Most of the music technology scene I cover is US based with a little bit out of Europe, mainly the UK thrown into the mix. From my perch here in Toronto, I can tell you that we have a thriving music scene across our great country of Canada. We are graced with some of the world’s best artists, producers, sound engineers and as an overall economy, we are loaded with a lot of top flight tech talent across different industries.

We are starting to see smart, innovate people meld the two together to establish Canadian music technology companies who are determined to create world class products/services.  We aren’t just good at hockey and throwing snowballs in the dead of winter! We love our music, our artists and many of us are early tech adopters, as evidenced by the young and fledgling music + tech start-up scene developing in cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Just off the top of my head and by no means is this an exhaustive list, we have the likes of Backfed, Mediazoic, IOUMusic, LyricFind, Fanteraction, Zunior, OpenMicScene, Ecoutez and Bandzoogle doing some amazing stuff. And the latest, YouPhonics, which just launched at NXNEi last month.

Fresh out of the gates after being heads down developing a new music creation/collaboration tool, Aidan Nulman threw open the digital doors by hosting a launch party which brought together more than 100+ people passionate about music, technology, arts and culture. Right now the service is invite only but if you keep an eye out on the YouPhonics and Aidan Nulman’s Twitter stream, you should be able to get your hands on an invite. Or, leave a comment and I can hook you up as well.

On top of growing his start-up, Aidan is chronicling life as a first-time digital music entrepreneur. His posts are very engaging, witty and is sharing his experiences in open and honest detail. Anyone who is currently working on their start-up will likely share a lot of the ups and downs facing every new, young company. A must read in my opinion.

The Canadians are coming, with a few cases of beer in hand! Keep an eye out for us! You will be seeing and hearing more about music+tech innovations coming out of Canada!

The other industry event I attended was the PriceWaterhouseCoopers launch of the annual Global Entertainment and Media Outlook: 2010-2014.  The study covers the global market for music, video games, movies, newspapers, magazines, radio and advertising.  Following a year of decline in 2009, the global entertainment and media market is forecasted to grow by 5% compounded annually over the next five years,  reaching US$1.7 trillion, up from US$1.3 trillion in 2009. Latin America and Asia Pacific are the fastest growing regions, while growth in the world’s biggest media market, North America, will be much slower. Consumer spending is expected to be strongest in the video game, TV subscriptions and movie markets. Forecasted music spending is near the bottom of the list, which is probably not a surprise to many people. Glenn Peoples at Billboard.biz provides his analysis on PwC’s music (physical/digital) forecasts.

Some of the major themes explored in the report include:

• The rising power of mobility and devices and the growing dominance of the Internet experience which is being driven by consumers.
• Media consumption has become a collective social experience.
• Testing the limits of paid content and a move from ad-supported to hybrid revenue models. There is a lot of experimentation with business models trying to find the right mix.
• Increasing engagement by going “hyperlocal” and consumer readiness to pay for content driven by improved consumption experiences and convenience.

You can download a copy of the presentation here (PDF) which provides global stats by various market segments and insights into what is yet to come. Combine this report with Morgan Stanley’s internet trends and mobile technology research and you have yourself a pretty good base of “free” market forecasts and intelligence to work with.

Investments and Mergers/Acquisitions

The first few months of the year started off strong and by the end of the second quarter, investment activity slowed down, with a lot more takeovers and acquisitions this past month. It’s still a pretty challenging environment for any digital music startup looking to raise money.

Total 2010 Investments as of June 30th, 2010

Q1/10: $99.6m
Q2/10: $104.25
2010 total to-date: $204m

• Sonicbids Acquires ArtistData, Terms not Disclosed. Will we see more music service consolidations?
• HP buys streaming music firm Melodeo for between $30m-35m
• Ticketfly buys music event site Gigbot to gain ground on Ticketmaster
• Triton Digital Media Acquires StreamTheWorld
• Pandora Raises an Undisclosed Fifth Funding Round Financing
• Inspired Instruments Raises $1.25M, Lets You Rock Out On A Digital Guitar
• BuzzMedia Adds Music Blogs Gorilla vs Bear and PureVolume, Partners with Hype Machine, RCRD LBL, PopMatters
• AudioBoo Lands Funding, Partners, Radio Deals
• Guardian Media Group Buys UBC’s MXR, Takes Its iTunes Tagging Service

As I mention each month, this isn’t a comprehensive list and the numbers (where disclosed) have been pulled from public sources but it still gives us a sense of general investment activity in the music tech space. If I missed any deals, please don’t hesitate to comment below.

Music Services and Apps

Seven45 Studios to pump new life into music games – Looking to revive a once hot gaming category by introducing a new kind of faux guitar and a unique kind of drum set.

LimeWire Planning A Serious, Cloud-Based Comeback – A diversionary tactic or a legitimate attempt to square things up with the labels? Are they looking to capitalize on whatever brand power they may have left to launch a service that will attract paying consumers, fast? And if they do successfully relaunch, will anyone really care given all the ticks and fleas that LimeWire may never shake-off?

Sound Around – Another in the growing line-up of DIY iPhone app development targeted at bands.  Ryan at Virtualmusic.tv does a great job covering the backstory of this new music startup.

UK supermarket Tesco is preparing for to launch of a digital locker service for music and movies -  “The way it would work practically is that when you buy a disc in store or online, that title would be put up into your Digital Locker which would immediately be accessible from devices registered to that locker.”

mSpot Opens Up Freemium Cloud Music Service in a Bid to Pre-empt Apple and Google; In-Depth Q&A with CEO Daren Tsui – First 2GB are free with plans running up to 100GB per month. Only works on Android phones for now and what differentiates mSpot from other locker services is the way they are navigating around the licensing issue by not having a master copy of a song that is served out to listeners, but will keep individual copies for each user who uploads it, which they believe is in keeping within fair use laws and therefore doesn’t require any additional royalty payments.

GarageBand Online Music Community Shuts Up Shop – Being in operation for ten years, especially a digital music business, is quite the feat. Garageband spawned social music discovery service iLike, now owned by MySpace. The general consensus around the web is that the service won’t be missed very much, having lost its lustre over the past few years.

Mixlr: Share Live Music On The Web – A new platform for DJs, bands to share live music straight to the web. You can broadcast live or upload prerecorded sets.

Tastebuds.fm – This LastFM powered music dating service helps you connect with other single people who share the same love of music. Very slick interface and easy to use.

Fanit – This new service builds on the “true fan” concept. It’s built around a gaming theme where you have to take certain actions (for example: promote on social networks, buy badges with the money going directly to the artist) within a 60 days period to prove you are a true fan. If you don’t achieve this status, you start again.

Aviary Launches Music Creator – New in-browser music creation web app lets users access free and Creative Commons instruments/loops to create music and beats for commercial and non-commercial purposes.

Slacker Radio Announces iPhone, iPad and iPod touch Station Caching for Listening Everywhere – This new feature seems like a first for internet radio. I think it’s kind of cool, especially when you don’t have the time or even know what you want to listen to. Pick a station and download programmed music for offline listening.

HomePipe now streams your iTunes to Android, other files too – Another service that lets you access all your local files (music, photos, video, files) from your iPhone and now Android.

Thumbplay Releases Subscription Music For iPhone – Thumbplay, once a dominant ringtone provider, is switching gears to leverage the smartphone boom, and is placing its bets on full-track subscription music services.

Koitunes – Currently in private beta, this new music service is a Twitter overlay app which helps you discover music that your Twitter followers are posting or talking about. The service supports LastFM, Pandora, Blip, theSixtyOne, Spotify, as well as a handful more.

Buzzdeck – UK-based digital distributors AWAL launch a new real-time analytics tool designed to help enable labels and managers to better track and respond to any buzz growing for their artists or releases online.

Aupeo – Personal streaming internet radio. Based on a recommendation engine and mood station that are powered by the latest innovations from the Fraunhofer Institute, inventors of the MP3.

Opinions, Insights and Analysis

Google Needs To Decide Which Side Of The Music Industry Fence It Is On – “The labels and Google need their relationships to be as amicable and as fruitful as they can be. The experience of Apple shows that antagonizing a key channel partner just wastes energies for both parties and does little or nothing to help the competition and does nothing to help the fight against free.”

A Guide To The Cultural Battle That Is Reshaping The Media Business – “The challenge for big media companies is not just financial. They have to find a way to embrace the power of their users and change their thought process and attitude towards their customers, while not alienating the creator-centric model that currently pays the bills.”

The Music Radio Solution – “Consumers are dictating what devices they prefer, how they want to listen (in shorter segments), where (on their mobile devices) and with whom (their social networks).”

Hidden in plain view: Google Music’s stealth infrastructure – “It’s called YouTube AudioSwap, and it’s really quite clever. When you upload a video to YouTube with a music soundtrack, you can opt for your low bitrate version to be replaced by a superior quality master recording from Google’s own extensive collection of master recordings. What’s that, you ask – you’re saying that Google has an extensive collection of master recordings already? Indeed it does. Fully licensed, with publishing information.”

We Need Digital Lockers More Than Ever – “We now live in a world where we have multiple devices on which we want to consume various forms of media: TVs, desktop PCs, laptops, smartphones, tablets, eBook readers, and more coming. We need a locker. We need an open, authenticated location in the cloud where we can store, access, receive, organize, and share our digital media. Media is too fragmented online.”

Getting into the digital groove: The top five of music 2.0 – Five new digital music projects using crowd-sourcing, cool coding and collaboration to help the music industry rock out in the digital age.

C’est Lala Vie: Does A “Stream Any Song Once” Model Make Sense for Apple’s iTunes? – “And the problem with free, ad-supported streams is that ad rates simply aren’t high enough to allow the streaming services to offer reasonable payments to labels for each stream, let alone generate enough profit to support and grow the company.”

You, the D.J. Online music moves to the cloud – “The anonymous programmers who write the algorithms that control the series of songs in these streaming services may end up having a huge effect on the way that people think of musical narrative—what follows what, and who sounds best with whom. Sometimes we will be the DJs, and sometimes the machines will be, and we may be surprised by which we prefer”

Upcoming Music + Tech Events

• OpenMusicMedia NYC – New York City, NY – July 7th, 2010
• Social Media and Direct 2 Fan Music Marketing – Toronto, ON – July 7th – July 8th
• Latin Alternative Music Conference – New York City, NY – July 6th – July 10th
• Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference – London, UK – July 5th – July 8th
• Music 4.5 Goes Practical – How to use local, social and cultural content and grow globally – London, UK – July 7th, 2010
• Vinyl Music Festival – Sarisota, FL – July 15th.
• Beirut Music Conference – Beirut, Lebanon – July 14th – July 18th
• The Conclave Learning Conference for Radio Broadcasters – Minneapolis, MN – July 15th – July 17th
• The New Music Seminar – New York City, NY – July 19th – July 21st

If you have an upcoming event you want us to post in next month’s music + tech recap, please get in touch with me.

Gabriel Nijmeh is a software business analyst, passionate music lover and guitar player. He currently advises a couple of music startups, including Mediazoic, a real-time social DJ platform and co-founded the Toronto edition of OpenMusicMedia which brings people together to openly discuss the intersection of digital music, media and culture.

Nice to see winter hand over the reigns to spring. Mind you, winter here in Toronto was mild, some might even say non-existent. It is even nicer to see people trading their hats, mitts and down-stuffed jackets for sunglasses, short sleeves and beers on the patio. Along with spring renewal comes a slew of new album releases, concert announcements, music conferences and meet-ups.

I had a chance to attend Canadian Music Week mid-month which I wrote about here. I found it quite interesting and fascinating to sit in on a variety of executive level music panels to hear ideas & opinions being vigorously discussed which is quite different from reading blog posts and news releases. I think generally there is more optimism than you would expect but it’s also because more people are coming to realize that time, energy and resources are being misspent in ways that haven’t proven productive and never will.

Clay Shirky in his latest think piece, “The Collapse of Complex Business Models” fittingly describes what happens when stress hits complex societies and/or industries as they become far too inflexible to respond. It’s not that they don’t want to change, it’s because they can’t. There is more than enough historical precedence that shows countries, empires and industries who, after years of domination and success, find themselves quickly unraveling and never able to maintain their former glory.

He ends his piece by describing what happens to institutions when they collapse. If we consider the music industry today which is facing monumental technological, economic and cultural shifts, the battle raging between the old system as it fights to preserve the status quo and the people who have broken away from the industry is a clear indication that we are in the very early stages of an industry refresh.

When ecosystems change and inflexible institutions collapse, their members disperse, abandoning old beliefs, trying new things, making their living in different ways than they used to. It’s easy to see the ways in which collapse to simplicity wrecks the glories of old. But there is one compensating advantage for the people who escape the old system: when the ecosystem stops rewarding complexity, it is the people who figure out how to work simply in the present, rather than the people who mastered the complexities of the past, who get to say what happens in the future.

We have the likes of Apple, Pandora, Spotify and hundreds of other music startups, artists, even new music labels/companies, who are shaking things up by building new business realities. For any student of history and economics, this is very interesting to witness firsthand.

Investments and Funding

March was a quieter month with much less investment activity compared to January and February. Q1 2010 closes with an approximate investment amount of $99.6m. As I have noted in past recaps, this isn’t a comprehensive list and the numbers have been pulled from public sources but it still gives us a sense of general investment activity in the music tech space. If I missed any investments, please don’t hesitate to comment below.

• Sonos Confirms $25 Million Investment From Index Ventures
• Beamz, maker of interactive music products, raises $2.48m
• The Echo Nest Gets $500,000 Grant From National Science Foundation
• Regen manufacturer of solar-powered audio products, raises $1.6m in funding

Billboard has been tracking the hottest music-based startups, which have predominately been music service based companies, meaning pretty much anything but streaming or download services. Billboard has tracked 136 deals in 2008 and 2009, with 49 deals involving 45 companies that provide music services. 36 deals amounted to $417.5 million with $101m of that being VC based. Very interesting stats!

Music Services and Apps

Rootmusic- This is a slick little music add-on for artists who want to build a MySpace-like band page in Facebook. It lets fans listen to streaming music (using a Soundcloud player), view tour dates, photos and read a band’s bio. Rootmusic joins a list of other Facebook band apps like LP33 and My Band.

Immitter – A new music delivery service that is aiming to help unsigned, indie bands get heard. Bands can enter details/keywords specific to their music (genre, location, BPM) which helps users to discover new music, Pandora-style (as some are describing it). To be really effective as a music discovery tool, this service is going to need a massive infusion of artists to make it worthwhile for fans.

Project Playlist Seeking More Funding, In Talks with AOL- $23m in funding so far, legal troubles with two out of four music labels and the company is looking for more money? Tough pitch. I didn’t know that Owen Van Natta, former Facebook exec and former CEO of MySpace was CEO of this startup. He wasn’t there long enough (5 months) for anyone to really notice?

IMHO is a new music, video, radio and TV cloud-based multimedia service and reading the press release makes your head spin. Bleeding-edge? Watershed moment? Next generation? I gave it a spin and IMHO, it’s not very good. The service is slow, cluttered, not very user-friendly and tries to shove too much in a tiny widget.

CBS hopes for Last.fm profit in 2010 – It took me a while but once I really gave the service a chance, Last.fmhas become my go-to music service. They linger in the shadow of Spotify, Pandora and MOG and claim that subscriptions make up 25% of their revenue. It certainly helps having the muscle of CBS behind them, because Last.fm may not have survived independently. I’m definitely cheering them on. Check out my music Last.fm profile hereand lets connect! In other related Last.fm news, they have just published their long-awaited API update. It will be interesting to see what kind of new and updates apps developers might start working on.

Q+A with Claes Loberg, CEO of Australian music service Guvera- With Guvera’s US beta launch on March 30th, this is an interesting interview that provides deeper insights into this new ad-support music download service.

Muziic for iPhone- The desktop version of this music service is now available for iPhone/iPod Touch letting you search for music and videos on YouTube, tune in to hundreds of internet radio stations, build a playlist or browse featured tracks and albums.

Ultimate Guitar Mobile App- My favorite guitar tabs site now has an iPhone app! It is currently the number one paid app and a top fifty overall app in iTunes.

Snowtape- Do you remember the days sitting beside your cassette machine that was hooked up to your radio, waiting to record your favorite top 40 hits of the day? Well, here’s another internet radio player app but more interestingly lets you record individual tracks from the radio stream. Given the amount of music that can be downloaded (legally or otherwise) or accessed, not really sure why anyone would spend much time recording streams on the run. This experience will never compare to the early days of home taping.

Venue.FM- A web mash-up with a simple and clean interface powered by Songkick. Pick your city and pick a period (limited to current day, next 7 days or next 30 days) and a list of concerts is presented to you. Beyond the usual information (date, venue, location), a batch of songs from each touring artist is available for you to listen.

BYO.FM – Michael Robertson (of MP3.com and MP3tunes.com) is at it again with his latest idea that lets people program their own radio station with news, weather, traffic sports and music. CNET provides a good description of the service. I gave it a try and I really like the overall concept and I believe this is an idea that commercial radio should explore further.

Mflow- Another music recommendation platform that follows a Twitter approach. Music fans follow each other, recommend music along with a tweet size comment, each recommended song allows for a full first time listen and subsequents listen are 30 second clips (similar to Lala). When someone buys a track you recommend, you get 20% of the purchase price. This is similar in concept to Blip.FMbut mFlow has partnered with a number of music labels and is focused on getting people to buy music. Currently in beta and only available in the UK.

Universal Music Group has just released their version of Guitar Hero/Rock Band/Tap Tap Revenge called Six String. Includes six songs, they offer twenty additional tracks available for in-app purchase.  I gave it a try and it is a very well designed app, the first to be released directly by a major label.

MOG showcases iPhone and Android apps- Expected to be released in Q2, will allow users to download tracks for offline listening, which is something Spotify currently offers in their iPhone app.

Song.ly, Twitter Music Sharing Service Up for Grabs for $50,000 – A much simpler, no-frills version of Blip.FM, Song.ly is a service that lets you search for and share songs on Twitter. It appears that someone has put in a bid for $50k, although I am wondering if the bid is legit and whether a deal will go through.

Interview: Zach Zalon On Hello Music’s Opportunity Engine For D.I.Y. Musicians – Hello Music combines technology with professional A&R to identify artists and connect them with career opportunities. This type of music service proves that technology is only a part of overall effort in building a music career.

22 students + 10 days + Echo Nest = 7 mobile apps!- A group of mobile development students at Olin college just completed the mid-semester #mobdev contest. 10 days to create a compelling product prototype on the Android platform using the Echo Nest APIs.

Opinions, Insights and Analysis

Music 4.5was held in London on March 4th, that brought together tech start-ups, serial entrepreneurs, investors, artists, band managers and key industry players to talk, strategize, and debate the direction of the music industry. Musically has provided great insights into the panels and discussions that went on:

• The communications gap between music and tech companies
• A lot of music services, but where are the businesses
• 10 music startups pitch their wares
• Music startups pitch to teenagers

Dave Kusek on The Cloud, Topspin, Hype Machine, SoundCloud, and the death of MySpace – “Great music is more important than anything else”. True. Very true!

The Human Recommendation Engine – Algorithms have come a long way in automating music recommendation and discovery, but nothing will ever beat talking to a passionate friend or trusted source about new bands and new releases. It’s about the conversation and slowing life down a bit so we can actually enjoy and connect with the music in more than a drive-by fashion.

The Truth About What We’re Paying For Content- People love to debate the merits of free vs. paid content. But overlooked in all this is the cost of access to that content, that’s where the action is. We’re paying more than we ever have to receive our movies, news and music, according to Forrester analyst James McQuivey.

5 Reasons I’m Still Not Paying for a Music Subscription Service – Hard for most people to justify paying for something when so much of it is already available online and which will remain that way. I do always wonder had the labels initially came together to combine their catalogs and hired the best music technologists to build a solid, user-friendly application, would the story be different? Would they have got it right? Can it even be done today?

How Important is Gaming to the Music Industry? – According to a games developer, “Industry insiders are learning that video games are the radio and distribution channel of the 21st century”. I don’t agree that gaming is a primary music distribution channel because how many people buy games because they want to hear the music first? Music is an add-on that enhances game play.

Upcoming Events

• Replay: Symposium on Sound Sampling – Syracuse, NY, April 9th, 2010
• NAB Show- Las Vegas, NV, April 10th to April 15th, 2010
• Envisioning 21st Century Music Business Models- Berklee College of Music, Boston, MA – April 15th, 2010
• ASCAP “I Create Music” Expo – Los Angeles, CA – April 22nd to April 24th, 2010
• Music Hackday- Amsterdamn, Netherlands, April 24th to April 25th
• Musexpo 2010 – Hollywood, CA – April 25th to April 28th, 2010
• NARM – Music Business Convention – Chicago, IL – May 15th to May 17th, 2010

Gabriel Nijmeh is a software business analyst, passionate music lover and guitar player. He currently advises a couple of music startups, including Mediazoic, a real-time social DJ platform and co-founded the Toronto edition of OpenMusicMedia which brings people together to openly discuss the intersection of digital music, media and culture.

Theremins used to be innovative.

Innovation is important. It elevates a product beyond simple retail and causes it to become a catalyst for change in the marketplace and culture. Innovation is also notoriously elusive. Today’s stroke of genius could be tomorrow’s old news. Worse, that first-to-market concept you’ve been hustling to get out the door could be short-circuited by the company down the street. The brief shelf-life of an innovative product is simply not enough to build a business on.

Music is no different. Breaking a “brand new sound” is not easy to do. Most listeners find anything too far outside the norm to be at best challenging, or at worst offensive to their ear. New sounds usually take time to bleed into the mainstream. The listening public gradually becomes accustomed to them as they buzz around their periphery, like messages quietly played on a loop while they sleep.

Sometimes a band is good enough, and lasts long enough, to cash in on this build-up of auditory equity. More often it’s another act that happens to enter the scene at the just the right time. They may seem to come out of nowhere, but if you look closely you’ll probably find the forerunners whose shoulders these new radio (internet?) darlings are standing on.

Is that a bad thing? Maybe for the pretentious scenesters who know the truth. My band-mates and I always shunned those tipping-point bands that stumbled serendipitously into the breakthrough. They got all the glory, but we knew they were reaping what others had sown.

For everyone else, no. It’s not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a good thing because it’s necessary for the introduction of new music into the mainstream. The mainstream and the underground have a symbiotic relationship. One feeds off the other.

Counting on Innovation to Cut Through the Noise

When a new band forms and gathers for the first time in their drummer’s basement they may talk about how they’ll rise above the sea of new music and make their mark. Inevitably one of the members will suggest that all they have to do is “write something totally new that no one’s ever heard before.” Then people will have to notice them. It’ll probably be the guitarist. And while his speech may be compelling, that band will be making a serious mistake if they take his word for it.

I already laid out the challenges of innovation-as-a-business-model in the paragraphs above. The way I see it, they leave our imaginary example band with two primary options. They can adopt innovation as their ‘signature’ and strive to reinvent the wheel with each new project. Or, they can try to make a big splash with something way out there and ride that wave as far as it will take them. If you take each of these paths you’ll see that neither is a great option.

1. Innovation as a Signature

Do you really think you can put out album after album, song after song and keep breaking the mold? I’m not saying that it hasn’t happened, but I think we can all agree that this is a tall order. Take for example some of the most well known musical innovators of the past decades: Radiohead. Radiohead released Kid A, then gradually drifted back toward their earlier rock focused writing. They haven’t lost what they gained with Kid A, but they haven’t repeated the feat either.

2. Innovation as Conversation Starter

Gaining exposure through the release of something new and out there is a little like getting struck by lightening. You never really know when it’s going to happen, and while there are things that you can do to greatly increase your chances, there still has to be a storm already brewing overhead.

For those who do make waves with something innovative are usually prime candidates for the classic ‘sophomore slump.’ If you can’t get lightening to strike twice you’d better put out something that doesn’t stray too far from the once-revolutionary formula you pioneered the first time or you’ll have some disappointed fans. Not to mention the Pitchforks of the world who live for those moments when promising new bands fall from grace.

And did I mention that just about every new band out there is trying to do the exact same thing?

What Role Should Innovation Play?

I’m not suggesting that innovation is not important to an artist or business. Nothing could be further from the truth. Art in particular is revitalized by innovative works. Innovation is what keeps art forms alive. However, what keeps artists alive is longevity. Longevity is built from many disciplines, innovation being only one of them.  It requires insight into promotion and public relations. A solid business model that creates opportunities for consistent revenue and has room to change with shortening market cycles. A well-defined vision and a plan to see it through.

Most of all what long-lasting success demands is authenticity. The greatest skill an artist can learn is to create in their own voice. When innovation is given a disproportionate focus the most common casualty is authenticity. Some of the greatest songs ever written have been simple and traditional. Even in rock and roll. Write music that you’re passionate about and listeners will get it. You will succeed or fail based on your own merits and your own personality. And best of all, you’ll never run out of material.

Where is music technology headed in 2010

Another year has passed and we can only hope – and more importantly work – towards making the new year and new decade in the music business less tumultuous and one where the the disruptive forces of change are embraced for the sake of the artists and fans. Because it’s about the music, isn’t?

Now more than ever we need to keep the focus on two important groups: artists and fans.  It’s about creative innovation, not exploitation. We still have a way to go but signs are pointing up as more people focus their energy on solutions-based thinking and building.

Before we look too far ahead to 2010 and usual set of predictions, let’s take some time to reflect on what transpired not just in 2009 but over the past ten years. Has anything been learned? Are we headed in the right direction? Will we be spinning the same wheels bare?

Did anyone imagine that in just a few short years the industry would face such swift, radical change leaving some still spinning?  Disruption for one group is innovation and opportunity for another and the battle will continue to rage between these two camps.

A review of 2009 on back…

CMU has put together their review for 2009 covering the media and the internet, the music business and artists and the music.

The A to Z of digital music startups in 2009 is an impressive list of digital music startups.

11 Interesting Moments For The Music Industry In 2009- Twitter, Social Media, Music Games, drop in concert attendance.

Bruce Houghton: 3 Trends, 13 Companies & 1 Wild Card To Watch In 2009 and How Did I Do With My 2009 Predictions?

The decade in music: Sales slide, pirates, digital rise – “Nothing defines pop’s past decade as much as the Internet and its evolving powers to alter the way music is created, marketed, shared and consumed. And, some would say, devalued and plundered.”

All the Rules of the Music Business Have Been Remade – From creation, distribution, consumption, it is utterly amazing how technology has flipped the business on it’s head and blown the gates right off.

What has the digital decade meant for music? – “The way in which we consume music has been revolutionised, but rumours of the death of major labels have been greatly exaggerated.”

2010 Music Predictions, Wishes and Guesses

Here’s a recap of some predictions written about for 2010. It’s a fun, year-end exercise and it might be a better idea for those making them to review them monthly, or at least quarterly. And better yet turning these predictions into actionable goals.

All the predictions in the world won’t matter unless the music fan is looked at like a valuable consumer and not some menacing threat.

Bruce Houghton has one prediction for 2010 and honestly, it’s less a prediction but good old common business sense: Those that serve the fan will thrive. Those that do not will whither.

Here are a few that are worth bookmarking and revisiting over the next couple of months:

• Five Music Predictions for 2010 (and Five Reasons Why 2009 was a Flop)
• 8 Key Trends for the Next 5 Years
• Bob Lefsetz’s Predictions
• The Year in Digital Music and Predictions for 2010
• Bobby Owsinski’s 7 Music Business Predictions For 2010
• 2010: 5 Music Business Predictions (And A Football One)
• 10 music-tech trends that will shape the next decade

And as for my thoughts for 2010 and beyond?

Service Agnostic Playlists:
I believe that in 2010 we will start seeing more service agnostic, portable and shareable playlists. You just enter the name of a band or song, and a new service like Playdar (hooked in with the XSPF format) will help you find the song either on your local drive or any music service(s) you might subscribe to. Playlistnow.fm, Stereomood.com and Playlist are examples of the shift from MP3s to playlists, and as an end user you aren’t as concerned about where the music is located.

Music in the Cloud Goes Mainstream:
Sure, anyone with the time and inclination can use Simplify Media, Subsonic, Tunesbag, MP3Tunes to create their own streaming music service but only the biggest, most meticulous music geeks are doing so. 2010 we will see, directly or indirectly, Apple, Google, Amazon making moves towards cloud based music service offerings.

Apple and Others Finally Get Social Music:
For most of us, music has always been a social activity and we are already enjoying the social nature of music online using sites like Twitter, Blip.FM and other third-party, independent services. Apple, Google and other big players will finally start taking it seriously and will build social networking functionality into their core service offerings.

Music Tech Investments
Duncan Freeman of Band Metrics has just posted his list of music tech investments and M&As for 2009. There was certainly quite a bit of activity and will we see more investment activity in 2010? GigaOM recently posted a piece: After Weak Exits In Digital Music, VCs Start Smaller offering some additional perspective. Investors may be stepping back a bit but are not stepping away completely from investing in the digital music sector. Investment returns in music streaming services haven’t been as hoped for but there are other (not as sexy as Spotify) digital music opportunities that don’t face the same, out of the gate, licensing hurdles. With $154 billion of venture money still sitting on the sidelines, that money will have to be invested somewhere, right?
December funding news:

• App Store Champ Smule Raises Another $8 Million
• Podcasting company Lexy raises $458k in debt financing
• ZumoDrive Raises $1.5 Million For Cloud-Based Mobile Music, Media Access

Music Services and Mobile Apps

New iPhone apps like Flypt (music remixer), PRS Jam App (for guitarists), Muppets Animal Drummer (music rhythm game), Beaterator (music mixer) being released are becoming much more interactive. Instead of just being passive listeners, music lovers can now try their hand at being creators, producers and remixers.

Soundtrkr is another interesting app I played around with this month. It’s a geo-tagging music app that lets you connect with other music fans in your area. It’s like Foursquare for music. It will probably be just a matter of time before Pandora or LastFM add this functionality which I think would be brilliant move. Myxer launches MobileStage, a mobile marketing platform for artists and brands/advertisers.

Nowplaying.FM – With so much music/bands being discussed on Twitter, there isn’t always a link provided to the music. With Nowplaying.fm, they are a music search-and-play service in the style of GrooveShark which searches various services and finds the song you want to hear. As I already noted, this is where Playdar can really shine as a music content resolver.

PlaylistnowFM – Similar to Stereomood, you can listen to preselected playlists based on mood/what you are doing. Clean interface (combines elements of Blip.FM and Twitter) and a decent selection of tunes.

Playdar – I’m going to keep an eye on this one in 2010. It’s a bit of “geeky” but very promising tool. Some smart developers will create amazing apps/services that will make it even easier for the music fan’s to discover and listen to music. For early adopters getting their heads around it and Playdar powered services like Playgrub and Playlick, the focus will be building playlists and less on where the music is located. I really hope to see Playdar underpin a lot of future music services which ties well into my thoughts about service agnostic playlists. Read this write-up for a really good description of how Playdar works.

Amazon Adds Audio and Video Streaming to CloudFront – This announcement slipped through quietly. For no additional cost, Amazon will let developers/companies stream delivery of audio and video content. Keep an eye out for new and upcoming service launches now that this type of technology is easily accessible and affordable.

Best of 2009: 10 iPhone/iPod Touch Music/Sound Apps – Suzanne Lainson has recently posted a very thorough article detailing the potential iPhone music revolution where many free and/or cheap tools are allowing music fans with little or no musical talent to create music. It may not be all that good but at the very least, fans will garner a better appreciation of the time and effort that goes into the creative process.

Opinions, Insights and Analysis

In 2009, the hot talk was about Spotify (will they or won’t they launch in the US?) and in 2010 music in the cloud will be on everyone’s lips. There is still a way to go before we see commercial offerings and mainstream adoption but a lot of the hurdles are being knocked down including: technological, costs and cultural.

Music in the Cloud: Heavenly or Pipe Dream? – There are enough open-source tools and software that lets you share and stream music from your computer anyway, so streaming music from your “personal cloud” is already here. It’s just that many people can’t be bothered with setting up, maintaining and backing up their libraries. Once Apple flips the switch, it’s game on. See next article.

How Apple’s New Music Strategy Reflects a Paradigm Shift – This is a great piece with two key points: 1) the transition toward streaming rather than owning is slow, but real. and 2) Apple is still betting on owning music in a new way, rather than subscribing to it.

In the legal download world, someone has to pay for the music, so will 2010 be the year that “brandvertising” finally proves that ad-supported music downloads work? Free for All and Guevara are going to try hard to prove so. And with so much activity on the mobile front, it will be interesting to see if 2010 “will be the year mobile begins to realize its potential for marketers.”

Here is a great article that describes the The Problem With Free. It is summed up best: “When you pay for something, you appreciate it more than when you get it for free.”

APIs Can Set You Free — “Music — or any kind of information, for that matter — no longer emanates from a centralized source. Instead, it reaches listeners’ ears through a plethora of tweets, blogs, widgets, apps, social nets, search services, recommendation engines and the personal messages from the artists themselves.”

Formula That Can ID Music Industry Payola Developed — “A University at Buffalo researcher has invented a statistical method that can detect payola-like corruption in the music industry, a system that gives law enforcement an inexpensive statistical guide to identify potential music corruption and to better target more traditional and much more costly hands-on evidence-gathering.”

4 Ways One Big Database Would Help Music Fans, Industry — Great idea but very challenging to implement and maintain. We already have MusicBrainz and FreeDB plus other proprietary music industry databases. Trying to reconciliation and bridge commercial and open source interests won’t be easy. And I hate saying it but it will be impossible to reach any consensus or standards to satisfy all parties.

What was once thought will be a music business saviour, music video games sales peaked in 2009 and sales forecasts missed . Are consumers bored? Will 2010 be any better?

—-

And that caps another year in the business! Where do you think we are headed in 2010? What do you hope to see happen? What are you working on that you feel will make a long-term difference?

Gabriel Nijmeh is a software business analyst, passionate music lover and guitar player. He currently advises a couple of music startups, including Mediazoic, a real-time social DJ platform and co-founded the Toronto edition of OpenMusicMedia which brings people together to openly discuss the intersection of digital music, media and culture.

The latest music business report from the Forrester Research Group hasn’t produced the kind of buzz that the last one did. That’s likely because while the previous report did have some solid ideas, it wasn’t the answer people were looking for.

The report is called Music Product Manifesto: The Product Features That Will Save Recorded Music. (I know – I hate titles like that too.) This time around researcher Mark Mulligan focus on music product innovation. “In 2009, the album celebrates it’s 100th birthday and yet remains the centerpiece of the recorded music product portfolio,” Mulligan writes. “The time has come for a radical overhaul of the recorded music product range.”

Consumer needs, not business needs.

Mulligan introduces his recommendations with “six fundamental consumer ‘rights’” that he believes should be the foundation of all future music product innovations. I’ll give you the six bullet points and focus in on a couple of them that I think are worth examining further.

1. The right to great customer experiences first (and business models second).
2. The right to unique music experiences.
3. The right to share in the creation process.
4. The right to share [music].
5. The right to fair use of technology.
6. The right to be social.

The first one may seem like kind of a ‘duh,’ but in Mulligan’s defense this point has been largely missed by most of the record industry. I appreciate that he took the time to spell it out because he is exactly right. A business model is useless without costumer buy in. Figure out what your customers want and give it to them – that’s the model the industry needs to embrace.

Number three is huge. I’ve written before about how important I believe it is for fans to have the freedom to remix and mash up the music they love. The promotional value and increased fan engagement that can result from allowing your fans to share in the creation process are opportunities that should not be missed. More on this point later.

Four, five and six are somewhat related. The report makes the argument that friends and family are “one of the most important sources of music recommendations.” Music products should leverage this, not attempt to squash it. “We’re looking for cross-service sharing to become the glue that holds the digital music marketplace together,” the report states.

This is something that the blogosphere has been preaching for years, so it’s nice to see an ‘official’ report in agreement. However, Mulligan is unwilling to to all the way. “This doesn’t mean full interoperability,” he writes in the very next sentence. “But it does entail creative solutions, such as one-play-only streams and downloads. In other words you can share a track with your friend, but as soon as you listen to it the file self-destructs like a new assignment from the Impossible Mission Force. People are going to LOVE that.

Future Music Products

The remainder of the report lays out a series of predictions and recommendations regarding what future music products should look like. The big theme that runs through each of the nine or so items is interactivity. Consumers need to be given stuff to do while they listen to music. Videos to watch, games to play, social media to update and tools to remix and mash up. “Music’s ‘lean back’ nature has allowed it to be shunted into the background by more interactive entertainment,” writes Mulligan. “Next generation music products need to thrust music into the interactive age, delivering multiple interactive music experiences that demand listener’s attention!”

Instead of simply purchasing music files, listeners would download something more like an application that contained all the functionality laid out in the above diagram.

I think this is a big step in the right direction. It takes advantage of a wide range of technologies to create a more immersing experience for the listener. The center of this experience is still music, but not necessarily recorded music. All of the different mediums are represented: live performance, studio recordings, written lyrics, music videos, etc. Extras that aren’t strictly musical would be included as well, such as interviews, photos, and games.

All of this would be integrated with social media allowing real-time sharing. One significant benefit would be that the ability to share and communicate around an artist’s music could potentially strengthen the fan community. That sense of community is so important to building a solid fan base.

Here’s a close-up of the proposed remix function:

Adding value or diluting music?

One question that this report raised for me is whether this additional functionality might add value to music as a product at the expense of the integrity of music as an art form.

It was hard at times not to read this report as if it were saying that the industry needs to recognize that music has been relegated to background ambiance and borrow from other forms of media to get people to care about it again. Yet, in a lot of ways that may be true. It’s easy to blame file sharing and piracy for music’s waning cultural influence. But in today’s interactive, multitasking world it is getting harder for music to compete. Mono-sensory art is so last century!

“Music companies must remember who their competing against,” writes Mulligan. “This isn’t a fight to be the ‘iTunes killer’ – rather, it’s to be the ‘P2P killer’ and an ‘apathy killer.’” He goes on, “To compete against this ‘axis of digital music evil’ and truly differentiate themselves, new music products must offer excitement and uniqueness.” In other words, future music products can’t just be about the music anymore.

Conclusion

Philosophical concerns aside, Mulligan is absolutely right that the recording industry needs to start delivering what fans want if it hopes to find a sustainable business model. I think the example he presents does go a long way toward responding to the way fans have shown they want to engage with music. Mulligan doesn’t really address how he would monetize these products – subscriptions? Maybe the app is free and the content is pay per download? Or the other way around? Yes, I know I just said that giving fans what they want should come first. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to generate revenue. Maybe that will come in a future report.

Here’s a recap of what went on in the music industry over the past two weeks. Make sure to check out anything you might have missed and leave your comments. Know something we don’t? Submit a story.

Most Popular:

• The Defining Sound of this Decade is … Undefined – This decade is drawing to a close and there is yet to be a truly definitive sound. Why?
• “An Old Man’s Perspective” on the Current State of Rock and Roll – Music industry vet and founder of Live Music Machine David Sherbow tells it like he sees it.

This Week:

• What do you do when you just aren’t good enough? – How to make an honest assessment of your strengths and weaknesses as an artist.
• The music business gets leaky – Radiohead, Jay-Z, Muse and more – It looks like high profile leaks are here the new reality for the music business.
• To leak or not to leak? 3 ways for artists to respond – What should artists do to prepare for or respond to a leak of their unreleased material?
• Forrester Report: The way forward for the music industry, or a step backward? – A new report proposes a plan to ‘save the music industry.’
• The future of product innovation in music – Moving beyond the iPod.
• Album review – Castanets – Texas Rose, The Thaw, and the Beasts – Spaced-out folk rock.
• Billy Corgan announces new Smashing Pumpkins album – 44 free songs – A bold first play from Billy Corgan’s new Smashing Pumpkins.

This Week in Music History:

1976 – The first of the two night 100 Club Punk Festival at Oxford St, London. The festival featured The Sex Pistols, The Clash, Sub Way Sect, Suzie (spelling on the poster), and The Banshees, The Buzzcocks, Vibrators and Stinky Toys. Admission was £1.50.

It’s been four years this month since Sufjan Stevens released his last full record Come on Feel the Illinoise. For a man who once declared that he would release an album for each of America’s 50 states – and for the uniquely dedicated fans who follow the indie-rock wunderkind – four years is an awfully long delay.

Fans don’t have much longer to wait, however, although Stevens’ next release may not be quite what they expected. The BQE is a multimedia set based on a live performance Stevens’ put on back in November of ’07 of the same name. Inspired by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in New York The BQE was, at least in the words of Pitchfork, “an over-the-top affair with an orchestra, artsy footage of the highway, and hula hoops.”

Pitchfork may not have been impressed (when are they, really?) but the show was a success, selling out all three nights of it’s run at the Howard Gilman Opera House in downtown Brooklyn. So why has it taken two years to release the BQE set? Stevens’ Asthmatic Kitty Records explains:

One week following the performances, Sufjan and his orchestra went into the studio to record the soundtrack, but afterwards, feeling disenfranchised by the magnitude of the universe, Sufjan decided to shelve the project. Until now. Two years later, Sufjan found inspiration to mix the music, edit the video and expand the project to include photographs, liner notes, a comic book, and a stereoscopic image reel—a multi-media package that attempts to render this much-loathed urban expressway into a conscionable work of art.

According to the press release, the two-disc album will include the original film on DVD, the original soundtrack on CD, 40 pages of photos and liner notes, and a View-Master reel, created by illustrator Stephen Halker. Oddly, the set does not appear to include footage of the original live performance.

A limited-edition vinyl version will be available as well, and will include the soundtrack on 180-gram vinyl, a large-scale 32-page booklet with liner notes and photographs, and a 40-page Hooper Heroes comic book. All this will be kicked off on October 24th at 92YTribeca where they will show the film and feature a string quartet performance of selections from the upcoming “re-imagining” of Stevens’ Enjoy Your Rabbit album.

Sufjan Stevens certainly has his skeptics, but you’ve got to hand it to the man for consistently pushing the envelope. His deliberate and borderline reclusive nature in many ways contradicts the direction the rest of the industry has been heading in recent years. Yet, he has managed come up with an impressive string of innovative ideas to keep his fans engaged. Melodrama aside, the BQE should be a great example of an artist providing extra value to give fans plenty of reason to buy an album.

Here’s a preview to hold you over until October:

It used to be the record label’s jobs to tell us who to listen to. A&R would scour the earth looking talent, groom them, coach them and surround them with people who could get them where they wanted to go. If the label caught the scout’s vision they would sign the act and fund a record or two.  There was a process. It wasn’t perfect, but a process nonetheless. Label’s stopped doing this years ago. Maybe it was MTV that started the decline of artist and repertoire. Label’s saw the money that could be made off a pretty face and their priorities began to change. Before you knew it Britney Spears was at the top of the charts. Once the majors began to consolidate and were gobbled up by companies run by executives who hadn’t played a record since the Carpenters, the role of Taste-maker belonged to fewer and fewer entities who cared less and less about the art of music.

As listeners began realizing that they were being fed a diet of insubstantial junk, it was the beginning of the end for the industry. You can blame Napster all you want, but what made Napster so appealing was that it exposed fans to music they had never had access to when the major labels were running the show. It was like one massive, world-wide mix tape that anyone with a broadband connection could tap into. Independent bands started to realize that people in places they had never even toured were not only listening to their music, but were sharing it with their friends.

Now new tracks are pouring onto the Internet like auto workers into a state unemployment office. Except there’s no line, and nobody working behind the counter. Armed with a free copy of Garageband and the vague hope that someone, somewhere might listen, scores of nameless musicians are doing their best to take advantage of the new digital frontier.  It’s largely the same situation for listeners. A music fan who logs onto MySpace looking for fresh tracks could spend endless hours scrolling through band profiles, probably finding more misses than hits. It might take weeks before they uncover something that really gets inside them.

The major labels dropped the ball. The world needs taste-makers. People want help discovering new music. When the labels couldn’t be trusted, at least the world always had independent record stores. The fact that music lovers were willing to weather the elitist condescension of record store employees is proof of this – people want someone to tell them what they should like! Of course, record stores were a casualty of the digital revolution, too. An unintended and unfortunate casualty, but I’m not sure any amount of wistful nostalgia can bring them back now (though there are many who still try - and God bless them.)

This is why services like Last.fm make such big deal about their ‘recommendation engines.’ They’ve created a system built on crowd-sourcing and meta-tags in order to fill the taste-maker void. It works ok – I have found a few artists through Last.fm that I’ve now added to my regular rotation. But crowds are stupid. The individual members of a crowd might by intelligent and capable, but put them together – stupid. Read Malcom Gladwell’s Blink if you don’t believe me, he’ll convince you. 75% of the songs that end up on my Last.fm station are either mediocre or downright terrible.

I know there is more good music out there - but where is it? We need people and services to step up and tell us where to find the good stuff so that we don’t have to waste so much time on the filler. Technology can help but real people need to be involved, too. Pandora has a good start, using over 50 actual humans to analyze a host of criteria when making recommendations. Mufin is brand new, and looks like it may be the most comprehensive recommendation engine to date. But even these options don’t feel human, so they don’t carry much weight. People don’t want recommendation engines, they want to hear someone they trust raving about an artist they love. Maybe it will be bloggers, maybe indie labels will step up to the plate, or maybe someone will create an engine that really does the trick. Either way, in our post record industry world, the sooner the new taste-makers emerge the sooner the real talent will have a chance to rise more quickly to the top. That’s good for everybody – except maybe the filler.

ReverbNation announced a new feature yesterday designed to generate revenue for the site and for some of its artists. The Sponsored Songs program will add a small, branded message to the digital cover art of each download. The message will then show up every time that song is played. In exchange for allowing the ad to be attached to their song, the artist will receive $0.50 per download up to a cap of $50. Not all of ReverbNation’s artists will be eligible – only about 1000, which is a small fraction of their members – but those who are have probably been notified already.

I’m not sure what I think about this program. When I first saw the news on Hypebot, it seemed like a decent gig. The more I look into it, though, the more I think it might do more harm than good. First of all, $0.50 per download isn’t a bad cut for a song you’re giving away for free. You’d make more selling your track on iTunes assuming you aren’t sharing your $0.70 with a label or any other services, but still – not bad. The $50 cap seems very low, however.

The idea that a track’s cover art has become ad real estate makes me a bit queasy. I’m not opposed to ads – I’ve got ads on this site, and just made a deal to acquire a few more. Ad revenue is one of the only things keeping the internet humming right now. But on cover art? Maybe I am making a bigger deal than I need to about this, but there’s got to be another way (and there are other ways.)

As far as the positives are concerned, when a brand sponsors a song they take some ownership of promotion. According to ReverbNation, “to help you out, the sponsor will be spending money to promote your music on MySpace, ReverbNation, etc… by driving traffic to your song.” This is something that the indies don’t get to hear all that often. Without a record deal, most bands are completely on their own when it comes to marketing and promotion. Getting a little boost could be exactly what an artist on the brink of national exposure needs to push them over the edge.

ReverbNation also appears to have some understanding of where the industry is at right now. Here is a statement by Michael Doernberg, CEO: “Traditionally the music business has been synonymous with the record business where the lion’s share of revenue came from selling music. With reduced emphasis on music sales, the music business must develop new revenue streams that leverage the artist as a brand.” I think he is exactly right, and I am glad that they are trying to respond to this with new business models. I would just hope that we can find away to ‘leverage the artist as a brand’ without compromising that brand in the process.

Greg Kot, in his new book Ripped, focuses on the story of an unlikely but high profile independent artist – Prince. While the diminutive 80’s pop star and his music may not seem relevant to many of you, it turns out he is actually an interesting example of an artist bucking the traditional system and striking out on his own. In particular, his frequent release cycles and emphasis on touring have made him something of a forerunner. Prince had a deal with Warner that was reportedly worth up to $100 million, but he was unhappy with the control the label exerted over his creative process. Prince was (still is) a prolific songwriter and wanted to release several albums per year. The label limited him to one and also kept him from releasing Sign O’ the Times as a triple album in 1987. Apparently it is very unwise to cramp Prince’s style (and oh, what a style it is…) because after this he began to do everything he could to get under the label’s skin. He all but stopped touring, he wrote the word ‘slave’ on his cheek in black permanent marker, and famously changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol.

When his contract finally ended, Prince released a new album, Emancipation and went into business for himself. Prince has always been a bit nuts, and being independent hasn’t changed any of that – if anything it has only highlighted it further. Within a couple of years of being ‘set free’ from Warner, Prince had released nine albums worth of material. Album after album flooded the market – experimental tracks, archived material, new music, and who knows what else. People thought he was crazy.

Yet, look at the industry today. We’ve got thousands of artists and millions of songs that are available at the touch of a button. The days of waiting three years between releases are long gone. I’m talking frequency here, not volume – nine full albums worth of material is way more than necessary. But if you release a couple songs every few months, your fans will stay much more engaged and you will have the opportunity to remain front of mind in a crowded marketplace. If you really still want to release a full album, you can compile them at the end of the year and sell it dressed up in creative, high quality packaging along with some extras you had saved for the occasion.

Also, look at the way Prince handles touring. He is constantly changing things up. He’ll spend a few weeks playing one venue, or give away free post-midnight performances at previously unannounced locations. When he does do a conventional tour, he makes it worthwhile. He once packaged his new album in the price of the concert tickets and everyone who came to his show walked out with his CD. The record shot immediately to the top of the charts.

This is creative stuff. Not all of it is going to work for new or unknown artists, obviously, but it can all be scaled and applied to wherever your career is at right now.