Twitter Jumps Into The Music Discovery Game

Twitter Music Test Tweet

Music rumors at SXSW keep swirling, and the latest one is that Twitter is getting ready to enter into music discovery thanks to their recent purchase of We Are Hunted. WAH scoured the web to find new artists that didn't necessarily have much visibility, but fit with your playlist tastes.

Once again, music discovery is the holy grail for most of the deep pockets in the industry, and a startup with any kind of working discovery technology is bound to find money or be purchased in no time. The reasons?

• Music discovery means it's easier to find new acts that fit the listener's tastes, which grows the industry.

• More new artists means less reliance on old catalog for the labels as a revenue generator.

• Being found by a discovery engine makes it a lot easier (or even possible) for a new artist to jump out of pack of hundreds of thousands of releases every year.

• Bottom line: a healthier industry with increased revenue streams, which hopefully benefits everyone, although the big dogs always seem to benefit the most.

On the surface, Twitter seems the perfect delivery vehicle for music discovery. Imagine that you tweet that you're listening to something and add a few hashtags to indicate same. The discovery engine reads that, finds a match of new artists, and tweets you back. If it knows what your music delivery platform is choice is, the links are to that platform. This is just speculation on may part, but seems like it would be a great way to implement it.

The leaks about Twitter Music (the name of the new standalone app) are different though. It will stream from Soundcloud, and have a number of tabs for song selections. Suggested recommends songs based on your tastes, #NowPlaying brings in song links from people you follow on Twitter that use hashtags, Popular brings in the current trending songs, and Emerging tracks up and coming artists.

The fact that it's linked to Soundcloud is interesting, since it's more of a storage platform than a delivery service. First of all, will artists and songwriters get paid? Who determines what songs can be used by Twitter Music? What happens if your songs are hosted but you haven't registered?

Supposedly there will also be links to iTunes previews, but there's no info about connections to other services yet. Of course, everything but the purchase of We Are Hunted are well-placed rumors reported by several insiders (check out CNET for more), so much can change before the service is even launched.

All of this means that music delivery and discovery is getting a lot more exciting. There may be some questions about Twitter Music at the moment, but it's a welcome addition to our music world.

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Music Spending: The Same As It Ever Was?

SXSW is rapidly becoming THE place for all types of announcement and product releases, from hardware to software, album releases to media studies. Where once other conferences like MacWorld, New Music Seminar, MIDEM or MusicTech were the center of attention, they've all ceded their importance to the show held yearly in Austin.

And since the music world is now revolving around SXSW, it's only appropriate that Nielsen Entertainment should introduce their latest study of spending on music there. The study looked at the consumption habits of 4,000 "music fans," who's category accounts for 75% of music spending in the US, and takes into account everything from the purchase of music, concert tickets and artist merchandise.

As you can see from the infographic below, the most serious music fans, the "aficionados," can spend as much as $422 a year on music. The fact is that Nielsen also discovered that they illegally file share more than any other segment, with an average of 30 a year, which didn't seem to impair their actual spending on music music (perhaps it even enhanced it). This segment accounts for as much as 40% of music spending.

The next segment spends between $196 and $363 per year, with a subcategory called "Big Box" who shop at mass retailers partial to pop and country music.

Finally, the least engaged consumer spent between $44 and $121 per year on music. 60% of this category has never seen their favorite artist live and is more likely to use a free streaming service like Pandora. 25% of these use Spotify or Rhapsody.

I don't know that the general findings of this study are any different from any other era or decade of music. There's always been a multi-tiered system of music consumers that ranged from ambivalent to passionate to aficionado, so that hasn't changed. I don't even think that the spend levels have changed much, adjusted for inflation. In fact, this probably holds true for other segments of the entertainment industry as well.

What is interesting is the way music is being consumed, as shown by the study. Take notice the differences between the category between CD sales (purple) and digital tracks (orange). Then take notice how much live events (red) make up each category. Finally, check out where paid online subscription comes in (dark green).

This all goes to show that, if anything, there's a chance industry growth. In fact, Nielsen exec David Bakula estimates that it could grow as much as $2.6 billion, which is certainly good news for the for anyone with ties to the business.

The study does point out what everyone seems to forget is that when we speak of the "music industry;" there's a lot more to it than just recorded music. While recorded music is less than half of what it was at its peak, the rest of the business remains somewhat healthy.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Interested in the Music 3.0 archives? Buy The Music 3.0 Guide To Social Media. The best of over 800 posts.

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.

The Harlem Shake Gets Busted

Harlem Shake - Kansas Basketball Style

Use a sample, go to jail. Well, not exactly, but unless you get permission, you're going to be hearing from an attorney. The latest episode of uncleared samples comes with the recent viral hit "Harlem Shake" by Baauer. It seems that the DJ used pieces of Hector El Father's 2006 single "Maldades" and Plastic Little's "Miller Time" without getting permission first, and now they want some money.

The fact of the matter is that most major labels have business affairs departments that would've made sure that all samples were cleared before the song was released, but "Harlem Shake" was on the tiny Mad Decent Records, who had no such resources. It was only after the video for the video went viral with it's crazy dance (if you can call it that) that the song became a hit.

"Harlem Shake" has spent the last 3 weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart and had over 800,000 downloads, and the video has over 27 million views. All of that has been very recent though, as the song was actually released last May and until the video broke, was destined to be one of the many songs that with little traction in the marketplace.

To a small record label who considers a couple of thousand sales a hit, clearing samples is hardly a priority. Chances are that the sample owner will never hear it, and if they do, there's hardly enough money involved to make a legal case of it. That all changes when the song is a hit however.

It will be interesting to see just how much El Father and Plastic Little settle for. I've known people in the past who know that they're being infringed upon and purposely wait until the song is a big hit before they announce the situation to the world. You get a bigger payday that way.

Regardless, it's just another lesson that if you don't get the proper clearances, it will cost you in the end.

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Interested in the Music 3.0 archives? Buy The Music 3.0 Guide To Social Media. The best of over 800 posts.

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.

The Reasoning Behind Apple's Low Streaming Rate

News seeped out last week about Apple pushing for a low-ball royalty deal with the record labels for their upcoming iRadio (or whatever they're going to call it) streaming service, probably from the labels themselves. The leak was made to make Apple look like the bad guy in the negotiations, and maybe it is, but you won't see the whole story in any of the news reports.

To recap, Apple is looking to pay half of what Pandora now pays, which is 12 cents per 100 songs streamed. That's still lower than what a typical radio station pays for their online service, which is 22 cents per 100. And then you have Spotify, paying what seems to be a whopping 35 cents per 100.

So why should Apple get away with paying so little in comparison to the potential competition?

The fact of the matter is that streaming experts all agree that Pandora's and Spotify's business models are broken, and neither company will survive if they have to continue paying the current rates. In fact, Pandora itself has said as much as it pushes hard for a better royalty deal than it has now. Apple does not only want to stay away from that trap, but it also wants to set a precedent for payment. It's pretty difficult to push for a lower rate once a higher one is agreed on, as Pandora and Spotify are now seeing.

Of course, none of this helps the artist and songwriter, who are not making much even with the current rates. They'd make more if they had better streaming deals with the labels and could participate in more of the upfront fees that the services pay, but that's not going to happen any time soon.

While I can see the labels point in keeping the rate as high as possible, the fact of the matter is that a strong Apple entry is good for the entire business, even at a lower rate. While free streaming with ads doesn't help the artist much, widespread subscription would. Any push in that direction only gets the industry to a better place faster.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Interested in the Music 3.0 archives? Buy The Music 3.0 Guide To Social Media. The best of over 800 posts.

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.

Tumblr Discovers Music Discovery

For record labels and investors alike, music discovery is the holy grail when it comes to music online. Many of us tend to listen to songs that we have in our collection over and over, and that prevents us from finding anything new. Usually that's because we don't have a trusted source for new music and don't want to spend the time sampling new music without finding anything that suits our tastes. A reliable discovery method that knows our tastes is always welcome.

Just about every music service has tried to fill this void, some more successfully than others, but the ultimate discovery service is still elusive.

Blogging site Tumblr thinks it might have the answer. From their over 95 million users, the company will select a group of editors that share music, and their choices will appear on Tumblr's "Explore" page. They also have a new music.tumblr.com blog that will post announcements and music recommendations as well.

Both of these will be available to mobile users and non-Tumblr members, and will be officially rolled out this week at SXSW.

Music discovery really hasn't changed since the 50s. It used to be a radio personality who exposed us to something new. We liked and trusted his taste and knew that his selections generally jibed with ours. That still holds true today.

Although programmers have tried valiantly to design a recommendation engine that works, it still comes down to a human to point us in the right direction. That's why Tumblr's decision to employ editors as the basis of their recommendations is such a great idea. Of course, you still have to pick the right editors. We'll soon know how well they've done that.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

Interested in the Music 3.0 archives? Buy The Music 3.0 Guide To Social Media. The best of over 800 posts.

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.