Redeye Distribution D2F

Redeye Distribution has recently entered into a new type of marketing. Direct to fan marketing (or D2F) is being used in a service called 11spot. Through this service, a dedicated staff member will help their artists and labels target their fan. This service is supposedly very user friendly as well, allowing the customer to purchase physical, digital, and other merchandise products all in one stop.

The article also mentions an artist who used the service. For the artist, Redeye posted announcements to social media sites like Facebook and Myspace. That is all the article described about that story. Posting to social networking sites like that is pretty easy these days, so in my opinion I do not see how this service is very effective. Maybe I missed something in this article, or I am really tired. It seemed that this article was full of fluff to advertise a service rather than show what it could really do.

- Derek Jenkins

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iTunes Music Prices

iTunes may be lowering their prices according to an article I came across. A new service called "TunesPro" has launched, and it offers single songs for $0.19 and albums for as low as $2.00. With the current prices on iTunes, many hit songs are $1.29, that is over 2/3 the price of an entire album for TunesPro.

While this new service might make Apple investigate as to whether or not they need to modify their business structure in any way, I highly doubt it will result in more than a slight reduction in their prices. Their market share is not likely to dwindle in the digital downloads market. They already have a dedicated following from average music listeners, Apple fanboys (and girls), and other consumers.

Similar services like TunesPro seem to pop up ever few months and then fall apart quickly. It will be interesting to see how long they stay in business. To see what the level of quality is in their services that they offer will be another thing to watch as well.

- Derek Jenkins

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Music Videos and Concerts Coming to Hulu

Electric and Musical Industries Ltd. has reached an agreement with Hulu to begin offering concerts and music videos on the media streaming site. Some artists have already had their own sections or channels added on Hulu. Hulu seems to be taking off as of late, and they seem to offer higher quality streams over YouTube in my opinion. I wonder how long this will last, as they obviously do not receive the same volume of users as YouTube does at the moment. Either way, this seems like a great move for marketing artists. Not only can people view their artist videos on YouTube and a bunch of clone-YouTube sites (sites that "leech" YouTube streams), but they can now view them on Hulu. To me, the added bonus is that they will be offering concerts on Hulu. Of course, you can find concerts on YouTube at the moment, but so many of those videos are of terrible quality or are taken from cell phones.

Anyway, if you are an even remotely interested reader, I suggest that you head on to Hulu and take a look for yourself.

- Derek Jenkins

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Shazam!

Shazam Encore recently debuted on the iPhone. Apparently, Shazam Encore is a music discovery application that allows people to "learn more about their music." It also allows people to find music that is similar to the music that they already like. This new version of Shazam features some improvements and new functionality. Shazam also can apparently detect what a song is if you put your iPhone or iPod touch close enough to the speakers. This means that it will tell you who the artist is, song name, etc...

With this new release, the app is being considered a premium program, meaning that you need to pay for it now. The free version of Shazam will still be useable and downloadable. However, new users of the free version are limited to five Tags per month.

This seems like a neat program, although I have yet to use it myself. It also helps in introducing people to new music and would lead to at least some increased sales. Apparently it features Twitter and Facebook integration of some sort, so I am sure that there is some additional marketing opportunity in that functionality.

- Derek Jenkins

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Can Technology Predict Hit Songs?

I recently came across an article that talks about this new music technology that supposedly tells you if you have a hit song.

Apparently, the way this software works is that it analyzes the audio using mathematical algorithms (real smart people stuff!) to interpret the patterns of the music. After that, it gives you feedback. The service will not only tell you if you have a hit, but it will also tell you about what markets the music would successful in.

Gathering from the colorful pictures on the service's website, it seems that it also will show you where these "hit clusters" are in your music. Your song may also get a Gold or Platinum Audionaut Award if it is good enough. It will also compare your song to current song trends, so it will let you know if your song will do well in the current or future market.

While the service may seem like a neat idea, I highly doubt it works. If there was actually some way to predict hit songs, I think that this service would be more well-known. I remember hearing about this back in 2008 or 2007 I think, and if it has not caught on by now, it probably does not work too well.

Anyway, take a look at the links if you are curious.

- Derek Jenkins

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uPlaya Link

Foo Fighters Facebook Live Performance

Foo Fighters recently streamed a live studio performance over Facebook. The concert was only viewable by Facebook members. Of course, now it is available to view all over the internet, as some people recorded it.

I think this is an interesting marketing plan. Recently there have been a lot of free concerts and digital downloads being offered by artists. U2 recently streamed one of their performances, NIN and Jane's Addiction had the free download of NIN|Ja as well. In the NIN|Ja case, I believe that you had to give out your email address in order to obtain a link to the download. This gave them an opportunity to add people to their mailing lists, I'm sure they got a lot of people to do that as well.

By giving the fans something for free once in awhile, it makes them crave more. Eventually, one would hope that this would lead to a purchase, or the attending of a live concert. You cannot pirate the feel of a live concert at least. There is also the strange, naturally occurring phenomenon of people paying $20.00 for a T-Shirt at these events as well!

There was not much information available at the time of this posting as to how this performance came about. The only information I have obtained to so far is that Foo Fighters and their reps approached Facebook first. I am unsure if there were additional parties involved or if there was any sort of product placement during the performance. I will update or post again if I do find more information. From what has been said so far, this was mainly meant to be a "thank you" message to the fans. It was a way that the band could give back for the continued support of their fan base.

- Derek Jenkins

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Four Track for iPhone

Four Track is a mulitrack audio recording app for Apple's iPhone. According to the developer's website, it can record audio that is on par with CD quality sound. Interestingly, a band called "The 88" from Los Angeles recorded a song with this application. There is a link to a video of the making of this song on the developer's site for those whom may be interested. I highly recommend giving it a watch. It is brief, but it gives you a decent idea as to how the app works. Another feature that this application has is the ability to send tracks via Wi-Fi to any computer with a browser. This will allow the person(s) using the app to mix the tracks down or continue working on them with their own computer software. It also includes some standard features such as: a metronome, pan controls, a compressor, and other features.

This is an interesting technology in my opinion. I have yet to mess with it, since I have been a Logic user for many years, I do not see myself even touching anything else. Might be worth messing around with at least, I suppose. For a musician on a budget, it may be a useful thing. But, if you can afford an iPhone, then why can you not afford some decent recording equipment and software? Either way, it is a neat little tool that I thought was worth mentioning. This is just one of the many products that gives you an idea as to how fast this industry (and the way it is marketed) changes. One can only imagine what may be in the works ten years from now.

- Derek Jenkins

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Apple's FM Radio for iPhones and iPod Touchs

According to rumors, Apple will be releasing their FM Radio app which will allow iPhones and iPod Touchs to pick up (you guessed it!) FM Radio! This hardware has been within the devices since their second generation. If this is true, my phone should be receiving some additional functionality soon if the app does not get delayed again. Hopefully that will make up for the less-than-wonderful 3G signal that it gets.

Anyway, the real interesting part here is that Apple will be integrating iTunes Store functionality into the program. I am assuming that this will function to where you can purchase the song that you are listening to from the program. I believe that this could potentially work out quite well for Apple. Despite the fact that they are not exactly hurting in the iTunes Store department, I can see this as only increasing their sales. How many times do you hear a tune on the radio, only to forget the title and artist name when you get home? Now you will not have to worry, if you have an iPhone that is. Not only will it increase iTunes Store sales, but some people may purchase an iPhone because of this added functionality. I already know of one person that has been waiting for this, so there are bound to be others like him.

- Derek Jenkins

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Blackberry Music Store

According to an article, a new music store may be taking form soon. The digital music store will be for Blackberry users, and it claims to be cheaper than any of its potential competitors.

7Digital, the United Kingdom-based (or UK for short) company, claims that a majority of its tracks only cost 0.77¢ as compared to iTunes 0.99¢ price average claim. There are songs that cost 0.99¢ on the site, but these are tracks that are usually $1.29 on iTunes.

The store only has 7 million DRM-Free MP3s as opposed to iTunes 10 million. One major feature is that the store offers 320kbps MP3s, which are of higher quality than most digital download stores. Surprisingly, the 3G network cannot handle these. But if you do download a song at say... 128kbps, once you reach a Wi-Fi spot you can replace it with the 320kbps version for free.

The article continues on, questioning how the company can maintain such low prices. There is really no other useful information after what my last paragraph discussed. I think that this is an interesting idea. As an old-school musician/fan, I still purchase CDs. So I was surprised to learn that iTunes only offers 256kbps as their highest quality at the moment. Most of their MP3s are still encoded at 128kbps as well. I find the inability to transfer high quality MP3s over the 3G network to be somewhat alarming. It seems rather inconvenient to have to potentially download something twice. It will be interesting to see how this expansion of 7Digital's services works out.

- Derek Jenkins

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Advertising on The Internet

This week, I decided that I wanted to cover a topic that is somewhat related to my other articles. I would like to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the type of website that a musician or their representatives may use in order to promote themselves or their artists.

At the moment, there are countless ways out there to promote yourself. You have media streaming sites like youtube, independent and mainstream bloggers, social networking sites like myspace, facebook, and twitter, and even music-specific streaming/social networking-ish (yes networking-ish) sites like Last.fm, and Isound.com. You also have the option of creating your own website to cater to your needs.

Whatever you decide, there are advantages and disadvantages to both options. By using an already established network, you will most likely receive more traffic, but is it really worth it? You also have to take into consideration that these sites may not be perceived as being professional when compared to a personalized website. With a personal website, you also have to worry about maintenance issues. Some questions that may arise are: where will I store the site, what domain names are not already taken, how much will bandwidth cost, how can I prevent people from hacking into my site, how will I bring people to my site? I shall try to touch on all of this in this article.

Often times with the established networks, the cost is lower when you use a lesser version of what they can offer in full. Often times they limit free users by having bandwidth limits, lack of advertisement on their page, or a lack of various features such as blogs, biographies, sales, etc... Even when you do pay for your page on these sites, you do not get nearly the same amount of quality that is possible with a personal website. In my opinion, the only advantage to these sites is that they offer a quick glimpse of what you have to offer. They also have the potential to receive more traffic, but at the same time, how useful is the traffic? There are many automated bots that go through these sites as well, so some (or many) of your clicks may be results of these. Some people even use bots to their own benefit on purpose, but that is a whole different discussion.

Now, when you have a personalized site, the sky is the limit... almost. Do you go with old-school html, flash, or java? These are some of the formatting choices that you may have. Most professional sites are a combination of flash and html, a completely flash-based site is becoming more popular these days as well. With these sites you have complete control over the content and appearance, you can even have your own email address if you want. Of course, more responsibility and maintenance comes with these. But that can be a good or bad thing, depending on your own personal preferences. You will want to register the domain with the government that has control over whatever domain you choose (.com, .org, .net, .mus, .co.au, .jp, etc...). There are many sites that will do this for you in a simplified way, but you can also do it directly with the government agency in some cases. Domain fees are generally cheap, especially if you host the site yourself. You can pay as little as $2.99/yr for your own website if you do some research. If you go through a third party to register, do some research on the company, especially if they advertise $2.85 or something around that price range. On average in reality you will see $6.99-12.99 for quality services. Often times these more expensive companies offer some hosting solutions, but in my experience it is best to host your site with your own hardware. That way you can avoid bandwidth fees, which can be quite hefty. Bandwidth fees often result in anywhere from $35.99 to $1,500/mo. Why so much? If you have three gigabytes of bandwidth and you exceed that amount, you will either temporarily have to have the site taken down, or pay fees related to overuse. Despite these things, having a personal site can be a great thing for a musician or their representatives. You can offer as many or as little services on the site, such as: blogs, forums, streaming music, streaming video, etc... You also get much more potential for quality, because YOU are in control. The downside is that you will have to find ways to bring traffic to your page. Often times this may cost a lot, depending on your goals. But there are cheap ways of doing so, advertising with google or getting search preference can be cheap ways to get traffic to your site. You can even go all out and advertise across internet forums or blogs. Heck, you could even have both a myspace (or other site) AND your own site. By advertising your site on your myspace, you could get traffic to your personal site and cut down the cost of advertising for it.

Basically, it really comes down to how you want to present yourself and your music. If you want to have increased exposure and low cost, go with a myspace or similar site. If you want to have a more customized and professional appearance, create your own site or hire someone to do it for you.

- Derek Jenkins

Isound.com

This week I decided that I wanted to write about what I feel is an overlooked web service site for musicians. The site is called "Isound." While the site is increasing in popularity, it is not used nearly as often as last.fm, myspace, or youtube.

If you are unfamiliar with Isound, it is very similar to the sites that I listed above. Like myspace, it gives you four free slots to use for different songs. If you wish to increase the amount of music that you are allowed to put on the site, you can become a "LOUD Artist." The LOUD service allows you to upload one hundred songs, it also enables a blog, more photographs, occasional front page recognition, and top placement in searches throughout the site.

Another thing that I like about Isound is that it offers accounts for people whom are not musicians. These accounts are called "Listener" accounts. Listener accounts act much like Artist accounts, except that you cannot upload your own music. Instead, you select a playlist and stream it from an artist account. I feel that this allows people whom are not necessarily musicians to feel like they are involved in the community as well. The other sites that I listed do have such accounts, but I believe it is a nice feature to have for such a site.

At the moment, I feel that this site is not the best site for marketing. I do believe that it would not hurt to have a presence there either, especially if you are an artist or a label. At any given time you will see that there are usually a few hundred to a thousand listeners online, and ten to one hundred artists. Despite these small numbers, I do believe that the site receives a lot of unregistered traffic that is unaccounted for in the front page statistics. My account had a song with six thousand plays, yet I only had four hundred friends. I highly doubt that my listeners listened to that particular track that many times even though it is quite nice. You are guaranteed to appear in searches in this site, and it is quite efficient, unlike myspace's search. There are several ways to search for artists, just like any search engine. You may search by name, genre, first letter of the name, and location. For the most part, I think this would be an effective (and affordable) way to reach a niche audience. If you want more exposure, Last.fm or a professional website of your own would be a better choice, in my opinion.

I had been introduced to this site a few years ago through one of my music theory teachers. From personal experience, I found the site to be an enjoyable use. I landed a composition job through having a presence on here. I compose for gaming developers on occasion. I also found the account management tools to be very straightforward and efficient.

- Derek Jenkins

Isound