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Music and Tech Recap – June 2010 Edition

Gabriel Nijmeh — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 14:27:59 +0000

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

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.

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Music and Tech Recap – February 2010 Edition

Gabriel Nijmeh — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:30:09 +0000

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:

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

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!

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Deconstructing the Week in Music September 21 – October 4

refe — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:56:12 +0000

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.

This Week:

New music releases – September 22, 2009 – Pearl Jam’s Backspacer, new U2, Castanets, Müm, and Monsters of Folk.
Is your release strategy driving fan engagement – or preventing it? – A “continual stream of creative output” will help keep your fans more engaged, longer.
New music releases – September 29, 2009 – Cymbals Eat Guitars with Why There Are Mountains, new Avett Brothers, Ghostface Killah, and the excellent soundtrack to Where the Wild Things Are.
Album review – Sufjan Stevens ‘Run Rabbit Run’ - A surprisingly engaging string quartet re-imagining of Sufjan’s all electronic sophomore album Enjoy Your Rabbit.
Why music still needs the underground – Market cycles have compacted making it possible for music to go straight from the innovator to the mainstream. Does this mean the underground is dead?

Music Video Picks:

Kings of Convenience ‘Boat Behind’

This Week in Music History:

1973 Phonogram announced they were increasing the price of their albums from £2.00 to £2.18 and de-luxe albums would go up from £2.29 to £2.38. Oh how things have changed… (This Day in Music.com)

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Deconstructing the Week in Music September 7 – 20

refe — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 14:51:04 +0000

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.

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Sufjan Stevens Gives Copyright to Fan Who Won’t Copy

refe — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:59:25 +0000

In November 2007 Sufjan Stevens announced that he would be trading the rights to one of his latest songs for the winning entry in a contest called the Great Sufjan Stevens Song Xmas Xchange. More than 600 fans submitted original compositions and a song called ‘Every Day is Christmas’ by Alec Duffy was chosen. Duffy’s song became property of Asthmatic Kitty Records, and as promised, the rights to Stevens’ ‘The Lonely Man of Winter’ went to Duffy.

Sufjan Stevens is no stranger to innovation in both art and business, and Xmas Xchange contest stands in start contrast to the recording industry’s copyright-centric message. Here we have an artist voluntarily relinquishing his rights to his own song – not to a record label, but directly to a fan and allowing him to do whatever he wants with it. In the words of Sufjan’s Asthmatic Kitty Records website, “Sufjan’s new song becomes your song. You can hoard it for yourself, sell it to a major soft drink corporation, use it in your daughter’s first Christmas video, or share it for free on your Web site. No one except Sufjan and you will hear his song, unless you decide otherwise.”

What would you do if you won exclusive rights to you favorite artist’s new piece? Not an easy decision, and one that took Alec Duffy about a year to make. Instead of uploading the song to the internet and sharing it freely with the world, he has chosen to protect it, keep it quiet. Duffy has recently begun holding private listening parties in the living room of his apartment. That’s right – if you want to hear the song you have to travel to Brooklyn and sit on this guy’s couch.

In an effort to counter the cheapening effects of internet all-availability,” writes Duffy on his website, ”and to recapture an era when to get one’s hands on a particular album or song was a real experience, we at Hoi Polloi would like to share this song with Sufjan fans in a special way… We would like to invite you to our Brooklyn home for an exclusive listening session of this gorgeous song, with hot beverages and cookies provided for your enjoyment.”

Duffy doesn’t charge anything to get in, but guests are required to listen to the song on headphones to prevent secret recordings being leaked onto the Internet. “This is the finest way we felt we could curate this song,” says Duffy in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, “It brings people together.”

It has certainly brought Sufjan Fans together in the blogosphere. Many have expressed dissapointment and anger over Duffy’s “snooty little tea parties,” calling him “another self-interested, self-absorbed, attention-starved, narcissistic poser claiming to serve some higher artistic truth.”

Honestly though, I think what Duffy is doing is great. Sure, I’d like to hear the song – I’m a big Sufjan Stevens fan myself. But when Duffy cites the “cheapening effects of internet all-availability” he is spot on. There are plenty of Sufjan tracks on the net. Yet, because this one isn’t, it’s special. That’s one of the things that makes this whole idea of handing a song over to a single fan such a brilliant one. Whereas the normal strategy would be to broadcast a new single to as many millions of people as possible (and this is certainly not a bad strategy, by the way) The Great Xmas Xchange has allowed ‘The Lonely Man of Winter’ to take a different route. No one would be talking about this song right now if Duffy had simply sprayed it all over the net. It would have been streamed and downloaded by all the usual suspects, added to Sufjan’s already formidable catalogue and that would be that. Instead, the song has taken on a near-mythical status and will likely stand apart from the rest of Sufjan’s work for some time.

Of course, if Sufjan Stevens himself had done this, I’m not sure if it would have the same effect. There is something pretentious about an artist withholding a song in order to create demand for it. Yet, apart from the fan fare of the contest itself, Stevens has stayed out of it and has declined to comment. This is a very creative example of an artist giving his fans the opportunity to engage with his art and letting them do the promotion for him.

“He’s like the wizard behind the curtain,” says Duffy, “If he didn’t like it, we’d be so sorry.” I wouldn’t worry so much about that, Alec. Something tells me that Stevens is more than happy with the results of his contest.

So what do you think? What would you do with exclusive rights to your favorite artists’ new song?

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Video Pick: St Vincent ‘Actor Out of Work’

refe — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 05:29:05 +0000

Actor is the sophomore album of 26 year old Annie Clark. Clark began her career touring with the eclectic Polyphonic Spree and Sufjan Stevens, and has now recorded two solo albums under the name St. Vincent. Clark built her arrangements differently this time around -- in Garageband, actually -- and the result is something of a departure from the guitar rock of her first album, Marry Me. The track ‘Actor out of Work’ is an exception, with every bit of its two minutes and thirty-seconds propelled forward by fuzzed out guitars and driving toms.

The video itself is clever, featuring a group of actors crying on cue during an audition. In an interview with Spinner Clark admitted that she was hesitant to film such a literal take on the song, but that she was sold on the idea by directors Ian Kibbey and Corey Creasey -- better known collectively as Terri Timely. “There is something so darkly comic and eerily unnerving about the act of crying on cue. It feels like such a lie -- a betrayal in a sense -- to see someone burst into hysterics in one moment, and then, as if it had never happened, stand up, smile and go back to checking their text messages. Sometimes I had to restrain myself from laughing out of discomfort, and sometimes I had to restrain myself from crying -- it’s as contagious as yawning.”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZW9NYX6JZA

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Deconstructing The Week In Music 6.1-6.7

refe — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 15:32:20 +0000

Here’s a recap of what went on in the music industry this week. 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 the Music Industry still needs Taste-Makers - With so much new music flooding the system listeners are dying for someone to tell them who to listen to.

The Resurgence of Vinyl Could be Just What the Music Industry Needs - A ghost from music’s past makes a comeback.

This Week:

Album Sales Continue to Drop – Down 18% in May – More bad news from Soundscan, but what does this means artists?

Why Free Music was Inevitable: Part One - The first installment in a series that seeks to explain why the value of recorded music continues to drop.

Study Confirms Longer Music Samples Sell More Tracks - Listeners want to try before they buy, but the major retailers still won’t let them.

Video Pick of the Week: Grizzly Bear Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear’s new video might make your head explode.

This Week in Music History:

On this week in 2003, a High court judge in London ruled that rap lyrics should be treated as a foreign language after admitting that he was unsure of the meaning of ‘shizzle my nizzle’ and ‘mish mish man.’ The court battle was over a copyright issue between the Ant’ill Mob and the Heartless Crew who had used the lyrics on a remix. (From This Day in Music.)

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Resurgence of Vinyl Could Be Just What the Industry Needs

refe — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:25:08 +0000

A pair of Wired stories recently reported evidence of a significant uptick in the sale of vinyl records, showing that while CD sales have declined 11.7 percent this past year, vinyl sales have increased 36.6 percent. This recent resurgence of vinyl is beautifully ironic. This is the digital age! Music is cheap, convenient and portable. Innovations in technology have propelled us to places no one could have dreamed of a couple of decades ago. 8-Track cartridges came and went. Cassette tapes came and went. We’ll soon be able to say the same thing about CDs. Yet here we are, watching the sale of vinyl records climb like it’s 1976.

There are those who may see this as a step backwards for physical media, but in reality that couldn’t be further from the truth. For the past few years the recording industry has been increasingly commoditized, and listeners have consistently chosen quantity and convenience over quality. The MP3 is the poster child for this idea. You can download, copy and share it almost instantly and carry it anywhere, but it sounds terrible. The result is a glut of recorded music on the Internet and a largely devalued product. Listeners were ok with this for a while, but it seems the masses (or at least an increasingly large subset of the masses) have had enough.

Vinyl could be the perfect answer to listeners’ digital fatigue, and could provide the flailing music industry with something it desperately needs – value. Digital files are nearly worthless as a product. You can’t see them or touch them. They are infinitely reproduce-able and instantly available. If over abundance commoditized a physical product, inite-ness devalues a virtual product completely. Vinyl on the other hand can’t be easily reproduced, and is a much more sensory medium. The sound quality is better, there is more room for artwork. You can see it, hold it, smell it, taste it. It has the ability to foster a much deeper connection between the listener and the music. How many times have you flipped through dozens of songs on your iPod without really listening? You have to work for vinyl – finding the right album, placing it on the turntable, finding the groove, flipping it over when the first side finishes. You can’t just let it play forever in the background. Vinyl has the potential to return some of the appreciation for music as art that this industry has lost.

CDs are not the answer. Digital files have made CDs redundant and obsolete. Why do we need a physical version of a digital file? That makes no sense. We have iPods for that, which better represent the advantages of digital anyway – convenience and portability. MP3 players don’t scratch or skip and you can carry your entire library in your pocket. CDs were always flawed, and now they are finally on their way out.

Of course, we’re talking about vinyl replacing CDs not digital music in general. We have only just begun to realize the potential of digital technology, but digital is still more effective when a physical medium is also available. Labels like Matador Records have recognized this and have begun including coupons in record packaging that can be used to download digital versions of the album’s songs. According to Matador the coupons have been a big hit. Programs like this are a great way of providing fans with the best of both worlds.

I’m not old enough to have any real nostalgia about vinyl records, but the benefits a true resurgence could bring to our struggling industry is exciting. Vinyl provides the artists and labels with a real product to sell again, yes - and that’s great. What excites me, though, is that vinyl has the potential to get listeners to connect to recorded music as an art form again, and that is something we can all get behind.

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Video Pick – Grizzly Bear ‘Two Weeks’

refe — Sun, 31 May 2009 10:45:06 +0000

Grizzly Bear have been doing alright for themselves lately. The Internet is buzzing with talk about their new album Veckatimest, and their current single Two Weeks is already a certifiable indie rock hit.

Two Weeks’ video was shot by Patrick Daughters and employs an eerie, slow motion aesthetic that sort of sucks you in and compels you to keep watching even though very little appears to be happening. An appropriate choice, as the song itself has a similar effect. In all, another interesting addition to Daughter’s impressive videography. Make sure you keep watching until the end.

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Deconstructing the Week in Music

refe — Sat, 30 May 2009 15:32:52 +0000

Here’s a recap of what went on in the music industry this week. Make sure to check out anything you might have missed and leave your comments. Thanks to This Day in Music for the music history.

Most Popular:

Why the Music Industry still needs Taste-Makers - With so much new music flooding the system listeners are dying for someone to tell them who to listen to.

Why your band needs Booking and PR before Management - The first in the Back to Basics series, learn what you need to do before looking for a band manager.

This Week:

It didn’t work for 8-Track – Why we should stop clinging to CDs and embrace the Digital Market - When innovation changes the game the only real response is to adapt.

Tunecore and Amazon offer Cheap On-Demand CD Distribution - Great idea, but is this service right for your band?

Memorial Day Video Pick - A little Ben Folds ‘Army’ to get you in the mood.

ReverbNation Paying Artists to give away Free Songs - Some successful models from the biggest independent act of them all.

This Week in Music History:

On this week in 2005 Coldplay’s new album was leaked onto the Internet a full week before its official UK and US release. This occurred when copies were sent to UK radio stations and the day before it went on sale in Japan. This was in spite of security measures around the release which included hosting album playbacks at Abbey Road studios for journalists instead of sending them copies of the album, and any CDs that were sent out were labelled with a false name – The Fir Trees – to throw would-be pirates off the scent.

Music History 101:

- John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote 295 songs together.
- Pink Floyd hold the record for the longest stay on the UK Top 40 album chart with “Dark Side Of The Moon.” A total of 364 weeks never reaching the No.1 position.
- Keith Moon is said to have named Led Zeppelin when an early version of the band was being discussed that would have had himself, along with John Entwistle on bass, Jimmy Page on Guitar, and an undecided vocalist, as members; he stated the potential supergroup would “go down like a lead Zeppelin”.
- The most expensive music video ever made is “Scream” by Michael and Janet Jackson, which cost $7 million to make in 1995.

Infamous Quotations:

“I choose to have one foot in the modern world and one in the past.” Beck 1997.
“I always smudge my lipstick nudging the microphone with my lips.” – Robert Smith, The Cure. 1987.
“Rock ‘n’ roll is like pulling back your rib cage and showing people your heart. It’s not about wearing the right shoes.”- Bono, 1997
“I haven’t got the patience for a rock opera. I’m focused on verse, chorus, verse chorus, middle eight, guitar solo, verse chorus, fade it out.”- Noel Gallager, Oasis.

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