As of this week, you are now able to download high quality MP3s or WAVs directly from the online music magazine.

Originally focused in Australia, Resident Advisor quickly grew to an international leader in their field. Starting with music news, event reviews, photo reports and an active forum, it soon added a podcast, DJ charts, even an event ticketing system, and has grown over the last 10 years to become one of the leading electronic music magazines. 2011 has seen it expand it’s reach further, hosting a series of 10 events across the globe (from London to Berlin to New York to Moscow and more), and now the announcement of direct in-site download sales.

Tracks are added to you RA shopping basket, which has previously been very effective in the sales of event tickets. The playable samples and track information is powered by UK retailer Juno, and the pricing structure is very similar, with mp3s priced from $1.45 to $1.89, moving up to $2.45 to $2.75 for full quality WAV files.There is also a ‘processing fee’ of $0.10 added to each transaction.

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So, what does this mean for the 2011 digital music fan? Well, each month, roughly 3000 DJs, from 80 countries chart 30,000 tracks. These are also compiled into a monthly Top 50. Alongside the aggregated and artists charts, Resident Advisor will begin adding music from top artists and labels with the aim of “giving the electronic music community a convenient channel through which to legally purchase music while browsing RA”. This equates to a lot of music out there, and some possible positive and negative affects for the RA community.

The Good

Resident Advisor is a place where people head to learn about new music. It is a logical step to involve an in-site system to purchase legal quality music downloads, and makes things easy for the music fan / consumer. Convenience is king, and being able to add a track to your cart whilst perusing the charts of your favorite DJs and live acts has an element of loyalty to the creators and taste-makers of underground music.

The Bad

Resident Advisor has always earned respect among electronic music enthusiasts for not being led by record label money or PR companies and the like. Whilst they have featured charts and podcasts, they are normally submitted and judged purely on artistic merit. Mixing in the factor of music sales means that another angle needs to be taken into account; offering a chart or podcast with 30 tracks and only one for sale can look lazy or incomplete, and so an artist could be encouraged (directly or indirectly) to submit ‘better known’ or ‘more readily available’ content.

The Result?

Seeing as the service only launched a few days ago, we’ll have to give it a bit of time to tell how it will affect consumer habits and the site itself. Will it dilute the current underground ‘premier’ content that made the site so well loved and popular? Perhaps it will persuade more DJs and music collectors to stick to the convenient legal ways to get their music fix of the next big hits.

by Lee Jarvis.

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A leading online curator of legal and free music downloads go mobile.

I have long been a fan of RCRD LBL, not only for the free downloads that they hook up, but the general music recommendations that they dish out. I’m always open to new sounds, and their emails make discovering new bands a regular joy in daily bite-sized chunks. As someone who constantly absorbs new music I am often pleasantly surprised by their suggestions in all genres and styles. Recent changes have made it easy to add these new discoveries to a ‘favorites’ list, and then re-visit via your profile page. Now, the blog-like music curator takes things to the next level: mobile.

In launching the RCRD LBL iPhone app, they reach out to the millions of music consumers who do so on the move. The in-house radio station is updated with constant fresh music, and users can create their own playlists as well as check out ready-made mixes from staff and celebrity guests. Sharing to Facebook and Twitter is simple enough, track info comes with artwork and short artist bio, and as the all important price point.. it’s free. Which, let’s face it, there are so many music listening apps out there now that you have to offer consumers at least a free basic version to try your product. The app keeps things simple, and does them well, rather than attempting to please everybody with overly complicated and buggy features.

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Most music on RCRD LBL leans towards rock, electronica and hip hop, and they often find boundary-pushing hybrids and throw them in the mix for good measure. It doesn’t seem that they will deviate from that current line-up, preferring to excel at certain niche markets rather than try and compete with iTunes to the commercial masses. Which is a good thing if your tastes align with the above – listening and downloading music via RCRD LBL is easy and fun, which is what music discovery should be all about.

Check out the iPhone app for yourself at http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rcrd-lbl/id438702678.


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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It has recently been announced that the wonderful Sia will be stopping by North America and Europe to sprinkle some of her musical magic dust as part of The We Meaning You Tour. Tickets are on sale now, and I am definitely heading along to the Chicago show on April 25th.

Tickets are selling out fast, with only a very limited number of VIP tickets left, so check out the list of US tour dates below and then hurry on over to SiaMusic.net to buy your tickets (EU dates also available via that link).

NORTH AMERICA

Check out the video below for Sia’s fantastic version of You’ve Changed, with her own unique quirky character shining though as strong as her epic voice. If you like what you hear you can also get a free download after the jump…

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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.

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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.

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