Live Nation & iTunes To Offer Concert Downloads

The article that I'll be discussing is about Live Nation making some of their concerts available for download on iTunes. It's described as a smart piece of brand extension & it debuted this past Tuesday. So far exclusive performances from OK Go, Jesse McCartney, Saving Abel, A Fine Frenzy, Duffy, Ziggy Marley & Plain White T's have been released this week, with more to follow.

Personally, I think this is a GREAT idea. This is something that I think should of been done quite some time ago. As a fan of live shows, I may use this feature to catch a preview of upcoming shows that are coming to my town or shows that aren't coming to my town or if I happen to miss a local show, hopefully it'll be there on iTunes for me to catch. I really see this being a success for both parties. Live Nation is really showing that they're on top of their game this year.

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/11/live-nation-itunes-to-offer-concert-downloads.html

-Marcus Hall

Fair Play? A Million Spotify Streams Earned Gaga $167

Many believe that Spotify is the solution when it comes to online music streaming services. However, there has been speculation surrounding Spotify's business operations. According to Swedish paper Expressen, Lady Gaga (arguably one of the most listened artists in the world) and her songwriter Redone made just $166.56 in songwriting royalties from one million plays of her hit Poker Face. Spotify stresses that it pays "not only collecting societies, but also publishers and record companies". They also stressed that the $167 is from "way before we'd established ourselves as a music service and built up a large user base". Some believe that digital platforms should give artists the same ratio of rights revenue they get for CD sales. However, the main issue that is prevalent in the news, is the labels stake in the service which is rumoured to be that they are getting paid twice. Overall, there is still fear even with Spotify, which has received alot of spotlight for its business model. Spotify's freemium model is down to a mistrust of free music and has failed to establish a significant number of paid accounts. These services are doing a great job of bring exposure to main stream artists but we are slowly seeing that these services have no effect on P2P piracy, and are not helping indie/underground artists like we all thought they would.


-Ryan Dolan

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-fair-dos-a-million-spotify-streams-earned-gaga-167/

Tommy Lee "Crowdsourcing"

The article I read is about Tommy Lee's new album "Public Mayhem". Tommy Lee reached out to fans all over the world, and made it possible for them to download a number of tracks from the album, and submit their own parts to the songs. He says that at first he was worried that this would not work, but has quickly come to realize that there are many talented people in the world.

Lee notes. "These days you've got to have some way to involve their fans so it's an experience, not just another record, and involve your fans. This just seemed like a perfect way; you can download the tracks for free, get involved, take some ownership, tell your friends about it, maybe be in an album. And the enthusiasm is overwhelming. I've never experienced anything like this."

I think this is a great marketing tool. There is nothing like getting fans involved one on one in a way with the artist. It really gives them a chance to try and experience what it is really like to be a rock star. If they are even talented enough they may end up being apart of the song on the album. I think artists and marketing teams need to realize that just putting an album out there isnt going to sell itself anymore, you have to be unique and creative and form your own strategy to draw fans in again and again.

- Valerie South

Legally Downloaded Music Cheaper Than Dirt!

The site tunespro.com is making some waves in the music community. They are selling music at a fraction of the cost of other sites like iTunes and Amazon. Individual songs are being sold for only 19 cents. There is a price break for buying entire albums which start at only $1.88. The site was taken down over the weekend with speculation that the site was not authorized to sell music by many of the labels. Apparently they do indeed have permission from the labels to sell music at that price and they were back up and running after only a short time.
This is a limited time promotion though since the site actually loses 39 cents a song. The promotion is expected to last the next 2 or 3 months but no absolute date has been set yet. They are hoping that they can get customers by practically giving away music rather than spend millions on promotion and advertising. I personally have signed up for this site and searched their catalog. So far I have found everything I have been looking for. My one complaint is that the file is downloaded in a compressed zip file that has to be extracted and then added to iTunes or whatever player you are using, but saving about 8 dollars an album I can live with the extra two minutes of work.
Steve Smith

Band =/= Brand

I was intrigued by something that I read on Hypebot concerning the "band as brand" idea. The article, aimed at up-and-coming bands, urges bands to focus their attention not on getting sponsorships but on word-of-mouth style marketing. The author constantly compares music to religion in this sense. The first major word of advice put forth is to "[q]uit running your band like it's a Proctor & Gamble product, and start running your band more like a church". Essentially, the article advises bands to spend time building relationships with fans and less on building a brand out of themselves. As the author puts it, "Give your fans what they want – a message, a community, a reason to support you, believe in you, and come back to you over & over – and they will." It is a very interesting article, and I recommend reading it.


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-Bill Ross

MySpace Music Overhauls Charts

With Facebook adding a music application, it would seem that MySpace would be worried over the competition that they are now going to face. However, they have added more to their site in order to keep them in the game. MySpace music has been around for much longer and already had a solid reputation, and probably a good number of loyal users. Although the popularity of Facebook in social networking compares to Google as a search engine, there are still many people who are more comfortable using familiar technology instead of having to learn something new. Facebook music will definitely attract many users, but I don't think that MySpace has counted themselves out yet.

One of the new features that the new MySpace music has is a new "movers" section that highlights fastest rising artists contents across the network. Alike iTunes, they are offering something more to the users other than a library full of music. It order to stay in the competition, these websites have to keep on growing with their users to keep the attraction, and thus far, MySpace has made a pretty good attempt.

-Lyndsie Klott

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/11/myspace-music-overhauls-charts.html

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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