Music 3.0 - The Blog Behind The Book

Enter The Micro-License

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 04:30:00 +0000

One thing that music publishers aren't good at is making their songs available to anything less than major music business entities. If you're Paramount Pictures looking for a title song for a movie, you'll have no problem, but if you're an indie video maker trying to do the right thing and license a song for a video, you're out of luck. Not only are you probably stifled by the process, but you probably can't even easily find the song you want. Believe it or not, most publishers don't even have a publicly searchable index of their catalog.

The National Music Publishers Association and the RIAA are out to change that though, as they recently announced a move to institute "micro-licensing" platforms to make finding and licensing songs much easier. A micro-license is a new kind of business model that allows producers to use the Internet to find the songs they need and do the licensing deal online, without expensive attorneys or negotiations.

Right now most producers might just take a chance on using the music and waiting to see if a cease and desist letter pops up later, or on YouTube, a take-down notice. Let's face it, if it's for a wedding video, the chances of getting caught are pretty small, and if it's something distributed on YouTube, you have the option of either taking the video down or allowing commercials to be inserted in it if the copyright owner discovers you're using it illegally.

But if the process were streamlined, that's a great deal of fairly passive income that would flow into the hands of labels, artists, publishers and songwriters.

You have to look at this announcement in amazement and think, "What took them so long?" Of course, the truth is that for so long there was so much money in publishing that the revenue from micro-licensing seemed insignificant to most publishers. Those days are over though, as a new financial reality seeps into the business.

That can only be good for both artists and songwriters, who need all the revenue streams they can get these days, no matter how small. As we've seen from digital music distribution, it all adds up.

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MySpace Tries It Again

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 04:30:00 +0000

We've been hearing about it ever since Justin Timberlake bought in 2011, but the new MySpace is now out of beta and open to the general public. The company has a significant marketing war chest, with $20 million for both digital and television campaigns to raise awareness. If its first commercial (see below) is any indication of what that campaign will be like, it's in for a rough ride.

MySpace now has a nice clean modern look and feel and is keeping its legacy as a music streaming and discovery site alive by keeping that at the forefront of the site, rather than social networking. This may or may not be a mistake, only time will tell, as it remains to be seen just who its users will be.

I personally think the company made a big mistake by not taking advantage of the last Timberlake release in March. Piggybacking on the huge marketing effort would have brought much more awareness than the $20 mil they're about to spend. It's hard to believe that Timberlake didn't insist upon it back then. Yes, the service wasn't ready yet, but the fact of the matter was that it was already in beta, so it wasn't like there wasn't anything to show. Opportunity lost.

It's a much larger music world now than the first time around in 2003 for MySpace. Even with its current 25 million or so users, it has a very uphill climb as a result.

Check out the first commercial.

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The New Music Grammar Guide

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 04:30:00 +0000

Most industry pros now agree that metadata on digital tracks is way more important than the average artist realizes. After all, it's there to help listeners find your track, and to provide the digital equivalent of liner notes to the song. Now the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM) have released a sort of "style guide" to help artists and labels alike avoid problems with all the meta data required on a digital track.

One of the problems is that poor meta data, which includes the title, can be a reason that a song isn't easily discovered, or even worse, rejected by a music distributor like iTunes (always known to be picky about these things).

So what are some of these rules? A big one is proper capitalization of a title, since some artists get a bit too clever for their own good. "In da House" and "It's fo; Realz" get good marks, according to the guide, despite the intentional misspellings. "Intentionally misspelled words must respect the same title casing rules" as those spelled normally, states the guide. Random capitalization (like "a TIMe to love") violates the guideline, however.

Another one is to not use ampersands (the "&" symbol) when two artists collaborate unless they are inseparable as an act (like Hootie & The Blowfish). Yet another is using an excessive description when identifying an artist (like "Jeff Beck (Guitarist)").

Perhaps the most egregious act is to randomly include the name of a superstar in the meta data of a track where he may not belong in order to sell more product. That's not a good idea on many levels, the least is the fact that the people it attracts probably will get angry when they're favorite star isn't actually involved of what they're listening to.

If you're going to be making digital music and you want to give it the best chance of being discovered, it's probably a good idea to take a look at the guide. Rules are made to be broken, but you have to know what they are first.

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Facebook Introduces Hashtags

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 04:30:00 +0000

In a sign that the company could be changing direction, Facebook announced that it will introduce clickable hashtags on the site. Most other social sites such as Twitter (the originator), Tumblr, Google+, Pinterest and Instagram have incorporated hashtags already. On the surface this may not seem to be such a big deal, but there's more to this announcement than meets the eye.

Up until now Facebook was all about the friends you know electronically banding together to share insights on their lives. It was intimate, and kept that way by the fact that in order to friend someone, both party's had to agree to it. Want to cut someone out of your Facebook life? Just unfriend him. Want to narrow the list of who could see certain posts? Put them on a list.

Hashtags change that dynamic by making whatever you post a broadcast to the world where someone can find your topic with the click of the keyword that your hashtag uses. This means that the emphasis of the network is gravitating more towards public conversation and interaction than private, a change that many already disgruntled Facebook users may not embrace.

It will be interesting to see if this leads to those disenchanted with FB to find another service. The only one that's presenting much of a challenge at the moment is Google+, and even though it also incorporates hashtags, it also provides more personal intercommunication with its Circles feature.

Facebook keeps on adapting, which you have to admire them for, but as far as many users are concerned, it's not always for the better. It still remains the 800 pound gorilla of social networking with over a billion active users, so the company isn't always be wrong. We'll see how hashtags play out in the coming months.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

The YouTube Channel Charts

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 04:30:00 +0000

If you've ever wondered which YouTube channels are the most popular, now you can see exactly which one's are getting the big views. The new Tubefilter Charts are powered by the data from OpenSlate that monitors 50,000 channels and then determines the top 50 channels worldwide and in the US. While you can take a look at them all for yourself on the Tubfilter site, if you're short on time, here's the top 10 worldwide:

1. Psy - 45.640 million
2. Muyap - 44.242
3. PewDiePie - 32.393
4. The Ellen Show - 32.784
5. SkyDoesMinecraft - 31.141
6. BBC - 25.220
7. The Fine Brothers - 25.029
8. Rhianna VEVO - 24.753
9. MovieClips Trailers - 24.049
10. ArabIdol - 23.798

The interesting to note that Psy still remains so popular, and that The Ellen Show ranks so high around the world. Now let's take a look at the US charts.

1. The Ellen Show - 34.327 million
2. SkyDoesMinecraft - 30.596
3. MovieClips Trailers - 24.788
4. RoosterTeeth - 23.872
5. Rhianna VEVO - 21.586
6. RyanLewis Productions - 20.786
7. Justin Bieber VEVO - 18.047
8. smosh - 17.665
9. IGN Entertainment - 15.310
10. Pink VEVO - 15.062

The Ellen Show, SkyDoesMinecraft, MovieClips Trailers and Rhianna VEVO all show up on both charts, and while it makes sense that their channel views are different, in the case of The Ellen Show and SkyDoesMinecraft, they're larger in the US than worldwide. That doesn't quite make sense, but the actual numbers aren't as important as the chart position.

The best reason to know about this chart is so you can look at popular channels to learn why they're so popular. That doesn't mean you necessarily have to like the content, but they're a good study what makes a YouTube channel tick.

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Scalpers And Their Bots

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 04:30:00 +0000

Want to buy a good seat at a concert? Then prepare to fight off the bots! Yes, in the battle for a great ticket, your chances of winning are growing smaller and smaller, thanks to the custom computer programs used by the big scalpers to scarf up all the good seats before you can even enter your credit card information.

According to Ticketmaster, bots are used to buy 60% or more of the best tickets available, and the company's not happy about it. The problem is, it's a grey area as to whether purchasing tickets this way is legal or not. According to an article in the New York Times, last month Ticketmaster sued 21 people in a New York court for fraud and copyright infringement related to using bots to buy tickets. Three years ago, four men from WiseGuy Tickets were indicted on conspiracy and wire fraud charges, but got off with only probation and community service.

Ticketmaster has hired a team a computer investigators to try to combat the bots, but even though they can usually identify them, they don't actually stop them from buying tickets, only slowing them down to give a regular human a chance. Still, that doesn't mean that you'll ever get a real chance to buy that great ticket anyway, since it's a common industry practice for the venue or promoter to place a hold on a block of the best seats for sponsors or industry people, or even sell them themselves for a large markup.

With ticket prices so high and with all the extra "convenience charges" tacked on, now the consumer has to suffer the indignity of not getting a chance to buy the ticket he desires as well. It's a scalpers market, and the bots are in charge.

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Music Licensing 101

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 04:30:00 +0000

Here's a guest post from Anna Durish, marketing and communications director for Rightclearing AG, a company that specializes in music rights clearances. Music licensing is an increasingly more lucrative source of income for many musicians and songwriters, but they usually don't know as much about it as they should. On the other hand, artists, bands, film makers and television producers who want to use someone else's song in their project usually don't know the first thing about how to go about it legally. Hopefully this post will explain all.

"What do the Beastie Boys, Vanilla Ice and Johnny Cash have in common? They were all accused of copyright infringement. What this means can be seen in the case of Vanilla Ice quite clearly. For his song “Ice Ice Baby” he adopted the melody of Queen's and David Bowie's “Under Pressure” almost identically, without having the legal usage rights to it. (Here’s the comparison of the songs). Since the infringement was quite obvious, Vanilla Ice had to pay a significant amount of money to the creators.

Clearly this isn’t the way that music licensing normally works. That’s why this blog post wants to help you prevent such a disaster from happening by teaching you the basics about music licensing. Because it really isn’t rocket science!

When do I have to license a song?

Let’s start with a little example: Imagine you’re making a video about your holidays and the only thing missing is a piece of music to complete it. Quickly you add your favorite track and you’re done. So far everything sounds quite easy. But when does music licensing come into play? Depends on how you want to use the video. There are two different types of use:

Private Use: If you only want to show the video to your closest friends and don’t intend to publish it on the Internet or another medium, let alone distribute it commercially, then you don’t need the permission of the creator. You don’t have to license the song.
Public Use: If you want to show the video to people outside your private sphere by making it available for example on YouTube or if you want to sell it, you need the concession of the creator; you have to license the song.

Which rights are affected?

To publicly use someone else’s work you have to acquire certain rights of use. There are two different kinds of rights involved: The master and the publishing rights.

Master rights: The owner of the Master Rights owns the actual recording of the song's sound. These rights usually belong to the party that financed the recording. Often this is the record label if they don’t lie with the artist.

Publishing rights: The owner of a song's Publishing Rights owns the rights to the composition; usually this is the author of a piece of music. The author is also the copyright owner unless there is a written agreement by which the author assigns the copyright to another person or entity, such as a publisher.

If you publish your video without acquiring the usage rights, it can, to put it mildly, get quite unpleasant for you. YouTube for example can block your uploaded video or delete your account. If you are really unlucky the rights holder can take legal action against you and demand compensation. The rules apply to all sorts of videos and their public use not just YouTube videos.

How do I license a song?

Enough theory for now! Let’s get straight to the point and talk about how music licensing works in practice. Unfortunately this process is often very complicated and takes a lot of patience.

Selecting the song: First of all you need a song. Most of the time you don’t have the perfect song at hand and need to scour the Internet or your personal library until you find a track that matches your video.
Legal aspect: After having found a song you have to find out who holds the rights to it. They can lie with the artist, a label, a publishing house or a collecting society. Depending on the country, different publishing houses can hold the usage rights.
Request: Now you have to ask the rights holders if you can license the track. You need the permission of both the holder of the master as well as the holder of the publishing rights, which are often different parties. If you’re very unlucky one of them rejects your request and you need to start your search from scratch.
Pricing: Next you have to negotiate a price. There are many factors to consider, such as popularity of the song, distribution or type of project.
Normally songs of very famous artists like Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, Muse, Queen etc. are very difficult to license or just unaffordable. But even for less famous artists the license can be too expensive. If this is the case you’ll have to start all over again with your search.
Draw up a contract: Last but not least you need to draw up a contract with the rights holder, which implies that you either have some legal knowledge or are willing to pay a lawyer to work for you.
Time factor: As you can see, this whole process costs you a lot of time, money and nerves. Depending on the track you want to license you might have to wait several weeks or even a year until you can license the song properly.

Is there an easier way to license music?

Don’t panic, there is! Before you completely lose your courage, there are several online music licensing services trying to simplify the whole process and solve the problems mentioned above, like audiosocket.com, soundtaxi.net and rightclearing.com. Every page has its advantages and they serve different needs. To get you an idea of what online music licensing is and why it makes the process of music licensing easier, here’s an example of how rightclearing.com works.

The site offers you a constantly growing sound pool of pre-cleared tracks. This means that it’s already determined who holds the rights to every song. To find a suitable song you can search via keywords or just drop a song in the rightclearing.com search bar and the system will find the most similar sounding pieces in the library. As soon as you have found a song the system will automatically calculate the price of the license. They also offer Creative Commons licenses, which, in some cases, can be obtained for free. After paying for the license an automated lawyer will draw up a legal contract. The licenses are valid worldwide and unlimited.

Thanks to online music licensing services like that you don’t have to wait for month or even years until you have your license. It often takes only a few clicks to legally add sound to your video.

Last but not least…

… this blog post has hopefully helped to clarify the topic of music licensing and answered some of your questions on how it works. Licensing music doesn’t have to be complicated and it definitely pays off in the long run. If you license your songs properly you are not only legally on the safe side, but you also ensure that the artist gets rewarded fairly for his hard work and creativity."

Thanks, Anna, for your insights!

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Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

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Trent Reznor Changes The Paradigm Again

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 04:30:00 +0000

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be contributing to Forbes online, analyzing the new music business, and the "Trent Reznor Changes The Paradigm Again" story can be found there.

This means that there will be some changes in the Music 3.0 blog from this point on, in that the focus here will now be more on social media and how it effects the music business. The more music industry focused stories will appear on the Forbes blog site.

I invite you to follow me over at Forbes.

I'd dedicated to providing the most up-to-date information possible, and this change will allow me to more tightly focus on the area of social media and music here. Excerpts from upcoming book Social Media Promotion For Musicians will also be featured here when it's released. Also I may be reposting a story here after it's posted on the Forbes site from time to time.

Thanks again for following and reading. This blog surpassed a million views a few weeks ago, so I don't take your viewership lightly.

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The 5 Top Facebook Music Apps

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 04:30:00 +0000

While Facebook seems increasingly to be an adult network of anyone over age 25, it still has over a billion users worldwide, and a number of them frequently listen to music on the service. The analytics site MetricsMonk determined that the top 10 Facebook music apps have around 74 million active monthly users, which is around 33% more than last year. Here are the top 5:

1. Spotify - 33 million
2. Pandora - 8 million
3. Soundcloud - 7.8
4. Deezer - 7.8 million
5. iHeartRadio - 4 million

The big winner here is Spotify, as it almost doubled its users from last year, while Pandora ominously shed users by more than half. The big trend though, seemed to be towards services like Songza and 8Track that provided more personalized streaming, although none of those services even remotely challenges Spotify at this time.

That said, the latest numbers (as of May 1, 2013) state that there are over 1.13 billion active monthly users of Facebook. If less than a tenth of them get their music through the service, then these numbers may not be anything to get excited about. Yes, they're increasing, but there doesn't seem to be a challenge to the standalone streaming services by Facebook in the cards anytime soon.

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Is Music Discovery All It's Cracked Up To Be?

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 04:30:00 +0000

To many in the music tech community, the holy grail of online music involves music discovery. As a matter of fact, some within the industry feel that the music business' future depends on it. That's why any company that has "discovery" as a feature suddenly becomes a hot investor attraction even as investors grow wary of the music industry.

The reason why some think that discovery is the future is many feel that's the best way to grow the industry. Instead of listeners recycling their listening with more or less the same songs from years past as well as a smattering of songs from today that are high on the charts, any way that exposes a listener to something new means that there's a new potential sale, either from buying music, merch or concert tickets.

While that certainly seems plausible, one has to wonder just how much better the current discovery algorithms can get, and if an improvement is really all that necessary. In an interesting article on Hypebot last week, a number of industry vets were asked their views on the subject, and they had some interesting insights.

In the article Jay Frank, the author of Future Hit. DNA (a great resource for anyone in the music business) postulates that music discovery is overrated, since it appeals to only a limited segment of listeners, the ones actively looking for something new, to begin with. That, of course, limits the widespread usefulness of such an algorithm considerably.

Where once upon a time you were exposed to new music on the radio whether you wanted to be or not, today we have too many choices for that to happen as much (even though radio is still the largest form of music discovery, with YouTube far behind). In fact, so much of music discovery still comes from word-of-mouth. If all of your friends rave about the new Daft Punk album, of course you're going to check it out. If you hear mixed reviews, you're less likely to take a listen unless you're overwhelmed by the media exposure (think the last Justin Timberlake album). With a discovery algorithm, you might be exposed to something new, but will that single listen to a single song be enough?

While an improved music discovery algorithm might still be the holy grail for some, it doesn't seem likely that it will change the music business as much as some hope it will.

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Is Vimeo Better Than YouTube?

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 04:30:00 +0000

YouTube is the undeniable king of the hill when it comes to online video hosting, but it's far from the only game in town. At last count there were over 90 other sites doing roughly the same thing, which you can see at all-video-sites.com. While most of these sites were very specific in their content, a number of them are a catch-all, open to anything that one might post, as is YouTube.

There is a competitor to YouTube that doesn't open its arms quite as wide, which in many cases makes it a better choice for the serious artist or videomaker. That's Vimeo, which gets 70 million unique visitors a month that are generally more engaged that what you'll find watching the competition.

One of the advantages of Vimeo is that the content is generally up a notch or two from YouTube, with fewer cat and baby videos. Add to that a streamlined layout that allows you to find and watch what you want a lot easier, and you can see why it's preferred by many after they try it.

One of the best reasons to watch on Vimeo though, is that it's advert free, which won't make money for the content creator but sure is better for the viewer. Let's face it; no one likes to wait for a pre-roll commercial before you get to the video you want to check out.

A basic membership is free and allows you to upload one HD video per week or 500meg of storage. The downside is that your uploaded videos are subject to banner ads, the ability to make a video private is turned off, and the analytics package is pretty basic. Upgrade to Vimeo Plus for $9.95 a month and those limitations are lifted. If you're a pro, you can upgrade to a Vimeo Pro account for $199 per year that basically ups the game by providing better video quality, more storage and bandwidth, and the ability to monetize your content.

You might not want to change completely from YouTube, but Vimeo offers a lot - for a price. Then again, with a service like OneLoad, you can upload to a number of platforms and have a presence across all of them. After all, there's nothing like a video everywhere to raise your profile.

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Facebook's 3D Music Map

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Tue, 04 Jun 2013 04:30:00 +0000

One of the cool things about the online world is the variety of measurement tools that are available, and the fact that new ones are being created all the time. Take for instance the 3D music map that Facebook commissioned Stamen Design to come up with.

In the following video, you'll see a number of views of the 90 day viral spread of 3 songs on Facebook; Will.i.am and Britney Spear's "Scream And Shout," Macklemore and Ryan Lewis "Thrift Shop," and Swedish House Mafia's "Don't You Worry Child." Check out how "Scream and Shout" starts to go viral in Miami and New York first before it spreads, and how "Don't You Worry Child" surges in Texas in the middle of February.

While this is just a test of the technology, I can see how a more real time version could be useful to record label marketing departments and agents, as they could see the hot spots of a song's activity and be able to respond with a greater artist presence in the area. For now, it's just a cool video (with no audio, by the way).

The map is part of Facebook Stories, a blog that looks at different ways that people use the social network.

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Predicting Retweets

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 04:30:00 +0000

What if you could determine how many retweets you'd have before you even sent the tweet? It probably would change the way you compose your tweet and use Twitter for promotion.

Up until now, most marketers depended upon data that suggests either the best time of day, or the best hashtags to use (or a combination of both) to get a feel for what their tweet might do in the wild. That might all change, as an MIT professor has now created a computer model that predicts the number of retweets in its entire lifetime after only a couple of minutes of retweet activity.

“A lot of people felt that Twitter usage was totally random and unpredictable, that it was all just noise,” stated Sloan School of Management assistant professor Tauhid Zaman in an article in the LA Times. “But it turns out that there is a systematic, repeatable behavior that you can model.” Who knew?

You can actually see the model in action on his website Twouija: the Retweet Oracle, which is a twist on the old physical Ouija board. The site shows a number of tweets from celebrities and shows, as well as how well they match his predictions.

While on the surface this might seem like a boon to anyone who does promotion via Twitter, I don't think the model by itself adds much in terms of promotion, since you have to actually release the tweet first before it can predict what it will do. By correlating that data over time though, it might provide some better clues as to the parameters that make a tweet more "retweetable."

That said, I can tell you that without any of the fancy computer models or predictions. Just write something worth retweeting.

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The 30 Richest DJs

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Fri, 31 May 2013 04:30:00 +0000

Who says you can't make money as a DJ? It seems like the stars of EDM far out-earn the rock stars of yesterday, and all without needing the major label infrastructure to promote them to boot.

Considering that the 7 biggest EDM clubs in Las Vegas average income was $625 million a year (according to Nightclub & Bar magazine), and many DJs now have sponsorship deals with major brands like Ralph Lauen and Sonos, you can see how the those at the top have become hot financial properties.

Here are the top 30 DJs with the highest net worth, according to celebritynetworth.com.

#1: Tiesto – $75 million
#2: Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (Daft Punk) – $60 million
#3: Thomas Bangalter (Daft Punk) - $60 million
#4: Paul Oakenfold – $58 million
#5: Paul van Dyk – $52 million
#6: John Digweed – $45 million
#7: Armin Van Buuren – $40 million
#8: Judge Jules – $42 million
#9: Sasha – $40 million
#10: Pete Tong – $32 million
#11: Moby – $30 million
#12: David Guetta – $30 million
#13: Steve Aoki – $28 million
#14: Fatboy Slim – $23 million
#15: The Chemical Brothers – $20 million
#16: Ferry Corsten – $19 million
#17: Deadmau5 – $18 million
#18: Carl Cox – $16 million
#19: Skrillex – $16 million
#20: Benny Benassi – $15 million
#21: DJ Pauly D – $15 million (Sad but true)
#22: Sven Vath – $14 million
#23: Jeffrey Sutorius (Dash Berlin) – $13.5 million
#24: Calvin Harris – $13 million
#25: Avicii – $12 million
#26: Afrojack – $11 million
#27: Kaskade – $10 million
#28: Sebastian Ingrosso (Swedish House Mafia) – $10 million
#29: Steve Angello (Swedish House Mafia) – $10 million
#30: Axwell (Swedish House Mafia) – $10 million

For those of you who want to break out the turntables (or more appropriately, the computer) and get into the game, just remember that we may be seeing the absolute peak of the market here. I'm told by a friend who owns one of the world's biggest sound companies that EDM at the major European festivals is already somewhat passe this year, although EDM-only festivals remain hot. Any one care to speculate on the next trend?

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A New Way To Distribute Music Digitally

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Thu, 30 May 2013 04:30:00 +0000

If you want your music on iTunes, Spotify, and other digital services, most artists choose to use either Tunecore or CD Baby as a distribution method. Each have their upsides and downsides, with the downsides mostly being financial, with Tunecore charging a flat per year for each release and CD Baby taking a percentage of the sale. Now there may be a cheaper and easier way to do it, thanks to DistroKid.

DistroKid is an offshoot of Fandalism, the social network for musicians started by Philip Kaplan. What makes it different from most other distribution networks is that it costs only a subscription fee of $19.95 a year which allows unlimited uploads of your music. You can even upload one song for free before you enter any credit card information.

Kaplan started the service with an eye on democratizing music distribution even further than it currently is by making it a snap for anyone to release their music. While on the surface this seems like a noble idea, the big problem is that since there are really no record label gatekeepers to sift through the mediocre to find the brilliant, at least the service fees of Tunecore and CD Baby would make people think twice before they'd release something that might not be up to par.

The flip side of that coin is, who really knows what another person might like? Music history is filled with big hits that their writers, artists or record labels thought weren't very good and were later pleasantly surprised by the public's enthusiasm. The beauty of Music 3.0 is that if you look hard enough, you'll find at least a small audience for it somewhere. The downside is that it's hard for the consumer to sift through all the noise.

DistroKid is a boot-strap operation despite the earlier online successes of Kaplan (the ad network AdBrite and social shopping Blippy), so it's yet to be seen just how effective it will be in getting your music to all of the sites it claims. Plus, there's not a lot known about how the accounting is handled yet. That said, if you want to get your music on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play and Amazon in 2 to 4 hours (which is really fast), give it a try.

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Twitter's #Music New Chart Features

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Wed, 29 May 2013 04:30:00 +0000

Although Twitter's #Music discovery service has gotten off to a somewhat shaky start (it was probably impossible to beat the expectations), it seems to be settling into its own comfortable groove. One thing that's important to fans and artists alike are charts, and #Music has finally included them, giving everyone a better idea not only of what's happening on Twitter but elsewhere as well.

#Music now provides 10 musical genre charts (from rock to country to hip-hop), but the 5 additional charts are the more interesting ones. These include Superstars, Popular, Emerging, Unearthed and Hunted. The Superstars and Popular charts show the songs that are currently trending on Twitter, while Emerging and Unearthed are truly for music discovery of new or lesser-known artists.

The most interesting chart of the bunch may be Hunted, which seems to be derived from We Are Hunted, the service that Twitter bought and turned into #Music. This chart actually looks at blogosphere to determine the listing, not just Twitter.

This service isn't catching on because it has limitations, since you need either a Rdio or Spotify subscription to listen to the song, or you can listen to 90 seconds from iTunes. That just isn't easy enough to use for most listeners who now have plenty of other choices that are much easier to get their music from. Too bad, because #Music could really be a boon to music discovery.

You can access the charts via the icon on the upper left corner of the #Music page.

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A New Revenue Stream For Musicians

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Tue, 28 May 2013 04:30:00 +0000

While a Kickstarter or Indie Gogo campaign is all the rage for artists to fund a recording these days, another twist on an old idea may give traditional crowdfunding a run for its money. A new site called Patreon, labeled as a "fundraising" site, allows fans to subscribe to the artists they follow and receive "patrons-only" streams of their work.

The brainchild of Pomplamoose's Jack Conte and AdWhirl founder Sam Yam, the site allows fans to perform the age-old function of patron. The difference from European royalty is that instead of a large lump sum bestowed upon the artist, each patron can contribute a small amount (think of it as a tip) every time the artist releases a piece of content. The content can be videos, songs, blogs, articles or recipes or anything other "art" that comes on a regular basis.

A patron receives more than the stream though, as they also have the ability to post in the artist's stream and can unlock additional patron packages like private Google+ Hangouts or tutorials with different levels of support.

It's a cool idea and just another way that an artist with a fanbase (that's the key here) can create a new income stream. Check out the video below for a more detailed description of Patreon.

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Prince's New Record Deal

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Mon, 27 May 2013 04:30:00 +0000

We tend to think of record labels not changing much even in the face of the major paradigm shift that is Music 3.0, but while that may hold true for the major labels, there are a few that are forward thinking. Take Kobalt Music, for instance, which is an independent publishing company that launched their version of a label last year with the idea of giving control back to the artist, allowing them to not only maintain ownership of their work, but when and how it's made available as well.

The latest to sign a deal with Kobalt is superstar Prince, who joins the likes of Dave Grohl, Paul McCartney, Dave Stewart and Eddie Veder (among others) who've decided that this is the way to go in the future. Of course Prince is all about control, even changing his name to that unpronounceable symbol in order to get out from under the clutches of his deal with Warner Bros.

One of the things that he gets in the new Kobalt deal is access to their new software that closely monitors the streaming world, thereby increasing the royalties. Every artist and songwriter is concerned about streaming and what it will do to their career, so any way to get a foot up is attractive, which is why Kobalt seems to be making the splash that it is at the moment.

It's still to be determined just how successful their software tools actually will be, but there's a lot of music heavyweights that are convinced that Kobalt has something they need. You'll hear more about them in the future.

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The Implications Of Euro BMW's Streaming Music

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Fri, 24 May 2013 04:30:00 +0000

There's been talk for a number of years now how streaming music would eventually become standard in all new cars, but despite the predictions, it hasn't come to pass - until now. BMW just announced that their European Series 5 autos now come with access to mobil carrier Vodafone's Rara streaming music catalog, and it will be available in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands.

On the surface this only sounds like the next evolution of streaming music, but dig a little deeper and you find that the deal includes 3G access wherever you can get a signal without any extra charges, cables or devices. The trick to this is that each car has it's own embedded SIM, which means that the radio isn't the device, the car is!

For this you pay a flat fee of about $500 for the first year and $285 for each year thereafter, but that includes mobil voice and offline access as well. It's steep, but definitely cheaper than any alternative in Europe, especially if you drive the continent extensively and have to subscribe to a variety of services in different countries.

But the implications are many, especially back here in the US. Since so much of traditional terrestrial radio now depends upon drive-time listening, imagine the hit it would take should a version of Beemer audio hit the States. There's an entire broadcast industry that hasn't yet quite felt the evolutionary heat like music and television has, but that writing is on the wall.

Image what this will do for music discovery? While it's true that YouTube is the leader in music discovery online, radio is by far the leader across all media categories. The major labels still depend upon the radio infrastructure of yesterday to spread their new music and cultivate top 40 hits. Legions of listeners tuning out to listen to their custom streaming channels could finally turn this paradigm on its ear. Could this eventually lead to the final nail in major label (as we know it) coffin?

Sometimes the smallest event is all it takes to trigger a huge change. Could something like the 3G Beemer be the one that triggers the next?

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Teens Tiring Of Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Thu, 23 May 2013 04:30:00 +0000

We've seen this coming for the last year or so, but now the trend seems to be in full swing - teens are tiring of Facebook and moving their social media lives to Twitter instead. According to new Pew research data, nearly a quarter of online teens now use Twitter instead of Facebook to keep up with their friends and celebrities. This is up from 16% in 2011.

Even though 60% use the privacy settings on Facebook in order to limit their interactions to only their friends, most seem to be growing more disenchanted with the service because of "oversharing" with adults, especially parents. What's more, roughly 50% had deleted their own posts, other's comments, or untagged themselves from photos, 75% had deleted people from their network, and 58% had blocked someone from contacting them.

But parents have their own concerns as well, as 81% are concerned about how much of their children's information is being learned by advertisers. That said, teens themselves were not worried about being targeted by marketers, and just 9% expressed concern about how their data was collected.

Pew also found that teens are pretty open about themselves in general when using social media.

91% post a photo of themselves
71% post their school name
71% post the town or city where they live
53% post their email address
20% post their cell number

This new data is not a good long-term sign for Facebook. Although it won't mean much in the near future, the teen of today is the adult of tomorrow, and by transitioning to a different social media platform than Facebook, is now growing comfortable in their own non-Facebook world.

The Internet is strewn with social networks that were king of the hill one day and seemingly gone the next (remember MySpace, Friendster, MP3.com?). Five years from now we may be looking at Facebook in a far different light.

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Live Gig Footage To Your Phone

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Wed, 22 May 2013 04:30:00 +0000

As video technology has gotten cheaper and smaller, it's been a dream of many artists and fans alike to shoot every gig at a venue. While this sometimes happens with the venue using pro equipment, it actually happens anyway with many in the audience holding their phones up to capture the performance.

That's all well and good except it's a pain to hold your arms up for more than 5 minutes at a time, and the act doesn't make anything from the process (except for some additional promotion). Now a beta version of the Soundhalo app may take care of both situations at once.

Soundhalo takes the footage and audio from a production crew at the venue and delivers a fully mastered MP4 video straight to the cloud directly after the song. Fans can then pay to download the song directly to their Android phones one song at a time.

There's a lot of upside here. First of all, the production quality (especially the audio) is better than what can be captured by a phone, the fan can get it immediately so it can be an impulse buy, and the band has an additional income stream.

If venues were smart about it, they'd build this feature into the price of each ticket, but I can see why that probably won't happen. One of the biggest problems of digital commerce is clearances, and live recording can be a hornets nest just waiting to be struck. What if the artist decides to play a song on the spur of the moment that's not under his or her control? There's not time for clearances if the song is available immediately after it's performed. The artist/publisher/Soundhalo also has to pre-clear everything before the gig, and anyone who's ever tried to do that knows that it always takes more time than it should.

S till, for a hungry up and coming band that owns that owns their own publishing gigging in a club, it's a great way to increase revenue (if only slightly) and capture a memory at the same time.

On a similar note, an app called Switchcam allows aggregation of phone camera videos. If your fans are going to record you, you might as well have access to it.

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A New Media Format From......BitTorrent?

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Tue, 21 May 2013 04:30:00 +0000

One of the big problems of the modern digital music industry is bundling, or more accurately, lack of it. Back when the business was a roaring success at the top of its game, the CD album (and before that the vinyl album) brought in most of the revenue. Sure, singles were a reasonable business (at least in the vinyl days), but the album was where the big money was made. Of course, that's all gone away in our current Music 3.0 world where the single song is the king.

Now comes an interesting new bundle that's not exactly an album or movie, but more of a combination of music, video, flyer and store. And it's all built into the same file. The only potential problem is that it's from the service that most creatives love to hate - BitTorrent.

Basically the BitTorrent Bundle is a file that acts as a graphic, telling you anything an advert normally would, but the other pieces can be unbundled as the user buys in. For instance, Ultra, the label that brought you such EDM artists as David Guetta, Tiesto, deadmau5, and Calvin Harris, is trying the new bundle with Kaskade.

The bundle acts as a virtual flyer over social media, and if someone subscribes to his mailing list they then unlock behind-the-scenes footage. Want to buy some music - it's already there. Make a donation, and see some video. It's all up to how to configure it.

The music business needs a new concept in bundling and potentially this could be it. The big problem, of course, is that it's from BitTorrent, which the industry (not to mention artists and songwriters) view it as a bastion for piracy. That said, they do have 170 million active users that you can immediately access.

The Ultra BitTorrent Bundle is a first alpha release, so we don't know what the bugs are yet, but on the surface it's a great concept. Check out this video for more info.

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It's All About Song Skipping

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:30:00 +0000

Probably the holy grail of listening to music is the ability to skip a song when we get bored. It was pretty difficult with vinyl records, easier with CDs, and much easier with digital music. Of course, it's always been impossible with radio, but digital streaming brings us many possibilities.

One of the features siad to be in Apple's new iRadio music streaming service is the ability to skip songs, and apparently that's become a big problem for Sony Music. It's not that they're opposed to it, it's just that they'd like to get paid full rate even if a listener only played the song for a few seconds. Apple would naturally prefer pay a portion of the royalty using a formula that determines the royalty rate based on the amount of the song that's actually listened to.

Of course, whatever is hammered out with Sony will no doubt be applied to the deals with Universal Music and Warner Music Group as well, since it would be a shock if they didn't have a "favored nation" clause built into their agreements that would keep the compensation equal regardless of who got the best deal.

Yet another feature of iRadio is said to be the ability to rewind a song. As a listener, I love the thought of this feature since there are so many times that I'd love to repeat a section of a song to analyze it. The problem then becomes, how much is paid for each rewind and how is that rate determined.

It's funny how some things that we take for granted with music we own become an issue when it comes to streaming. That said, this is another reason why I think that much better days are ahead for songwriters and artists. The compensation may be small but the increased number of revenue streams should increase income substantially.

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Is Viral Success A Myth?

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Fri, 17 May 2013 04:30:00 +0000

Everyone is searching for viral success with one of their videos. There's been books written about it (a good one is Contagious: Why Things Catch On), presentations given at conferences, countless web articles, and much speculation about assumptions and formulas, but few are able to recreate the a success like OK Go's "Here It Goes Again," Rebecca Black's "Friday," Baauer's "Harlem Shake," or Psy's "Gangnam Style" (not to mention the numerous cat videos that routinely make the rounds).

But is it possible that what we think of as viral isn't actually viral after all? A number of recent articles and presentations propose that these videos were given a big corporate helping hand first before getting any kind of traction.

Take for instance Psy's "Gangnam Style." In a recent article on Pando, Brandon Mendelson postulates that the video's success is "actually the tail end of months and months of preparation, buying fake views and comments, an extensive PR campaign, and his video fitting a very specific need for the business model that fuels the web: The Page View Based Economy."

He goes on to state that Psy's record company purchased views and comments by using companies like Microworkers and Fiverr to trick the YouTube algorithm into thinking the video was exploding. It actually was, only as a result of gaming the system.

Another article by Keven Ashton on Quartz points out that Baauer's "Harlem Shake" had only a few thousand views as a result of YouTube comic George Miller's video compilation. It was only after Warner Brother's owned Maker Studios made a version of the video to promote the studio itself and promoted it across it's many YouTube channels and Twitter did the video begin to get some traction. Other companies, DJs and bloggers jumped on, mostly to promote themselves, which caused Baauer's record label to take notice and begin its own promotion. Ashton provides a pretty thorough blow by blog of how it all took place, and it a lot less to do with what we think "viral" is rather than self-promotion. Here's the very first version the "Harlem Shake."

The gist of both articles is that what we believe and what's reality are frequently two different things when it comes to social media. It's becoming easier to manipulate many of the metrics that we use to measure success, if you have the money.

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Google Launches A New Streaming Music Service

noreply@blogger.com (Bobby Owsinski) — Thu, 16 May 2013 04:30:00 +0000

Yesterday Google introduced its new streaming music service called All Access, but surprise, surprise - it's not the same one that's been rumored for months.

Previous reports had it that Google's new service would be built around YouTube, which made a lot of sense since the majority of people discover new music through that video service anyway. It seems that both services will live in parallel, the difference being that All Access will be subscription only with no free tier. Users will have to pay $10 per month for the service ($8 if you subscribe by the end of June) with a 30 day free trial.

While we don't know for sure what's in store over at YouTube, We do have a little more information about the list of All Access features. It appears to combine your personal music collection with any available tracks in their catalog into a single searchable library, and of course, Google excels at search so everything should be easy to find. It also has auto-recommendation-based radio stations that allow you to customize your playlists.

A couple of things about Google All Access are very interesting:

1. Google beat Apple to the punch. The tough part about launching any kind of digital music service is making a deal with the major labels. The fact that Google accomplished this before Apple probably means that the labels pushed for a better deal and got it. This had the dual purpose of stymying Apple's attempts as well, as the company has reportedly only recently upped the terms of what they were willing to pay, and still haven't completed deals with Warners and Sony.

2. There's another service vying for marketshare. Although Amazon is king of the hill in terms of online retailers, their music site hasn't made nearly the mark that was anticipated, especially when you consider the marketshare that Android phones enjoy. As more and more consumers discover the joy of accessing music versus owning it, the marketshare that it has (about 13%) could shift in a hurry, especially if Apple doesn't introduce its service in the short term. Google as a behemoth company stands on the same ground as Amazon, and could easily eat their digital lunch and maybe Apple's too when it's all said and done. After all, they have an installed base of all those Android phones.

As has been the theme here lately, we're witnessing a big change in the music business occur right before our eyes, and it's going to be better for musicians in the long run. Today every artist and songwriter complains about the meager revenue they receive from streaming, but remember that as of now it's only expected to total $1.7 billion at the end of 2013. Considering that iTunes throws off twice that in royalties to the major labels alone every year, you can see where this is eventually going to go. Unfortunately, no royalty details were mentioned during the announcement yesterday (no surprise there).

Streaming probably won't replace the income of the glory days of CDs, but things will eventually be better than they are now in the transition period from one distribution method (downloads) to another (streaming).

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.