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.

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

MySpace has recently completed a deal to acquire music streaming service Imeem, and is in the first phase of integrating certain assets into its Myspace Music network. Although the sum of the deal remains undisclosed, sources report a total deal worth around $8m. (CNET shares, “The News Corp.-owned MySpace has agreed to pay $1 million in cash, but the total figure also includes money for accounts receivable and employee earn outs”.) These figures fall wildly short of the $30m+ that had been invested in Imeem during it’s 6 year development, and point towards, essentially, a fire sale.

Imeem is one of several sites that have recently gone bust or sold for next to nothing. Pressure from both major labels and large indies in the form of ‘infringement payments’ have helped smother another promising start-up, although the Imeem team had the relatively simple choice of selling up or packing up.

What Myspace will do to connect with Imeem’s loyal following of 16 million users remains unclear. The Imeem blog says that ‘visitors to imeem.com will be guided to MySpace Music to find and play the music they want’… the only problem being that Myspace Music is cluttered, saturated by the popular market and not particularly user friendly. Searching for and discovering new music is a challenge and the sudden change-over has Imeem users up in arms.

Imeem had to respond to try and calm worries about playlists being lost, but Myspace will have a lot of people to try and win over, and they can only do so by improving their functionality and moving the Imeem user accounts over as soon as possible. Even then, people don’t like the Myspace brand. It served a function many years ago, but has fallen behind to Facebook and Twitter, not only in terms of regular traffic, but in the appeal to new web users. Buying up a rival music service and not maintaining it’s quality will only breed further dislike.

One area that Myspace will certainly benefit is from the knowledge and experience of Imeem CEO Dalton Caldwell, CTO Bryan Berg, COO Ali Aydar and VP of Sales David Wade, who are all joining the Myspace team as consultants to help with the transition.

Here’s to hoping that they will not only share some of the pitfalls to avoid, but aid with the smooth functionality that helped make Imeem so popular.

Lee Jarvis

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

For many members searching for jobs in the music industry, each little bit of income helps, and streaming seemed to offer hope of another revenue source to help make a living from music. However, Spotify, the streaming application that is immensely popular in Europe (and due to launch in the US soon, has come under fire along with the performing rights societies about the minuscule amount that artists actually receive.

Hypebot recently reported that Spotify paid Lady Gaga just $167 For 1M Plays:
Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face” was one of the most popular tracks for 5 months on Spotify; being played more than 1 million times. But according to reports this weekend, the Swedish Performing Rights Society only paid her $167. If true, it confirms other complaints from other artists like those of Swedish musican Magnus Uggla who pulled his music off Spotify declaring, “I’d prefer to be raped by Pirate Bay than played on Spotify”.

When an artist starts out with earning no income from their music, they are quite happy to give it away for the exposure it may create. Obviously it is easier for a small band to offer a free mp3 and say “we may have lost a potential $1000 in order to gain some new fans”, than it would be for Universal to do it with a Lady Gaga single and consider losing (potentially) a lot more.

However, the idea of exposure still remains. Streaming can be a way for people to try out new artists without committing to a $15 album (of which, Universal made many, many terrible ones). There are already reports saying that streaming is drawing consumers away from P2P sites, and with the Pirate Bay trial and Joel Tenebaum ruling gaining so much press this year, some users will be scared off using such sites in the future. The Pandoras, Spotifys and LastFMs of the new music industry are an essential part of artist promotion in my opinion, and so I would consider pulling your music away from them is a foolish move.

As there is no way to measure the direct income derived from a person who streams two tracks, then goes to buy them from iTunes, and then pays $40 to see the artist in concert, it can be hard to judge.

I would stick my neck out and say that it helps though.

We’d love to hear your response on this – comments around the Music Jobs office range from outrage at the royalty rates for artists to “that’s about $166 too much”! Feel free to comment below.

Lee Jarvis

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

The music streaming app that is currently taking the UK and Europe by storm is looking to set-up in the US in the very near future. (This may well help create music industry jobs in the USA, so keep checking the Jobs Board!)

Founded by two Swedish entrepreneurs, Spotify has over six million tracks available to stream, and gives users the ability to create, save and share playlists, offering greater interaction and discovery. They are working with US music publishers and labels to evolve a deal to enable them to offer the same service here. Having dealt with many of the key companies regarding European licenses, it’s a very real possibility that they will be operating here soon.

The relatively new start-up (October ’08) is hoping to launch it’s desktop application in the US by the end of this year. However, even greater potential could be reached if they are approved as an iPhone app. The issue there? It could be so good as to make Apple’s iTunes virtually redundant to millions of music consumers.

Spotify derives revenue from a number of audio commercials during playback (current EU advertisers include Nike, Ikea, H&M and more), or a monthly fee for a premium service with no commercials, greater audio quality and extra premium-only content. The monthly fee is currently £9.99 in the UK (approx $15), and word is that the mobile app would only be available to those who subscribe to this.

People are becoming excited about the possibility of a real contender to iTunes, and as a fan of aiding music discovery, I really hope that Spotify will push forward with the licensing deals. They provide a great service, and user word-of-mouth will ensure a global success.

Lee Jarvis.

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

Muxtape was one of the most exciting ‘music 2.0’, forward-thinking companies to emerge in 2008. The website allowed users to upload their own mp3 playlists as virtual ‘mixtapes’, and to listen to other users’ playlists. The site became immensely popular fro day one – with 8,685 users registered in its first day and 97,748 in its first month (stats from Wikipedia). Creator Justin Ouellette explains that the important part of a mixtape, which he tried to preserve on his site, is about discovering new music instead of someone finding music they are already familiar with. He therefore purposefully made the site unable to search for tracks in playlists.

Differing from Napster in the way that users would stream playlists, and then hopefully move on to purchase (with the help of Muxtape links to Amazon) new music, many musicians, consumers, labels and web enthusiasts alike hoped for a bright future for Muxtape. Alas, the RIAA had other ideas, and in August last year the Muxtape homepage displayed the grim message “Muxtape will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA”.

September last year brought a new message, explaining that the site is being re-formatted to create a platform for independent artists to distribute their music. Yesterday, the website appeared in a new ‘preview’ mode, with a selection of artists that Muxtape had asked to trial the new platform. Other bands will be able to sign up themselves in the coming weeks, and users will once again be able to create playlists and share around the web.

Will the new version of Muxtape work? I really hope so. The death of the original version was a real shame, and yet another indicator of major labels and governing bodies failing to realise the potential and future direction of digital music. Fresh start-up companies such as Muxtape are driving the music industry forward, and I am glad they are not letting the previous issues keep them down. It will be interesting to see what emerges of the new site and how users react / interact over the next few weeks. If nothing else, just by visiting the new homepage I have discovered 12 new bands, some of which I really enjoyed listening to, and will be likely to purchase music from them or see them on tour as soon as possible. Oh, wow, look at that…. free streaming = potential future revenue….

Lee Jarvis.

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