Record Store Day Declared Big Sales Success

According to the Nielsen Soundscan, recorded music sales surged during America’s third annual Record Store Day on April 17th. In comparison with the previous week, overall U.S. album sales in the independent sector increased 12% including a big 19% vinyl sales jump for the weekend and 529% growth in vinyl single sales.

Several artists including Black Keys, Soundgarden, and Bruce Springsteen were among those who released exclusive vinyl singles, part of the nearly limited vinyl and CD releases offered in the U.S. for Record Store Day. Eight hundred stores in the U.S. (1,400 total worldwide) participated in Record Store Day and saw a 7% increase in record sales. While on the whole, album sales were up 3% on a year-over-year basis.

Honestly, these statistics sort of surprised me a bit. What they suggest to me is that the Compact Disc is still thriving somehow in a world that has been overpowered by the Internet and illegal downloading. I still believe the CD is going to eventually become extinct, however. What I think is keeping the CD sales alive right now is the older, less technologically-inclined generation who grew up on cassettes and CDs. Eventually, this generation is going to die out and the people to replace them are going to be those who grew up on stealing from the Internet. I guess only time will tell what's really going to happen though.

- Samantha Bruno

Source:

http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2010/04/record-store-day-declared-big-sales-success.html#more

Trade Your Fans

Headliner.fm is a social networking promotion site which allows bands to share their fans. If your band has a show coming up or is releasing an album, you can send a request to another band through Headliner.fm and ask them for a promotion. If they accept your request, your advertisement will be published on their social networking sight and sent to all their fans. Since the promotion is coming from a band they are a fan of, they will be more likely to take the promotion into consideration than had you blindly sent it to them.

This is a great way to promote because bands can help each other out. If you know of a band that sounds like yours, you can easily reach out to their fans and expand your fan base. From a fan's perspective, anything that is promoted through Headliner.fm is okayed by the band promoting it, so you can trust it. If a request is sent and the band doesn't think they relate to it, it can be denied and their fans won't get bothered by it.

Watch demo here!

Source: hypebot.com, headliner.fm/

by Rebecca Weyhrauch

Are CDs A Lost Cause?

Universal Music Group just announced that they're going to lower the prices of their CDs to $10 or less. This effort is being made to see if people will be more likely to buy new releases on CDs if they cost less. In an age where anything can be downloaded for free, lowering the prices for the almost forgotten about CD can't hurt. It is, however (in my opinion), too little too late. Downloading music for free has been going on for about 10 years now, and record companies are just now deciding to lower the cost of CDs to compete with downloads? The kicker in this situation is that the price reduction isn't even permanent-- it's just a "pricing test" to see how consumers react to lower prices. The beginning of this temporary price reduction does not have a start date, but it is rumored to begin in the second quarter of this year.

Like I said, this can't hurt, but I do find it a bit humorous that it took someone this long to figure out that lowering prices on CDs may help sales. My predictions for the test: it probably won't help too much. Most young adults don't even buy CDs anymore because they grew up with music downloads, so they probably won't jump on this. Older adults may get into this deal because they're not as tech savvy and many still buy CDs, but we have to remember that the sales will be on new releases. A lot of older people like to buy CDs of artists that they grew up listening to, so the sales may not be on items that they want. Again, I feel as if this attempt is too little too late.

-Ashley Stokvis

source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/2010/03/cds_are_cheaper_but_is_univers.html

Rhapsody Allows Offline Streaming

Rhapsody has announced an upgrade to their iPhone app that will allow users to stream music through the app even when the phone is out of wireless range. This will be the first music app with this feature that will be released in the United States. However, there are some things it can’t do just yet. Right now, users can only stream playlists they have created themselves. The ability to stream albums and songs offline will not be available until June.

Despite that, this is going add a lot of value the Rhapsody’s subscribers if they can stream the music even when their device is offline. As no iPhone gets service 100% of the time, this is going to be really great for those who use Rhapsody to listen 24/7. No matter what, they can access all of the music on Rhapsody, and that means you’ll have a lot of music at your disposal, even when you are in the middle of nowhere with no wireless connection. I think that’s pretty cool.

Although this app is currently only available to the iPhone, they say they will have one available this summer for Android devices.

Rhapsody said that their current app has been downloaded 1.5 million times, so it will be interesting to see if that grows with the addition of this feature. Of course, you first have to subscribe to Rhapsody in order to really get the full use of the app, but if it means you can now access a huge collection of music anywhere at anytime, it might really be worth your money.

-- Ashley Snider

Source: http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/content_display/industry/e3i30743ee7ced098677d5dc5a8c2374e5d

Launch of NimbitPro

Nimbit, a direct-to-fan services provider, recently launched nimbitPro which is an improved suite of tools and services designed “to allow artists and their teams to manage their direct to fan marketing and sales efforts via a unified dashboard.” NimbitPro allows artists, managers, and small labels to capture and communicate with fans, execute marketing campaigns, generate direct sales across multiple storefronts and distribution channels, and to measure their efforts. According to Nimbit co-founder, Patrick Faucher, “we’ve now delivered an end-to-end platform designed for long term, profitable fan relationships and music careers.”

With nimbitPro, artists can distribute their music to iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, Rhapsody, and Napster in addition to selling their digital music on Facebook, MySpace, and on their own website. The dashboard also offers real-time sales analytics and reports in addition to a multitude of other fan management tools. At only $25 a month, nimbitPro seems like a reasonable investment for any artist hoping to expand and engage their fan base.

Source: http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2010/04/nimbit-expands-direct-to-fan-toolkit-with-nimbitpro.html

-Emilia Segatti

Cloud Computing (Reality or Fiction)?

I came across an interesting article on Yahoo!’s Associated Press speaking about the cloud and how many companies like Rhapsody have been using it for streaming music over the internet and on mobile devices. Associated Press gave some insight on why the cloud is beneficial for some music listeners, especially the ones who have a wide variety of musical tastes, and consume new music daily. At the same time they focused on why the cloud hasn’t crossed over to the mainstream. One point AP makes is that the cloud hasn’t been marketed well enough to the masses to make them understand why it’s better than buying music in stores or online. Also, many consumers do not like the idea of having to pay a monthly bill for music. Along with these issues for the consumers, record labels are hesitant of moving to the cloud because it hasn’t proven itself as being a strong way to generate revenue from music streams.

I think the cloud is still something that needs to be developed. I’ve been researching this for the past few months, and it sounds like a great concept expect there are a lot of issues on the legal side that stand it its way (read this article). So, I can understand why many labels are wary of joining. Given more time, I think the cloud could be the thing that reinvents record labels, and make them work within the digital era of music.


Submitted by: Jarvis R. Smith

Source
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100419/ap_en_mu/us_music_in_the_cloud

FYS Yourself with Four Year Strong

Four Year Strong's newest album, Enemy of the World, was recently released and in order to help promote it, they've come up with an amusing/unique web site.

I saw a few of my friends tweeting, "FYS yourself like I did" with a picture of themselves containing various cartoon-y graphics such as clothing, tattoos, piercings, etc. that they added to their picture. Curious as to what that meant, I clicked the link and it brought me to a page in which I could upload a picture of myself and add different kinds of graphics to it. This page was also continuously streaming 4 songs from Four Year Strong's new album [as I added things to my picture]. At the bottom left of the page is a link to a contest in which you can enter the picture you've created with a chance to win the "Enemy of the World Package" which includes a skate deck, vinyl, CD, tickets, and more. At the bottom right of the page were various links to follow the band on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and YouTube.

This is like the culmination of everything we've been talking about in class. I thought this was a really smart way for Four Year Strong to get some of their music out there for free in order to promote their new album. It was mentioned in class that it's not really a good idea to give away ALL of the music for free, which FYS didn't do. In my opinion, they put up just the right amount of songs up to give the listener a good preview of the album. The thing I really liked too was that they were getting people to come to the Web site through these funny pictures that people were creating of themselves. Initially, I didn't click the link wanting to hear the band's new music, per se. I just wanted to make a goofy looking picture of myself because I was bored. While I did so, however, I found myself to be digging the music as I had fun turning myself into a scene kid with the "Fys yourself" game. This led me to tweet my picture which in turn, probably got some of my followers to click the link and hear some of the songs as well.

Unique move by this band in my opinion. They didn't force the music down your throat, you had the option to pause it if you wanted and you also had the option to enter the free contest. And even if this doesn't lead to people buying the album, they may still check out the band's Facebook, Twitter, or MySpace page and buy tickets to see them in the future.

If you're bored like I was, I recommend you go "fys yourself" and maybe listen to the music too. Personally, "Wasting Time (Eternal Summer)" was my favorite song.

- Samantha Bruno

Source:

http://www.fysyourself.com/