This week I came across a presentation from New York marketing communications brand, JWT. Their October 2011 Things to Watch list is a special Music Edition, and covers a variety of trends in “accessing, discovering and sharing music”.

After a variety of research and specialist analysis, there seems to be a bit more clarity in this presentation than there has been in recent years. The digital age certainly flipped everything on it’s head, but the fact that the big digital guns have stepped into the arena means that they see a viable future. Independent artists are more common and more powerful, and the platforms available for them to communicate and reach out to consumers are much more of a regular way of life than previous years. The frustration of not knowing where to find the music you like, and then not knowing what the ‘legal’ options were seems to be vanishing, and whilst there is no one ‘savior’ of the industry, the combination of many new techniques and technologies has created the beginnings of a new enjoyable sharing experience for all music lovers and appreciators.

Says JWT director of trendspotting Ann Mack, “It’s all about the ability to listen to your own archives, and just about anything else, wherever you are. It’s a major change, and one that comes just as listening gets a lot more social, from Turntable’s DJ rooms to Facebook’s peeks into what friends are listening to.”

Some of the my favorite points include;

Access Over Ownership – in today’s music world, consumers are shifting to the convenience of simply having access to music (i.e. music for hire), as opposed to wanting to own a copy themselves.
The Celestial Jukebox – a dream come true! The advent of Spotify, Rdio and the like means that we seem to have near infinite music available at our fingertips.
Taking it to the Cloud – 2011 saw some major players offer cloud storage (Apple’s iCloud / Amazon’s Cloud Player and Google Music Beta), and with that remove the limitations of hardware storage and which devices have music on them.
The Death of the MP3 Player – we are moving away from both devices that store music, and also devices that have only one function. Being able to stream more music from a mobile device that has multiple uses is a big shift in trend.
The Facebook Effect – the world’s runaway leader in sharing and networking has recently unveiled real-time sharing of music listening habits, via third party apps such as Spotify, Vevo, Mixcloud, Rhapsody, Soundcloud and more.
Youtube IS MTV – albeit an on-demand version, with new licensed content, music documentaries, vintage live shows and much more, this offers something for every music fan to tune into.
Artists are Doing it for Themselves – services and platforms helping musicians manage, market and sell have come on leaps and bounds. It really is possible to be a self made superstar in the internet age.

by Lee Jarvis.

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Groovebug is a new iPad app soon to launch that allows for simple and efficient music discovery, coupled with instant news on your favorite artists.

I recently had a chance to test drive the app prior to the official release on September 8th and must say that it certainly lives up to the label of “personalized music magazine + discovery engine”. The app is fast and easy to use, and made it fun to flick through new artists and end up in a well of new music. Its ‘Similar Artists’ page is pretty on the mark, and the database of music is vast. Groovebug also allows you to purchase full songs once you find an artist or album that you enjoy. Just a couple of clicks through the iTunes interface and you’re downloading and back to exploring.

Once you have music on your iPad, you can play the full versions through Groovebug; it will also play any previously purchased and iPad stored mp3s. Other pages offer Full biographies and a list of all Youtube videos available to watch full screen. Completing the one-stop-shop for music needs, the app also takes feeds from some of the biggest and best music blogs around to provide fresh news, reviews, and tour details.

This intriguing app; a combination of necessary content and a fresh and clean look, has attracted an array of active investors in the creative and business worlds, including the man behind Lollapalooza and Austin City Limits, lead designers and COO of Feedburner, a teacher of Entrepreneurship at Northwestern University and more.

Check out the introductory video:-

You can sign up for updates and an e-prod when Groovebug launches at http://groovebug.com

by Lee Jarvis.

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Things move fast in the digital age: only last week we told you about the launch of Amazon and Google’s music ventures, and now we have news on how two other powerhouses – Facebook and Apple – plan to shake up the way that consumers listen to, pay for, and share music on the internet.

Firstly, Facebook has announced that it is partnering with Spotify to launch a new way to listen to music with friends. Users will see a Spotify tab on the left hand side of their Facebook home page, and clicking in this will launch the Spotify player much in the same way that the desktop app currently launches. This integration is still being tested and will not likely launch for another two to four weeks. While this is not the creation of a new service from Facebook, their social reach is undeniably a hugely powerful thing, and so it will still have major impact in music industry circles.

However, this new service is unlikely to be available in the US right away. Spotify has been dealing with licensing issues with the major labels for some time now; we reported that there was almost a breakthrough back in summer 2009, but nearly two years later they are still unable to come to an agreement. Having Facebook involved may assist this issue, but it is still a huge hurdle to overcome.

Next up, it seems like Apple may have even been putting some of the talent they acquired from purchasing Lala to good use; it has been revealed that they have reached “tentative agreements with all four major record labels” that would enable music fans to listen from it’s own cloud-based service, and this could launch as soon as June 6th, according to one report from the LA Times. As I mentioned in last week’s blog post, this was one factor that both Google and Amazon’s service were lacking, and may lead to issues somewhere down the line. Apple, having developed relationships with the labels over the last eight years with iTunes, could have the edge when it comes to mainstream content in this respect; the fact that iTunes shifts somewhere between 75% and 85% of the entire download market has surely put them in good stead.

But…

Clearly, there are still issues that could come up with any new ventures in the music industry; that these ‘big four’ e-giants still struggle to get content online in 2011 or have to bow to some of the key copyright holders. Myspace Music made a huge mistake when it chose to drop the indie musician and cater to the majors, and now they are suffering. Hopefully one (or more) of these guys will come through with some news of how their service aids the discovery of new and exciting music from around the globe, rather than simply pushing the same pop stars with the biggest budgets.


by Lee Jarvis.

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Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music both launched within a couple of weeks of each other. They join a number of well established and loved music streaming services such as Pandora, Rdio, Rhapsody, Last.FM and many more, with the supposed king of them all, Spotify (which is VERY good, by the way), still due “any day now”. So… what do the new kids on the cloud have to offer?

Amazon offers both a Cloud Drive and a Cloud Player. Cloud Drive is your hard drive, uploaded into the cloud (therefore backing up not just your mp3s, but other documents, also). The Cloud Player offers a place to store all new Amazon mp3 purchases, as well as access to your Cloud Drive. You can stream music on the go with the app for Android mobile phones or tablets. Cloud Drive offers all users 5Gb free storage, and, for a limited time, a free upgrade to 20 GB of Cloud Drive storage with an Amazon mp3 album purchase. Also, all new Amazon mp3 purchases saved to Cloud Drive do not count against your storage quota, essentially giving regular Amazon mp3 shoppers an ever-growing storage limit.

Google Music is still invite-only at the moment, but is essentially a similar idea – uploading of your current music files, and a place to easily add new purchases, that are then accessible from any Flash-equipped web browser, along with Android phones and tablets. Very similar indeed. The one big difference? You still need to purchase new music, and this will mainly point music consumers back to digital retail stores run by Amazon and/or Apple. The supposed reason for this hitch? Everyone’s favorite villains; the major labels. Wanting to much money up front apparently hindered Google’s ability to create a one-stop-shop, and has meant that the streaming launch is more of a stutter.

Worth noting is that both of these new players are iTunes friendly. They are not aggressively attacking the third big cheese, Apple, but instead recognize that millions of music fans already have playlists and organized folder based on 10 years of iTunes usage. To ignore this fact would be a foolish move, and making it easy and convenient for them to sync, swap, and move their music around is definitely the first step in taking a slice of the Apple pie (pun intended? Possibly.)

by Lee Jarvis.

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You seem to be web-savvy enough to be reading this blog, so I’m going to assume you’ve heard all the furor about The Beatles over the last 10 days. Yes, The Beatles have finally released their catalogue of music on iTunes, seemingly ending decades of feuds between Apple Corps (the company owning of much of the rights to The Beatles music) and Apple Inc. (Steve Jobs’ computer monster that originally signed a deal to never be involved in music.)

With all the delays in the ‘launch’ (the iTunes Store went live in 2003, and digital music has been around longer than many music consumers), I wondered if it was a case of too little, too late. Nielsen Soundscan released the figures yesterday, and in the first seven days, The Beatles sold over 2 million singles and more than 450,000 albums. Quite a lot. Well, kinda…..

I’m not a die-hard Beatles fan, but I own 4 of their albums on CD or 12″ vinyl. I’m not in a rush to go out and sweep up another 4 or 5 digitally, especially when Amazon played along and dropped the prices of all the remastered Beatles albums on CD to a competitive $7.99 each. I’m sure I’ll pick up another one or two at that price soon, but right now I have been sidetracked by their Thanksgiving week sale, where they have slashed prices on various digital albums to just $1.99 each. So far I have picked up LPs from John Legend & The Roots, Gorillaz, Belle & Sebastian, KT Tunstall, Vampire Weekend and more.

Before this starts sounding too much like a promotion for Amazon, my point is this… Album pricing needs to be drastically adjusted. At $1.99 I am (and many others are, i’m sure) sweeping them up: exploring new sounds, current trends and past hits of unknown artists. Discovering new music and taking a ‘risk’ is fun and easy. Yet, I don’t know if the industry can sustain at that price point (at least, not with major labels and their costs involved.) Eight bucks for a CD? I’m still going to have to choose wisely, and just pick up one or two a month that are dead certain. I’m not risking too much – too many memories of being burnt by terrible LPs from the 90s

$12.99 for a digital album that isn’t full WAV or FLAC quality, and I may have bought in previous formats over the last 20 years, and could potentially rip a better quality recording from… I’ll pass every time. If convenience is king (and, it is), it is not convenient for me to spend 52 bucks to ‘replace’ my Beatles collection with inferior quality audio, years after I bought the CD/vinyl.

Correcting this price point could inspire a whole new generation to buy a collection of Beatles albums. I’m not saying that younger music listeners aren’t into them now, but chances are they ripped a copy of Sgt Pepper about 10 years ago. This year, there have been two much more headline worthy releases – Taylor Swift sold a whopping 1 million albums in the first week with her latest release, and Eminem topped off a $60m tour with another million sales of his ‘Recovery’ LP – going platinum in just two weeks.

With all the hype for the Beatles, and all the things this could have been, I feel it is much ado about nothing. And so… Apple (Inc. and Corps), if you halved the price per unit and sold twice as many units, would that have been a bad move?

by Lee Jarvis.

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Thanks to all our Facebook fans (new and old) who made the iPad Giveaway such a success. Our grand prize winner of the 16GB iPad and an annual subscription to US Music Jobs is:

Casey Lewis

Caption: USMJ Tara Duffy and iPad Winner Casey Lewis.

Also, please congratulate our 4 runners up who each won an annual subscription to US Music Jobs:

Leigh Gillespie

Steve Garbade

John Douglas

Jason Bohl

Thanks again to all our fans (new and old) who made the iPad Giveaway such a success! Here at US Music Jobs, we’re happy to be able to give a little back to our loyal fans.

The US Music Jobs Team

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Essential info on Apple’s revolutionary tablet computer…

1. Dimensions
It has a 9.7-inch full multi-touch capacitive LED touchscreen, and weighs in at four and a half pounds; it’s lighter than a netbook and, at just 0.5-inches thin, is extraordinarily slim.

2. Operating System (OS) and key features
The Apple iPad sports a bespoke iPhone-like OS and will have 3G built in. There is also Wi-Fi 802.11n and Bluetooth 2.1. Other notable additions include a compass, accelerometer, speaker and microphone.

3. Battery life and storage
The Apple iPad should keep going for 10 hours without charge, and even more impressively, it can stay alive for one month in standby mode. On the storage front there are 16GB, 32GB and 64GB flash memory models.

4. Processor power
Powering the tablet beauty will be an Apple 1GHZ A4 chip. That puts the Apple iPad in line with the Google Nexus One and the Palm Pre, both of which boast the Snapdragon processor.

5. Video playback
Steve Jobs showed off the Apple iPad’s movie playback capabilities with movies being displayed in 16:9 widescreen despite the iPad’s 4:3 ratio screen. The screen is HD and looks super hi-res.

6. iBooks
The iPad, as expected, packs eReader support, specifically an app called iBooks. While you swipe a finger to turn the pages, the accompanying iBook store gives you the choice of books from Penguin, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and the Hachette book group. Speculation is that top titles could cost around $14.99. Look out Amazon Kindle…

7. Apps
The good news is that all iPhone apps will work on the Apple iPad. Smartphone apps taken straight from the Apple App Store will run scaled up via “pixel doubling” to fill the iPad screen. Apps will also be made exclusively for the Apple iPad in the App Store.

8. Software Development Kit (SDK)
Apple has announced the development kit for the Apple iPad, which means tech-minded users can design and create their own Apps. This means there will be some happy geeks and a lot more software choice for you.

9. Price
iPad pricing starts at $499, and monthly non-contract data plans are available across the US.

10. You can win a free iPad today!
Yes, you can win an iPad from the team here at US Music Jobs – we are giving one away within the next 24 hours! Full details and Terms and Conditions are here.

Good Luck!

The US Music Jobs Team.

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We’re giving away a 16GB iPad exclusively through Facebook!

We’ll also be giving away additional US Music Jobs annual subscriptions to four lucky runners up. To be eligible to win, all you need to do is register for free as a member of US Music Jobs first. **No purchase necessary, and no credit card information is taken.** Then, to receive the exclusive link that will allow you to enter the contest, simply head to our US Music Jobs Facebook Page and click “Like”.

Once you’ve “Liked” us, we’ll be sending out an exclusive update* via Facebook on Tuesday, July 27th. In the update you’ll find the link to enter yourself to win a 16GB iPad and an annual subscription to US Music Jobs.

If you’ve already “Liked” our US Music Jobs Facebook Page, you’re all set, and now just keep an eye out for our exclusive update* on Facebook.

Thanks again and we look forward to rewarding you!

* Updates can be located within your Facebook message center in the lefthand column, or you can visit this link: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=updates

Full Terms & Conditions
(more…)

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So, it seems that Apple spent a ton of money on Lala only to close it down 5 months later.

This past weekend, Lala users received a notification email and this notice was posted on the music streaming website. Current users will be able to use the service until May 31st, after which any credits or balances will be transferred to the iTunes store. They also announce to Lala members that “In appreciation of your support, you will receive a credit in the amount of your Lala web song purchases for use on Apple’s iTunes Store.” This will also be the last chance to hear our Music Jobs Lala playlist, ‘Rockin into 2010‘, so go check it out now.

I have no doubt that Apple will use some of the Lala technology to create an iTunes streaming service – music ‘in the cloud’ is where it’s at these days. While no official announcement has been made from Apple in this respect, reports and predictions have been flying around since the buyout, and the computer/music giant have their finger on the pulse enough to recognise the trends that have occurred in recent times.

It is a shame that another quality streaming service has to go (Imeem shut their doors after the Myspace acquisition), but hopefully there will be something good come of all this, rather than the usual bullish business moves and subsequent dumbing down of a great service.

Lee Jarvis.

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I came across a lot of new rock / dance / electro funk punk / etc bands last year. Not that they were always new bands, but often new to me. There’s also a couple of more established bands who are threatening to get back together or released their first material for a few years.

With that said, I thought I’d make a shortlist of several artists that I’d love to see perform live in 2010, with a little help from Lala. Having received a lot of coverage with their recent buy out from Apple, I thought I’d compile a streaming playlist from their site, and must say I found the process simpler and more fluent than I remember from last using their system. Here’s to hoping that Apple help make the brand profitable and they continue providing a useful service.

And so, onto my rockin playlist – featuring music from Kings of Leon, Jet, Kasabian, The Strokes, The White Stripes, Silversun Pickups, Muse, The Prodigy, Foo Fighters and Soulwax.

Enjoy!

Lee Jarvis.

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