I am currently knee deep in developing a new online platform that I believe answers a real need in the new music industry. (If you are part of the Creative Deconstruction Facebook community you already know this…) I’m working with Erik Peterson, the founder of music community and marketplace Plugola. We are very excited about the project, but we still need a couple of key roles to be filled on our team.

Most importantly, we are currently looking for a Ruby on Rails developer for this project. Candidates should have extensive knowledge in rails, or be willing and able to learn on the fly. A familiarity with the new music industry is preferred, but not required.

Here is a brief description of the types of skills and experience we are looking for:

• Must be available approximately 20 hrs/week during initial development period
• Must be available for future maintenance/upkeep (and possible add-ons)
• May use pre-developed plug-ins/code
• Good communication skills
• Ability to add design template(s)
• Very minor Java Script work expected
• Very minor e-commerce work expected (payment plugins/Paypal)
• Experience with crowd funding, social media, or online communities also a plus

All applicants MUST be able to produce examples of past work.

Know anybody that I should be talking to? Let me know.

Hope and Social at the 'Come Dine with Us' event.

The new music industries work in a very different way than the record business of the ’60′s. The precious 7 inch of plastic discs of that decade (when music demand far outstripped supply) were rare; clamoured for. Music lovers saved their pennies and tens of them would gather round a single radio to hear the charts. People flocked in droves to record shops to hear the latest discs and treated their vinyl with the cotton glove respect that’s reserved for the finest of diamonds. People Treasured Music.

Today’s music environment is very different. With 13 million bands on [cough - spit] Myspace alone, a growing live scene, thousands of pieces of music becoming available free online daily, and most all forms of recorded music being easily copy and shareable, we can’t consider Music itself to be the carrier of our currency. The Democratisation of Music means more supply of music, and that means that the expectation is that it sells for less. What’s more, music is copyable, shareable, reproducable and even if only say 4% of the bands on Myspace are any good, that’s over half a million bands to compete with.

So, what can we sell?

If we can all now make, distribute and sell music, to succeed we’ve got to differentiate ourselves from the crowd & give people something they can’t get elsewhere. If we can give people something that isn’t repeatable and isn’t copyable then all the better. So, what’s unique and not copyable? A feeling, or an experience. We have a saying in Hope and Social. Have Fun, Make Art. It’s become part of our ethos. If it’s not fun we don’t do it; and if it sounds fun we should probably ask others to get involved. It may not be the same for your tribe, but for Hope and Social the currency we deal in is “Fun”.

3 Course Meal in a Crypt

Come Dine With Us

With the “Make Art, Have Fun” mantra resounding in our communal larynx, we took a demo of a song that sounds vaguely like French supermarket music, added the germ of an idea that a cheese and wine night could be fun and multiplied that by the effervescent mind of the brilliant Ben Denison‘s.

What we we came up with was a great way to galvanise our close fans, to get them involved in making art with us, to have a lot of fun and to raise money to fund our music making. We invited our fans to our home, the studio we’ve recorded all our albums to date in (and the venue for the Crypt Gig last year). We promised to cook great food, to have the band wait on, and play at our guests tables and finally, once everyone was suitably relaxed drunk, record a song together. We named it “Come Dine With Us” and we invited people by song.

The Event

We’ve already blogged about the amazing people who helped us pull all this together, but to see them in action is something else. A picture says a thousand words and all that:

Hope & Social • Come Dine With Us [Behind-the-scenes] from 3B Media on Vimeo.

We turned our studio into a French Bistro for the evening, we served a 3 course gourmet French meal to 70 people, the band waited tables, played at people’s tables, silent auctioned one-off items and recorded a song with our good people.

Offer Value

Our (initially flummoxed) drummer Gary Stewart (who joined us this past year) said, “I don’t understand… so you just think stuff up that you want to do, and people pay for you to do it?” and quite simply the answer is yes. When we do special events, we do our best to ensure that we give value to those who care enough to attend. We price it as something we could afford to do. Through this we’ve built relationships with our fans which enables us to sell unique events such as our Crypt gig last year and Come Dine With Us as far more than a standard gig.

People buy into our events because they know it will not only be a good time, but also that we’re not trying to bleed as much profit out of them as maybe we could. All our standard releases are Pay What You Want. People know we’re not in the game of ripping people off. Most importantly though, people know we’ll include them in the night and as in the case of our recent Come Dine With Us event, we might well make a song with ‘em for our album.

The Wine Bottle Orchestra

The Song

James Hamilton wrote a wine bottle orchestra part, we tuned 50 wine bottles, asked guests to bring an instrument of their choice and we made art. We recorded the song live along with our fans singing, blowing, clanking, banging and singing along. As Ed Waring said in his recent blog:

“Eurospin is not my favourite song on the album but it’s kinda my favourite bit on the album. Watch the amazing video below. You got to love the amazement on our faces that it’s working and the fact that the crowd just make it look so easy…”

Hope & Social • Eurospin from 3B Media on Vimeo.

… additionally however, the story of how we made this song has helped us reach many new fans.

The Footprint

More from 'Come Dine with Us'

The response to the event and the concept of the event has been amazing. In advance the twitter and facebook communities were rife with activity around the event, and by turning our guests into band members on the record itself, they became the evangelists for our record.

It’s not by accident that the tools we use to sell and promote our work online include the option to share. There’s the 3B Media videos, and the bandcamp music which can be easily embedded on most websites. Bandcamp also has the transformative “Post to twitter” and “Post to Facebook” direct links and through the stats package we can see this appearing daily in people’s posts. There are new blogs sprouting up about the event, and through selling more Fun we can reach out to even more new people.

The music industry has changed, however if you know your band and if you know your tribe you can give them something they can’t get anywhere else. Find that thing and that‘s your currency!

Digital music services - big updates to Spotify, Lala, and more.

There certainly was a lot of news and announcements in April even though it seemed to me that things got off to a slow start. Ultimately it turned into a Spring awakening as the month rolled on that it became a challenge to keep up with the avalanche of news, stories and announcements.

Some of the bigger stories? Facebook announces their new Open Graph protocol with Pandora as one of the first companies to partner with Facebook. It’s a start but will FB ever make music a spotlight of their service or do they consider music like any other social activity that makes up just another part of your life?

Spotify releases the first significant update in awhile with a heavy focus on sharing and social networking while Lala is finally being shuttered by Apple on May 31st.

Let the Apple game of speculation begin: iTunes in the cloud? Nope not anytime soon because Apple has something even bigger brewing and it has nothing to do with a streaming music service but maybe, just maybe given the timing of Lala’s shutdown, Apple will launch a music subscription service as early June? My guess is Apple will take it slow because of concerns from the labels and they will milk the a la carte market for as long as possible. Apple, as well, does a good job conditioning their users and fan boys so whatever they ultimately release will be carefully planned to stir maximum hype and ensure maximized revenue. I’m not really convinced that Apple cares much for the social aspects of music, seeing it more of a nuisance to achieving their media domination plans.

Let’s jump right in and see what April had for us to think, discuss and debate.

Investments and Funding

April was a very strong month for investment activity. A couple of notes: I have included some hardware/networking related investments which have a music component to them and as per my usual disclaimer, 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.

Total 2010 Investments as of May 10th, 2010

Q1/10: $99.6m

Q2/10 (to-date): $58.72m

2010 total to-date: $158.32m

• Zenverge, Fabless Semiconductor Company Building Digital Media Solutions for Content Storage, Playback, Mobility and Networking Closes $30 Million Series C Financing
• MXP4, the Leading Interactive Music Technology Platform, Closes $4 Million Investment to Accelerate the MXP4 Everywhere Strategy
• News Corp. raises bet on digital music as part of $10m series B investment in Beyond Oblivion
• Stitcher Secures $6 Million in Series B Venture Funding to Help Transform the Way We Listen to Talk Radio
• MusicMatic buys Mangrove’s share in Jamendo, intends to raise more funds
• Thumbplay, provider of mobile entertainment including music, videos and games raises $2.5m in funding
• Nimbit, provider of career management solutions for independent artists and labels receives $2.56m in new, unattributed funding.
• Yangaroo, a B2B digital delivery solution provider for music and advertising industries received $666k in Debt funding
• FameCast, an artist discovery engine received $2.71M in unattributed funding.
• Sleek Audio, raises $285k in debt financing

A couple of interesting funding articles you might find interesting…

• Help Fund Music Technology Startups via Musicians for Music 2.0
• Good News: There’s A Little More Funding Floating Around…

Music Services and Apps

Bandsintown a concert ticket aggregator, event recommendation and notification platform announced an API partnership up with Shazam, EMI and Reverbnation which will now expose concert date to 50 million people via these partner networks. I love that I can integrate my LastFM account (or Pandaro) with Bandsintown where they will track and notify me when my favourite bands are playing in town.

Senzoo.me – A simple and customizable fan-funding widget that encourages fans/consumers to pay back value creators like artists, developers, educators and musicians. Compared to similar platforms like Flattr and PaySwarm, Senzoo is extremely lightweight and does not require any technical skills to implement. Integrates with major blogging platforms (WordPress, Typepad, Drupal etc) and payments are handled through well established payment gateways like PayPal, Google Checkout and Amazon Flex Payment Services.

Beyond Oblivion – As mentioned above, this startup just received $10m in funding and is looking at an October 2010 launch date. What are they planning on doing? Well, in hyperbolic style, they plan to… “combine the stickiness of a social network with unlimited life-of-device access to the largest music library on Earth, within a vast ecosystem where content owners are paid per-play no matter if the original music file was ripped, bootlegged or legally or illegally downloaded.”

Indaba Music releases Mantis, a web-based Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) enabling anyone, from anywhere in the world, to record, edit and mix high-quality audio.

Headliner.FM – I really like this concept. Headliner is a social media cross promotion exchange that connects bands and artists to new fans. Fans will be more open to receiving recommendations from their favourite band to other similar/complementary artists. A great way for bands to leverage existing and well-connected networks and to share fan bases.

Mixtape for You – Based on Andrew Dubber’s “I Made You a Tape” idea, this new web service lets you create mixtape MP3s. Very simple site and limited in features, it’s a throwback to those days where you deliberated carefully to create the perfect mixtapes on cassette tapes for your friends, girl/boyfriend, spouse etc. My wife still has three or four mixtapes I put together many years ago which she still relishes today and I have a few hanging around in a box somewhere that I received from friends.

Songr – Another day, another music mash-up. Like a Digg for music, users submit song title/artist they are listening to and visitors to the site can bump a song up or down. The sites uses the YouTube API to pull the song in to listen/view the video.

AirKast – Digital content delivery platform and mobile app framework used by radio, television broadcasters and content publishers to distribute multimedia-rich content to mobile and connected consumer electronics devices.

WaTunes Launches Music Store Application on Facebook Platform – Pretty good launch timing in light of the Pandora and Spotify integration with Facebook. If users are already spending a lot of time on Facebook, they don’t need to leave the site to buy music (using Facebook currency perhaps?) that they may already be sharing and discussing with their Facebook friends.

Music related startups in Ireland – Naturally with such a focus on US startups, it’s a good reminder that there is a lot of digital music startup activity happening beyond our shores. Some of these Irish startups in this list are doing some pretty cool things.

Rhapsody Adds Offline Listening To Its iPhone App – Rhapsody is giving its iPhone app some bragging rights with an update that lets subscribers listen to tracks even when they’re not online. Users will now be able to download their Rhapsody playlists to their phones and by June, Rhapsody says it will add functionality so users can download individual songs and albums as well.

Amsterdam Music Hack Day – A weekend that brings together 150 of the best music and tech geeks produces a huge array of next-gen music apps. A list of all the hacks can be found here.

How Tech is Changing the Tone of Music as We Know it – A look at four different technologies looking to change the music landscape. Hypersonic sound is really fascinating. Sound is passed through a tightly focused beam that you can only hear when the beam is pointed directly at you.

Glee fans, grab the new iPhone karaoke app and annoy your friends.

Stereomood, an emotion based Internet radio station just released a new developer API.

LastFM is in the news again having dropped their on-demand streaming, and putting a renewed focus on scrobbling and personalized internet radio. Shortly after that announcement, they introduced a new program “Play direct from artist” that lets artists post full tracks for streaming.

Opinions, Insights and Analysis

Plugged/Unplugged: How Facebook Will Change Digital Music – “Facebook already has trained more than 400 million users in how these functions work within the Facebook confines. Applying them to the broader Internet holds significant implications for the music industry. For instance, it’s no secret that music recommendation and discovery is considered the greatest digital music opportunity. More music is being created that ever before, and the digital music services that can best introduce users to the new music best suited for them in the most seamless way possible will benefit not only the music service, but the artists and labels trying desperately to reach new fans.”

Digital Music Startups: Sexy, but Smart? – Insights from Adam Wexler, a young entrepreneur building out his startup Go Rank’em. Key point in this blog post is an interesting stat by David Pakman who says that only 5 out of 109 digital music startups have led to positive returns for investors.

A Billion Taco Vending Machines = Bigger Taco Industry – “Some in the music industry may question the economic impact of cloud music, but I think it’s a great opportunity to turn every device into a vending machine. Music is such a spur-of-the-moment emotional experience that if people hear a song and can get it with one click they will (if it’s easy). If every phone is a vending machine that’s a few billion more retail outlets to take the place of the vanishing record stores,”

Black Eyed Peas Will.i.am commenting at Twitter’s Chirp Conference – “The band of the future is not going to be a singer, a guitarist and a bass player. It will be a singer, a guitarist, a bass player and a code writer – the guy who does apps, computer animation. That is a group. It is going to be about self-contained content-providers.” I’m not a fan of Black Eyed Peas but his comment is rather insightful and on the money. It’s also the same sentiment I’ve heard from a few indie artists I know.

Research: Music recommendation is *the* big opportunity – “Word of mouth recommendations from friends and family is the most powerful way of driving purchases.” Lefsetz has been writing and talking about filtering as being the next big thing.

Anatomy of a band website – Lots be honest, most band/artist websites leave a lot to be desired. Most are static, brochure-type sites that don’t engage fans and/or nurture an active and vibrant community that demands repeated frequency visits. Which bands do you think are effectively using their websites? Nine Inch Nails comes to mind. Others?

Spotting the Creators of Peer Influence – “People make over 500 billion impressions on each other about products and services every year.” In a trust-based economy, consumers are influenced by their peers, friends and family. Personal influence is the new advertising? How will this play out for artists? And how does it tie into the music filtering and personal recommendation process?

Excellent RAIN Internet Radio Summit coverage from the NAB conference in Las Vegas. A lot of insights on internet radio and mobile apps. A recommended read.

Witnessing The Atomization of Artistic Culture. – “The internet gives us far more choice than the limits imposed upon us by broadcast media. We know of more bands, we can get tour dates pushed to us, can sample music long before it is released and we can reserve tickets well before the show. But we are doing this across many more artists, spreading our limited disposable income around in ways we didn’t when we had fewer choices. Nevermind that we are offered billions of other entertainment choices from video games, YouTube, Facebook games and even Crowdreel and Bitly.TV.”

A decade of digital: 10 things for 2010 – “Digital is not a channel. It’s a suite of platforms, channels and tactics that will, ultimately subsume its parents entirely. Digital marketing is not simply a new place to disperse persuasive symbols, but the emergence of any entirely new behavioural grammar, as companies and their customer begin to engage with each other in entirely new ways in entirely new spaces, where everyone has an equal voice.”

Upcoming Events

• Digital Music LA – Los Angeles, CA, May 11th, 2010
• OpenMusicMedia Toronto – Toronto, ON, May 12th, 2010
• San Francisco Music Hack Day – San Francisco, CA, May 15th and 16th, 2010
• NARM Convention – Chicago, IL May 15th to May 17th, 2010
• SF MusicTech Summit – San Francisco, CA – May 17th, 2010
• Future of Music Coalition Presents D.C. Policy Day – Washington, DC – May 25th, 2010
• Open Music Media Montreal – Montreal, QC – May 25th, 2010
• transmitCHINA Conference – Shanghai, China, June 2nd to 4th, 2010

We spend a lot of time with our faces buried in our computers so let me end this recap by saying get out there and support live music! The best technology we have is our ears, our hearts and the magic created by artists and their instruments!

See you next month.

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 east coast edition of Digital Music Forum played out in New York on February 24th and 25th. Digital Music News did a great job capturing some of the key points raised in the various talks. Here a few of the interesting discussions and if you want to check out the rest, follow this link.

• Live@DMF: Ted’s Locker Room Speech: ‘Enough Already’ – “Enough reminiscing, old music business is not coming back, “the old days of the music business are over.”
• Live@DMF: There’s a Mobile Music App for That – “The ability to go across platforms and devices… is an inescapable responsibility of the so-called web app developer.”
• Live@DMF: The Umbrella ‘State of the Union’ – “You’re going to see a shift in the power structure, and it’s going to be ugly… the companies that adapt, open up and let people in… the ones that don’t do that will get squashed”
• Live@DMF: The Game of Music Gaming Is Changing – “Major console, mobile, social-based (and virtual) games are leading segments for music.”

Investments and Funding

Investments in music and audio related technology companies continues to be fairly strong in February with another ~$26m in investments. For those keeping a tally, in the first two months of 2010, we have seen total investments of approximately $70m. Please keep in mind this isn’t a comprehensive list and the numbers have been pulled from public sources but it still gives us a pretty good sense of general investment activity in the music tech space. If you know of others, please share them in the comments section below.

Here are some start-ups that received funding in February:

• Music Mastermind raises first round $4.9M for virtual music creation
• LinkoTec Gets $1.5 Million For Web-Based ‘Media Manager
• Social Music Player TuneWiki Raises $7m From NTT Docomo
• Spotify Reportedly Raises New Funding From Founders Fund For U.S. Expansion
• Tunesat Raises $975,000 For TV Music Tracking
• Online Music Service Mog Raises $9.5M; UK Expansion Planned
• Slacker Gets $2.0M In Debt Funding

I should also note a couple more companies that received funding in January which I missed reporting:

• Pioneers of the Inevitable (developers of Songbird) received $2.02M in Unattributed funding.
• Instinctiv (iTunes plug-in) received $400k in Unattributed funding

Music Services and Apps

Twones just released The Music Bar which is a Firefox add-on that gives you a set of tools to bookmark, manage, share, discover and search for music.

Extension.FM is a very cool Google Chrome extension that makes it easy to listen to any music embedded on a web page. Once installed, click on the button and a playlist is created which you can listen to within the embedded music player. Amazingly, you can navigate away from the page and the music keeps playing. A couple of other great features is the ability to scrobble to LastFM and as you visit different sites, Extension.FM builds a library of music for you that you can revisit anytime. Of course, no music is downloaded or stored on your computer. Here is a quick 2 minute intro video that describes this tool. If you haven’t switched over to Chrome, this might make it worth it. Ever since moving away from Firefox for performance reasons, the number of amazing Chrome extensions being developed keeps growing.

Bitspace Launches HTML5-Based Streaming Music Player and Backup Service – “There is no dearth of streaming music services on the web today, so it takes quite a bit for a new service to stand out from other popular services like Spotify, MOG and Lala. Today, we came across Bitspace, an online music player and backup service for your music files that puts an interesting new spin on this subject. This service stands out because of its great design and the fact that it’s fully based on HTML5.”

RealNetworks, MTV to Spin-off Rhapsody Music Service – The thinking here is that both companies get to move the money-losing music service off their books, and the new structure may theoretically give them a better chance of finding a buyer.

Bankrupt, Crowd-Funded SellaBand Acquired by German Investors – Reading a few blog posts and comments, it doesn’t sound like many people were all that surprised. Sellaband’s crowdsourced music-financing experiment seemed promising, and in its three-plus years, it attracted thousands of artists and financed dozens of CD and download releases, so it wasn’t a total failure. However, the company also admits that the company’s bankruptcy resulted from a combination of old-school record industry ways and new-school misplaced optimism.

Rejected By Apple, Grooveshark Releases App For Jailbroken iPhones On Cydia – Having lost patience with Apple’s app approval process, Grooveshark has gone ahead and released their app for jailbroken iPhone/iPod Touches. This is a ballsy move and probably one that won’t sit well with Apple and the labels. Either this move goes quietly into the night or Grooveshark has just given their detractors more ammunition to go after them.

theBizmo launches Hit Or Not Facebook music app – This new facebook app is similar in concept to the original The Next Big Sound when they first launched. In this game, you play the role of an A&R person and test your hit making skills. I spent a bit of time playing around with Hit or Not and it’s kind of fun to play and even slightly addictive as you try to find those hidden gems in hopes of turning them into “big stars” and making yourself rich.

SeeqPod Founder Resurfaces with Mimvi Music Aggregator – “Mimvi, currently in private alpha, will use a similar approach to that of SeeqPod — which claimed 50 million unique monthly users at one point — to grab videos from Brightcove, Crackle, DailyMotion, MTV, Pitchfork TV, Veoh, Vevo, Vimeo, and YouTube, mashing their metadata against what its web crawlers determine about a given song’s popularity and associations. In addition, it reacts to how people use it.”

RadioDNS – I’m still a big fan of radio, mostly internet radio now so it excites me to see a project like RadioDNS. This collaborative project wants to converge radio broadcasting and IP-delivered services. I see it as taking a tried and tried technology (terrestrial radio) and harnessing today’s internet technology to turn radio in a multi-platform medium. The write-up is a bit technical but this four minute video should give you enough background information. It’s worth reading Jerry Del Colliano’s new media predictions to get his perspective on the future of radio. I believe there is some tie-in’s between what he is saying and what RadioDNS is attempting to do. We’ll see whether RadioDNS is adopted in any significant way or will it be another noble attempt that is overlooked or worse, dismissed outright without serious consideration.

Micropayments has been getting a lot more attention recently with the launch of PaySwarm and Flattr. PaySwarm is open source and allows artists/writers that create digital content to distribute it through the Web and receive payment directly from their fans and customers. Flattr, started by a co-founder of Pirate Bay, will let consumers divvy up money to the musicians, bloggers, photographers, or other publisher of their choice. Will these new payment platforms gain traction? Will consumers trust them? I also wonder how labels, managers and others in the music business chain feel if bands start receiving these micropayments, effectively cutting them out of the action. There is going to be a lot nit picky things that need to be carefully addressed in order to make this a sustainable payment model. Don’t forget, PayPal already offers micropayments and have the infrastructure and experience to expand this service if we see any significant adoption.

Opinions, Insights and Analysis

The hype is in the cloud, but the reality is hybrid – “The cloud-based solutions, specifically DaaS (Data as a Service) have to be available with the “hybrid cloud” option. Hybrid cloud solutions give you ubiquitous access to your data , locally as well as in the cloud. In does not matter where are you accessing the files — they can be locally available in your LAN or on your own computer; or they could be accessible in the cloud. A hybrid cloud solution seamlessly keeps both local and cloud files synchronized.”

Rent vs. Own: The Streaming Music Debate Continues – Is this really worth debating anymore? Some people will be quick to adopt streaming services, some will want to buy, whether it is digital or physical and then other will happily access music in multiple ways. As mentioned in the above article, realistically, it won’t be an either/or choice, consumers will just have more ways to consume music.

Sony Music chief foresees the endgame for CDs – “While 60% of Sony’s music business is now made up of CD sales, Hesse saw CDs as accounting for only 20% of the business by 2013. The rest will be made up of musical ringtones, subscriptions, and downloads, either paid for by consumers or supported by ad sponsors.”

Google’s Music Strategy: Past, Present and Future- I’m not sure that Google will unseat Apple anytime soon when it comes to music, although some of the music labels probably wouldn’t mind a new partner. If Google treats music as an after-thought, rabid music consumers will know it. But I suspect they are serious, given that they supposedly lost out on buying Lala and now the rumour is they are looking at buying Catch Media. Love or hate iTunes and the iPod, Apple has captured the minds (and pockets) of music consumers and will work hard to keep them. I’m looking forward to the competition between these heavyweights and I know that there are one or two start-ups lurking in the background that will one day become a music heavyweight themselves.

New free music sites, Guevara and Free All Music learn from others’ mistakes – My initial reaction is “why are they trying this again?”. I don’t know if this “tweaked” model will finally find success but it’s better that we cheer for their success for the sake of music and technology. More success equals more confidence by consumers, investors, artists, labels, advertisers that new music business models can work. It may not be a service that some of us will care about but if they find the right audience, hopefully they make it work.

5 Mantras For The New Music Business – So the big labels are trying to preserve past, successful business models, mainly the CD release complex and yet want to wholeheartedly embrace new digital strategies? Not sure you can have it both ways given the massive shifts in technology and digital music consumption. The question now being asked is whether content owners should accept lower average revenue per user (ARPU)? Here is a great piece by Kyle Bylin where he writes about MusicDNA and whether it has a chance to catch on. In this piece he describes very well the record industry’s structured top-down, highly centralized “push” marketing model and how “the push mentality of the record industry could not be extended into the digital realm, because all three of these institutions — that they built themselves on the back of — deteriorated in the face of the societal and technological shifts that the Internet brought forth”.

The Challenge for the Music Business – “The tried and true methods of creating success in the music industry are over and are never coming back. The economics just don’t work for most acts anymore. The greatest risk in the next 5-10 years for music is that no one will want to fund the development and promotion of new musical acts the way the major labels did in the past, until we see a new financial model.”

Upcoming Music Conferences and Events

• Music 4.5 – London UK, March 4th, 2010
• Billboard Music and Money Symposium – New York City, March 4th, 2010
• Canadian Music Week – Toronto, Ontario, March 10th to March 14th, 2010
• Digital Strategies Conference – Toronto, Ontario, March 10th, 2010 (Part of Canadian Music Week)
• 2010 Media Summit – New York City, March 10th to March 11th, 2010
• SXSW – Austin, Texas, March 12th to March 21st, 2010

I’m planning to attend Canadian Music Week, and particularly looking forward to the Digital Music and Media Summit and Digital Strategies Conference. For those attending SXSW, be safe and pace yourselves. Before heading off, it might be a good idea to check out this SXSW survival guide to help get you through those long, action packed days.

See you next month!

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.

Has music become a sideshow?

Did you watch the Grammys? I didn’t.

Music’s self-proclaimed “biggest night” celebrated it’s 52nd year this past Sunday with one of the most colorful, over-the-top spectacles in the broadcast’s history. Pink pulled a Cirq Du Sole while dripping wet and suspended from the rafters. Lady Gaga played a duet with a rock and roll icon who more recently has come to resemble a Lady Gaga himself, Elton John. Green Day performed a broadway number, and the Black Eyed Peas dressed up like Tina Turner.

And most likely much of that was set to music.

It’s unfortunate that even on “music’s biggest night” the music itself is relegated to the background – an excuse to dress up and do something ridiculous that might buy you a few more weeks in the blogs and tabloids. Yet that’s exactly how the priorities appeared to shake out on Sunday. Yes, It’s an awards show and awards shows need to drive ratings to stay alive. It’s also a television broadcast, and translating music for a visual medium requires adding an element of interest to the performances. TV doesn’t have the advantage of the living, breathing energy of the club and needs to compensate.

Nevertheless, the Grammys are arguably the most ridiculous awards show on television. Certainly the least sophisticated, with the exception of the MTV music awards. I think that says something about music and the position it holds in the entertainment industry as a whole.

Music’s Position in the Entertainment Hierarchy

In some ways, music is an outdated medium. We’ve lived in a visual world for decades now, with TV and movies dominating entertainment. More recently interactivity has come to the forefront. Music plays an important role in each of these formats, but still hovers somewhere near the background. While music supports the overall effect of the media package, it’s subservient to the visual and interactive elements.

Music as a Celebrity Springboard

You can see this hierarchy in the celebrity world. When popstars reach a certain exposure threshold what do they do? Begin make cameos in movies. Landing a supporting role is like a big-time promotion for a pop singer. The actors who take the opposite route are usually the ones struggling to stand out in the Big Pond of motion pictures. Their agents convince them to take a short swim on down to the slightly smaller music pond where they can be a Big Fish. Take J-Lo for example.

Music as an Entry Point to a Media Empire

For another example just look at Apple. When Apple introduced the iPod and iTunes they revolutionized the way people enjoy music, but they also used these products to position themselves as a major player in the media/entertainment space. Over the past year Apple has shifted their focus heavily towards the mobile gaming industry. Remember that big Apple music event last September? It would have been more accurately billed as an iPod event, because Jobs spent much more time talking about all the great things the iPod touch has brought to video games than the new iTunes LP format. Music was the entry point for Apple, not the end goal.

I don’t say all of this to discount the value of music as an artform, or even as a medium of entertainment. Music has an inherent power that none of these other artforms can claim. With no shapes, colors, faces, no buttons, joysticks or touchpads, music is able to make an unparalleled emotional impact on the listener. Music has a unique way of capturing time and space, and the ability to transport a person back to the important events in their life.

The fact is that our culture has changed, and continues to change.

The Musician’s Role in Culture

Musicians need to figure out where they fit into the larger arts and entertainment picture if they hope to build or maintain sustainable careers. Maybe this means accepting the subservient role music has been dealt over the past two decades and focusing on licensing for film and television, or video games and Rock Band. Maybe it means trying to break this mold and attempting to capture the world’s attention again the way rock and roll did in the 60′s and 70′s.

Perhaps the reason why the Grammys feel so irrelevant and inauthentic is that the organizers appear to try to ignore music’s new role in entertainment and pretend that music is still king, while at the same time desperately relying on non-musical spectacle to get anybody to care.

What are your thoughts? Can music stand on it’s own in today’s entertainment culture or must it be paired with spectacle to be remain a viable industry?

This is a guest post by Gabriel Nijmeh, a business analyst and music technology enthusiast.

What a month of news and announcements coming from the digital music and tech world. The big Internet guns (Google, MySpace, Facebook) and a pack of known and new startups were battling for the top digital music business headlines. Funding, new music services, the ongoing debate about ad-supported vs. subscription business models, music ownership vs. access and new mobile apps, the debate and discussions continues.

Show Us the Money

Starting off with funding, the past few months has shown an apparent thaw in venture capital flow as as quite a number of music startups have attracted investor’s money. After a bleak period in the financial markets, the stocks markets have rebounded but overall economic recovery tells another story. There are no shortage of analysts, market pundits and economists who have declared the recession is over but the rebound will have to prove itself. Some are saying that the tech sector will lead us out of the “great recession” as evidenced by strong results at Apple, Google, Amazon, Intel and IBM. Techcrunch is reporting that Q3 venture financing Is Up 17.5%.With all the latest announcements, there is no shortage of confidence or eagerness to plant some stakes in the online digital music business. Amie St, Deezer, Shazam, GlobalGrind, Ecast, Free All Media, Band Metrics, Conduit Labs, MOG all announced financing deals over the past couple of months.

Duncan Freeman at Indie Music Tech is keeping tally of all 2009 music tech related investments and should have Q4 update for us before year’s end.

Access vs. Ownership, Downloads vs. Streaming and the Battle of Business Models.

Is this really a “versus issue” or can access, ownership, bundling, downloads and streaming all co-exist? The digital music business is like a pinata and many companies are lining up to take a few whacks believing inside is a pot of gold.

Google, MySpace, Facebook make music moves — It was only a matter of time before Google and Facebook made a direct move into music. Too little too late? A good thing for consumers, artists, labels? The general response seems to be “ho-hum”. The Google music announcement is at least five years too late, and doesn’t offer anything new or compelling to either artists or consumers. It just formalizes and attempts to monetize Google music searches. Dave Kusek has posted a piece entitled: Google Music and the New Payola – Some Things Never Change and lays out who the winners are. More analysis here and here.

Dell and Universal Team Up to Offer Pre-Loaded Music Bundles — Dell and Universal have teamed up to give consumers a chance to purchase pre-bundled DRM-free MP3s when buying a new computer.  Dell is also partnering with Napster to offer a year of Napster Unlimited on selected laptops.

Daniel Ek of Spotify expands on the idea of packaging music and getting it into people’s existing billing habits and he is walking the talk but announcing that Spotify and 3 UK are hooking up to bundle Spotify premium with the HTC Hero phone. Will this be the future of music purchasing?

MOG’s $5 Monthly Music Service Highlights Spotify Obstacle – Earlier in the summer MOG secured new funding and come US Thanksgiving, MOG will be the newest music streaming service. It was clearly noted by MOG’s CEO David Hyman that a free, ad-supported service is not possible due to the high cost of licensing on-demand music for the United States. This raises questions about Spotify’s US offering in early 2010. Will they offer an ad-supported service or go directly subscription-based?

Lala App Turns iPhone Into Dime Jukebox — Pending Apple approval, Lala has an iPhone app ready to go that will let users stream music for only 10 cents a track on their computer and iPhone/iPod touch. As for the business model, LaLa claims they earn on average of $67 per user which is 300 percent more than what iTunes reels in. Sandy Pearlman has been espousing 5 cent downloads for more than four years and Lala is the closest to realizing the idea.

Free All Music to offer free MP3s, new ad model — In the “it’s be done before BUT…” category. Free All Music which just recently raised $1m in seed funding and is set to launch, will be offering free MP3 downloads in exchange for selecting and viewing a 15-20
second ad. For people with time and a no money, it’s not a bad deal. For those with no time and with money, this isn’t a big deal given the effort and song download limits. Will this ever prove to be a sustainable business model? Digital Music News provides a good analysis.

Opinions, Insights and Analysis

With all these announcements, new services, new business models comes the obligatory opinions, insights,   and analysis.  Here are a few over the past few month:

Digital music – who’s making money? – For years, people have been using sites like Pirate Bay and P2P to download music and now that there so many legal online music services then ever before, will music fans open up their wallets to these services? This is a massive bet on the behavior of the modern music fan.

Is Streaming The Future Of Music? Don’t Be So Sure — “Streaming makes technological sense. But it doesn’t make financial sense. Which means we’re confronted, once again, with the single, glaring, ineradicable fact of the internet age: what’s exciting and welcome for consumers is almost always catastrophic for the poor bastards who produce the content.”

Will the music industry ever extract real value from digital? — A thoughtful piece about tempering expectations that services like Spotify are the next big thing. As CD sales will continue to erode, the future of the music market will be a fragmentation into a number of niches.

Q&A: A front-row seat for media’s meltdown – An insightful interview with Eric Garland, CEO and co-founder of Big Champagne where he talks about the impact digital technology has had on the music and movie industries.

Music Services and Mobile Apps

Activity in the mobile music front keeps bubbling as more developers come to the table with new music based apps for the iPhone/iPod touch in particular . The biggest iPhone/iPod touch music app released this month was Rock Band. It comes with 20 tracks and the option to purchase more music in-app. Tap Tap Revenge 3 was also released this month and works on a very similar premise where using Apple’s in-app service users can purchase music bundles.  Not surprisingly, both apps are in the Top 10 Paid Apps list.

In a related note, which some might call short-sighted, a market analyst is claiming that the iPhone/iPod touch is the biggest threat ever to games publishers. I’m confident games publishers won’t follow the same path as the music industry and have started to embrace “digital distribution” across platforms, game portals, consoles and mobile. But is everything coming up roses? A couple of recent reports indicate that sales and revenues are down in the music games category.

Music Ally has put together a slide deck covering 10 Trends in Music Games that is worth taking a look at. And Kukapp is a great site to keep tabs on the hottest and best selling iPhone apps.

Other interesting music apps released or planned for release include:

Cadence App — An iPhone app for workouts that automatically creates a playlists beats per minute (BPM). No more fumbling around for that right set of songs to get you through a workout!

ZooZbeat — A feature-rich mobile application for creative music creation on the go. Allows users to download and recreate tracks from major label artists. Fans want to interact and be part of the creative process. I would highly recommend you check out Suzanne Lainson’s blog and catch her on Twitter because she hits upon this topic quite often.

MocoSpace teams with Nellymoser for mobile music app — Mobile social network MocoSpace announced an agreement with turnkey content and services solutions provider Nellymoser to launch MocoSpace Music, a new application enabling consumers to discover new releases and featured acts, view artist photo slideshows and video interviews, search for nearby live shows and purchase ringtones.

We are the Panel — A group of “tastemakers” are asked to pick two albums each week that they review and offer a full music stream delivered to an iPhone app. ($2.99). Will apps like this be part of the future of music journalism?

A few other interesting tidbits this month:

Playdar Can Save Music Services Cash, Enable P2P Streaming — A small piece of open-source software has flown under the radar but looks to be very interesting and possibly contentious if this gains traction and impacts music license revenue streams. Playdar can detect when someone is streaming a song they have on their computer or home network and play it from anywhere. This would reduce license fees owed to the labels. What if this can be done across the network and different listeners? Are we closer to realizing the Celestial Jukebox which has been talked about for almost ten years?

Midem Net Labs will be showcasing 15 new music startups to be judged by some of the digital music biggest trailblazers and innovators at Midem in January 2010.  They have already announced the first five startups: GoMix, Radionomy, Kickstarter, Thesixtyone and Pops Worldwide. Want to participate? You have until November 6th to apply. Looking forward to see who the remaining startups will be and what innovative products/services they have up their sleeves.

PiracyPayback — Anyone who has pirated copyrighted material and feeling any remorse can now “donate” to help ease the guilt. They don’t name who is running the site and claim the money goes to “to beneficiaries who work with or represent artists and other professionals impacted by digital media piracy.”

New Business Models and how musicians, labels and songwriters are compensated – The Future of Music Coalition has posted a great set of presentations/spreadsheets aimed directly at musicians.

Reality will not match unreasonable expectations

Let me tie-up this month’s recap with a few thoughts of my own. Looking at the number of companies already in service, and those coming on stream shortly, consumers face confusing and conflicting choices. They will be faced with the difficult decision of choosing the right service and in the face of unprecedented choice, may not make any choice at all.

In a fragmented online music world where niches have started to develop, how many people will want to pay for any music if they can snack for “free” from each of the various online music sites to satisfy their music consumption? Building the technology is the easy part. There also appears to be more of a willingness to negotiate more reasonable license deals between start-ups and labels but the biggest challenge will be changing behaviors and mindset. Will consumer step-up and open their wallets because they find these services compelling and offer value that can’t be found elsewhere?

Having said that, we are experiencing a period of experimentation as the music industry and music startups try to work through new revenue and service models that may one day be viable and sustainable. We are all witnessing and experiencing a massive and tumultuous shift from pre-web music economics to web-native music economics.The important consideration is acknowledging that expectations have to be tempered. It is easy to be dismissive (I’ll be first to accuse myself of that) but now that the gates have opened, problems are being solved, innovative ideas are being worked in a collaborative fashion outside the walls of a closed garden.  As companies scramble to find a set of valuable products and services that will hopefully benefit all participants (labels, artists, technologists, fans), let’s look at all this disruptive change from a positive perspective. Entering this business is not for the faint of heart. The digital music highway is littered with causalities.  Innovators need to be encouraged and rewarded. Music as culture needs to be celebrated.

Looking forward to seeing what next month’s digital music business brings our way!

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 album has reigned as the prince of popular music formats for nearly a century. Yet, it’s become unclear how long this reign will last. Digital technology has transformed the way many listeners experience music and fueled a resurgence of the short-form single.

For the past several years bloggers, critics, industry pros and consumers have contributed to countless articles and comments discussing the merits of this transformation. Most of these discussions have revolved around business models and economics. If the album becomes obsolete, what will it do to industry profits? How will artists continue to make money? Conspicuously missing is any thought given to how all of this will effect music as an art-form.

I recently stumbled across an interview between Exclaim’s Vish Khanna and songwriter Sufjan Stevens that approaches the issue from a very different perspective.

For many years Sufjan Stevens was known for his prolific songwriting and ambitious projects. Between 2000 and 2006 Stevens released seven expansive albums. This month he will release two new projects, Run Rabbit Run which dropped on the 6th and multimedia set the BQEwhich will be released on the 20th. However, the last conventional album he released was back in 2005 with Come on Feel the Illinoise.

Many of his numerous fans have been wondering what’s up, and speculation came to a head a couple of weeks ago when Stevens made some comments that some took as an  announcement of retirement.

When Vish Khanna asks Stevens to clarify he quickly dispels any rumors that he is calling it quits, but he goes on to give some insight into why he has waited so long to put out a true follow-up to Illinoise.

I definitely feel like ‘What is the point? What’s the point of making music anymore?’ I feel that the album no longer has a stronghold or has any real bearing anymore. The physical format itself is obsolete; the CD is obsolete and the LP is kinda nostalgic. So, I think the album is suffering and that’s how I’ve always created—I work with these conceptual albums in the long-form. And I’m wondering, what’s the value of my work once these forms are obsolete and everyone’s just downloading music?

What does an artist do when his medium suddenly becomes irrelevant? The pundits are usually quick to urge the artist to simply switch to a new medium, because their concerns are typically focused on the business aspect. Other artists and die-hard fans will generally encourage the artist to stick to his convictions and forget about what the rest of the world is doing.

The pundits are obviously missing an important point, which is that music is not simply another product to be bought and sold. It’s an art, and the album is an art-form. The artists – and especially the fans – often forget that music is also a business and that the artist has to make money if he’s to continue making art.

So what’s a guy like Sufjan Stevens to do?

First of all, the album isn’t dead, nor is it likely to be anytime soon. Blogger hyperbole and personal existential crises aside, nobody ever said Stevens can’t continue putting out full-length conceptual epics for the remainder of his career.

It can be easy to look at the current state of the industry as a whole with all of its transitions and tribulations and lose sight of the fact that each artist and each fan’s experience is different. Just because the market is moving away from a particular format doesn’t mean everybody needs to abandon it immediately or risk becoming obsolete.

Sufjan Stevens’ fans love his work largely because of the way he has used the album format to communicate his artistic vision. If he continues to release in the album format his fans are likely to continue buying and listening to his music that way.

The same goes for any artist. Don’t get so wrapped up in the latest fashions and buzz-words that you lose sight of your own unique offering. If an established career artist like Sufjan Stevens isn’t immune to this I would imagine that many more new artists stumble get caught up in it all the time. You want to put out nothing but epic concept albums? If you can find the audience then I say go for it. You want to write 90 second musical haiku and release it in bundles of 20? If that’s what you’re passionate about and you can find a way to make it work financially, who has any right to stand in your way?

I have come to advocate a model of continual creative output where an artist releases a song or two at a time in shorter intervals for the purpose of increased fan engagement. I feel strongly about this type of release strategy because I believe it gives emerging artists the best opportunity to cultivate a strong base of core fans and keep them connected. I’m not alone in that opinion – the concept has begun to really catch on recently. But don’t confuse any one model’s acceptance with the idea that you have to give up your own vision. Maybe Sufjan Stevens would find success in smaller, more frequent releases. Or maybe he’ll come up with something completely new. But if you can’t really get behind it as an artistic form then it likely won’t work well for you anyway.

Write great music and present it in the way that best expresses what you’re trying to say. If you start there and you are serious about building your career the business models and economics will fall into place over time. Read everything you can about what is working for others and incorporate what you feel will make you successful. But don’t lose sight of your own vision and your own style in the process or you’ll risk stalling your career, in some cases before it really begins.

Here’s a recap of what went on here at Creative Deconstruction and in the music industry over the past couple of 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:

• Why music still needs the underground – Digital distribution has caused musical innovation to hit the mainstream faster than ever. What does this mean for the underground?
• Copyright and artists – do great artists steal? - In light of the Coldplay vs. Satriani settlement we ask the question: is it ever ok to copy another piece of music? Where is the line?

This Week:

• New Forrester Report Presents ‘Music Product Manifesto’ - Mark Mulligan of the Forrester Research Group offers his ideas on a possible future for music products.
• New Music Releases – October 6, 2009 – Built to Spill, Mission of Burma, The Raveonette’s, Sufjan Stevens and the Xx’s.
• New Music Seminar Chicago – “Everything You Know Is Wrong” – My summary and review of an important conference.
  
• 1,000 True Fans and the Importance of Milestones in Your Music Career - Revisiting Kevin Kelly’s now famous 1,000 True Fans concept.
• Targeting and Converting Potential Fans – If 1,000 True Fans is your goal, where do you begin?
• Review: Does Spotify Live Up to the Hype? - Spotify prepares to hit the states in a whirlwind of buzz. How does it stack up?
• EMI Drops Lawsuit, Licenses Entire Catalogue to Grooveshark – The story of EMI vs. Grooveshark takes an unexpected turn.
• Think Outside the Venue To Get That First Gig – Sometimes if the gatekeepers won’t let you through you just need to find a way to go around.
• No Royalties for Ringtone ‘Performances’ – A ridiculous lawsuit meets a swift end.

This Week in Music History:

The Quarrymen

1957 – Paul McCartney made his first appearance with The Quarry Men at New Clubmoor Hall, Norris Green, Liverpool. The line-up for The Quarry Men was John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Eric Griffiths, Colin Hanton, and Len Garry. Paul played John some songs that he has composed which Lennon contributes, marking the birth of the Lennon & McCartney songwriting partnership. (This Day in Music.com)

In any well-managed business each member of the team has a set of specific measurables to help them – and their employers – know whether or not they’re on track. Without these milestones it can be very difficult to remain focused and accomplish long term goals.

Artists and musicians are no different – except that they may need this structure even more than their white-collar counterparts. A career in music is something that builds slowly and takes constant, focused attention to properly cultivate. The goal is sustainability. You want to have the means to quit your day job and support yourself with your music. It can take years in the trenches to reach that point, and without strategic goals and milestones it is easy to lose focus. The most frustrating thing for an artist to wake up and realize they’re off track and have been treading water for months (or years!)

1,000 True Fans

One of the best music-career milestones that I’ve come across is the concept that Wired co-founder and blogger Kevin Kelly dubbed ’1,000 True Fans.’

The concept is fairly simple, and since most of you are likely already familiar with it I’ll just provide a brief explanation. If an artist can cultivate a base of just 1,000 fans who are radically committed to his work, those fans will provide enough income to support that artist. The theory goes that each ‘true fan’ will spend on average about $100 per year on the artist. That adds up to an annual revenue stream of $100,000. Even after expenses that should be enough for any individual artist to live comfortably.

There is a common argument against the 1,000 True Fans concept. If you are a member of a band it may have jumped out at you right away. $100,000 per year gross may be enough for an individual artist, but once you divvy that up between the members of a four- or five-piece band it starts looking a bit measly.

Fortunately, the math isn’t as bad as it sounds. Remember – these 1,000 True Fans represent only the most committed subsection of your fan base. There many other fans - what Kevin Kelly calls ‘Lesser Fans’ – contributing to your career. I’m not going to use the term ‘Lesser Fans’ because I don’t like it. Instead, I’d rather use the terminology that Tom Silverman used at the New Music Seminar here in Chicago on October 6. Silverman split fans into four categories: super fans, active fans, passive fans and potential fans.

Think of your fan base as a pyramid. The super fans are the smallest group, but contribute the most revenue per fan. They’re at the top. Beneath them you have a much larger group of active fans. Instead of spending $100/year, these fans may spend closer to $20/year on your products and shows. Yet, because there are about five times more active fans than super fans, their gross contribution ends up being about the same – $100,000 annually. The total revenue from these two groups is $200,000/year.

Below that you have your passive fans. Again, there are about five times more passive fans than active fans, but they only download your most popular singles, resulting in a spend of about $2 per year. This group contributes about $50,000 per year.

Potential fans of course make up the largest group at the base of the pyramid. These are people that may not be aware of your work, but who have an appreciation for the style or genre of music you play. Maybe they follow similar bands. This group contributes only a fraction of the revenue of the previous group, but when it all adds up may equal something along the lines of $5,000 per year.

That brings our total to about $255,000, or a quarter of a million dollars. Split that up four ways and although you won’t be able to afford that Bentley you’ve always wanted, you each should be living comfortably. And remember, this is just the revenue coming directly from your fans. This does not include sync licensing, sponsorships, grants, royalties, etc. The actually number could be closer to $300,000.

To 1,000 and beyond

The 1,000 True Fan marker is a milestone, but your career shouldn’t stop there. Obviously, you want as many people as possible to hear and enjoy your music. The bigger the tip of the pyramid gets, the more that will trickle down into the rest of your fanbase. Each super fan is going to influence several other people (sometimes hundreds, thanks to social media) and evangelize a few new active and passive fans who have to potential to one day become super fans themselves.

In a follow-up post I’m going to address how to go about cultivating these 1,000 True Fans. One of the most frequent questions that arises when this concept is discussed is, ‘How do I get there?’ I’ve put together some strategies that will hopefully help to answer that question.

In the meantime, is this outline clear? Let me know your questions, comments, concerns and I will try to incorporate them into the follow-up to make sure all of this is as helpful as possible.

Original album artwork for Kraftwerk 'The Man-Machine'

Lot’s of new music this week from the likes of Built to Spill, Mission of Burma, The Raveonette’s, and Xx.

Sufjan Stevens brings us Run Rabbit Run, a string quartet re-imagining of his all-electronic sophomore album Enjoy Your Rabbit. Read the full review I posted last week for more information.

I am also unhealthily excited about the new remasters of the Kraftwerk catalogue that drop this week. Back when I ran a little venue outside of Chicago we used to hook turntables up to the PA and play The Man-Machine during off hours. I will be waiting to pick them up until November, though, when they release the remasters on vinyl.

This week also brings us five reissued New Order albums on 180 gram vinyl, which means that I will soon be hearing them blasting through my floorboards courtesy of my post-punk obsessed neighbor downstairs.

The complete list is below with affiliate links to purchase straight from iTunes or Amazon (depending on availability at the time of posting.) You’ll notice that this list only includes major label acts – this is simply because I don’t have the time to track down each and every new independent release. If you are an independent artist or record label and would like your upcoming releases included on this weekly list please contact me.

New Music Releases October 6, 2009

Air – Love 2
Alela Diane – Alela and Alina
The Aliens – Luna
Ancestors – Of Sound Mind (vinyl)
The Asteroids Galaxy Tour – Fruit
Asylum Street Spankers – God’s Favorite Band
The Big Pink – A Brief History Of Love
Black Hollies – Softly Towards the Light
Blitzen Trapper – Black River Killer EP (vinyl)
Boston Spaceships – Zero to 99
Brandi Carlile – Give Up the Ghost
Built To Spill – There Is No Enemy
Califone – All My Friends Are Funeral Singers
Calvin Harris – Ready for the Weekend
The Clientele – Bonfires on the Heath (vinyl)
Daniel Johnston – Is and Always Was
Dappled Cities – Zounds (vinyl)
The Dutchess & the Duke – Sunset/ Sunrise
Elliott Brood – Mountain Meadows
Emily Rodgers – Bright Day
Exene Cervenka – Somewhere Gone
Glorytellers – Atone
Gossip – Music for Men
Grant Hart – Hot Wax
Harmonia – Tracks & Traces
Headlights – Wildlife (vinyl)
Heart – Baby Guitars
Hockey – Mind Chaos (vinyl)
HORSE the Band – Desperate Living
Hush Arbors – Yankee Reality
Jamie T. – Kings & Queens
Jemina Pearl – Break It Up
John Vanderslice – Too Much Time b/w Moon Rocks 7″
Kraftwerk – Autobahn (remastered)
Kraftwerk – The Man-Machine (remastered)
Kraftwerk – Radio-Activity (remastered)
Kraftwerk – Trans Europa Express (remastered)
Kurt Vile – Childish Prodigy (vinyl)
La Roux – La Roux (vinyl)
Ladytron – Light & Magic (reissue)
Ladytron – Live At The London Astoria 16.07.08
Lake – Let’s Build a Roof (vinyl)
Langhorne Slim – Be Set Free (vinyl)
Lights – The Listening
Lita Ford – Wicked Wonderland
Lou Barlow – Goodnight Unknown (vinyl)
Lucero – 1372 Overton Park (vinyl)
Mark Knopfler – Get Lucky (CD & DVD)
Micah P. Hinson – All Dressed Up & Smelling of Strangers
Michael Jackson – In Memory Of Michael Jackson: 1958-2009
Mike Doughty – Sad Man Happy Man
Mission of Burma – The Sound The Speed The Light
The Mountain Goats – The Life of the World to Come (vinyl)
Music Go Music – Expressions (vinyl)
New Order – Brotherhood (180 vinyl)
New Order – Low-Life (180 gram vinyl)
New Order – Movement (180 gram vinyl)
New Order – Power, Corruption & Lies (180 gram vinyl)
New Order – Technique (180 gram vinyl)
Nick Oliveri – Death Acoustic
No Age – Losing Feeling EP (vinyl)
Noah and the Whale – The First Days of Spring
Orenda Fink – Ask The Night (vinyl)
Phish – Joy (vinyl)
Port O’Brien – Threadbare (vinyl)
The Raveonettes – In and Out of Control (vinyl)
Relient K – Forget and Not Slow Down
Rosanne Cash – The List
Shudder To Think – Live From Home (vinyl)
Vic Chesnutt – Skitter on Take Off
Slade – Live at the BBC
Sufjan Stevens & Osso – Run Rabbit Run (vinyl)
Supercluster – Waves
Three Mile Pilot – Planets / Grey Clouds (vinyl)
The Xx – Xx (vinyl)