Thursday, April 26, 2012

Wilco And Dynamic Ticket Pricing

wilco dynamic pricing from Music 3.0 blogIn what could be a new trend, Wilco and concert promoter Alex Crothers are trying a new format for pricing and distributing tickets for an upcoming benefit concert at the Massachusetts contemporary museum MASS Moca this summer.

Instead of tickets being sold through the box office and through scalpers and ticket brokers, tickets for the concert are being sold through a combination of "Name Your Own Price" auction and a lottery.

The first 500 tickets are sold to the bidders that make the highest offers, then the last 500 become part of a random lottery. Bidders drawn from a hat will be offered the opportunity to purchase a pair of tickets at whatever price they named on their original bid.

Regarding the social aspects of this ticketing method, it also allows both the band and the museum to capture the email addresses of these highly engaged fans.

As you can see, this cuts out the middle man and all the extra fees attached. I bet all fans would love this method or something similar if given the opportunity to purchase this way in the future .

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

The Cities That Are Most Influential To Music

research graphic from Music 3.0 blog
While London, New York and Paris are the leaders in fashion, it's been assumed that the media centers of Los Angeles, Nashville, New York and London do the same for music. Now 2 researchers from the Clique Research Cluster in Ireland have research that compiles data from 200 cities going back to 2003 that finally sifts through 60 billion pieces of data to finally determine if that assumption is really true.

What did they find? It appears that we've had it all wrong all this time. The study showed the following:
  • Montreal leads North America in its influence on indie music, while Paris does the same in Europe.
  • Surprisingly, Oslo leads in overall influence in all music of Europe.
  • Atlanta drives hip hop (no surprise there).
  • Richmond, Virginia and Columbus, Ohio are more influential for new music that New York.
  • Surprisingly enough, the major cities of New York, LA, London and Chicago placed near the middle of the influence chart in all parts of the study.
Although there's a tremendous amount of data involved, I'm not so sure that the results are the last word in world listening habits after reading the report. But it does prove that many of our long held assumptions may not be correct either. The lesson here is that what we knew was a fact before may not be now in our Music 3.0 world.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Look Out For Anontune

I don't know how I feel about this. The infamous Anonymous hacker activist group has launched a new social music streaming service called Anontune. The service is free and allows you to listen to music from multiple sources. It's similar to Grooveshark in that it doesn't host any of the music files itself; it simply searches for them on YouTube, Soundcloud and other sites, and will reportedly add MySpace and Yahoo as well as other sources soon.

According to the video that describes Anontune (which you can see below), "Anontune will never host any copyrighted music at any time, nor will it be streaming music. Rather than focus on the music itself, Anontune will instead focus upon information about the music. Information like were music is being distributed, how it is being used, and how it is discovered."

Anyone can try the service right now, although it's still reportedly pretty buggy. Security experts and copyright attorneys have also cautioned that it's probably a good idea to stay away, but it's at least something that you should be aware of.




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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Monday, April 23, 2012

4 Ways To Use Your CD As A Marketing Tool

Mixed CDs from Music 3.0 blog
Yes, people still buy CDs. There were over 240 million CD sales in 2011 that were recorded (and many millions more that weren't), so it's still a viable market that's going to be around at least for a little while longer.

Since people still buy CDs, you might as well use it as a marketing tool as well, instead of solely a piece of merchandise. Here are a few things to think about before you commit to manufacturing.

1. Pay attention to your artwork. It really is important. Low quality artwork can give a potential buyer the impression that you didn't care enough to get it right, and maybe the music and production on the CD suffer from the same fate.

2. Ad a QR code. A QR code is that little black and white square image that's basically an analog link to an online address. People scan it with their camera phone and can instantly go to your website, iTunes store, or just about anywhere else you point them. It doesn't cost much and is a great way to keep people interested while they discover more about the artist or band.

3. Be sure that your website URL is very visible. Put it on every page of the artwork so if the reader gets curious for more info they can instantly get it. This is your chance to sell some merch, which is where the real money is made.

4. Include a download code. This could be for the digital version of the CD, additional bonus material, or some unreleased songs. Whatever it is, this is becoming more and more common and CD buyers are beginning to expect it.

Remember, as I've said here before many times and illustrated in my Music 3.0 Internet music guidebook, your music is your marketing.
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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

YouTube Loses A Major Music Battle

YouTube logo from Music 3.0 blog
I always like to keep up with what's happening on the legal front of the online music business all over the world, and here's a potential blockbuster. A court in Hamburg, Germany recently ruled that YouTube is responsible for the content that users post on the site after the German music royalty collection service Gema filed suit.

Basically Gema stated that YouTube hasn't done enough to stop copyrighted clips from being posted and wanted YouTube to install filters to protect its 60,000 members. The case was only over 12 videos, but the ramifications are severe in that YouTube may be forced to pay a huge royalty bill on every video that contains copyrighted music as a result.

What YouTube is really afraid of is that this one ruling can snowball into different areas other than Germany. As if that wasn't bad enough, if the film and television industries also took up the cause, it could really mean that the service could not survive. Read those last words again - in its most severe form, YouTube could be taken completely off the air. Gone.

In the US, YouTube still enjoys the protection of a ruling that basically says "we're not responsible because we didn't post it." The problem is that once a precedent is set in one territory, you never know what might happen elsewhere.

There's some interesting gamesmanship that's going on in relation to this case. Gema's been asking for royalties for some time, so in 2009 YouTube basically blocked all the videos from all German record labels for a brief time in retaliation. Gema also obtained a ruling against the file sharing site Rapidshare where the judgement required it to be more proactive when in hunting for pirated content. Then Grooveshark pulled out of Germany because the licensing rates made it impossible for them to be profitable.

This could end up being a big problem not only for YouTube, but for all video sites. Watch this one closely as it unfolds.
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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

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