Your Favorite Musician is A Sellout! (Who Cares?)

I came across an interesting article on Cnet.com speaking about musicians, and if it's possible for them to sellout within this decade of music. The author (Matt Rosoff ) spoke about how many bands have been getting that extra push from corporations to get their music out to the public and generate a stronger stream of revenue from recorded music. Mr. Rosoff spoke about a band he discovered (Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes), and how he really enjoyed their single “Home”. Then when he saw that Microsoft was using this same single as the theme music for the launch of their new Smartphone “Kin”. He lost interest in the band because now the song he enjoyed for the artistic value is being used as a tool to sell a product. Mr. Rosoff goes on to ask the readers whether this makes him a dinosaur for believing that this makes a band a sellout.

I thought this was interesting because we spoke about this a little bit in our class, and how many bands have linked up with corporations (Mountain Dew, Red Bull, etc.) to have their music associated with selling a product, and whether this was an appropriate move for a band to make? I think it is because things have changed dramatically over the past few decades, and with CD’s becoming irrelevant musicians need to find other ways to make profit from their work instead of just touring and selling merchandise.

To me it all boils down to what the product is, and what its sellers are trying to say to its consumers by using a musician’s song. The Wilco and Volkswagen collaboration we spoke about is a good example of this. So, the issue of selling out is becoming a dated thing to say about a musician when they are limited to the ways they can profit from recordings. In the end, music is an art and that should never be forgotten, but at the same time it’s a business, and that can’t be overlooked . Especially when you’re trying to make it your career.

Submitted by: Jarvis R. Smith

Source
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13526_3-20002543-27.html?tag=mncol;title

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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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

Article Link

uPlaya Link

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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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