The world may be better off without the Rockstar persona...

By Jon Ostrow

Jon is the co-founder of MicControl, a music blogging network based on a social networking platform. For guest blogging opportunities or to simply reach out to Jon, he can be found on Twitter and Facebook.

In a time where reality TV has become the most popular form of programing – everyone from the famous (or infamous) celebrity drug addicts, to the not-so-famous, money-desperate “reality show” competitors have been cashing in on transparency as a way to connect with an audience and build a brand.

Would the sudden death of Corey Haim, the 80′s child-star who seemingly fell off the face of the earth around the same time as acid wash jeans, have made as big of a splash if his addiction hadn’t been documented on the A&E series, The Two Coreys? Probably not.

It seems that Reality TV has created a wave of transparency that everyone wants to ride. Even MTV, a MUSIC video driven channel, has since officially removed music television from their name in order to focus on following pop culture in its own element.

Beyond reality TV is the internet, and the continued development of social networking, blogging and microblogging, which has been giving musicians all around the world the ability to be as little or as overly transparent as they would like. So this brings up a very important question: Is transparency a good thing for musicians to take part in?

The real answer is that it is sort of a grey area. Yes and no. While the internet has made it easier for artists to connect with their fans on a real-time basis, successfully knocking down barriers between the fan and artist relationship, it also has the potential to remove the mystique of a musician’s image.

In a world where transparency reigns supreme, the David Bowies (or rather Ziggy Stardust’s), Marilyn Mansons and Kiss(s) of the world would never stand a chance. Fans expect and even require far too much access into the everyday world of a musicians, and would not stand for being kept in the dark about the private world hidden behind the veil of their public and staged image.

However, with the exception of the very few artists still attempting to create a brand based on image alone, transparency can be a very good. Just like anything else, it must be used in moderation in order to be effective in helping artists.

The following are a few ways to help you to achieve the level of transparency that is desired by your fans meanwhile avoiding the harmful side-effects.

The Good Kind of Transparency:

1. Your Agenda: Make people aware of your purpose, your goals and your mission. No one likes a hidden agenda. Be honest with your fans about what drives you and you are passionate about, and you will find that many will extend their own support in whatever capacity they can, solely because they know you are genuine.

2. Your Sound: While no one (well, mostly no one) wants to hear music that is just plain noise pollution, you should consider the transparency of your recorded sound. Make it real and easy to connect with.

As Seth Godin says, in the age of Slick where autotune and protools allow everyone to have that professional shine, you should have the guts to be transparent and be real.

You’ll be amazed how many people find the grittier tones of a ‘real’ recording (as opposed to an over-produced, glossy recording) to give the sound its character and originality. Go listen to The Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street, more specifically Sweet Virgina and notice not just the gritty, lo-fi characteristics of the recording, but the true depth of emotion in the music. That is the sort of transparency that made Exile one of the greatest rock n’ roll albums of all time.

3. Your Accessibility/ Acknowledgment of Fans: Make it easy for your fans to reach out to you. In a world where everything is accessible via the internet and the internet is accessible from virtually anywhere, fans will crave the ability to reach out to you.

More importantly, the internet gives fans a sounding board for opinions and feedback to be heard. Don’t be the artist that ignores their fans. You don’t have to act upon the feedback from fans, but acknowledging feedback in one form or another can be a good way to let your fans know that you hear them, that you care and that you took the time to digest what they had to say.

The Bad Kind Of Transparency:

1. Your Financial Situation: Don’t be that artist who tweets about how broke you are. Part of the mystique and romanticism of being an emerging artist (or a ‘starving artist’) is the fact that you are doing anything and everything for the love of your craft. If you go on to Twitter, Facebook or on your personal blog and bitch and moan about how life sucks because you don’t have any money, the ‘burning passion’ will have been all but stripped away.

2. Your Creative Process: This could really go either way, as some will argue that it is a great way to receive feedback from fans. I find that this will do more harm than good.

There is nothing wrong with sharing demos with select fans or giving a group of people the opportunity to supply feedback when you ask for it about an upcoming song or album, but giving fans the opportunity to watch you in the creative process, every step of the way, takes way the excitement of the overall finished product. It is the same reason why authors don’t let you read a book chapter by chapter as it is being written or a why a director doesn’t let you watch scene by scene as a film is being made. It hurts the integrity of the piece as a whole.

3. Your Unwarranted Political Opinions: If your music is deeply rooted in a specific political movement, then this most likely won’t effect you. For those of you who avoid the topic of politics throughout your music, do your self a favor and avoid announcing your strong opinions on political matters in public ways. If your fans run the gamut of all walks of life, you may find many walking away when you announce that you are pro-life, pro-choice, anti-immigration or don’t think that gay marriage is okay. Leave that aspect of your personal life out of your music.

In the end, your use of transparency is just like everything else- it should be consistent with the rest of your brand. Though it may create new obstacles for musicians who prefer to maintain a private life, it does give fans the opportunity to connect with artists as real people putting the focus back onto their music, and less on the nature of their look or their actions.

Is transparency a fad that will end with reality TV or is it a necessary part of the modern day artist/fan bond?

Image credit: http://blog.pennlive.com

Help delete irritating internet marketing tactics.

Last week, Hypebot asked me to contribute a brief post for their ‘Social Media Day’ feature. You can find it here. The exercise got me thinking, and I’ve decided to expand on the topic a bit here on Creative Deconstruction.

If I were to create a poll to find out the average internet user’s feelings toward internet marketers, how many people do you think would respond positively?

… And how many of that number would be internet marketers themselves?

Next to perhaps lawyers, the internet marketer probably has the worst reputation in Western business. In may cases, this reputation is largely deserved. Like the telemarketers of old, internet marketers make it their business to interrupt peoples’ days with unsolicited messages, brazen advertisements, and questionable ideals.

It doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to act like a tool to make money online.

Human Beings vs. Internet Marketers

The way I see it, there are two ways to approach business online. You can sell like a human, or you can sell like an internet marketer. The question is: which are you?

What is the difference between a human being and an Internet Marketing professional? I’ve taken the liberty of creating a handy list to help shed some light on the disparity:

1. Humans have real conversations. Internet Marketers have agendas.

2. Humans are interested in helping others. Internet Marketers are interested in monetizing each and every interaction.

3. Humans are passionate about creating interesting and valuable content. Internet Marketers are passionate about SEO.

4. Humans value connections with other humans. Internet marketers value leads. (Which do you think is more valuable?)

5. Humans develop mutually beneficial relationships. Internet Marketers develop human sales funnels.

The irony is that the human activities listed above have so much more potential with regard to building a valuable – yes, even revenue generating – network of connections, supporters, customers and fans. The other activities are shallow and transparent. Very few people are fooled by these tactics anymore anyway – so is it really worth trading in your personal credibility?

How Then Shall We Sell?

Selling like a human, to other humans, is not easy. Humans are notoriously unpredictable and difficult to please. That’s why so many turn to the soulless side of internet marketing. There’s a much lower threshold to entry. It also takes much less emotional energy to manage textbook marketing activities, than it does to truly seek to add value to human relationships – whether with customers, fans, clients or other connections.

The answers to selling like a human lie in what makes us human in the first place. Human beings need to connect with one another in meaningful ways. We need to belong to a diverse community of like-minded people. Sometimes we need others to help us, other times we need to share what we have with others. We need to learn, and even at times to be entertained.

If you can help meet these needs in other people, you will be successful in business – and life, for that matter. The other side of that coin is that if you can’t figure out how to contribute to at least one of these needs you will likely struggle.

What does this have to do with you?

Like the internet marketer, modern artists are often out there on there own.  There are precious few label deals to go around, and the ones going around may be a gamble, at best. So artists are left to promote themselves and their music lacking key resources and often without any kind of real training. So who do you turn to for direction?

When you’re out here on the internet, especially on social networks, pay attention to how you are going about your business. Are you interrupting peoples’ day with unsolicited messages, brazen advertisements and questionable ideals? (“Check out my MySpace page, fan me on Facebook and make sure you RETWEET!!” – What value does this add to the reader?) Or are you treating people like humans and helping to meet their needs?

People want good music, clearly, but I would even argue that people need good music. What we don’t need is to have artists trying to sell us that music by mimicking the tactics of shameless internet marketers.

Instead, take the time to think about your audience. Who are they? What do they want, and what do they need? How can you meet those needs and desires? Sometimes it’s as simple as giving them something to laugh about, or finding a way to connect like-minded people within your niche. That’s how you’re going to find an entry point into their day.

And that is how you are going to find new fans.

“That would never work in the real world.” You hear it all the time when you tell people about a fresh idea.

This real world sounds like an awfully depressing place to live. It’s a place where new ideas, unfamiliar approaches, and foreign concepts always lose. The only things that win are what people already know and do, even if those things are flawed and inefficient.

Scratch the surface and you’ll find that these “real world” inhabitants are filled with pessimism and despair. They expect fresh concepts to fail. They assume society isn’t ready for or capable of change.

Don’t believe them. That world may be real for them, but it doesn’t mean you have to live in it.

That’s an excerpt from the first chapter of Rework by the founders of 37signals. The message hits close to home for me right now, so I thought I’d share it with all of you.

I’m currently in the process of starting up a new business. In the real world, neither my partner nor I are in a great place to be risking it all on a new venture. Erik runs a music discovery service, and works as an internet marketer by day. I have two young kids, a full-time job as a headhunter and a music industry blog to generate quality content for each day. We’re busy, we’re already over-committed, and resources are scarce.

In the real world, we should both be heads-down at a cubicle somewhere trying to ‘focus on our careers.’ Instead, we’re seizing every spare minute to pour our time, energy and our best ideas into this project.

Why am I telling you this? Because I believe that my experiences starting a new business are not too far removed from many of your experiences starting a career in music. Our venture also  depends on many of the same factors that your careers depend on – namely that listeners and consumers will continue to value the music experience.

I’m going to try to blog the start up process from beginning to end, and well beyond. Everything I learn, you’ll learn. Every mistake I make will be one you won’t have to. My hope is that there will be something for everybody to take a way and apply to your own endeavors.

The first installment is simple: if you have a vision for your life and your career, don’t wait for permission. Get started now. Keep your day job, but make time to work towards your goal every single day. If I can do it in my situation – and I suppose only time will tell – anybody can do it.

Erik and I have the advantage of an idea that we truly believe in. We’ve discovered a real need in the music industry that no one is currently meeting with any kind of success, and we plan to fill it. We even have a few ideas on how we’re gong to do it.

But that’s outside the scope of this first post. For now, I’ll leave you with another short excerpt from Rework:

The real world isn’t a place, it’s an excuse. It’s a justification for not trying. It has nothing to do with you.

Does this resonate with any of you? Are any of you in a similar place? I’d love to get your feedback.

Recording Industry sales sink to a new low.

I’ve compiled a selection of some of the most important music industry news of the past week, along with a few of my own thoughts. Let me know in the comments section if you think I’ve missed anything notable.

Music News from Around the Web

Album sales at lowest point in decades

The good news just keeps rolling in!

For the week ending May 30, the U.S. music industry sold a total of 4,984,000 albums, according to Nielsen Soundscan. This figure, which includes new and catalog releases, represents the fewest number of albums sold in one week since Soundscan began compiling this data in 1994.

By comparison, album sales for the week ending May 31, 2009, totaled 5.76 million. The highest one-week tally recorded during the Soundscan era is 45.4 million albums, in late December, 2000.

Let’s not kid ourselves here, this is grim stuff. However, as anyone who has been reading this blog for a while knows, this is not the whole story.

Record sales continue to decline – rapidly – but the music industry as a whole continues to grow and show incredible potential. So, independent musicians take heart. These numbers are only one piece of the puzzle that continues to add new pieces each day. That means that it is growing more complex, but also more diversified. Which is good news, especially when we are watching the flagship go belly up into the water. Read the full report at Billboard.

ArtistData acquired by Sonic Bids

ArtistData acquired by Sonic Bids

Sonicbids has acquired ArtistData, a popular platform that many musicians and labels use to simultaneously update their content across the web. The move signals an expansion for Sonicbids beyond its popular electronic press kits and gig opportunities to also helping artists promote their shows after they’ve been booked. ArtistData founder Brenden Mulligan has been named Vice President of Strategic Development for Sonicbids.

This came as a bit of a surprise to me, only because last year I met with ArtistData founder Brenden Mulligan near his home-base in Chicago, and he seemed pretty excited about other plans he had for the service. It sounded at the time that his play would be data analytics, and perhaps that’s part of what made ArtistData so attractive to buyers. Sonic Bids was not the first suitor to approach Mulligan, but it looks like he was finally made an offer he couldn’t refuse. Read more at Hypebot.

Social works for Spotify.

Spotify goes social and watches premium subscriptions double

More evidence that the power of the social graph in music discovery:

The daily number of people signing up for Spotify’s paid Premium service has doubled since the update to its desktop client in late April that added Facebook-fuelled social features and the ability to play a user’s locally-stored music.

That’s according to Spotify’s UK managing director Paul Brown, in an interview for the latest Music Ally Report. “As we put Social and Local out there, Premium subscriptions doubled on a daily rate,” he says. “For us, it’s increased consumption, it’s brilliant for discovery, and we’re getting a net positive increase in people stepping up the ladder to pay.”

Read more at Music Ally.

MySpace Co-President latest to walk out the revolving door

In a shocking turn of events, MySpace has confirmed that Co-President Jason Hirschhorn has left the company a mere four months after accepting his co-leadership role with Mike Jones. Who would have thought when MySpace announced it was appointing Co-Presidents that it would end badly? Read more at Billboard.

Reports claim AOL to sell Bebo

…and the world asks, “What’s Bebo?”

In the scale of huge corporate mistakes, AOL’s acquisition of Bebo in 2008 ranks pretty highly. AOL paid $850 million for the social network, then watched it fade into mediocrity as Facebook left it for dust. Now a series of reports have suggested that AOL has agreed a deal to sell Bebo to a private investment group for a mere $10 million. Ouch.

Read more at Music Ally.

More Music Industry News:

Record sales for week ending 6/13/10 at the Lefsetz Letter.
Music publishers file suit to shut down LimeWire – HypeBot.

Congratulations! Your MySpace page will no longer have to look like this...

Announcing the winners of the MySpace Redesign contest, plus a special rate for the first 10 Creative Deconstruction readers to sign up for an account. Details below.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the ‘Transform your MySpace Page into Something that Doesn’t Suck’ contest! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, click here. In order to enter, readers had to tweet their best music business advice and tag it with the hashtag #CD140. As promised, today I have picked the winners. You can find all the entries by searching #CD140 on Twitter. I know I said I would only pick 5, but I made the executive decision to pick 6 instead. They’re my rules, after all.

The winners, in no particular order:

1. @LunaChicaRecord Fans are worth more than what they pay for your music. Online stores know all the info on who buys it, but do you?

2. @edhombre Make really incredible unique music. Make every gig & every artifact as amazing as you can. Repeat.

3. @radionowhere How to make it as indie band?As @tywhite sez, “quality is hyperefficient”. No point tweeting until music smokes.

4. @jensjolund DIY artists: engage authentically in all aspects of your career. Focus on what you have to give.

5. @Dezmund You cant do everything yourself. Write rehearse and perform. Enlist some quality help for all of the other stuff.

6. @richmondmike Advice for bands? Get a proper job, it’s much less trouble in the long run.

If you’re on this list make sure you are following me on Twitter so that I can send you a direct message with the access code to your new free account with MySpace 360 Wizard. Congratulations!

Important note for those who didn’t win:

If you are interested in optimizing your band’s MySpace page with the MySpace 360 Wizard but didn’t win, I have good news for you. Dave and Cara have given me 10 accounts to offer to you at 30% off the normal retail price. This is the best deal you are going to get anywhere on this tool, but you’ll have to act quickly because these discounted accounts are on a first come, first serve basis.

The first 10 people to use the coupon code ‘CD140′ will receive the discount. Click here to order.

I had a great phone conversation with Kyle Bylin of HypeBot last week about viral video – specifically OK Go’s ‘This Too Shall Pass’ masterpiece. He was preparing to sit down and write about the actual value of a viral music video. The elaborate, MIT engineered Rube Goldberg machine featured in the band’s latest video is ingenious, and enough fun to warrant a couple of viewings. But when the thrill wears off, does anyone really remember the song?

It is still about the song, isn’t it?

Kyle ended up with a great post, which can be found here. In it, he says this:

I think we’re getting close to the point where the marketing of the music video overrides the song in it to the point where the only thing that it motivates is more views, leaving fans with little interest in actually acquiring the song playing.  Since, after all, the song itself is boring once you take away the flashy effects, machine contraptions, and the marketing hype.

What he’s essentially asking is, do hit music videos sell records?

The more I think about that question, the more I wonder if it’s really the right question. More on that in a moment. First, I want to try and find an answer.

The answer is… sometimes.

OK Go had some mild success with their self-titled debut album, but they remained relatively unknown until their first hit video ‘Here it Goes Again‘ blew up on YouTube in 2005. The album was called Oh No, and sold around 200k copies. By contrast, Of the Blue Colour of the Sky has only managed to sell 20k copies, despite not one, but TWO viral music videos for ‘This Too Shall Pass.’

The video for ‘Here it Goes Again,’ which features a tightly choreographed dance across a series of treadmills, genuinely seems to have been instrumental in launching OK Go into the public eye. The exposure the band gained from the millions of views, the press coverage, the interviews, the TV appearances, and the copy-cat videos is something most bands will only dream about.

Yet, the more recent ‘This Too Shall Pass’ videos haven’t proven to be able to repeat that effect.

I think there are a couple reasons for this. The first is that OK Go already has a couple of hits under their belts. The kind of catalytic effect of the first viral video can’t be reproduced because a YouTube video can only really get you so far, and OK Go may already be there.

More importantly, this is 2010, not 2005. If you think the world hasn’t changed much since in 5 years consider this: YouTube had only been around for 16 months when OK Go the ‘Here it Goes Again’ video. It would still be 4 more months before the fledgling video-sharing site was acquired by Google.

In 2005 the idea that a music video produced by a mid-level band with limited funds could reach over 1 million people in only 6 days was mind-boggling. Today that number, while still impressive, doesn’t seem nearly as extraordinary. Non-celebrities can tweet a picture of their breakfast sandwich and trust that their 10,000 Twitter followers will faithfully click. ‘Charlie Bit Me’ can become an overnight meme sensation.

Can a viral music video sell records? Yes, if the conditions are right. Is a viral music video guaranteed to sell records? Absolutely not.

Are record sales really the right goal?

That brings me back to my initial point. Are we asking the right questions? Is the highest destiny of an online music video to sell records?

In the past it certainly was. Music videos were designed to turn singles into hits that made people want to buy records. But again, the world is a dramatically different place that it was in MTV’s heyday. Music videos across the board are struggling to have impact on sales they once did.

The real question isn’t, do viral music videos sell records? The question is, can anything sell records anymore?

Record sales have reached historic depths this year, with little hope of rebounding. No video – no matter how many millions of views it garners – is going to change that. Artists and members of the music industry need to expand their views of this business to include the smaller, diverse streams of revenue that make up artists’ livelihood today.

Modern music videos should be measured the same way that all the various weapons in an artist’s arsenal should be measured – do they drive exposure and engage new and existing fans?

Does a viral music video sell records? Sometimes. Does it introduce new eyes and ears to artists that had not been able to reach them in other ways? Certainly. And that kind of exposure – when handled correctly – can be translated into all sorts of positive returns.

For example, when I first showed the OK Go videos to a friend his first response was, “I bet this band puts on an incredible live show.” The energy and fun of the band’s videos caused my friend, and many others, to want to see what kind of fun they had on stage.

From a revenue perspective, having a history of music videos going viral allowed OK Go to secure sponsorship for ‘This Too Shall Pass.’ The video itself was a direct revenue source.

And to be fair, the video did boost record sales to some degree. According to Billboard, OK Go saw sales of their most recent album triple, and sales of single tracks (mostly ‘This Too Shall Pass’) increased sevenfold. The numbers still aren’t great, but without the video and the attention it has garnered the band they would be dismal.

The music video has evolved into an art form of its own, but it remains an important promotional tool. The key for modern artists and bands is to figure out what exactly they are trying to promote. Just an album? Or the diverse streams of art, content and experiences that grow their fan base and make up their livelihood?

MySpace360Wizard is a new tool designed to help bands brand and optimize their MySpace pages. Find out below how to win one of 5 FREE access codes.

Every band has a MySpace page. Unfortunately, 99% of those pages suck.

When it comes to out-of-the-box usability, MySpace ranks far, far below its more attractive cousins, Facebook and Twitter. The template is cluttered and counter-intuitive. The page is filled mostly with noise, and it takes large amounts of time and money to customize and brand an artist profile effectively. Even many well-funded bands have MySpace pages that would make an unfamiliar listener believe it was posted by a high schooler.

Yet, every band still has to have a MySpace page. Why? Can’t we just put our music on Bandcamp and call it a day? Put your music on Bandcamp – it’s an excellent service. But the fact is that many, many potential listeners stop at a band’s MySpace page first – before even their homepage – to check them out.

That’s why your page really can’t suck. Like it or not, it’s going to be making your first impression on many eyes and ears out there.

Inexpensive, user-friendly MySpace optimization

MySpace360Wizard, created by David Sherbow and Cara Peckens One Fan Consulting, aims to provide an accessible solution to the MySpace problem. It clears up the clutter, and offers a straightforward guide to help artists customize and brand their profiles.

More importantly, it helps artists optimize their profiles for conversions. When the pros set up a website they do so with specific goals in mind – the sale of a product, mailing list sign-ups, etc. What are your goals? In other words, what are you trying to get the people who visit your page to do?

In most cases you want visitors to do 4 things: listen to your music, buy your stuff,  show up to your gigs, and sign up for your mailing list.

MySpace360Wizard is integrated with all of the major direct to fan services – music players, online stores, and email marketing programs like FanBridge and MailChimp. It’s layout and navigation are designed to drive visitors to these services without having to sift through all the MySpace noise. The player is front and center, the store is above the fold, and right next to it is the touring calender.

It takes about an hour from start to finish to redesign or create a profile from scratch using the wizard. The wizard makes it pretty easy, taking the user through the process step by step. You can preview the profile at any time to make sure it’s looking the way you want it to look. It costs $99 bucks to publish the custom profile. You can check out a completed example here.

Win a FREE custom MySpace page by tweeting good advice

I’ve got 5 free access codes to give away, plus 1 grand prize  Here’s how this is going to work:

1. Tweet the best advice you have for independent bands and artists in 140 characters or less.

2. Include this link: http://bit.ly/bRWMlS (It links back to this post.)

3. Tag it #CD140

I will personally pick the best five entries to receive the free codes. Good luck!

The service is still in beta, but what do you think of the ‘New MySpace’ that this tool offers?

New music streaming service Rdio.

Rdio is a brand new streaming music service from the creators of Skype and Kazaa that is currently in private beta. Trials are currently invitation only. For information on free invitations please see below.

This is certainly an interesting time to be launching a music streaming service. Today, Monday, June 7th is the first day of Apple’s always anticipated World Wide Developers Conference, and the day that Apple is expected to announce a new version of iTunes that may or may not include streaming or cloud-based features. (UPDATE: Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC 2010 has come and gone without any word of the alleged ‘iTunes in the Cloud.’ Looks like it wasn’t such a bad time to launch after all!)

Spotify still hasn’t made it to US shores, yet continues to gain traction and evolve in Europe. MOG , which launched late in 2009, has a gorgeous interface and a comparably cheap monthly fee -$5 for web access – seems to have had a hard time gaining serious market share.

Lala was my own personal favorite, but of course Apple shuttered it at the end of last month. Lala had, by far, the best social and music discovery features. Their catalog seemed nearly bottomless, sharing among friends and followers was encouraged through a system of points, and the entire site as fully integrated with Facebook. I still hold out hope that Apple plans to embrace Lala’s best features, but only time will tell.

Enter Rdio

How does Rdio stack up against the competition? Well, that depends on who you are comparing it too. I mentioned Rdio briefly in last week’s Friday news roundup, and again a few times on Twitter. So far, it has seemed most natural to compare the service to Lala, due to it’s user interface and the way that it collects songs from your iTunes library and brings them into the cloud. Yet, as one reader pointed out on Friday, it really has more in common with Spotify or Mog. It is a subscription-based streaming service, after all.

In reality, it appears that Rdio is attempting to provide an answer to both.

Here’s how it works. Rdio.com not only allows users to stream thousands of tracks from major and independent label, but also to replicate their existing music library both on the web and their mobile phone. These two features may sound a bit redundant – and they are, sort of – but if you’re asking why you should need your personal collection online if you’re able to stream any track you want anyway, the answer lies in part with your mobile phone.

Rdio apps for iPhone, Blackberry, soon Android phones will allow full streaming access when online, and access to your full collection when offline. Spotify’s mobile apps have features similar to this, but instead cache the tracks you are streaming for offline listening.

The collection matching feature is built on Adobe Air, and works well. The matching process only took a few seconds and there didn’t appear to be any errors or bugs. Rdio does not yet reproduce your iTunes playlists, unfortunately, although there are reports that this functionality is coming.

Shallow catalog may not justify cost

The biggest draw back to Rdio at this point is its catalog. At this point, Rdio has only signed licensing deals with a handful of major and indie labels. If the music you’re looking for isn’t available through those partners, that song can’t be streamed. And, like Lala before it, if that song exists in your personal collection it simply won’t match when the Rdio application is run.

Unlike Lala, however, Rdio’s catalog is currently very limited. Only about 200 tracks from my library were matched, out of the thousands on my hard drive. Let’s be clear – Rdio isn’t even out of private beta, so we should probably cut them a little slack.

However, they will have to hurry up and sign on a few more licensing partners if they hope the general music listening public to fork over the $10 per month subscription cost. At this point I cannot see upgrading my account when my free trial runs out.

User interface is on the right track, but needs some tweaking

Rdio’s interface is clean and easy to navigate. The front page dashboard features a selection of tracks that are currently receiving a lot of play within your network, as well as the most recent activity.

From the top navagation bar you can also choose to browse new music, view your existing collection and playlists, check out user reviews, or review the people in your Rdio network.

One of the most interesting navigational features is found on the collection page. A series of blue bubbles represent the artists in your collection that you listen to the most, the bigger the bubble the more frequent the plays. Think of it as a kind of tag-cloud for music.

Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do with these bubbles other than mess around with where they are positioned on the screen. I found myself wanting to drag and drop these bubbles into playlists, or to be able to remove the ones that I didn’t want there.

Instead you have to scroll through a full listing of the artists in your collection in a sidebar to the left of the screen. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it feels like they’ve missed an opportunity to turn something that is simply fun into something truly useful.

Music Discovery

As the music streaming and online radio market becomes increasingly crowded, services will rise and fall based on how easily users can discover great new music, and how much fun they can have doing it.

This is where Lala excelled, and Rdio borrows heavily from the now-defunct service. There’s just one important piece missing.

Rdio, just like Lala before it, allows users to follow other users and view their playlists and streaming history. Rdio lays it out a bit differently, grouping network activity into Heavy Rotation and general activity on the front dashboard instead of a catch-all stream.

The big piece that’s missing is the incentives that Lala built in to reward sharing. In Lala, when one of your followers purchased or listened to a track at your recommendation you were awarded points. These points didn’t really mean anything, but acted as a sort of influence meter. The users with the most points built reputations as tastemakers.

This was more powerful than it may at first sound. Without built-in incentives to share and promote great music, a user’s network becomes a more passive force in the music discovery process. This is a shame. Because, while I’m sure Rdio’s internal recommendation engine is adequate, there is no substitute for peer-to-peer sharing.

Music discovery can be fun, social and highly engaging. Or, it can be a cold, lonely, technology-driven process that users participate in solely due to a need to feed their musical itch.

Fortunately for Rdio, that itch is just as powerful as ever.

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Flava Flav may soon have to downgrade to some smaller bling.

I’ve compiled a selection of some of the most important music industry news and commentary the past week, along with a few of my own thoughts. Let me know in the comments section if you think I’ve missed anything notable.

Public Enemy Cut Their Sellaband Target to $75k

Hip-hop legends Public Enemy burst onto the crowd-funding scene a few months ago with an ambitious $250,000 target. Since then they’ve been having a bit of trouble reaching that goal…

“We have learned that the fan funding model is still not fully developed and, as a result, a $250,000 fund raising effort, while possible, will take too long to accomplish,” explains a new post on their SellaBand page. “We now believe that a $75,000 fund raising target will fulfill the needs for a new recording project and is much more appropriate for the strength of the existing SellaBand model and the current economic climate.”

The language of their announcement is careful not to accept too much blame for their failure to raise the amount of money they originally hoped for, but I also think they have a point. So far, fan-funding seems to be working most effectively with smaller projects and more reasonable goals.

Could it also be that fans are hesitating a bit to fund a legacy act like Public Enemy that has a) already seen much success and b) lacks relevancy for many of today’s hip hop fans? Read more at MusicAlly.

Canadian Copyright Laws May be Getting a Reboot

Ah, the endlessly complex world of copyright law. The Canadian government is debating a bill that would effect the way its citizens are allowed to interact with the digital music they have purchased.

The bill, which was introduced in Parliament yesterday (June 2), is intended to modernize copyright laws that were last updated in 1997. At present, it is illegal for Canadian citizens to copy CDs onto digital music players.

“Simply put, our law governing copyright has not kept pace with the breakneck speed at which digital technologies are moving,” Industry Minister Tony Clement told a televised news conference in Montreal.

Read more at Billboard.

More Details Surface About Google’s Music Services, Including a Really Creative Name

Google announced it’s second foray into the world of digital music a couple of weeks ago (the first being music streaming and download results within Google search.) In very Google-like move, they have apparently selected to call the service ‘Google Music.’ A little on the nose, maybe, but it certainly get’s the job done. The real question is, will their product be compelling enough to steal some of Apple’s thunder as they most likely reveal a seriously revamped iTunes next week? Read more at TechCrunch.

But is it worth the fee?

Rdio.com is Like Lala, but Without All the Fun?

Skype and Kazaa founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom unveiled more details this week about their cloud-based music service Rdio.com.

It compares people’s music collections to its own catalogue, then lets them stream the songs that match to any device, including web browsers and mobile phones.

Sounds a whole lot like my favorite music service Lala (RIP), except:

The service will cost $4.99 a month for web-only access, and $9.99 a month to include mobile access via iPhone, BlackBerry or Android handsets.

Also, no mention of anything similar to Lala’s 10 cent cloud-based music purchases, or what kind of recommendation engine it will feature, if any. So far it looks like the world may have to wait a bit longer for a real replacement for Lala. Will Apple deliver? Read more at MusicAlly.

More Music Industry Headlines:

The ‘Nuts and Bolts of Touring’ is a great case study from OneWorkingMusician.com.
Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber managers talk tech and social media promotion over at Hypebot.
Gorillaz replace U2 at Glastonbury festival via Billboard.

Andrew Dubber

The following colorful rant is brought to you courtesy of Andrew Dubber, Reader in Music Industries Innovation at Birmingham City University, Bandcamp advisor and new music industry thinker. It consists of a series of Twitter updates with his reactions to a roundtable discussion that he participated in along with Gerd Leonhard. I’ve shared it here for your reading pleasure:

Balls. So many people are being wrong all at once. No time to even start to address all that.

Was part of a 5-way radio chat about the future of music with @gleonhard and others. So much wrong, I didn’t know where to start.

“Music was better when it was expensive to make” #balls

“It’ll be good if we can claw back 10% through the 3-strikes laws” #balls

“What we need is blanket licensing for all music (like water)” #balls

“Spotify is a doomed model” #balls

“Spotify is the future of music” #balls

“Real music is all about live musicians, touring” #balls

“We need to educate people to stop stealing music” #balls

And then other assorted #balls that assumed an ongoing artificial distinction between producers and consumers of IP.

One speaker made distinction between music business and the ‘recorded’ music business – but then spoke only about music as recordings #balls

However, I love that the first words out of @gleonhard‘s mouth were “I wrote a book called The Future Of Music.” That’s how it’s done folks.

I’m not sure I need to add anything to that. You can follow Andrew on Twitter as @dubber.

Photo by Fräulein Schiller.