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CueSongs Partners With AudioSocket

2013-05-22T09:41:20-04:00

Peter Gabriel co-founded CueSongs, a one-stop music licensing hub for online and digital media, today announced a partnership with Audiosocket. Audiosocket’s music catalog will now include CueSongs’ roster of established artists, and will be available in early June to its customers which include Vimeo, Associated Press, Monster Energy and others.

CueSongs signed agreements last year with all the major publishers, as well as working directly with a number of artists such as Groove Armada, Embrace, French Horn Rebellion, Dido, Ziggy Marley and Peter Gabriel.

Gabriel says: “Many of us want to add music to our videos, but have no idea how we might get the right permissions. Whether we be amateurs, semiprofessionals, small businesses or schools etc. there are millions of potential users, who currently have nowhere to go to license their music. CueSongs painlessly connects music licensing to the new world of social media, Youtube, and the web."

Urturn Announces $13.4 Million Funding Round, Launches Mobile App

2013-05-22T08:51:06-04:00

Urturn provides creative templates or "Expressions" for social media that shift the typical post and like exchange to an encouragement to take "your turn" and express yourself by combining audio and video elements in a shareable, postable form. It's been used for a number of music marketing campaigns since they started out in late 2011. Today they have two big announcements, the raising of a funding round of $13.4 million and the launch of their first mobile app.

Urturn launched in 2011 as Webdoc, a more complicated offering that provided graphics, audio and video options for the creation of an embeddable, shareable HTML5 widget. However there seems to be a real limit to most people's desire to start from a blank canvas and Urturn has gradually simplified the offering focusing on templates that allow you to take such simple actions as choosing a photo and a song to combine in a "music postcard," as shown below:

Apparently this focus, that led to the relaunch of Webdoc as Urturn in January, is working out well. Musicians continue to use Urturn for marketing campaigns with new projects in the works. And now Urturn has reached a major milestone.

$13.4 Million Funding Round

I spoke yesterday with Co-founder Vincent Borel who discussed today's announcement of a $13.4 million funding round, the first public round of investment in Urturn. He was quite excited about the news which includes $10.7 million from Balderton Capital.

When asked what he'd do with all that money, he said they would continue to do what they do which, though it includes marketing campaigns and an onsite network, primarily focuses on giving web users tool for quick self-expression.

Launch of iOS App

One way they're making that possible is with a new iOS app that should be a good match for their Expressions or template approach to combining creative elements. It might also be a more appealing entry way to using Urturn than a desktop environment.

Since a common approach used in Expressions is to take or upload a photo as part of the mix, the ability to take a mobile pic and create an Expression at that point should be a strong combo. With creation and sharing happening on the go, that will make Urturn more appealing to users as well as to those with marketing interests.

Next Up: An API

Borel said one of their next major launches is an API that will open up the creation of Expressions to third parties. For example, it will faciliate creating new templates that can then be shared, reused and become part of what will ideally be an ecosystem of interconnected platforms and parts from Urturn to social networks to websites.

But Borel reiterated that the focus of Urturn was on the users and their desire to create. He wants to see Urturn maintain its openness to all users and to combine self-expression with immediate action. And now Urturn has the funding to take their Expressions to another level.

Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (@fluxresearch/@crowdfundingm) also blogs at Flux Research and Crowdfunding For Musicians. To suggest topics for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.

AM NEWS BRIEF: Eminem Sues Facebook, Sony Explores Spinoff, RIAA Cuts, Interlude +$16M, OK Go & More

2013-05-22T08:10:00-04:00

WEDNESDAY 5.22.2013

Music Business News & Views From Around The Web

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Updated Continuously Under Hypebot's More News Tab Above

1 Month After Launch, Twitter #Music App Is Officially A Flop

2013-05-21T14:12:57-04:00

Just a month after launch, Twitter's entry into the music space appears to have fallen flat. As if today, the app languishes as the 113th most popular free iOS music app. To provide perspective as to how poorly that means #Music is doing, several years after launch Spotify and Pandora remain #1 and #2; and something called Sing! Karaoke is the 9th most popular free music apps.

Perhaps even worse, none of the tastemakers and musicians that I follow appear to be using the #Music app. And if they are, they are not tweeting about it.

Even if #Music was a disappointment, it was a cheap one - a one-inch punch that Twitter could toss into the world and let succeed or fail on its own terms," writes Russell Brandom in The Verge. "It's the kind of thing giants like Google and Facebook do all the time, but Twitter has only recently come around to."

Perhaps. But it would be sad to see the interesting music discovery tech developed by We Are Hunted and bought by Twitter to power #Music, go to waste.

Could Flickr Become The Next Big Social Network For Musicians?

2013-05-21T11:58:00-04:00

Yesterday's news that Yahoo is buying Tumblr is certainly big for musicians given the widespread usage of Tumblr for music blogs often as an adjunct to an official website. But it also overshadowed Yahoo's relaunch of Flickr, a fading giant making a comeback at a time that might be ideal for musicians who've taken to services like Instagram and/or who see the possiblities in content marketing via Creative Commons licensing.

Yahoo buying Tumblr is big news for those using quick content sharing to market their music and have a more personal, off-the-cuff presence on the web. It's a big music content purchase for Yahoo, in many ways, though its strength is in visual content, often purloined from the web.

This acquisition creates an interesting situation for Flickr which relaunched yesterday with a striking new design and a free TB of storage. Flickr has been considered one of those acquisitions Yahoo botched but has remained an active site including as a free source of photographs for reposting.

Network Effects of Tumblr x Flickr

Take a network of blogs popular among musicians, combine with a free photo-sharing site at a time when music marketing has become increasingly visual and you have the potential for a must-use social network for musicians.

If Flickr becomes a default option for Tumblr photo storage, for example, then more Tumblr users will be drawn to Flickr. That moves music blog audiences into that terrain and so creates a reason for musicians to become more active there as well especially if auto-posting from mobile devices works widely and easily.

Creative Commons Licensing and Content Marketing

Another fairly unique angle at Flickr is the option for content creators to choose among a variety of options including allowing for free usage for "content to use commercially" and "content to modify, adapt, or build upon." These options can be found via advanced search and are at the discretion of the creator.

If Flickr becomes more popular and fresh free content starts showing up that is available for legal reposting then not only can Tumblr networks be fed but blogging and media outlets can repost as well. Flickr's identity as a source for Creative Commons licensed content can help it regain prominence in that regard.

This status offers not only the chance for one's regular photo posts to be discovered via search but also the opportunity to create the equivalent of free stock photos tagged with common keywords. Reposting can include requiring a link back and so this approach would become a form of content marketing.

New Flickr Reviews:

Please Find Lost Music And Return It Via The Web

2013-05-21T11:15:00-04:00

By Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm.

The Legendary 'Disco Indian Stories' tape is not online and nobody seems to know where it is.

It’s easy to get the impression these days that everything under the sun is now just a few clicks away on the internet — that is, until you look for something that’s not there.

My first ever feature story for the web, from 1997 or so, a CNET piece called “Cellphone Horror Stories,” appears to have vanished from the planet entirely, for example (and if you can’t find an article with my weird byline attached to it, it’s probably not there). I could be the only person who cares about that early appraisal of the dangers of butt-dialing your significant other as you talk about them to your best friend, losing cell service on the side of a lonely stretch of highway, and the other “horror stories” listed in that feature, but for future generations wondering what the first consumers to carry cellphones were thinking, maybe it would come in handy. Oh well.

Much more importantly, for music fans, some of our most beloved songs are also entirely missing from the web. Luckily, YouTube offers an easy way to rectify the situation — see our tutorials on how to do that for Mac and for Windows.

The first song I ever “rescued” was Danny Kaye’s amazing “Tubby The Tuba,” one of my childhood favorites:

Comments include:

“What a lovely warming memory to have found on a freezing March afternoon. Always loved Danny Kaye. I recommend getting hold of film ‘The Court Jester’ and defy anyone not to laugh out loud. Long may his memory endure.”

“Haven’t heard this for about 35 years…just transformed me back to my childhood. Thanks for the memories.”

“Magic stuff, thanks indeed for the memories.”

“Oh, who happy I am, too! I love it so much :)”

“thanks for uploading, you’ve made my dad very happy and nostalgic… have to put up with him singing the frog song now, though O_o”

See? It’s worth it.

Other rare songs I have put onto the web (and maybe even the whole internet):

I will finally get to the point here: We need more of this.

The next time you look for a song on the web and it’s not there, and you have a physical copy or can somehow get access to the recording, please do this or this to solve the problem.

Kurt Schlegel once left the above-pictured cassette, containing an amazing compilation of Indian children’s music called Disco Indian Stories, in the tour van of the band P.E.E., whose co-singer/guitarist Jim Stanley once worked with me at CNET, and who lent a copy of the cassette amongst a group of us in San Francisco in the late ’90s.

This is what went down on Facebook after I asked where it came from:

Jim Stanley: “Kurt Schlegel. He left it in the van on tour once. I have tagged him here for further insight.”
Kurt Schlegel: ”There’s that tape! I’ve been missing it terribly. Provenance: Given to me by Grux from Caroliner Rainbow. Apparently, this type of recording is quite popular in India. This makes sense when you see it in light of Bollywood production values. Can’t tell you the artists involved, just that it rules.”

Indeed, it does. And you still can’t hear it. And neither can I, or anyone else, apparently. If you have this tape, or know where it is, please put this music online (whether you have Mac or Windows). It can’t just disappear… can it?

While we’re on the topic, I am also looking for an album recorded by my mom’s cousin’s amazing all-girl ’80s a capella group, The Chapped Lips.

I can’t find Disco Indian Stories or The Chapped Lips anywhere, and I have been looking for both of them. For years. We can do better.

Is there some rare music that’s been haunting you that you can’t find? Please, let us know, so that we can at least put the notion that someone is looking for it online. If there’s a need, we’d like to turn this into a recurring feature, to preserve little bits of analog amazing-ness before everyone forgets there was a time before the internet.

New Report: Making Freemium Music Services Pay

2013-05-21T10:45:00-04:00

A new free report from MIDiA Consulting by Mark Mulligan takes a look at some of the challenges facing freemium web services including Pandora, Spotify and Deezer. From "free being too good" to customer churn, "Making Freemium Add Up" is well worth a read to see how freemium businesses are responding to the challenge of making free pay. The report itself is available for free to subscribers of Mark Mulligan's Music Industry Blog.

Mulligan announced the report on his blog explaining that it:

"analyse[d] an intentionally diverse selection of consumer web services, looking at the distribution and scale of their user bases and the relationship of these with their business models...It also includes long term data trend analysis of Spotify, Deezer and Pandora."

The report initially notes that inactive users are a problem for all freemium services because:

"Freemium businesses depend upon harvesting large swathes of users with free tiers and converting sizeable portions of those users to paid products." [p. 2]

In addition:

"Freemium services are below average [when comparing registered to active users]: all of the tracked freemium services have registered-to-active rates below the ‘industry’ average rate of 52%. All but two of the freemium services (Slacker and Deezer) have rates between 37% to 40%." [p. 3]

A primary concern with inactive users is customer churn, especially when they go away unimpressed. But "freemium inactive user bases are priceless qualified marketing lead databases" [p 4] and so a problem that represents an opportunity.

A different but related issue is that "free can be too good" and thus active users never move up to become paying customers.

In some cases, the freemium approach is supported with advertising which can offset the free being too good problem:

"The four freemium services with the lowest rates of active-to-paid user rates – Soundcloud, (0.1%), Pandora (2%), Skype (3%) and Hulu (8%) – have free tiers that are quite simply good enough for the majority of users, thus reducing the need for many to pay."

"This is a challenge YouTube will have to address as it introduces premium channels. In the case of Soundcloud the premium tiers are aimed mostly at content creators rather than the much larger base of consumers."

"For the other three though, it is simply that the free product is so good that the majority of users do not see a reason to upgrade and all three companies have robust business rationale for maintaining this status quo: Pandora and Hulu depend on advertising revenue, while achieving scale and platform reach is key for Skype owners Microsoft."

A key conclusion is that "social and communication services are well embedded" and have become a daily part of users' lives.

However content services, such as subscription music services, face numerous challenges in becoming a daily choice due to an array of free competing products and the tendency for music services to present a commoditized selection of music making differentiation difficult.

Another important conclusion is that:

"The free-to-paid divide needs narrowing: zero to $9.99 for streaming music on a phone is too great a leap. More needs to be done to bridge the divide."

Possibilities include third-party subsidies, e.g. bundling music with other services, and pricing and packaging experiments including shorter subscription periods.

While the report overall is in no way drawing a bleak picture, the closing line perhaps best sums up the situation facing subscription music services:

"Questions about the commercial sustainability of the freemium model remain but as long as the key players retain the cash commitment and strategic willingness to experiment with the model, the paid content sector will continue to edge further forwards to sustainability."

Lots to consider here as we "edge further forwards" to a deeper understanding!

More:

MIDiA Consulting
Music Business Blog (subscribe for free report)

Pandora Launches Premieres: Full New Album Previews

2013-05-21T10:29:11-04:00

Pandora today announced the launch of Pandora Premieres, free stations that stream full upcoming album releases up to a week prior to going on sale. Pandora Premieres are updated weekly and will feature previews from both established and emerging artists across multiple genres.

As of this morning, only two albums were featured:

"Wrote A Song For Everyone" is the 9th solo studio album from former Credence Clearwater Revival front-man John Fogerty. It will be released Tuesday, May 28th on Vanguard Records.
"Once I Was An Eagle" is the 4th album from British singer-songwriter Laura Marling. It will be released Tuesday, May 28th on Virgin Records.

Initially, T-Mobile is sponsoring and listeners can add the Pandora Premieres station, which will be updated weekly with new releases. Users can choose to hear any track on the featured album, in any order and as many times as they'd like, for the time period the album is available on the station.

The 4 Places You Should Be Entering All Of Your Concert Dates To Increase Concert Attendance

2013-05-21T09:52:54-04:00

Wondering how to get connected in the live music scene? Not sure where you should be focusing your promotion efforts? Jesse Cannon lists and exposits four resources you should know about on Music Think Tank.

"Entering dates into the services we have outlined below increases the chance of getting both fans and potential fans to your shows."

(Read On)

Spotify Adds Most Viral & Played Charts, Track Counts

2013-05-21T08:39:00-04:00

The rollout began several days ago, but now it's official: Spotify has added song play counts to every artist's top tracks, showing their total number of global plays since October 2008. Initially rolling out for the desktop client, play counts will be added for all Spotify users in the coming weeks. Alongside the track counts, the music streamer has also launched two Spotify Charts.

The Spotify Top 50 is the top 50 most-streamed songs of the previous week, market-by-market. The Social 50 is the top 50 most-shared songs of the previous week. These are the songs that have been most actively shared to other Spotify users, including via Facebook and Twitter.

Updated every Monday, Spotify Charts is is an embeddable widget that can be set to show the most played or most ciral tracks in any of the 28 markets where Spotify is available

See the new Spotify charts here.

Spotify's 50 Most Played & Shared Tracks [U.S. & UK]

2013-05-21T08:31:30-04:00

Spotify launched two new charts this week in each of the 28 markets that it serves. Macklemore & Ryan top this week's most played track in the U.S., but Five Finger Death tops the most shared songs. In the UK , Daft Punk tops the most played chart, and Hoodie Allen has the most shared track. The Charts:

NEWS BRIEF: XBox Launches, Last.fm Adds Videos,BeatDecks Launches Free Analytics & More

2013-05-21T08:02:00-04:00

TUESDAY 5.21.2013

Music Business News & Views From Around The Web

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Updated Continuously Under Hypebot's More News Tab Above

Lively Launches Concert Recording & Sales App

2013-05-20T13:59:00-04:00

Launching today, concert recording and sales app Lively offers a simple way to record and sell live recordings immediately after the show. Available for Android and iOS, Lively is led by startup veteran Dean Graziano.

Graziano's previous ventures include Visible Technologies, which has raised $50 million for reputation management and social media software, and Reach Machines, which merged to create Meteor Solutions and was acquired late last year by Covario.

How Lively Works

Designed to be used with the Apogee Duet audio interface, Lively’s Audio Manager provides the software and online purchase and download tools required for an artist to capture and sell quality audio (and with other gear, video) of their shows.

The Apple and Android app stores take about 30% and Lively splits the remaining revenue 70% artist and 30% to the company. Lively also provides analytics

Concert-goers download the free Lively app onto their Android and iOS devices which allows them to purchase the performance immediately after the concert for $4.99 for audio or $9.99 for both audio and video.

“The Lively concept came about in response to the overwhelming number of fans we observed at concerts who were attempting to use their phones to capture the experience and memory of a live show and share it with their friends,” said Graziano. "Lively has introduced a new way to deliver a high quality experience for the fans and help drive new incremental revenue and exposure for the bands.”

Here's a a video demo:

When Is The Best Time To Post On Social Media? [INFOGRAPHIC]

2013-05-20T13:32:14-04:00

You spend hours every week to craft the right tweets and Facebook posts. You're even pinning photos and graphics. But you're not getting results. One reason may be the time of day that you post. Every social media outlets has it's optimal posting times. Nothing replaces your own testing, but this infographic offers a great place to start.
via Socialcaffeine.com

Potential Of Direct-To-Fan Realized By Few Bands

2013-05-20T11:58:00-04:00

By Kyle Bylin (@sidewinderfm), founder and editor of sidewinder.fm, a music and tech think tank.

Direct-to-fan marketing tools and services continue to hold a lot of promise. They enable artists to connect with their fan base and sell their products directly to them. But has the full potential of these tools and services been realized? Who is realizing it? What part of this potential has yet to be fulfilled? In this interview panel on direct-to-fan marketing, four influential executives in the music and tech industry weigh in on the potential of direct-to-fan.

Direct-To-Fan Still an Afterthought to Many Artists

Jason Spitz | Independent online marketing consultant at The Spitz Agency.

The “full potential” of D2F is currently being realized by a few — very few — bands. I spent years running the online store for the Grateful Dead, and I can tell you their direct-to-fan business is quite healthy. In general, jam bands do D2F well. Smarter indie/rock acts make noble attempts, and some succeed, but many run sub-optimal campaigns. They often leave money on the table. Other genres hold promise, but aside from a few shining examples, direct-to-fan is still an afterthought to many artists.

Personally, I believe that every band has the potential to build a profitable direct-to-fan business, but it requires hard work, a smart plan, and a fair amount of time to see it come to fruition. Many bands don’t have the patience or longevity to fulfill their potential.

But there’s also a problem with the broader music market. Consumers want their shopping experience to be easy, reliable, consistent, and smooth. That’s why Amazon and iTunes and Zappos are so successful — they create a really good user experience, over and over again.

Bands as a collective group can never be as successful. Every band website has its own store layout, with different conventions for calls-to-action and navigation. Often the design is flat-out bad. The plethora of D2F platforms means shoppers will come across many different checkout flows, each one slightly different. This lack of consistency makes it hard to create a habit for consumers as a whole to shop on artists’ stores. That behavior may just remain the realm of the niche super-fan.

We’re Selling Fans Short on What’s Possible

Benji Rogers | Founder and CEO of the crowd-funding company PledgeMusic.

The full potential is far from being realized. As previously described, by offering fans more ways to simply buy products and not offering them more reasons to buy, we are simply selling short on what is possible. The full potential can be realized if artists and labels truly go direct-to-fan and offer the experience both fans and consumers want.

Nielsen data we just presented at SXSW points to an unmet demand for access and experience of up to $2.6 billion per year in the United States alone. Let's be clear here, too: This is music listeners of all types asking for more than just a bunch of ‘buy’ buttons or CDs on shelves. These listeners aren’t just looking for fan clubs. They want events that they can say they were a part of. The product they buy at the end is less the point and more of a takeaway, a souvenir to show that they were there, that they belonged.

To me, the social networks have in one way stolen the thunder surrounding releases simply by killing off the reveal. Fans see things on Facebook that are broadcast to all, that in many ways show the fans what they are missing. When artists are truly being artists, they hide the majority of what they are doing and then attempt what used to be the big reveal. Only now it's sort of flat. Formulaic. There may be a competition – some clever gimmicky marketing – but it all leads to the same core messages: Pre-order my album. Buy my album. Have you bought my album?

So much more is possible with the potential for taking fans along on the journey, unlocking access and sharing what’s happening with those who choose to be let in. There’s a fan-centric social layer that these true direct-to-fan tools make possible that is being chronically underused by most artists and labels.

I think this is the reason we’re seeing a decrease in the spend-per-fan as well as a lack of participation in a truly holistic musical economy across the board. The potential is that now more is possible – it just requires a fresh pair of eyes to see it and bold moves on behalf of those in the business of making music to adopt what has been built.

Artists Products Could Be On Streaming Services

Darren Hemmings | Founder of the digital marketing agency Motive Unknown.

I think there are still gaps in the chain. The front-end marketing and CRM element is pretty slick these days; its something Topspin and Bandcamp have evolved really well.

However, I think one missing part is the pick/pack fulfillment logistics, which are far less sexy than the whole email collection and communication element, but which are the Achilles heel of larger D2C operations. If you're looking at a pan-European retail setup then you really need to have a great, cost-effective partner for the fulfillment; preferably one who can provide customer support as well.

The other gap I'd love to see filled is the upsell from streaming services and other such points. I'd love to see info on deluxe products from artists I listen to all the time on Rdio or Spotify, be that extended editions of albums or other things like art prints or other merch bundles. Unfortunately, though, I think the stumbling block to that might be that such services simply don't see it as being in their interests to do this. Daisy seems to be suggesting it can deliver on this though, so I'll be interested to see how that shapes up.

Direct-To-Fan Not Magical Remedy That Saves Music Industry

Virginie Berger | Founder and general manager of the creative and development agency DBTH.

Don't go thinking that recorded music can still earn artists a living, or that digital music (and all its technical variations) is going to suffice either. While 75 million tracks have been deposited at SACEM (French collecting society) only 2,000 of its members earn royalties, which equal the minimum wage.

We consume differently. Indeed, record production is an anomaly, which has been going on since the 50s. Before musical production became industrialized, there were artists and we are simply coming back to the state of music before it got to be recorded: music was dematerialized, without intermediaries or real physical support.

Within the digital world then, thanks to the direct-to-fan marketing tools, your public does not necessarily buy you, they rather support you. Your fan — the one supporting you — will generate revenue, if you do things right.

But if your public considers your recorded music as worthless, they will not pay to listen to it. And there's worse: Will you be able to make a living out of it? It's not that certain. But that's not the point. The point is for you to be discovered.

No matter how many direct-to-fan tools exist. Direct-to-fan is not the magical remedy which will save the music industry. It is likely to help some people, but certainly not all of them. And, for the majority, it doesn't change a thing. Because of the lack of discovery and curation. It is of course quite normal, and even encouraged, to compose great songs, be an amazing stage performer... and show totally expressionless eyes at the sound of words like mash up, Twitter, widget, CSS, etc., that is, not having the slightest clue about it all.

But why people will “buy” you if they don’t know you exist?

And here is an interesting paradox: music fans can access an infinite choice of content, which may be consumed more or less at anytime, while artists get almost lost/hidden in the Internet. But, this is not yet comfortable, this is not yet mastered but it represents great opportunities for the development of a new generation of direct to fan tools and services.

—

Sidewinder.fm is founded and edited by Kyle Bylin of Live Nation Labs. If you would like to contribute a post to be featured on the site, please reach out.

Tips From A Start-Up Guide For Musicians

2013-05-20T11:30:00-04:00

The Unsigned Guide's newly released "A Start-Up Guide" includes tips on "sending your demos out successfully, how to get your music & videos featured on blogs and the basics on music publishing and how you could be earning money from it." The three short articles in Part 1 of this free digital zine cover some solid basics and make for a quick interesting read.

Part 1 of "A Start-Up Guide" with tips from The Unsigned Guide, Radar Music Videos and Sentric Music is available from The Unsigned Guide.

Tips From A Start-Up Guide For Musicians

Demos: Making sure your music doesn’t end up in the bin!
by The Unsigned Guide

"Don’t just blanket!"

"Whilst it may be tempting to wing your music out to the whole world and see what comes back, you are ultimately wasting your time and wasting the time of the music companies in question. Take your time to investigate a little further initially."

"We hear from many companies listed in the Guide who say they regularly receive demos from Rock bands when they are a Hip-Hop specialist, and so on. Most listings in The Unsigned Guide tell you the genres that the company in question specialises in, plus other artists that are on their roster, so take heed!"

"It can also be worth taking a quick look at their website, having a listen to releases on SoundCloud and so on, to make sure you are barking up the right tree before you hit the Send button."

How to get your music video featured on blogs
by Radar Music Videos

"Choose which of your 10 blogs you would most like to premiere your video. Send the journalist your press release and an exclusive invitation to premiere your music video. Let the journalist know that if they would like to premiere your video, you will tweet and post on Facebook about it and send out a newsletter special to your fans, linking to their blog."

WTF is Music Publishing?!
by Sentric Music

"As a music publisher I look after your songs. Songs that YOU have written. Just by writing the song you’ve created a copyright; a piece of intellectual property that can be exploited to generate income. (on a side note; the word ‘exploited’ in this usage doesn’t carry the negative connotations you may think it has when you read it elsewhere. To ‘exploit’ in this sense is to simply extract the intrinsic value of something – and your music, no matter how brilliant or rubbish, has value)."

More:

The Pros And The Cons Of Google Play Music All Access Subscription

2013-05-20T10:55:00-04:00

By Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm.

I set out this morning to built a chart listing the various features of the major music subscription services: Rdio, Rhapsody, Spotify, and we assume the recently-launched Google Play Music All Access, although it remains to be seen whether it will succeed on the level of those standalone music services — or whether it will become an also-ran from a company whose main business is something else (like Microsoft XBox Live Music, Sony Music Unlimited, or “MOG by Beats“).

The pointlessness of that endeavor became apparent rather quickly. They’re all so similar, essentially offering the same music (Google has about 20 million songs right out of the gate, which is on par with the rest, and four million more than MOG says it has right now).

All of their apps play music offline (i.e. locally, without streaming the music over WiFi or a cell data connection), which is great, because it’s an important feature — but not one that can be used to distinguish between these services. (In Google Play, offline playback is indicated with a Pin icon.) They also have radio features that can play music without you choosing every single song, although those vary in quality.

In terms of the big picture, the most important issue in music right now is how to collect music in these overwhelming times, when music comes at us from all angles. However, all four of the services mentioned at the top of this article are capable of grabbing the music you’ve collected on your hard drive and zapping it up to the cloud, from where you can listen to it on all your connected devices, so there’s no real difference there.

Spotify and Google do stand out in one important regard: Their mobile apps can play MP3s you’ve imported into the desktop client (in the case of Spotify) or uploaded to the cloud (in the case of Google) — a feature that’s missing from Rdio and Rhapsody.

All other things being equal, which they almost are, we’re just going to focus on specific reasons why you should or should not use the new Google Play Music All Access music subscription, rather than Spotify, Rdio, or Rhapsody.

Pro: It’s Cheaper (Right Now)

Music subscriptions typically cost $10 per month if you want the ability to carry music around on things that aren’t traditional computers. However, if you sign up for Google Play Music All Access before June 30, you’ll be locked in at a discounted rate of $8/month.

Pro: Downloading Actual Music Files from the Cloud

In the case of music in your Google Play account that you uploaded from a hard drive — as in, you own the actual MP3 somewhere — you can download those files from Google Play. (As we mentioned above, both Spotify and Google let you play those songs on your connected devices, but this is about downloading.) Because it’s also a locker service, only Google among the major music subscriptions lets you download those uploaded files. It only lets you do this to computers (i.e. not to Androids), but still, it’s a difference, and an important one to people who use lots of computers and/or still have a straight-up MP3 or CD player that doesn’t run apps.

Con: Credit Card Required

Google’s partying like it’s 2005 in this regard, requiring a valid credit card if you want to try the service for free for 30 days, at which point the charges will kick in automatically, unless you set yourself a reminder to unsubscribe after 29 days. Spotify, Rdio, and MOG switched to a freemium model after Spotify did it first, so that you can use those for free without entering a credit card. Google will save money here, but it’s a decidedly lamer way to try something out from a consumer perspective.

Con: No App Ecosystem

If you like the apps that run within Spotify for the desktop, you’ll need to stick with that, because nobody else has anything close.

Con: No iOS Version

There’s no native Google Play for iOS. You can entrust a third-party app with your precious Gmail credentials, however, in order to use it — but then that leaves the question of whether All Access files will play in those. James Clancey, the developer behind gMusic, says this:

The current app store version of gMusic does not support Google Play Music All Access. However, I did just send out a beta last night that allows you to play music from it. I am currently working on integrating the rest of the new features like radio stations. Also my search isn’t tied into it yet, but all of that is coming very soon.

As for user information, I am not totally sure. I do not track any user information at all. I don’t even have a server. I just keep to playing music. I do not even have the desire to look into getting personal information.

Your call on that front. It is possible, but it’s not the same as accessing Google’s music subscription on Android.

Con: No Scrobbling to Last.fm or Facebook

Evolver.fm has confirmed with Google spokeswoman Gina Weakley that Google Play Music All Access does not have Facebook integration, meaning that your Facebook friends can’t see what you’re playing there. If you like that feature, Google’s music subscription is not for you. Likewise, we are not seeing any Last.fm integration, so if you like to scrobble, you’re out of luck there too.

For some Android folks, Google’s option is going to make sense. Hopefully this article will help inform that decision.

10 Great Tips For Home & DIY Recordings

2013-05-20T10:12:08-04:00

Are you looking to develop your own recording space, upgrade your current equipment, or simply want to get the most out of what you already have? Rajiv Agarwal outlines 10 helpful hints for maximizing the quality of your recordings on Music Think Tank.

"There are no short cuts to experience and knowledge."

(Read On)

Soundhalo Turns Live Concert Videos Into Impulse Buys During The Show

2013-05-20T09:49:17-04:00

Soundhalo is a brand new service for taking live concert video recordings and transforming them into mixed single song videos for immediate sale. It's an interesting hybrid that's currently being offered as an Android app that allows purchases during the live show. DRM-free concert files are then available for viewing on any device. Sounds like a potential winner on impulse buys if Soundhalo can pull off some formidable challenges.

Soundhalo launched in beta at a performance late last week by Alt-J. People reviewing the technology seem impressed.

Chris Welch, writing for The Verge, described the process:

"Minutes after a song's conclusion, a production team pairs video with audio pulled directly from the soundboard. Everything's properly mastered before the final product is uploaded to the cloud, so you won't have to worry about dealing with a harsh audio mix."

My understanding is that audio/video will be provided via the band and venue. Soundhalo will quickly turn the individual videos around and fans can preview the videos via their smartphones and decide to purchase them individually.

Alt-J's songs went for around $1.50 each with the whole 16-song set being purchased for $9.00. Apparently the service automatically provides the whole set when you purchase enough individual tracks to cover the full-set price.

Nick Hide at CNET UK had some concerns about the scalability of Soundhalo:

"'The Soundhalo production team take video and audio feeds directly from the venue,' the startup explains, 'and utilising the fastest broadcast connectivity, delivers those files to the Soundhalo studio where mixing, mastering and grading take place by the expert ears and eyes of world class mastering engineers.'"

Without some kind of algorithmic solution, making each individual track quickly available seems really difficult. And the mobile app description does make it sound quick:

"Soundhalo is an evolutionary new platform that allows music lovers to buy, share and own artist endorsed live video and audio recordings as it happens. Fans can now purchase and download the actual performance as it unfolds, whether they are at the gig or on the other side of the globe."

The focus on a mobile app is interesting given that you then download DRM-free MP4 files that can be viewed on any device. And you don't even have to be at the show if you have the app.

Soundhalo is launching with an emphasis on being closely tied to individual shows and the possiblity of impulse buys during the show.

Beyond that it's a live video production and digital sales platform accessible via an Android app. So that emphasis makes quick turnaround particularly important in making the whole thing work. If they can pull that off, Soundhalo potentially becomes quite powerful.

Spotify Adapts Audio Formats To Listening Platforms

2013-05-20T09:06:06-04:00

By Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm.

Recently, CNET reported on an extension for Google’s Chrome web browser that let people scrape songs off of Spotify’s web player, for free, and save the music as MP3 files. This was obviously fairly problematic and possibly illegal, as far as browser extensions go, so Google hastily deleted the app from its Chrome app store in short order, and then Spotify closed the loophole.

We did learn something from the brief saga of Downloadify (logo above). The app let people save music from any web-embedded Spotify playlist as MP3s, which indicates that Spotify is streaming MP3s, rather than the Ogg Vorbis format it sends to the desktop. (Downloadify could have been transcoding the files, but we doubt that, in part due to Spotify’s response to our inquiries, and in part because that would have required more work and probable patent-licensing by Downloadify, whose creator was apparently just trying to make a point, not create something for people to use forever).

According to Spotify’s FAQ, Spotify streams the open-source Ogg Vorbis codec, rather than MP3. That appears to apply only to the desktop, or at least not to the web player, where the music appears to be in MP3, which has cost implications (see below).

Well before Spotify launched in the States, I suggested to Spotify co-founder and CEO Daniel Ek, that even the people who built Ogg Vorbis thought commercial companies would shy away from it for patent concerns, so Spotify might want a back-up plan behind Ogg Vorbis. The problem: Over 20 patents apply to the MP3 codec, and some of them might cover stuff that Ogg Vorbis does — even obvious stuff like losing frequencies outside of the human hearing range.

He said he wasn’t worried, because Spotify could easily switch formats — and it looks like that’s what has happened, in the case of the web player anyway, albeit not for patent concerns. Instead, it likely has to do with making sure the music plays on any computer with a web browser, and MP3 is the more widely-supported format.

When we asked a Spotify spokesman if Spotify had in fact switched away from Ogg Vorbis, the company responded:

“We use the simplest and best sounding codec for each platform.”

That’s not outright confirmation, but it’s more than we knew before, which was “Spotify uses Ogg Vorbis.”

The implications are not earth-shattering, unless you’re sort of a digital music dork. But it’s interesting that streaming music to the web likely costs Spotify more than streaming to its own desktop app — not just because the desktop app defrays bandwidth costs by rebroadcasting bits via P2P, but also because when Spotify streams to your desktop app, it can use the open-source Ogg Vorbis, which, unlike MP3, is free for services to use.

NEWS BRIEF: Yahoo! Buys Tumblr + Reaction, iRadio Stalls, Bloom.fm Innovates, Kobalt Inks Prince & More

2013-05-20T08:31:00-04:00

MONDAY 5.20.2013

Music Business News & Views From Around The Web

CLICK HERE

Updated Continuously Under Hypebot's More News Tab Above

The Week In Music Commentary

2013-05-19T13:00:00-04:00

David Hahn Explains Why The Internet Is A Bad Place To Discover Music
Kyle Bylin Asks Can Pandora Find A Business Model That Works?
Extremely Decent Video: A Comedic (And Sadly True) 'Real Life' Look At A Facebook Updates
Upward Spiral Podcast #23: 10 Years of iTunes With Solveig Whittle [Part 2]
Clyde Smith Maintains Music Leads The Way In Return To Analog
Kyle Bylin Considers the Perils of Conflating Music Listeners and Music Fans

Getting It Done: The Week In D.I.Y. & Indie Music

2013-05-18T13:00:00-04:00

Prediction: Major Label Will Aquire DIY Distributor
Music Crowdfunding: Sam Tsui Kickstarts Debut, Songkick Detour Expands, JOBS Act For Labels
The Tools of Music Fan Engagement [Part 2]: Newsletters

Direct-to-Fan

The Early Beginnings of Direct-To-Fan: How Grateful Dead and Phish Made It Happen
3 Bottlenecks Holding Direct-To-Fan Marketing Back
Direct-To-Fan Campaigns Don’t Diminish Album Release

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Adrian Grenier's Wreckroom Bubbles Along In Brooklyn
UndergroundMusic.fm Offers Community Outlet For Free Streaming Music With Monetization Options

Music Blogs

Have Music Blogs Reached A Mainstream Audience?
Music Blogs Become New A&R, Run Niche Record Labels

MusicThinkTank Weekly Recap: Who Needs A Record Label?, 3 Simple Ways To Cut Through The Noise & More

2013-05-18T11:30:00-04:00

REWIND: The New Music Industry's Week In Review

2013-05-18T10:00:00-04:00

Does iTunes' Daft Punk Album Premier Demonstrate Its Marketing Strength?
Infographic: How We Discover And Consume Music
Music Sponsorships Top $1.28 Billion In 2013
With Murder For Hire Charges Looming, As I Lay Dying Cancels Tour
Google Takes On Spotify & Pandora With New Streaming Music Service
Kyle Bylin Releases Divergent Streams: Reflections and Explorations of the Modern Music Industry

MORE:

Hypebot's Music Industry News Links
As Edgar Bronfman, Jr. Exits Warner Music Board: Our 5 Favorite Edgar Faux Pas
SoundCloud Hires Pandora Exec To Open New York City Office
Investing In Individuals: Future Royalties And Future Prospects
Sony Rejects Investor Call To Sell Music Division

Awards

Songza, V Squared, Questlove & More Win SoundCtrl FlashFWD Awards 2013
Vote In The O Music Awards: From Digital Geniuses To Favorite Musical Cats
Grammys Force Midem Date Change

Startups

Free Social Media Marketing & Sales Platform For Musicians, Yala Backstage Launches
Muzeek Developing Intuitive Gig Booking Platform
Content Heats Up: Nas Finds Investors For Mass Appeal, Mountain Dew x Complex = Green Label

Music Services

Google Likely To Announce Subscription Music Services Today With Sony, Universal On Board
Spotify's Most Viral & Streamed Tracks [U.S. & UK]
Direct Licensing Is Key To Slacker's Success