The Day Spotify Changed The World

At the dawn of a new decade, the digital music sector remains unchanged.

Spotify didn’t launch in 2010. If it had though, would we be different now? I think so. Had it been made available in the U.S., an iPod type moment could’ve occurred. It could’ve.

And it still could. I’m not saying this out of blind evangelism either. Looking at the social features of Spotify more closely, I’m starting to believe Daniel Ek’s proclamation that music will displace photos on Facebook in popularity. Photo sharing is the lifeblood of Facebook, as are games like FarmVille and CityVille. Status updates and link sharing also play a big role. We like to see what our friends (and strangers) are doing and hear what they’ve been up to. However, a large majority of people do little with their accounts.

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Should Digital Collections Be Worth Something?

Most people don’t care whether they own music downloads or not.

Of the more than 8 million people that are estimated to buy a Kindle this year, only a small fraction of them understand that the ebooks bought on the device are licensed – not owned – which means they can’t lend or sell their titles. By agreeing to Amazon’s terms of service, which they didn’t read, they’ve accepted these conditions. Soon, single ebook lending may be allowed on the Kindle, but users won’t be allowed to buy used ebooks.

The “first sale” doctrine indicates that consumers can sell their physical books, give them to a library, or do just about anything else. This legal principle covers CDs, DVDs, and videogames too. It enables the used marketplace and retailers like eBay and Amazon to exist and sell used titles. In the digital age, this concept is under fire. It’s no longer clear that consumers should be granted the same rights when they buy digital downloads.

You own an iPod and Kindle, but not the songs or books on them.

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MTT Open: Everyone Is Lying To You And Becoming a Rock Star

Everyone Is Lying To You On Facebook

In Leena Sowambur’s opinion, social networks are not used for advertising and using Facebook to push information is the wrong way to do it. An artist should not think that people are fans just because they have “liked” the artist’s page.

“Just because you push the information out doesn’t mean you have your fans’ or friends’ attention in fact it is highly likely they are blind to it.” (Read On)

The Science of Becoming a Rock Star

Eric Galen shows how great music careers can be made by relating music to science. He uses charts and physics to explain. Read on for his explanation that can help you take control and steer your music career in the right direction.

“Talk to any successful artist, producer or songwriter, and you’ll discover that each of them struggled at one level until a breakthrough happened and their career took a quantum jump ahead.” (Read On)

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The Beatles Tell Us That We've Hit The Concert Price Ceiling

The recent release of the Beatles catalog on iTunes made me think - what did a ticket to see them at their live peak cost? 

Answer: a prime seat to see the Beatles in Chicago 1966 cost $5.75 - in today’s dollars this is $37.60 - almost ten times less than what you would pay for a huge act today. 

Things were different then of course - touring was done mainly to promote record sales and tickets were priced below market purposely to make sure shows were safely sold out and to reward fans for their record-buying loyalty.  This produced what economists call a consumer surplus.  Some of that surplus was soaked up by the secondary ticketing market.

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How To Use Facebook & Twitter With Your Official Website, Case Study Kissonline.com

A recent headline from KISS on Facebook: ”KISS Facebook Fans Pass 2 Million!”

Congratulations! That is great! Two million fans is a huge achievement and is no easy goal to meet. Then I decided it was time to discuss how to use Facebook and Twitter if you are a band, and sorry, KISS, you are the subject matter. This is not meant to put down the band in any way. I am having discussions weekly with various people about the benefit of Facebook Likes and Twitter followers. They ask what can they do to get more Likes and followers, and then what can they do with them once they have them. I only pick KISS because it is subject I know very well and a Facebook page I visit daily.

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6 Reasons Why The Album Format Died

I think it’s safe to say that we’re at the end of the “album age,” and although the format will hold on for a while, it’s clearly waning in popularity. I’ve given this a lot of thought and have come up with what I think are the reasons, but be aware, they’re not all exactly what the popular wisdom assumes. So let’s begin with the 6 reasons why the album format has, for all intents and purposes, died.

1) It was a visual experience. The album format in the vinyl record age had the advantage of that wonderful piece of cardboard known as the album jacket. The album jacket contained the cover art (still found on CDs), and most importantly, the liner notes on the back, which we’ll get to in a second. But one thing that everyone either forgets or has never experienced is the fact that millions of albums were purchased completely on impulse because of the album artwork alone!

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50 Most Read Music Think Tank Posts In 2010

Here’s a look at the top Music Think Tank posts in 2010. There’s some invaluable advice being churned out by these great authors. If you have a minute, glance through this great list of insights and marketing advice. This listing is organized by pageviews. Take a look:

1. How to Write a Music Business Plan
2. Bob Marley: The Transformative Sound of Selling Out
3. 15 Critical Marketing Mistakes That All Musicians Need To Avoid
4. 30 Tips For The Typical Musician 
5. Why Music Should Never Be Given Away For “Free”  
6. Template for Writing a Music Business Plan 
7. Eleven Steps To Fixing The Problem That Occurs When You Work Harder Than Everyone Else In The Band
8. Dear Musicians - Please Be Brilliant or Get Out of The Way
9. Well, What Is A Good Digital Music Strategy ? Part 1 - Introduction and Website  
10. 9 Mistakes To Avoid When Recording Your Own Album

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Microfunding Is The Future of Labels! (...But Kickstarter Is The Wrong Model For Bands)

By now we’ve all at least heard about Kickstarter. Many of us have helped to fund projects. I’ve supported 5 or 6 myself. The best I can discern is that Kickstarter projects follow one of thee models. The explanations are a bit long, but I hope to tie this back into music and into why I believe the Kickstarter models are mostly not the correct models for funding recordings, but are great models for other types of projects.

Additionally, if I ran Kickstarter, I’d disallow projects that did not meet a stricter set of guidelines because I believe that many projects that are on the site actually damage the Kickstarter brand and the entire concept of microfunding. I end this post with a proposal for a new fan-investment label model that I believe is viable, won’t burn out fan interest in investment, and inherently creates a dedicated “street-team” to help bands promote their work. Let’s start with my taxonomic breakdown of Kickstarter models:

Model 1 - Donation / Support

These projects are designed to produce art, ideas, operations, movements, or objects that supporters want the world to have. These notions (I’ve decided to use the term “notion” to describe everything in this category) are not really owned by any of the supporters and the supporters’ only reward is that they get to know in their warm, fuzzy hearts, that they helped make an otherwise impossible notion come into being.

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The Unfamiliar Sound of Competition and Managing Your Rights

Up until now, music was in a unique competitive product category: there simply wasn’t much competition (for consumer attention) between well-made songs.   

Songs are inexpensive, consumed in under four minutes, easily obtained, and songs are the only product in the world where billions of users…each own thousands of ‘competing’ alternatives.  In reality, uniformly-priced competitors are often stacked up and then consumed in succession, and in the age of the iPod, the stacks (the playlists) are growing instead of shrinking. 

However the modern world conspires to ultimately deliver, in every product category, the greatest value at the lowest price, and songs are about to loose their long held exception. 

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Bob Marley: The Transformative Sound of Selling Out

Bob Marley comes across as the ultimate musical rebel, though everyone—from American frat boys to Malian army officers—loves his music. Wildly successful, Marley is an enigma: Someone who managed to put obscure local music on the world map; who turned a marginalized community (Rastafarians) into admired trendsetters; who remained a humble barefooted guy even when tooling around in a BMW; who sold a boatload of records by sticking to his guns and making his music, his way. How did he do it?

He didn’t. Marley sold out.

Before you protest, think about it. Imagine, for a second, that a major figure in a subcultural movement—Minor Threat/Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye of the U.S. hardcore punk scene, let’s say—joined forces with a mainstream hip hop producer like will.i.am, and made a really great record that stayed on the charts for eons and moved units in the gazillions. Though some die-hard fans might scream that he’d sold out, he would have transformed the musical landscape.

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UPDATED: Can Computers Analyze Songs For Hit Potential?

In response to the ASCAP/HITLAB announcement that basically endorses the use of algorithms to analyze the hit potential of songs, I thought I would weigh in on the subject.

Proceed with caution…
As someone that spent the better part of a year evaluating similar algorithms, technology, services, business models and patents connected to acoustic analysis and hit potential measurement, I can tell you that you should proceed with caution when making a purchase or career decision that involves the utilization of services that sell computer-based, hit-analysis technology. 

It’s fascinating technology, however…
Generally speaking, the technology is reasonably accurate (my experience: 80% accurate, and often close enough to my expectations) when it comes to plotting a song relative to a cluster of preexisting hits and then rolling the plots into a meaningful score.  However a high score doesn’t mean you have a hit on your hands, or that “hits” even matter anymore.  Read on…

Here are some pros and cons to consider when evaluating services that use computers and algorithms to evaluate music:

Computer-based hit analyzing technology - the pros…

Targeting.  If detailed reporting is offered, this technology should show you how close your song is to clusters of previously recorded hits.  This information is useful for targeting listeners of similar sounding hit songs. 

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What If You Owned Music Think Tank?

It’s been a few months since the Hypebot team has taken over the stewardship of Music Think Tank. In that time, we’ve published some really spectacular material along with a couple of things that did not deserve to be featured in this thoughtful forum. Along the way, we’ve learned and are (we hope) slowly improving how we do things and the quality of the content.  But now that we’ve got our bearings, it’s time to ask for feedback: If you ran Music Think Tank, how would you do things differently?

For example:

• Should we more or less selective with the articles that we publish on the home page?
• Does the current level of self-promotion in some posts bother you or is it payback for sharing their content?
• Are there additional voices that you wished were represented here?
• Are there topics that you wish we’re covered more on MTT?
• Do you listen to MTT Radio and if so, how can we improve it?
• (Your great idea here.)

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What’s The Best Music Business Model? You Might Be Playing It Every Day

Have you bought a video game recently? Have you ever made an in-game purchase? Do you consider pre-roll, banner or in-game advertising acceptable? Do you think buying video games online or on a mobile device is normal? Has the video game industry turned social networking into a revenue generator through multiplayer gaming?

Every day, I’m meeting people who could answer “yes” to all these questions - which raised a very important question in my own mind: if we replace the word “game” with “music,” why aren’t these answers still “yes?”

The music industry has a lot to learn from the video game industry. We’ve finally gotten past the “save the CD” era, but the music industry is still lagging when it comes to proactively developing new business models. Just as the video game industry has continually adapted and reinvented itself in the last few decades – arcades to consoles to mobile to online to apps to ad-supported and so on – the music industry must learn to quickly spot new consumer trends and behaviors, and then adapt the technology and business models to turn those trends into new revenue streams.

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MTT Open: Google Music, Recording Vocals, & Is the Internet Dead?

Hakim Callier writes about the art of recording vocals. He talks about different aspects of recording from the perspectives of an audio engineer and a vocalist. The producer or engineer usually wants the vocalist to be comfortable to get the best recording. Read on for more details on the art of recording.

“This is important because in a musical production, the human voice not only tells the story of the song, by communicating the emotions and sentiment through language and other expressions, but it naturally wants to be heard above all else because of its frequency range.” (Read On)

Google Music Shuts Out Independent Artists

Noe Pacheco posts details about Google’s plans for a music service which outlines ways to help major artists, but doesn’t mention independent artists. The proposed plan is for a cloud-based service where consumers keep their music in a locker for $25 a year and can be streamed or downloaded. Google’s music service poses as an iTunes competitor. However, many major online music retailers are still leaving out indie artists that may be worthy of the service.

“Today, “quality” indie music is being made and is available for purchase. It would just be great for the music to be sold on such a large platform.” (Read On)

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