hypebot

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:

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.

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

MORE:

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

Vote In The O Music Awards: From Digital Geniuses To Favorite Musical Cats

2013-05-17T13:00:00-04:00

Voting has begun for the O Music Awards with the opportunity to nominate wild card contenders for the Awards' cutting edge mix of categories. Open nominations continue through May 21st with a 24-hour livestreamed awards ceremony and party taking place June 19th.

The O Music Awards offer a typically eclectic array of contenders. Some nominations still have room for nominees and you can vote for those through Tuesday using a complicated system of hashtags and hand gestures.

You can log-in to vote using Facebook or Twitter and it sounds like you've got a lot of work to do:

"You’ll be limited to 50 votes per day across all categories, but you can increase this up to 1,000 votes per day by sharing your Super Fan Page link with friends and having them vote through your profile page on one of your top picks. Each of these votes counts towards the nominee pick as a double vote and gets the Super Fan page used double points towards increasing the Super Fan’s voting allotment."

And, yes, a Super Fan Award will be given!

Here's the complete list of categories:

Digital Genius Award

Psy
Yoko Ono
Will.i.am
Trent Reznor
Pussy Riot

Best Web-Born Artist

Kitty
Baauer
FIDLAR
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
Angel Haze

Best Music App

Scape
Vjay
Timbre
CrowdSYNC
Jukely

Best Interactive Music Video

Linkin Park, “Lost in the Echo”
Beck & Chris Milk, “Sound and Vision”
Tanlines, “Not The Same”
Miranda Lambert, “Fastest Girl in Town”
Yung Jake, “e.m.-bed.de/d”

Fan Army FTW

Tokio Hotel’s “Aliens”
Adam Lambert’s “Glamberts”
Ed Sheeran’s “Sheerios”
Justin Bieber’s “Beliebers”
Beyonce’s “Beyhive”
Demi Lovato’s “Lovatics”
Thirty Seconds to Mars’ “Echelon”
Selena Gomez’s “Selenators”
All Time Low’s “Hustlers”
Lil B’s “Task Force”

Best Music Hack

Bonhamizer
Leap Orchestra
Maebe
Tweet Concrete
Boil the Frog

Must Follow Artist on Twitter

Bruno Mars
?uestlove
Frank Ocean
Andrew W.K.
Erykah Badu
Grimes
Carrie Brownstein
Solange
Ryan Adams
Richard Marx

Best Artist Instagram

Pictureplane
Tyler the Creator
Bon Iver
Mariah Carey
Riff Raff

Our Favorite Musical Cat

Lil Bub
Keyboard Cat
Skifcha The Hipster Dubstep Cat
Collective Soul Cat
CatCERTO

Too Much Ass for TV

David Bowie, “The Stars (Are Out Tonight)”
Sigur Ros, “Valtari”
DIIV, “Wait”
Frank Ocean, “Pyramids”
Robin Thicke, “Blurred Lines”

Make a Band Famous

The So So Glos
Chill Moody
Syd Arthur
Striking Matches
Tatiana Owens
John & Jacob
Shy Glizzy
Fallulah
The Future
Darling Parade

Next Big Scene

PostDubStep
CloudRap
Beats
#Seapunk
Vaporwave

Analog Genius Award

Jack White
Beck
Neil Young
Shone

Most Inspiring Fan Outreach

Dan Deacon
Avicii x You
Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir
Alicia Keys

The “Friday, Friday” Award

Harlem Shake
Flash Mobs
Goats yelling like humans in music videos
Twerking
Lip Dubs

Now Go Vote!

More: O Music Awards To Feature 24-Hour Drum-a-thon w/ Questlove & (Maybe) Your Band

Direct-To-Fan Campaigns Don’t Diminish Album Release

2013-05-17T11:58:00-04:00

By Benji Rogers (@BenjiKRogers) founder and CEO of the direct-to-fan company PledgeMusic.

Direct-to-fan tools can — when used to maximum effect — become the thinnest skin between the artist and fan. The full potential is possible and exists; but only a fraction of the artists and labels out there use it.

There are no real problems of scale because each release campaign can and should be as unique and original as the music that drives it. The main challenges are simply that the platforms are being used generally to minimal effect. They’re being used solely as sales engines and not as experience engines. And so the bottlenecks are with the creators of the campaigns. Gimmicks and competitions aside, what is the artist and label really doing for the fans? Or to put it another way, what are the artists and labels giving their fans to do?

Most people in the music business see a side of the music world to which fans are never really exposed. When a manager or an A&R person gets a demo from an artist they work with, there’s a thrill, a moment of true discovery. You’re about to hear something you’ve never before heard. You’re sitting on potential gold, or you aren't, but either way you’re in.

And so my question is, why can't the fans feel some of this too? Why can't the fans be in at the same time as those who are making these records are?

You don't have to give everything away but my contention is that you have to give something away. Most artists are pretty well okay with giving the end result away for free or close to it whether it's the entire album or just a single, but that's for all. That's the very public bit. The broadcast. It's not special and it's not an event.

Direct-to-fan can fulfill this massive unmet demand but the bottleneck is in the thinking that it will in some way diminish the release. In some way it will take away from what the artist or label is going to simply drop onto the fans when it's all done.

The end musical result is far easier to bond with from the true fan perspective if you are emotionally invested in it from its creation. If you have to wait like everybody else then you are simply being treated like everybody else. For some consumers that's okay. For fans and especially true fans this simply isn't enough.

Social is partly to blame for this as people are often made aware of what they are missing and in the same moment they are also aware of how easy it is to share.

So from a fans perspective they look in from the outside and see that someone is keeping them from what they want. The marketing logic that leads to this simply has to change.

Once this challenge is met everybody wins.

—

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.

Direct Licensing Is Key To Slacker's Success

2013-05-17T11:30:00-04:00

By Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm.

When I broke the news (no, not this news) about Slacker Radio back in 2007 after receiving an amazing reader tip (I wish I could tell that story), it was still called Broadband Instruments. Part of its plan was to buy up Ku band satellite bandwidth so that it could load up its hardware players with music without relying on WiFi, USB, or cellphone towers.

Much has changed about Slacker Radio since then, including its name and that satellite plan. When the iPhone came out, Slacker’s hardware player no longer made any sense, so it became an app exclusively. And this past February, it finally abandoned the “Designed by your uncle’s ‘cool dude’ Harley Davidson friend” look in favor of a tider, updated, Web 2.0 feel — a major, much-needed improvement that many credit with the service adding six million new listeners and making a dent in the mainstream press this week.

However, nobody seems to be talking about what makes Slacker Radio different from Pandora, iHeartRadio, or any other popular internet radio services: It doesn’t pay royalties to SoundExchange. Instead, Slacker negotiates direct licensing from record labels and music publishers.

This arrangement does at least two things for Slacker.

First, it allows Slacker to let people store stations “offline” by caching them on their smartphones, so that they plan on airplanes, subways, and anywhere else where WiFi and cellphone connections are scarce, slow, or non-existant. This is a crucial feature for the future of media, and you won’t find it on Pandora or any of the other major streaming radio services that pay SoundExchange, because that license doesn’t include offline playback.

Second, as Slacker has confirmed to me in the past, it pays a lower royalty than its competitors who pay SoundExchange, which is likely a big part of why Slacker says it will be profitable by the end of the year whereas Pandora will not — and why Clear Channel is pursuing direct licensing as well.

Is this an indication that internet radio royalties are too high? Don’t tell a recording artist that — after all, they’re even complaining about Pandora’s payouts. Maybe it’s just that music is still too expensive to be free and too free to be expensive.

Perils of Conflating Music Listeners and Music Fans

2013-05-17T11:00:00-04:00

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

I’ve always been skeptical of how music startups view music listeners. There have been many times where I’ve read a press release or heard an elevator pitch and narrowed my eyes. The suspension of reality can be astounding at times. Music startups seem to think that people have an infinite capacity to discover music and spread their love for artists.

I understand that people are only trying to market their music services. Sometimes, they say things that (I hope) aren’t meant to be taken seriously — they’re simply “selling” the vision behind their product and why they decided to create it. But I always get stuck on how they talk about music listeners — what they think music listeners are willing to do and how much effort they are willing to put in to get whatever value is being created for them. Oftentimes, it sounds like music listeners will run through any maze to find cheese.

There is also a tendency to conflate music listeners and music fans. But passively consuming music is different than actively endorsing it. The people with earbuds in aren’t the same as those with credit cards out. They don’t necessarily transform from iPhone zombies to Phish Heads. They’re just people who like music. They’re not music fanatics waiting in the wings. Music startups often talk about music listeners like they’re one direct-to-fan email or app download away from supporting their favorite artists and saving the music industry. But they're not.

To explore these thoughts further, I asked several music and tech experts: Do music startups and industry pundits conflate music listeners and music fans? What are the dangers of confusing a listener with a fan — of viewing listeners as something that they are not?

Wise To Determine What Type of Customer You’re Marketing To

Refe Tuma is a writer and occasional music blogger.

This is another example of the danger inherent in using ‘fan’ terminology when discussing the ‘business’ in music business. If there are any dangers in confusing listeners and fans, they’re primarily economic — related to money, and by extension, energy and time. This is a question about customers.

Nevertheless, a helpful definition of the distinction between listeners and fans might be that a listener is someone who consumes music somewhere on the passive end of the participation spectrum, while a fan consumes music on the active end.

There are distribution channels that cater to just about every point on this spectrum. On the passive end: traditional radio, streaming radio, licensing for TV and movies, etc. On the active end: curation tools, digital libraries, and remixing software.

Generally, the more passive the channel, the less the customer is charged, and the less revenue it generates. More active channels generally charge their customers more for their use, so they generate more revenue.

Startups seeking to provide a product or service would be wise to determine what type of customer they are marketing to, listener or fan. If they’re product will be used primarily by fans, they might be able to charge more per unit (or whatever measurement applies) and find success with a smaller, more active customer base. If casual listeners are targeted, they will likely have to provide the product for free or near-free, and work hard on wide adoption.

Music Industry Vs. Musician Industry — There’s a Difference

David Hahn is the founder and editor of the blog Musician Wages .

I'm sure they do conflate the two groups, but I don't think it makes much of a difference.

Music start-ups need one thing: numbers. Huge numbers. Without huge numbers of users and large market penetration, none of their business models will become profitable. Take, for instance, Spotify and Pandora, who are loudly complaining about their inability to make any money without more paying users (or lower royalty rates).

If they really want to care about who is listening, how much they care about the songs, whether they share the songs with their friends — then they should become musicians. Because ultimately, all of these concerns are much more important to the artist than to the label. What does the label care about how they get big numbers, as long as they do?

So I think the bigger problem here is conflating the music industry with the musician industry. They are, an have always been, two completely separate industries with very different priorities, expectations and goals. The only people actually selling music are musicians. They are the only ones who need to worry about who's listening.

Consider the Music Festival Brand and Artist Lineup

Amber Horsburgh is a strategist at the create agency Big Spaceship .

This is really an issue of differentiation for products and services. The dangers in confusing music listeners and music fans is not so much an issue for them, but more so the companies behind the products/services that serve them. Relying on the health of an artist’s fan pool to sell a music-streaming product, for example, makes little to no sense.

Take a look at music festivals. A great deal of festivals out there differentiate themselves year after year by artist lineup — the difference between Electric Daisy and Ultra being Calvin Harris is headlining, who is a bigger deal than Avicii, hypothetically. In these instances the touring department is doing the job of the marketing department and the marketing department is doing the job of a promoter. The end result is the festival (as its stand alone brand) relying on the fans of artists within the lineup to sell out their event where their experience with their favorite artist is likely to be diluted. Not to mention the other host of uncontrollable variables — what if in the lead up to the event the artist releases something terrible, or offends a public figure or simply struggles to remain relevant?

Creating an experience that is unique to the festival brand would help them to expand their potential audience, past the fans of the artists on the lineup. The same holds true for listeners of SONOS, YouTube and online radio — listeners all get a different experience for seemingly the same task — listening to music.

The Three Types of Music Consumers

Wesley Verhoeve is the founder of Family Records .

Music consumers live in three concentric circles. The casual listener, the fan, and the hardcore fan. They're all the same in the way that it's our job to guide them from the outermost circle into the innermost one, by listening to their needs and preferences, and catering to them in a way that makes sense for everyone involved.

I don't think it's possible to mistake one for the other, especially since the financial incentives differ drastically between the circles. A fan is a fan is a fan though. They are who we, as an industry and as artists, are there for. They are at the core of our business. It's their choice to listen to our artists, but it is our job to listen to what they will tell us.

We are getting better at listening, but it's coming from a point so low that there's still a long way to go. The industry was built from a place where listening to the customers was not something that was even considered. There is no difference between selling music, and selling anything else. You listen to your customers if you know what's good for you.If music customers had actually felt heard and loved the companies they bought music from, I am certain piracy would've evolved differently. The music industry not only didn't listen to their customers, it's proactively held up their middle finger to the customer.

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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.

Music Crowdfunding: Sam Tsui Kickstarts Debut, Songkick Detour Expands, JOBS Act For Labels

2013-05-17T10:05:00-04:00

Music crowdfunding continues to work its way into the fabric of the music world. YouTube star Sam Tsui recently used Kickstarter to fund a debut album rather than signing with a label. Songkick Detour is expanding its concert crowdfunding borders. And the JOBS Act continues to suggest future possibilities for music companies such as record labels that are yet to be realized.

Part of the promise of crowdfunding music that we're already seeing in practice is the shift in creative control based on funding sources. Many fans seem enthusiastic about supporting artists' work and that's keeping control in the hands of artists.

Keeping the Control in Artists' Hands

Sam Tsui is a YouTube music star making the transition from cover songs to original material. He chose to crowdfund his debut rather than signing with a label.

In an interview Tsui said the campaign revealed their base of support:

"The first thing was to get upfront capital. We did a Kickstarter campaign. I had never done one before and had no idea if people would support the project. We exceeded the goal [$30,000] in the first two days and more than doubled it. It was the first indication that people are excited about us doing this album."

Songkick Detour Expands Program

Songkick Detour London has been a closely watched experiment. Now it's expanding beyond its initial network to include other concert supporters in London with a broader range to follow:

"I’m excited to say that today we are coming out of private beta and opening up to any fan in London. Very soon we’ll launch Detour across the UK and have been thrilled at the emails we’ve been getting from fans and promoters across the world asking when Detour would come to their city."

Mark Mulligan followed the news with a piece titled "Songkick Detour And The Middle Class Musician." Zoë Keating is a current participant.

The JOBS Act for Record Labels

Miguel de Braganca discusses "Record Labels and the JOBS Act" in Berklee's Music Business Journal. While we've seen a powerful response to pledge-based and participatory crowdfunding, the possibilities are wide open for equity crowdfunding.

Braganca gives an example of one of the complications ahead:

"Because of the Act’s annual $1m ceiling per firm, the label’s corporate entity cannot fully micro-finance more than one act, which renders the instrument useless for risk management."

"What the label must do is create a holding company for each act being marketed to investors and transfer the ownership of the artist-label contract into the new entity. The public can then invest in a specific act through the holding company’s presence on a funding portal."

Peter Alhadeff considers "Music and Equity Crowdfunding" from additional angles.

More: Zoë Keating Crowdfunds London Concert Using Songkick Detour

With Murder For Hire Charges Looming, As I Lay Dying Cancels Tour

2013-05-17T09:25:00-04:00

Heavy metal band As I Lay Dying has pulled out of their spot in the upcoming tour with Killswitch Engage, in the wake of As I Lay Dying's frontman being charged in an alleged murder for hire plot. As previously reported, police allege that frontman Tim Lambesis gave an undercover officer posing as a hitman $1,000, his wife address and the means to enter the home. He is currently in California's Vista Detention Facility, with bail set at $3 million dollars.

A statement from the group, posted on their website reads, "In light of recent events, As I Lay Dying will, unfortunately, not be taking part in the upcoming tour with Killswitch Engage. Given the circumstances, we feel that it is best for the band to be off the road while the current situation gets sorted. We'd like to thank all of our fans for their ongoing support at this difficult time."

Lambesis will return to court on June 10th and a preliminary hearing for the case has been scheduled for July 10. - CelebrityAccess Staff Writers - via Celebrity Access

Does iTunes' Daft Punk Album Premier Demonstrate Its Marketing Strength?

2013-05-17T08:35:00-04:00

By Eliot Van Buskirk of Evolver.fm.

You might have noticed that every music blog in the world and half of its tech blogs are linking to Daft Punk’s iTunes page right now. As one example, Gorilla vs. Bear’s post simply includes an image, a video, and the words: “It’s here. Listen now at iTunes.” If you make the jump from any of these non-critical, “listen to this thing right now”-style posts to iTunes, you can indeed stream all of the French electronic duo’s latest album, Random Access Memories.

For some bands, premiering an album on Pitchfork is pretty much the best thing that can happen — even after the same publication turns around and gives the same “sought after” record a horrible rating a week later. For others, NPR has become a surprisingly effective tastemaker with its own line of album premieres from famous and/or culturally-significant music-makers.

However, Apple, and for that matter, Amazon and other stores make a lot more sense for album premieres, as Daft Punk is currently demonstrating (its album has risen to #4 on the iTunes chart a week before it even ships).

First of all, Apple doesn’t care whether the album is good or bad. No criticism! Perfect.

Pitchfork readers or NPR listeners still might decide whether to wait for the official review before they decide whether to like an album or not, because those publications also post professional music criticism — or, they might decide to maybe buy the album later, then forget about it. Daft Punk’s listeners this week, on the other hand, are already right there in iTunes — not even the web version, but the actual software itself — and chances are, iTunes already has their credit card information.

Premiering an album free stream in iTunes is a brilliant move for a band on Daft Punk’s level, because it reduces friction and criticism, and puts the fans on the buying page at the exact moment when they are all excited about hearing the record for the first time.

Not only that, but all of these links, which are seriously on just about any music, tech, or culture blog right now, will remain intact long after iTunes stops this free stream, which could happen at any time (probably the moment the album goes on sale next Tuesday, or Monday in the UK). They will live on for years, drawing curious listeners of the future to — where else — the iTunes purchase page for the record, which will then have only short samples of the songs, and of course the “buy” button.

This is the most high-profile pre-release album stream (the album comes out next week) in recent memory, but it’s not the first. Apple officially announced that it had been streaming pre-release albums for free last October, and we expect to see more of it in the future. It’s good for iTunes and good for Daft Punk.

ITunes’ value as an exclusive, pre-release album-streaming promotional resource could even be playing into the discussions, reportedly stalled, between Apple and record labels, in which Apple is reportedly seeking to pay lower royalties than Pandora does. Slacker Radio also pays a lower rate, and in return, probably has to occasionally promote a track here and there that it might not otherwise promote, although we don’t have confirmation of that, just basic logic.

Apple’s iTunes, on the other hand, still has plenty of muscle as a retailer, and that means more leverage. For all the talk about the “music cloud” killing off downloads here and elsewhere, let’s not forget that iTunes is still the biggest, most powerful music store in the world, of any kind. Its Daft Punk stream is pretty much winning the internets right now, and that can only help the company argue to the labels that putting an internet radio feature right next to those buy buttons could have a similar effect to these free album streams, thereby justifying a lower royalty rate.

Anyway, you can stream the new Daft Punk album on iTunes, for free, in its entirety. Take a listen.

Image courtesy of Daft Punk

NEWS BRIEF: iTunes Gets Upgrade, O Music Nominees, Yahoo! + Tumblr? Ticketmaster -$23M & More

2013-05-17T08:10:32-04:00

FRIDAY 5.17.2013

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Divergent Streams: Reflections and Explorations of the Modern Music Industry

2013-05-16T16:56:55-04:00

This is the preface for Divergent Streams, a collection of essays edited by Kyle Bylin (@sidewinderfm) and written by influential executives, startup founders, and thinkers in the music industry. Download a free copy of the e-book here.

I wanted something to read. Something that challenged me. Something that engaged me. Something that forced me to sit down and consider the writer’s perspective. What I found instead were news stories about trivial developments, blog posts with big headlines but small insights, and numbered lists lacking intellectual substance.

As someone who cares deeply about music and technology, I found this disheartening. I wanted someone to show me the bigger picture and help me see things from a different view. I wanted someone to visualize the future and inspire me to imagine what’s to come. Certainly, I thought, there must be analysts out there identifying emerging trends and writing about them in a way that would encourage me to grow as a reader.

But I couldn’t find anyone who did that on a regular basis. Although there are writers I admire and publications I love, I still wanted more.

Happily, this frustration presented an opportunity: Other people in music and technology may also feel the need for deeper analysis, I reasoned. So I set out on a mission to develop and curate the type of content I wanted to read.

I started out by taking on several younger writers and publishing their essays through Hypebot. Once this effort gained momentum, I started my publication, sidewinder.fm. I asked dozens of my friends, colleagues, and heroes if they would like to write guest posts. I told them my vision for a new conversation, but gave little direction about how it should begin. I wanted them to tell me what they had been thinking about lately and how they saw important issues developing. I wanted them to take on topics that they cared about.

In the ensuing months, 30 people wrote essays on such topics as digital music companies and their attempts to align themselves more closely with artists; the state of the live music experience and how new technologies could improve it; why social music services have failed and what they must do to gain traction; whether music fanatics are dying out or simply waiting to be found amongst mountains of behavioral data; how D.I.Y. artists make money and where new revenue streams might lie; and the future of music listening and discovery.

The following pages represent a collection of the best of these wonderfully insightful works. I’m both honored and grateful that the authors took time out of their busy lives to participate in this project. And while many others wrote essays that didn’t make their way into this collection, each of them contributed to moving the conversation forward and gave us all something substantial to read. Thank you one and all. I also want to thank Eric Garland for believing in this project; Bruce Houghton for giving it a bigger stage; and Annie Licata for editing a majority of these works and making them sing.

Sometimes, if you want to see the bigger picture, you have to paint it yourself.

———

Download a copy of Divergent Streams for free.

————

Contributors

Rishi Mirchandani | @rmirchandani
VP of Operations at Turntable.fm

Brenna Ehrlich | @BrennaEhrlich
Senior writer for the MTV O Music Awards

Matt Urmy | @matturmy
Founder and CEO of Artist Growth

Cortney Harding | @cortneyharding
Partnerships at Soundrop

Casandra Govor | @casandragovor
Marketing Associate at INgrooves

Aaron Master | @aaronmidomi
Platform Manager at Dolby Laboratories

Matt Kiser | @Matt_Kiser
Editorial Operations at Forbes Magazine

Sagee Ben-Zedeff | @sageeb
Founder and CEO of Serendip Media

Jason Herskowitz | @jherskowitz
Core contributor at Tomahawk

Alex Hoffman | @alexbhoffman
Principal at Subversive Inc.

Refe Tuma | @RefeUp
Occasional music blogger

Richard Pulvino | @rpulvino
PR and Social Media Specialist

Benji Rogers | @BenjiKRogers
CEO and founder of PledgeMusic

Jay Frank | @Repojay
Owner and CEO of DigSin

Alicia Yaffe | @thespllbndgroup
Founder at The Spellbound Group

Marc Ruxin | @ruxputin
Founder and CEO of TastemakerX

Aaron Tap | @aarontap
Guitarist, Vocalist, Music Producer

Emily White | @emwhitenoise
General Manager of WVAU

Chase Farmer | @chase_farmer
Software Engineer

Brendan O’Connell | @therightnow
Keyboardist for The Right Now.

Justin Stansbury | @twentyeyes138
Owner of Teethcutter Booking and Management

Alex May | @alexmdrums
Writer at sidewinder.fm

Michael San Pascual
Writer at sidewinder.fm

Matthew Moore | @MatthewrMoore
Writer at sidewinder.fm

—

A huge thank you to Iancu Barbarasa (@iancul) who designed the cover!

—

Kyle Bylin (@sidewinderfm) is the founder and editor of sidewinder.fm, a music and technology think tank. He is spearheading the development of the Ultimate Chart and related product strategy at Live Nation Labs, a division of the company that develops websites and mobile apps. Alongside e-commerce expert Jason Spitz, he also co-hosts The Upward Spiral, a bi-weekly music industry podcast.

Have Music Blogs Reached A Mainstream Audience?

2013-05-16T11:58:00-04:00

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

Music blogs are a huge part of how avid listeners discover music. Many of them check the same sites every day in hopes of finding new songs and artists. But how broad is the appeal of music blogs? Music blogs have certainly grown in readership, but have they surpassed a niche audience? If so, how? What cultural trends, heroic efforts, or music products have most helped music blogs reach a larger audience? In this interview panel on music blogs, four influential thinkers in the music and tech sector weigh in on whether they think music blogs have reached the mainstream market and what that might mean.

Good Music Blogs Do Not Surpass Niche Audience

Nicole Cifani | @cifanic | Executive producer, writer, and DJ. Interactive at Guggenheim Museum.

My personal opinion is that a good music blog does not surpass a niche audience. It stays within an area of specialized interest and remains utterly dedicated to its followers. These blogs know their audience, are typically members of said audience, and rally a respective community around them whether it be through snarky editorial, reviews of dance remixes or recommendations of what kind of music to cook to.

Blogs that have grown to become larger sites engage the opportunity early on to take on more writers, update often, engage live events, and convey as much relevant information as possible. These sites are also able to break out from a corner by establishing a blueprint for becoming a go-to resource rather than a place to pop in once or twice.

Pitchfork, Scene Star, and Rdio are sites with compelling content that engage a larger community and thus have the ability to retain repeat visitors. A downside to all of this is that after a blog reaches critical mass we sometimes see a trend of changing tonality — the authenticity that made the blog popular in the first place is no longer there.

Current cultural trends help drive a good niche site to success, but how we define success is up for debate. Sometimes a great site will emerge for a short period of time and I often wonder why it doesn’t get to the next level. What is the goal for these sites — to reach a certain number of visits? To be purchased by a larger entity? Or simply to tap into some cool music? A music fan would prefer the latter. Maybe that’s why we don’t see a strong network of music sites à la Gawker Media.

Excitement Around Music Blogs Transferred To Technology

David Greenwald | @daverawkblog | Contributing editor for Billboard.com. Founder and editor of Rawkblog and Uncool.

If they did, they’ve slid backward. The actual blogs seem less important than the conversations and headlines they generate on Twitter. Certain sites are successful: Stereogum reaches millions, Gorilla Vs. Bear tens of thousands — even Rawkblog still has 1,500 people picking up its RSS feed (R.I.P. Google Reader), an audience sizable enough to sell out most smaller L.A. shows. But it’s telling that Hipster Runoff, a blog founded on making fun of blogs and Internet indie culture, has become more successful than most of its competition.

The novelty of music blogs is over, and in retrospect, the attention of 2005 and 2006 was generated more by the technological feats of self-publishing and fast, hosted MP3 downloads than any actual blogging. There are few conversations now about what blogs people read. That discussion and excitement has transferred over to music apps and software products — SoundCloud or Spotify or Turntable.fm or whatever the hot new thing is. Online music consumers have always taken the path of least resistance: reading a dozen blogs, collecting the MP3s in a download folder and sorting through them is infinitely more difficult than reading Pitchfork and clicking through YouTube. Larger, one-stop shops like Pitchfork and Stereogum and so on draw the biggest audiences for their convenience (and sure, quality). So Twitter has become an interesting space: bloggers and music writers interact and share opinions and new music in a single public forum, which is more well-read than most of our sites. I have 5,000 Twitter followers, over three times the number that allegedly follows my blog.

Calling Music Blogs Niche Definitely Seems Archaic

Jessica Page | @jpage | Marketing and community manager at exfm, a social music discovery platform powered by thousands of music sites across the web.

The average person probably doesn’t read Pitchfork or Stereogum on a daily basis, but calling music blogs niche definitely seems archaic. Pitchfork literally has it’s own international festival that attracts thousands of people every year. From what I can deduct most people turn to larger blogs as a reliable source for new music and news as opposed to SPIN or Rolling Stone.

There are an array of products and platforms that have helped legitimize and shine the spotlight on music blogs. There was Streampad which was the original music player designed for blogs by Exfm’s CEO, Dan Kantor when he was over at AOL years ago. And of course there’s Hype Machine which really the first platform to bring music blogs to the attention of thousands of people with a great interactive aggregation system.

Now we have newer companies like the one I work for Exfm. We source from music blogs, but also SoundCloud and Bandcamp pages. We’ve created a new Site Player that picks up MP3’s as well as SoundCloud and Bandcamp embeds and we also have a browser extension that actually works as the platforms aggregator. All of these products and platforms were created because of the vast number of blogs out there and with the needs of bloggers in mind with the ultimate goal of shining the spotlight back on bloggers by bringing the music they curate to the masses in an organized, manageable fashion.

I’d Like To Question The Question At Hand

Matthias Galica | @galica | Founder of BEASTMODE.FM, a website and mobile app that curates the hottest new tracks on blogs into a music station.

I’ll contend that if “music blogs” = “all music blogs judged in the aggregate, or as a category,” then the over-arching assumption that the audience for this category is or was at some point limited to (and/or readily described as) “niche” becomes an unjustified implication here. Furthermore, since “niche” is a comparative qualifier, its own definition requires drawing on some basis for comparison/contrast with whatever’s the commonly-understood “mainstream” here.

If the audience we’re defining as mainstream = the grand total reach/readership/audience for all types of online blogs combined, and, we then want to characterize the audience for the subset/type — “music blogs” — vis-à-vis all the other comparable subsets/types… ]

 I’d argue that the audience for our particular blog type has always been among the MOST reflective of “mainstream.”

Otherwise, if the question actually intends to limit the definition of “music blogs” more narrowly (say, professional bloggers, or some particular genre only) in any way that makes this grouping meaningfully distinct from the grander “music blog” subset/type, I’ll object on the grounds of loading the question.

Lastly, I think this line of reasoning always ought at least begin with a point of reference/comparison drawn from inside the one specific medium in question. Or, in other words: I think most lines of reasoning that’d begin with something like: “music blogs in the 90s” = niche, whereas “MTV in the 90s” = mainstream, are ones most at risk for arriving at spurious conclusions.

—

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.

Muzeek Developing Intuitive Gig Booking Platform

2013-05-16T11:14:00-04:00

Muzeek is a new gig booking platform that hopes to go beyond simply being a handy booking tool and towards something a bit more powerful. In addition to taking care of agreements, bookkeeping and payments, Muzeek hopes to build a self-reinforcing community to ensure good behavior from acts, promoters and venues. Beyond that they see Muzeek as an "intuitive booking platform" that can ease the booking process based on data.

I heard from Muzeek's co-founder and Creative Directory Danny Fiorentini sharing some of his thoughts regarding their new gig booking platform.

Launched earlier this year, Muzeek currently offers a clean, well-designed framework on which to build:

"Upon creating a profile, users agree to allow Muzeek to offer legal booking arrangements, invoicing and payment through PayPal. The Muzeek interface acts as an entire content and scheduling management system, including a messaging platform to negotiate offers and attach additional files, a fullfledged calendar and additional significant features. From virtually anywhere on the web, venues can book artists, artists can book venues, promoters can book both; artists can even book other artists."

"Payment is not sent from booker to bookee until an actual performance takes place. The booker “pledges” an offer amount, that meets an optional minimum...If the artist accepts the booking and plays the show, the booker agrees to pay that amount in full within seven days."

Muzeek also offers embeddable BOOK buttons that can be placed on artists' websites and social media accounts. These faciliate booking wherever interaction occurs.

Examples of the BOOK button can be found in the wild on the following sites:

I Know Leopard (about.me-style site)

Moondog Matinee (Facebook tab)

Extreme Gelati (blog sidebar)

Fiorentini updated the initial product news with the clarification that though Muzeek continues to be free for artists, bookers will be paying an additional 8% fee on top of each booking.

In addition, he described their efforts moving towards being an "intuitive booking platform":

"Internally we're an intuitive service using data intelligence to connect artists, venues and everyone in-between - meaning artists will pick the right venues to play and venues will pick the right artists to play."

"Our profiles will contain all relevant stats and data, essentially becoming significantly smarter 'electronic press kits' that update in real time. Show lists and calendars will be embeddable anywhere, essentially becoming the source for all shows as they are either booked in real time (or manually 'announced' if kept a secret for festivals, etc.)"

Forthcoming features include:

"'Collectives' profile pages for Labels/Agencies that can link all of their managed artists or venues, notifying venues when 'favorited' artists are in town, 'panic' feature for cancelling artists, and tons more."

The overall aim is to build a system that enforces fair treatment and good behavior through the power of transparency and collective voice. If Muzeek can find critical mass, it should be quite a usefull service with far more potential than a simple booking tool.

More:

Why The Internet Is A Bad Place To Discover Music

2013-05-16T10:45:00-04:00

By David Hahn (@davidjhahn), founder and editor of the blog Musician Wages.

Recording music was a stupid idea. I sometimes daydream about what would need to happen in order for all recorded music playback devices to all stop functioning at once. And then, if people wanted to hear music, someone would have to actually play it.

But I'm not a luddite. While I often look to the music industry's past — it's only so that I might get a glimpse of what might happen in the future. I'm much more interested in what will happen to music in my lifetime than what Gustav Mahler did during his.

So, first: yes. There is far to much recorded music in the world. I wish that I could go at least one day without hearing any music at all. But I'd have to lock myself in a cave. There is no escape from the constant barrage of music in our modern world.

But I think a deeper point to address is discovery. How to listener's inundated with music find the music that is valuable to them?

I think two things.

1. Music choice is more about personal identity than it is about anything else.

Personal identity is spread through human interaction — that means what your friends listen too, or what your diaspora listens to — you probably listen to as well. Humans look to other humans for the social clues that help them decide what their identity should be, and in that way, that is how music discovery is spread as well.

That's a long way of saying this: Yes, we are overwhelmed by all the music choices available to us, but we find new music the way new music has always been found — word of mouth.

How do you think Bach got his gigs? Word of mouth. How did Kanye blow up? Word of mouth.

What the music industries needs more of is streaming services with these social cues. Spotify should tell me that 30% of my Facebook friends (or, now, Google+ connections) are listening to the Black Eyed Peas. Or that 70% of listeners from my (hyper-local) area have started listening to Justin Beiber's new album. I'm much more likely to listen to it is my friends (or merely people near me) are also listening.

Because music creates self-identity — which, in turn, creates something much more valuable: community.

If the music industry decided to start selling "community" instead of "music", they'd be better off.

2. Most music discovery platforms are in the wrong place.

Do you know the story of Joshua Bell playing violin in the Washington subway? He, one of the best violin virtuosos in the world, played piece-after-piece of classical repertoire. He played for 45 minutes and made $32.

To me, this was a ridiculous exercise. It proves two things to me:

1) The venue is much more important than the music or the musician

2) Never mistake a busy street for a venue

People are walking by. They left their houses because they had somewhere to go. Some middle aged guy with a fancy violin doesn't change the fact that they need to catch a train to get to work.

How arrogant do you have to be to expect people to stop their lives to listen to your music? Give me a break.

Here is the important part: Facebook, Twitter, and most of the internet is a street. It is not a venue. People are on their way somewhere. They are doing things. They are busy. The internet is, then, not necessarily the best place for people to discover, and fall in love with, a song or an artist.

So if it seems that listeners are overwhelmed, that they are not finding the music they want, or nobody cares about "my" music — it's because listeners are not in a venue that makes the music matter.

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This is David Hahn's response to the question:

How do you believe the paradox of choice in music culture is playing out? Is there really too much music and listeners are overwhelmed? Have shrinking shelves and stations lessened the burden?

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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.