As 2011 is drawing to a close, we thought we’d find out a little more about what kind of music listening preferences our members have used over the last 12 months.

There are now more ways to consume music than ever before, making the murky waters of the music industry even more treacherous for musicians, songwriters and performers, not to mention agents, managers and the like. Please consider taking our short poll and sharing some of your recent habits of consuming music in 2011. After you click submit you can see the results. Simply hit the back button on your browser to vote in another topic and see more results.

by Lee Jarvis.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed

Tower Records is something of a martyr for the old record industry. Whilst many new artists and music industry freelancers may be happy for the breaking down of barriers that arrived with the digital era, those same music fans also miss something about the old record buying process. The idea that you had to go to get out of bed and go to a real location a certain date for a record and that it only had a limited number of copies (whether that was 250 or 5 million the premise is the same – you can’t clone another physical copy from your original), is something that doesn’t even sound enjoyable to the latest generation of music consumers.

The experience of record shopping was a pleasure in itself. Having knowledgeable staff, who would know what you want and help you find it, and also recommend similar works, often turning you onto new undiscovered artists and rare albums, is something that rarely exists now. Hearing that something new and having it grab you enough to buy it, then the walk home, the rush in the door to unwrap the record and place it on the turntable (/in the CD player), and deciding on your new favorite track whilst scouring the liner notes and thank yous – that rush of adrenaline and excitement isn’t the same whilst waiting for something to download.

It had it’s pitfalls too, of course. The fact that you can spend half a day chasing around for a record that no-one has in stock, or those ‘special import’ prices we may have coughed up for now and then, or the double LPs that only really have one good song on there. But the risk was part of the fun. The ultimate would be to have the two systems exist in harmony: maybe we are reaching the critical minimum number of record stores that will just about survive if all the record buying public still contribute occasionally. The competition is less in number, so hopefully the ones that are still hanging in there will take up the customers of those that have passed.

Either way, the passing of Tower Records is an epic one; the empty stores and tattered signs across the US a cruel reminder and visual representation of the decline of the record industry. It is a story worthy of documenting… which is exactly what is happening. In 2008, actor and director Colin Hanks traveled to Sacramento to interview Russ Solomon, founder of the music retail chain which touched so many. He took photos and video of one of the desolate stores, and was inspired to want to make a full documentary – there was still so much more work to do.

And so, he turned to Kickstarter, a symbol of the new independent creative generation and digital-age fundraising tool, to set up backing for the project. He hit is original target a couple of weeks ago, but is still continuing to offer various worthy incentives for those who contribute to the venture. From their page, they describe it as this: “The Tower Records story is about a man, his company and the unprecedented economic and cultural impact it had on the music industry and people around the world. Tower Records begins with the man who created it… Russ Solomon“. You can watch the video below for more info…

Video Photos Courtesy of: Karen Salomon
Video Music Courtesy of: Three Eighty Three’s and La Strada
“All Things Must Pass” by George Harrison

Again, if you would like to aign up for a copy, grab some swag, or get your name in the Thank You credits, you can contribute to the project at All Things Must Pass: The Rise and Fall of Tower Records


by Lee Jarvis.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed

Who?

Spotify is a team of developers led by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon (pictured above). They now have a headquarters in London, as well as an R&D team in Sweden.

What?

As a music playing desktop application, Spotify offers a ‘Free‘ account, with a limited amount of streaming of music, an ‘Unlimited‘ account, in other words, all-you-can-eat streaming, and also a ‘Premium‘ account where you can listen to music on any of your mobile devices, completely unrestricted. Music is easily searchable, and users can also browse by artist name, genre and other factors. Playlists can also be created and shared easily with other users and across the web.

When?

Whilst development started in 2006, Spotify first launched in 2008. After years of deliberating, negotiating, and rump-shaking (probably?), several territories can now dive into one of the most infamous and hyped instruments of the new music industry. As of July 2011, Spotify has officially hit the US shores.

Where?

Having originated in Sweden, Spotify went on to take Europe by storm, making deals and giving access to music lovers in the UK, France, Finland, Norway, Spain and the Netherlands, before landing in the USA.

Why?

Well, for a start, they host literally millions of tracks. Over 15 million, in fact. The interface is simple and user-friendly, making it a joy to locate the sounds you currently crave, as well as explore new and interesting music.

How?

Firstly, head here to select which account you would enjoy (Free, Unlimited, or Premium, as explained above).

Once setup, you have various features to experiment with. Looking for a place to start? Perhaps check out my Spotify profile…

…then perhaps subscribe to some of the Music Jobs playlists that I have compiled…

…from there it is easy to click on artist names, and discover new albums and related artists…

…making playlists yourself is simply a matter of dragging and dropping tracks…

…and sharing with friends is also as easy as a drag and drop…

Hopefully this post will enlighten you and give you a brief insight to their service. I’m not paid by or affiliated with them, it’s just, you know, kinda groovy

Enjoy!


by Lee Jarvis.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed

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.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed

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.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed

A colleague sent me a link to this article, which I found to be quite enlightening. The music industry has been in a constant state of change over the past decade, and the former archaic manner in which it operated is obsolete. Whether or not the majors want to admit it… Digital is King, and the number of albums sold no longer dictates an artist’s success.

The passage below from the article illustrates the manner in which artists truly no longer need a label, and can be self-sufficient through promoting and selling their music in all forms digital.

“Let me provide context. The financial food chain of the music industry used to be as follows. A distributor sells a CD to a retail store for a wholesale price (let’s say $10). The retail store marks the CD up to $16.98 and make $6.98. The distributor takes a “distribution fee” of 20% of the wholesale price (in this case $2) and passes the remaining $8 back to the label.

Compare this to self-distribution to iTunes though TuneCore: an artist makes $7 for each album sold at $9.99 and $0.70 for each song sold at $0.99. By selling just two songs on iTunes for $1.98, the artist makes the same amount of money as if a $16.98 full length CD was bought. An artist sells one digital album for $9.99 and makes 500% more than a signed band. The price may have dropped for the music consumer but with self-distribution the artist makes more money”

The article goes on to show just how dramatically digital performance royalties have exploded. It’s an interesting reminder to all music industry professionals, artists, and bands to stay abreast of these changes – and to know the truth about the reality of the situation, not just what those who still believe only in albums sales try to force feed us.

T.Lynn

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed

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.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed

I’ve always liked Apple. They may not have invented digital music, or the portable digital player, but they fine-tuned them and distributed them to mass markets to perfection. More music is being heard by more people in more places than ever before, and for that, we should be grateful. (Figuring out how to strategize and monetize these new markets is a different matter.)

It seems that iTunes has ruled the mp3 generation, but times and trends are moving ever faster, and there’s now a whole new generation of consumers that may never even own an mp3. Streaming is big business these days. Enter Lala, one of several successful (read: popular but not entirely profitable (yet?)) online music streaming services that has established itself with the non-owning and mobile music markets. Being able to listen to music through a web browser is something that gives music fans greater freedom, and access to their collection from any computer, smart phone or other mobile device, and is something that Apple lacks within iTunes.

Apple may well be looking at using the Lala team and functionality to enter into the streaming market, and with the way they have revolutionized similar parts of the music industry, who knows what may be in store.

One thing I hope Apple does figure out, is if they are paying $17m or $80m+ for Lala assets. Either way, it is a lot of money for a service that has et to find a profitable business model. Moving from CD-swapping to a (comparative to Pandora and Spotify) complicated streaming system has proved difficult, and investor Warner Music wrote down $11 million of the original $20 million it put down.

Lala had recently struck deals with both Google and Facebook, hoping to widen it’s user base with new search traffic and gift options. Apparently Google was also looking at acquiring Lala, and having narrowly missed out they may try and pursue other deals in the near future. Finding a way to tie it’s music search division in with either a download or freemium/ ad-funded streaming service seems inevitable, and well within Google’s scope. In fact, there have been several similar deals in recent months. Imeem was bought by Myspace, whom also previously acquired iLike.

Although Apple’s future movements may not be yet announced, I am certain they will continue to push the digital music industry forward (and outwards) with their services and reach new listeners across the globe.

Lee Jarvis.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed

To bring everyone up to speed, there has been an ongoing case in Swedish court that the four owners and heads of Peer2Peer (file sharing) site The Pirate Bay were in mass breach of copyright laws, not just within the music industry but also regarding movies and video games. The case has received a lot of attention and also incredible support from torrent and P2P websites and their users. Roger Wallis, who spoke in favour of The Pirate Bay at the trial, received a colossal amount of floral tributes, sent to his wife at their home.

The verdict was announced today, and all four men (Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm, and Carl Lundström) received 1 year in jail each and fines totaling $3,620,000. The prosecutors were aiming for much higher compensation, although their calculations are often very misguided; 10,000 free transfers of your song does not mean you lost 10,000 times the sale price of that record. Do they take into account the people who downloaded a few free tracks and then bought the actual album? I thought not.

Having said that, I am not in favour of people setting up software allowing the public to trade music and other files for free without artists’ consent. Let alone the people who shoot their mouth off, claiming “all music is free” and the like. Yes, all music is probably available for free if you wanted to find it online, but I am in favour of letting the artists (and the copyright owners) make that decision, controlling and profiting from the distribution of their work in some way, be that financially or by building their contact list. As content creators, that is their choice, and one of the reasons I am a huge fan of Creative Commons licenses.

People are using over-stretched analogies such as ‘if you hold the P2P site accountable then you must also prosecute ISPs’. There are also many, many comments across the web from people claiming it is a sad day and that there is no way this should have happened. I’d like to hear them come up with a solution, as to how artists can retain control of their work, be compensated where appropriate, and how they will be able to fund and market future creations and music projects.

You can’t really go and prosecute the millions of end users who take the music and other files. The RIAA have tried and failed more than 35,000 times, receiving nothing but bad press, fueling angst and probably instigating further file sharing. If there was a system in place by the websites to charge the users a subscription fee, then maybe that could work, and they could then reimburse the labels and artists. But they have not chose this route. So, do you hold the P2P sites and owners viable? Maybe. If their business model does not compensate the artist in any way, then I think they should be charged somehow. Governing bodies should aim to control this cause though, rather than react to the aftermath. The P2P sites could avoid legal wranglings themselves by striking up deals with labels, but as they are sworn enemies, how about independent artists? If the artists can register their music with a site and give permission to distribute and share globally then the P2P sites can still aid the discovery and sharing of new music and building of artists careers, which they are so fond of using as their mission statement.

What will the devastating effect be on the music industry? Not much. For a start there will be months of appeals, more uneducated blabberings in the press, and probably more flowers. ‘Pirates’ will continue to vent and despise the major labels and government prosecutors. P2P file sharing is rampant, and as much a part of a schoolkid’s daily life today as dolls, toy cars and baseballs were decades ago – it’s not going to disappear. Major labels will continue to push in this wrong direction instead of focusing their efforts on restructuring their business models, and to get to the route of the problem, that is that they have mistreated musicians and music fans for many years now. Creating value, authenticity and transparency within their brands should be at the top of their agenda, not ‘hire more lawyers’.

Who wins? Neither side. Certainly not the Pirate Bay owners (lend me $905,000 will you, mate?), and not the labels who struggle to recoup a few million bucks when they have just spent the same amount on forcing untalented acts into their hit-machine mould, only to be forgotten by this time next year. There are some people out there who have a collection of thousands of unpurchased songs that they will hardly listen to who think they are on the winning side. Congratulations, you’re very clever.

Who loses? Artists. Artists may move to gigging like crazy in order to subsidise the record sales gap in their revenue compared to previous years. Which is fine if they are able to do so and the people who listen to their music online genuinely like them and willingly support them when they come to town.

So do me (or more accurately, the music industry) a favour. Find a new, upcoming artist / band / rapper / DJ-producer from your iPod collection who is performing in your town this weekend, and go out to see their show / gig / concert. Use the $15 you just saved from purchasing their album… you will then be giving something back to the industry that you ‘care about’ so much. Heck, you may even have a good time. Yo-ho-ho.

Lee Jarvis.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed

This was the first MET summit, organised by Chicago Booth GSB Students and held at the Harper Center, and I’m sure I’m not the only one who considered it a great success. The summit focused on Media, Entertainment and Technology (there’s the ‘M’, ‘E’ and ‘T’ for those of you paying attention), and featured some well chosen panelists and keynote speakers from a variety of backgrounds. I chose to follow the Social Entertainment and Music panels and will touch on them here as I feel they all shared good advice that you can apply to promotion of your music career / artist management / online marketing / record labels and much more. (note: Part 2 next week will go into the keynote speeches)

Session 1 – Social Entertainment
Cliff Warner, Principal/CEO, Thinkwell Design & Production; Matt Freeman, CEO, Betawave Corporation; Anisha Ahluwalia, Associate Director, Denuo; David Goldberg, CEO, Youbet.com

The panel spoke well about various types of customer engagement in the digital world, touching on the gap between huge scale tools such as Yahoo adverts which can reach millions of consumers but may only return impression figures, and the kind of niche tools that really help you to understand your customers needs when you connect with them in a relaxed state of mind and retain their attention; finding the right combination for your business / career holds the best possibility of engagement and ultimately, success.

With less disposable income and more choice than ever before it is harder to keep customers interest and retain return visits, and any business having strong offline comparables will have to offer something more compelling online. This may be as simple as ‘being able to shop at home in your underwear’, it may mean creating more interesting additional features to support custom, displaying reams of data that could not be processed or viewed physically, or offering real-time updates allowing instant changes to orders / decisions. Nike plus did this well and brought the physical act of running to an online state by offering a community to share advice and support.

We also heard about brands that needed to actually discover what their brands mean before launching into social media, and perhaps when it is unsuitable or just plain weird they are better off partnering other companies or launching a community based on a related but diverted niche of the brand. The panel finished up by suggesting where they see social entertainment moving in the future, and the points raised are something that I agree strongly with and will feature in future blogs, namely ‘mobility’, ‘filtering’ and ‘authenticity’. Customer will want access and entertainment on the go, and products such as the iPhone allow new ways to engage them all the time. They will also want and need ‘filters’, meaning that with more and more content being created and shared online, recommendation and guidance will bring quality to the end user and create a strong appeal. Lastly, authenticity is something that people crave, and with people becoming numb to faceless internet spamming, that means that genuine conversations, a strong offline connection and authentic actions / reactions create trust and loyalty to your brand (company / artist).

Session 2 – Music
Beverly Jackson, Sr. Marketing Manager, The Recording Academy; Jonas Tempel, CEO/Co-founder, Beatport.com; Peter Strand, Founding Partner, The Law Offices of Peter Strand; Brenden Mulligan, President & Director of Business Development, ArtistData

Well, obviously here is my forte, and the very well chosen panelists meant that i could have happily listened to a two hour speech by each of them, but I feel we covered a fair bit of ground in the session. Upon entering the room, there were already postcards advertising the Grammys (3 weeks late?!) and Recording Academy artists on all the seats… hmmm. Speaking of the Grammys, quote of the day goes to Jonas Tempel, who said after seeing the Jonas Brothers and Stevie Wonder performance, “I’m not sure if I was confused or offended”. Jonas and the panel also offered a wealth of knowledge regarding the music industry, mentioning that publishing rights are one revenue stream that should be protected, although I was a bit concerned at how this evolved into ‘illegal downloading is wrong’ and ‘they will get you if you do so’ style comments (maybe because of the watchful eye of the RA representative?). 10 years after the Napster hooplah started I thought there would be less of that.

We did move on, and somewhere that the panelists saw potential growth is in the live music sector. Concert tickets may be high, but people are obviously willing to pay that and even more on ebay and the like, so the demand for shows and discovery of music doesn’t seem to have slowed at all. Best Buy is apparently making shelf space in their stores for low-end musical instruments, obviously as a demand reflex rather than a good-will incentive to encourage young music types.

A variety of music players / widgets / promotion sites were brought up, all available to aid artists’ careers, and the panel agreed that independent artists are in a strong position in this shift in the industry, and also the new interesting ways of artist promotion such as the Prince CD giveaway with the Mail on Sunday in England, himself being a music visionary and now a savvy industry marketer and businessman. I would have loved someone to emphasise that the giveaway almost certainly helped Prince sell out 15 of 21 shows at London’s O2 Arena within the first hour of tickets becoming available.

Something I consider very important and is quite a hot topic recently is the Creative Commons Licensing. I wanted to ask the panel their thoughts, especially as to if this relates to the remix competitions that Beatport offers and to what the Recording Academy thought of the huge popularity and financial success of Nine Inch Nails’ operation with this licensing, but unfortunately we had run out of time.

I thought the discussions such a success and inspiration that I will endeavour to contact the recent panelists and other music industry professionals and report back with some interviews / quotes in the near future.

For more info on each of the panelists and keynote speakers, as well as general MET summit details is at www.metsummit.com, and I strongly suggest that you keep an eye out for next year’s event; if it is carried out as passionately and as smoothly as this year’s then I see it being a great opportunity for young entrepreneurs to enhance their knowledge and a key event to forge interesting relationships with intelligent forward-thinking media companies in 2010.

Lee Jarvis.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to our RSS feed