Kokopelli Times

Jay-Z the new Sinatra?

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:03:00 +0000

Great article about Jay-Z in yesterday's NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/fashion/08empire.html

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Erik
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Free File Sharers = $$$

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 12:19:00 +0000

Interesting article here stating that those horrible file sharers actually spend 75% more on paid downloads than those who don't illegally download music:

"Those who share files are simply more interested in music. They use file sharing as a discovery mechanism. We have a generation of young people who don't have any concept of music as a paid-for commodity."

Enjoy.
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iTunes Top 10 Singles & Albums

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:55:00 +0000

Here is a list of the top 10 singles and albums for iTunes for the week ending Oct 19, 2009 as published by the Associated Press:

Singles:
1. ''3,'' Britney Spears
2. ''Fireflies,'' Owl City
3. ''Party In the U.S.A.,'' Miley Cyrus
4. ''Whatcha Say,'' Jason DeRulo
5. ''Meet Me Halfway,'' Black Eyed Peas
6. ''Down,'' Jay Sean
7. ''Replay,'' Iyaz
8. ''Who Says,'' by John Mayer
9. ''Run This Town (feat. Rihanna & Kanye West),'' Jay-Z
10. ''Paparazzi,'' Lady GaGa

Albums:
1. ''The Twilight Saga: New Moon (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack),'' Various Artists
2. ''Crazy Love,'' Michael Buble
3. ''The E.N.D. (Energy Never Dies),'' Black Eyed Peas
4. ''The Blueprint 3,'' Jay-Z
5. ''Ocean Eyes,'' Owl City
6. ''Where the Wild Things Are (Motion Picture Soundtrack),'' Karen O and the Kids
7. ''Embryonic,'' The Flaming Lips
8. ''Slice,'' Five For Fighting
9. ''Dear Agony,'' Breaking Benjamin
10.''Only By the Night,'' Kings of Leon

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Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 01:44:00 +0000

Interesting article in today's NY Times about the resurgence of the band Creed. The article labels Creed as one of the last bands to achieve an enormous fan base, something that is more difficult in today's age.

Click here for the full article.

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Depeche Mode in Peru

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:43:00 +0000

Depeche Mode played a show in Peru this past week and drew a crowd of 30,000 people. I write often about concerts in Peru, and they just continue to impress me. Depeche Mode would likely have trouble drawing a crowd of 30,000 in some major cities in the USA, but they are able to travel to Lima, Peru to put on a concert where fans likely paid between $30-50 per ticket.

Do the math, that is a nice paycheck at the end of the day. And this, from a country where people attending the concert are lucky to make $300 a month. A sixth of their paycheck to see a band from the USA.

There is tremendous potential here for bands traveling overseas. To take Peru as an example, they have a large portion of the population in love with USA rock & roll from the 80's & 90's. If your band fits that bill, you might have some good luck in Peru.

For the last song, lead singer Martin Gore donned a Peruvian Chullo (stocking cap) that was a major hit with the crowd. I remember seeing Collective Soul in Lima, Peru and each band member came out in Peruvian soccer jerseys midway through the concert, to the rapturous applause of their fans. This is a very easy way bands can connect with their fans in other countries. I think it would be an even better idea to have a famous musician from that country play with the band on a few songs, especially if the instrument is local to that country.

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Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:37:00 +0000

The NY Times ran a great article about the hopes of the music industry to push monthly music subscriptions. Check out the article by clicking here.

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The Internet as Radio

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:50:00 +0000

The following quote came from the 2009 Future of Music summit:

"Copying can't be stopped," said artist manager Peter Jenner. "I have an interest in getting paid, but we have to stop thinking of the Internet like a shop and more like a radio station." The industry is clinging to a business built on mass-produced "small bits of plastic" sold inside physical stores. "The less we think about how we did it in the past, the faster we'll figure out how to make money," he said.

This is an interesting shift in thought. As radio's influence decreases, the Internet has taken that role. Obviously, everyone wants to get paid from their music being played on the Internet, but musicians currently aren't paid for their songs played on the radio, only the songwriters are.

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MySpace Music Down Under

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:09:00 +0000

MySpace Music has opened up shop in Australia & New Zealand as of today, Oct. 1. The popular social media network will have streaming music, playlist functions, and ringtone capabilities. This differs from the Myspace platform in that this one is specifically for music.

New's Corporation, owner of MySpace, has plans to roll MySpace Music out in other countries as well. So, this is being treated as a sort of test market for future expansion.

This product launch is also interesting in that in involves a partnership with Apple's iTunes for download sales. Most of the artists that will be highlighted on the front page will be Australian artists.

This has the potential to be of major importance for artists in the USA. MySpace will be gathering all types of important information from user's listening habits. Perhaps, if one style of music really takes off in a particular country, MySpace will seek to push bands of that music style in other countries as well.

The more information that MySpace gathers, the more that bands could learn (assuming MySpace will have some way to share or sell the informaiton) about potential international concert venues or fan bases.

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Beyonce, Rated G

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:34:00 +0000

Beyonce will be performing a concert in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on October 25th this year. This is noteworthy because just two years ago, she didn't play a concert because of dress code requirements which went a little something like this:

Female performers are required to cover up in the country, which has various rules for performances, including no foul language, or kissing or hugging audience members of fellow performers.

Cultural norms and expectations are an important consideration for artists performing overseas. This is a high profile case, and somewhat humorous, but artists must be aware of language, hand signals, and dress styles that could all be considered extremely offensive in the wrong context.

In the same manner as doing business in a foreign country, it would be wise for artists to study up on a culture before a concert. It could also be a way to involve the local crowd. For instance, if the country of the concert has a unique musical instrument associated with their culture, it would be a neat option to have a local artists play that instrument on a song or two of yours.

Beyonce could be viewing these restrictions in a negative way, but she could also flip that around and look at the bright side of the culture and try to involve her audience in better ways.

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Rappers & Pundits

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:29:00 +0000

The NY Times had a great article on Sunday showing how rappers and political talk show hosts are similar in the following ways:

- They both have huge egos.
- They regularly talk about haters.
- They have regular feuds with colleagues.
- Verbal skills are a necessary requirement for the job.

I thought this article was pretty funny and that it provided a good look into the skills necessary to make it in the rap & political talk show host world.

Click here for the full NY Times article.

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Radio Advertising

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 22:45:00 +0000

Radio advertising revenues are decreasing at rapid rates. All of these stats compare the 2nd quarter of this year with the second quarter of 2008 and the data comes from the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB)

Local & national terrestrial advertising accounts down 25% over last year 2Q to $3.4 billion.
Overall radio advertising revenues down 22% to $4.2 billion for the period, according to data from the Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB).

Not a great time to be in radio. But radio stations have not exactly been helping themselves with syndication and small playlists. The consumer has become their own DJ and radio has missed the boat.

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Warner Music Publishing Revenues

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:20:00 +0000

We can obtain a pretty good glimpse into the music industry by looking at Warner Bros latest Publishing numbers. Here are some highlights:

mechanical royalties dropped 20.4% (recordings played of the song)
overall publishing revenues dropped 12.5% percent to $147 million
performance royalties dropped 4.5%
synchronization royalties up 20.8% (music synchronized to film, tv, etc.)
digital publishing revenues up 60% to $16 million

This points to where the money is going - digital & synchronization. As a band, you should be trying to pitch your songs to be included in movies and tv shows.

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Pearl Jam Bundle

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:03:00 +0000

Pearl Jam has found a creative way to sell their new album by bundling it together with a ticket sale at the point of purchase. Pearl Jam will roll this out for their upcoming Australian tour. They will offer the following two option in addition to the price of the ticket:

$15 Australian ($12.36) - New album with one live bonus track.
$31 Australian ($25.54) - New album, live track, albums from tour openers (Ben Harper, Relentless 7, and Liam Finn).

It will be interesting to see how many albums Pearl Jam can sell. It is a smart move to offer auxiliary products at the point of sale.

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Erik
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Digital vs Physical Album Sales

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 20:30:00 +0000

This stat continues to baffle me - 65% of music sales are still a physical cd format! At least according to the sales numbers for the first half of 2009. Digital download sales account for the other 35%.

The prediction is that digital sales will overtake physical sales by 2010 as cd sales fall 15-20% and digital sales increase 15-20%.

Other interesting facts to come out of this report by the NPD group are that:

- 25% of overall music sales are done on iTunes
- 69% of digital music sales are done on iTunes
- 14% of overall music sales are done at Wal*Mart
- 20% of physical music sales are done at Wal*Mart

I have often blogged about the fact that music sales are happening at stores (online & offline) that have many different titles. I am always wary when a new site comes up online to sell one particular style or label of music. Consumers want to be able to purchase Mozart and Jay-Z in the same place.

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No More Auto-Play

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 14:16:00 +0000

MySpace is known for its clutter. I think that is one reason many people moved to the 'cleaner' Facebook network. In addition to the advertising, the user is always bombarded with music the moment a page is entered into on MySpace.

Well, not anymore. You see, every time one of those songs starts to auto-play, MySpace is paying streaming royalties. By turning off auto-play, MySpace will immediately begin saving millions of dollars in royalty fees.

This should also offer a better picture of what users are actually listening to. It can be a bit deceiving to say a song was listened to 5 million times if it automatically starts playing when the page is opened. But if users are required to press the play button, that will be a better indication of the actual amount of times the song was streamed.

On the negative side, bands will need to rely more on their page layout now to grab the user's attention. The distortion-filled opening chord of the hit song will no longer pull in potential fans.

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Old People Taking over Facebook

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 10:43:00 +0000

When you are a teenager, what is the one surefire way to kill a party? Invite adults.

For the first time ever, the number of 15-24 year olds establishing a new profile on Facebook has dropped. It's just not as cool when your parent or your parents friends can look in on what you are doing.

My prediction is that a new site pops up to take the place of Facebook for teenagers. They are not using Twitter as much as was expected. This new site will need to have the ability for teenagers to transfer their Facebook profile, photos, etc. seamlessly. Once all of the adults become established on Facebook, the teenagers will find somewhere new to hang out away from the old people.

It will be interesting to see if another site like Facebook pops up or if it will become more fragmented based upon interests. For instance, will all teenagers flock to one site or will they flock to many different ones?

The numbers are quite impressive though for older users. The 26-34 year old bracket now consists of 46% of Facebook users. This is up from 40% just last year. And the highest growing group is the 35-54 year olds who are now up 8% over last year.

As a musician or artist, it will be important to follow these trends based upon your listener demographic. If you are reaching the teenage crowd, then watch to see where they go from Facebook.

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Erik
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iLike the iPhone

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 19:47:00 +0000

iLike, the "leading social music discovery service, has just announced an upgrade to their iPhone application. You will now receive updates on when your favorite artists are touring in your city. Not only that, the app will use the GPS ability of the iPhone to give you directions to the venue. You can then share this information with non-iPhone users through email.

This is a great addition to the iLike mobile capabilities found on the iPhone. iLike already has over 50 million users through its ubiquitous presence on social networks like Facebook. This application is great news for companies like Live Nation who should really be capitalizing on apps like this.

Another thing that iLike does in relation to the iPhone is to create an iLike presence for artists on the iPhone. This is a nice way for artists to keep in touch with fans and provide ways for people to purchase music and auxiliary items.

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Erik
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Radio Performance Royalties

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:19:00 +0000

The Senate Judiciary Committee meets today to discuss the future of Performance Royalties for radio play. Right now, the artists who perform a song that is played on the radio do not get paid. Only the composers/writers of the song get paid.

Radio's response is that they are providing free airplay for the artists and should not also be required to pay royalties. Furthermore, it is likely that many stations would financially go under if required to pay these additional royalties.

Nancy Sinatra, Frank's daughter, wrote an op-ed in today's NY Times that hits on a lot of these topics. She is for the performance royalties. Take a look - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/opinion/04sinatra.html

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Rethinking the Album

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:02:00 +0000

Is the album dead? Yes. The sale of a physical cd/album will never again reach the peak of 1999. Yet that is not stopping Mariah Carey from experimenting with a fresh concept for her upcoming album.

Mariah will be working in conjunction with Elle magazine to create a 34 page magazine-style album insert. This insert will include advertisements to help allay the cost of the album.

This is interesting in the sense that it uses a similar approach to online content. Artists, YouTube, MySpace can place advertisements next to their online content for some additional income. Now, Mariah is doing the same thing but in a physical album format.

This will in no way revive overall album sales, but it could have an impact with Mariah's die hard fans. The magazine insert will contain exclusive content and information. When individual tracks become a commodity, offer additional content that is harder to replicate.

The album, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, is set to be released in August for some parts of the world, and September for the USA.

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How to Raise Money as a Musician

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 02:03:00 +0000

So, you have a big project coming up. You're recording an album. That means your burning cds, printing album covers, touring, feeding yourself during this whole process, and keeping up with strings and equipment purchases. How do you do it? What happens when you are so tapped out that you can't dig any deeper into your savings account or maxed out credit card?

A new website, Kickstarter, is here to help you with your financial necessities. Kickstarter is glorified pan-handling. You put together a project, say - the recording of a new album. Then you send this info to Kickstarter HQ for approval. Once you have their blessing, you go about raising money.

So, say you want to raise $4,000 for a new album. You put together information, perhaps a funny video, and describe what you are doing to your family, friends, and fans. The kicker is - you only get the money if you raise the total amount. The people who pledge the money only get charged if you raise the entire amount.

But, what a great idea for musicians in need of some seed money to get to the next level. And the best way to utilize this is to send this to the fans you have built up on the social networking sites. You've probably already maxed out your local friend's checkbook by inviting them to every show. But, what about the person following your music every time you post of YouTube video? What if they donated $5 to your next album? It would all add up.

So, don't be discouraged as a starving artist. The music industry has changed so that every band has to become an entrepreneur out of necessity. The artist is not going to get a million dollar check from the label anymore to go and record an album. The artist will need to raise this by themselves, just like a new business owner would need to do. Kickstarter seems like a good tool to raise seed money.

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SoundCloud File Sharing

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 01:39:00 +0000

I am part of a music duo and we have recently been recording an album. The engineer for the album asked us to begin sharing our work in progress files through a website called SoundCloud. SoundCloud basically acts as an FTP upload area to quickly share your music files with others. Many musicians are using the service and it is quickly becoming a big deal.

Now SoundCloud has an option to distribute music through customizable widgets. They are described as wanting to becoming the 'Flickr for Music' and already have over 160,000 artists on board.

The distribution aspect of SoundCloud is what really impresses me. We continue to see small companies grow their businesses by taking on more demands of musicians. It will be soon when we will see smaller companies taking on marketing, promotion, web presence strategies, etc., for artists.

So, for start ups out there hoping to make it big with musicians, offer services that free musicians to concentrate on their art. If you can create value, musicians will pay because everyone will be better off. The more you can do to make it easier on the musician, like creating widgets as SoundCloud did, the more users will flock to your company.

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Where are the Downloading Thiefs?

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 13:07:00 +0000

Illegal downloads of music are down. 42% of 14-18 year olds downloaded music illegally in 2007. By January of this year, that number was down to 26%.

Now the RIAA & the record labels would like to think they scared people into not downloading by suing their pants off. Problem is, that didn't really have the desired outcome. People are now finding plenty of websites where they can stream music on demand. These sites include MySpace, YouTube, and Pandora.

So, if a music fan wants to hear a new song from their favorite band, they will find better quality, a cleaner interface, and a safe environment at one of these ad-supported websites.

There is a great article from this week's NY Times that discusses this issue in depth. Here are some of the highlights:

Music fans who in the past used bit torrent sites to download music are now finding it easier and more user-friendly to use some of the advertisement-funded sites like Pandora. Also, since MySpace introduced their upgraded MySpace Music late last year, traffic has risen 3-fold. Last September, MySpace had 4.2 million visitors. In June of this year, they had 12.1 million.

This may be a little bit of light for record labels that have been hit hard from the decline of album sales. If more people use their home computers and mobile devices to stream music instead of steal music, the labels may make further gains in sales.

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Erik
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Social Media & Creativity

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:21:00 +0000

Does this new emphasis on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace take away from the creative process? Is it possible that the artist begins to spend too much time updating Facebook instead of writing new songs? Yeah, the major artists have teams completing the social networking, but sometimes that becomes obvious. If a corporate intern is doing Twitter updates for a major artist, sooner or later, that will become know, and the artist will lose followers.

Authenticity. We all want it from the musicians we love.

But there needs to be a limit so that the artist can concentrate on writing & composing. Yet, as more and more artist take the entrepreneurial route in building their fan base, social media becomes a necessity alongside the constant touring and writing.

So, perhaps the next step in this process will be social media band managers. These teenagers & 20-somethings will be able to work for many bands for relatively little money per band and coordinate all of their social media. What needs to come directly from the band (Twitter updates) can come from the band. What can be done by a social media band manager can be outsourced.

Tim Westergren, founder of Pandora, suggests that the new record label executive will fit more of this role - to take care of the non-creative items for a band. Perhaps the record labels could do this to resurrect their declining business model. But it will more likely come from tech-savvy music lovers who understand the power of social media and viral marketing.

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Apple Income: 8 Billion & Counting

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:02:00 +0000

Kudos to Apple and its iTunes store that just hit 8 billion song downloads. That's 8 billion in 6 years. They are now averaging more than 2 billion song sales per year. Apple takes roughly 30% of each song sale. That's $2.4 billion in sales. Not bad when the rest of the record industry is in shambles and most people are downloading for free.

And that's not even counting the tv shows, movies, and podcasts that are sold. And the iPhone upgrade allows for the possibility of downloading songs, movies, and tv shows directly to the mobile device. We will continue to see this 8 billion number jump until a viable alternative is created.

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Mega Man & Music

Erik.Rostad@gmail.com (Erik) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:53:00 +0000

Capcom just released Mega Man II for the iPhone. This popular Nintendo game from the 90's can now be played in its original format on the iPhone. The phone's screen actually mimics a Nintendo controller and a mini screen shows up in the center.

This is brilliant. Capcom offers one level of the game for free, and 14 levels if you purchase the game for $4.99. If Super Mario Brothers and Mike Tyson's Punch Out get released, I think they would be a huge hit.

The free version is currently #3 under top free downloads. #3 out of more than 60,000 iPhone applications. It's popular.

These games play on our nostalgia. In the day of interactive games with the ability to play against people in Sri Lanka, it's nice to play the simple games we grew up with on Nintendo.

How can musicians and artists use a similar concept for iPhone applications? How can a new band use nostalgia to drive interest in their music? Well, let's think back to the 90's. Along with Nintendo, what were other forms of popular content?

You had MTV. Tapes & CD's were the big thing. People used to purchase things called albums and would pore over the content inside the album.

What if a band could create an application that mimicked a record player. Where the songs actually had the scratch of the needle embedded into the tracks that brought back the feel of listening to records. What if, along with the music playing in the background, users could peruse all album covers with photos, lyrics, and shout outs?

What we see in the case of the Mega Man II game is that Capcom offers a free version consisting of one level. You get addicted and want to continue, so you purchase the $4.99 full game version. Likewise, musicians could offer an app that is free with limited content. To obtain further content, the user would be directed to the app store where the full version could be purchased.

All musicians should have some sort of a smart phone so that they know what technology exists. Creating an iPhone app could be a lengthy and expensive process, but one that, if well done, could create quite a bit of buzz.

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Erik
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