Thursday, April 18, 2013

Just Who Is Winning The Streaming War?

NPD Music Chart image from Bobby Owsinski's Music 3.0 blog
There's no doubt that streaming is catching on slowly but surely, as more and more people discover that having immediate access to a large library is better than owning a small one. That being said, Spotify seems to get most of the publicity. You may be surprised to learn that the service is actually far behind the leader though.

According to a new study published by the NPD Group called "Music Acquisition Monitor," streaming music usage in 13 to 35 year olds looks like this:

Pandora (free) - 39%
iHeart Radio - 11%
Spotify (free) - 9%
Grooveshark - 3%
Slacker - 2%
Pandora One - 2%
TuneIn - 2%
LastFM - 2%
XBox Music - 2%

Streaming music accounted for 23% of the demographic group's total listening. Interestingly, for those older than 36, this figure decreases to 13%, as most of their listening still belongs to AM/FM radio.

It's interesting that Pandora gets so little press (unless it's about royalty payments) yet has such a large lead in marketshare. It also should be interesting to see if these numbers hold up after Apple's iRadio is introduced later in the year. Next year's study might prove to be something very different.

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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.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

An Interview With Derek Sivers

Derek Sivers image from Bobby Owsinski's Big Picture Blog
Derek Sivers’s life has certainly been interesting so far, from working as a musician/ringleader of a circus to a stint at the publishing giant Warner/Chappell to being on the road as a touring musician to creating and running CD Baby, one of the most widely used music-distribution services today. After selling CD Baby in 2008, Sivers now spends his time thinking of new ways to help musicians. In this excerpt from my Music 3.0 book, you’ll see his insights are as thoughtful as they are cutting edge.

"What trends do you see today that you think will influence the distribution and consumption of music as we go forward?
Now that there’s absolutely no barrier to entry for every person on earth to release every noise they make, there is a huge flattening of selection. Instead of 100 people making $1 million each, the future music biz may be 1 million people making $100 each.

How do you think the audience has changed?
They’ve changed because they can’t be spoon-fed anymore, and they can’t really be sold or persuaded as much as before. Because they have endless selection, they only receive and act on recommendations from trusted sources, usually friends.

Radio used to be one of the things they trusted. But now it’s transformed into something that music lovers can’t even tolerate, so real music fans don’t expect FM radio to turn them on to new music like it once did. Therefore, for new artists, radio is moot.

What’s the best way to break an act today?
First of all, an artist has to have the right attitude, which maybe is no different than it ever was. What’s new is that the artist now must also have the ability to learn, adapt, and communicate.

You’ve got to touch lots of people. You’ve got to resonate emotionally with them, then communicate sincerely. A lot. Fans really do like using their favorite artist as a bonding, cementing group maker. It’s part of your job as an artist to encourage your fans to talk to each other and make a “tribe” (to use Seth Godin’s word) around you. And after breaking, you have to solve problems and improve your skills weekly to keep your career developing.

That being said, to be a great musician you have to learn how to focus. You have to look at yourself yourself objectively to notice what needs improvement, and have the dedication to improve that even when you think you can’t.

But to be a successful professional musician, you have to learn how to look at yourself through others’ eyes. You have to understand why the venue owner is really booking artists, why this person really signed your mailing list, and why people really go out to a bar at midnight on a Thursday night. It’s an amazing learning experience, and as you’ve noticed, I’m endlessly fascinated by these things.

Do you have any promotion tips?
Hundreds. Please see http://sivers.org/pdf, where I took a few months to write them all down and share them all for free.

As for tools, I’d try to find ones that aren’t already saturated with music: maybe an artistic use of Twitter or Improv Everywhere. But whatever I used, I’d really make sure that I was always in a real three-way conversation with my fans. It’s three-way in that I’d encourage them to talk with me and with each other and make my success their success, just like Obama did in his election campaign.

What are your feelings toward the major record labels today? 
It’s easy to look at them as buffoons (like we do politicians), but most of them are surprisingly smart. This last ten years has been humbling for them. It’s shaken out the people that were only in it for the money, so most of the people at labels today are in it for the right reasons and are more entrepreneurial.

If you look at the current biggest sellers, they’re almost all on major labels, so it’s just bad logic to say that the labels are doing everything wrong. They still may do many things wrong, but not everything. Their different expectations change their costs, so they have to get incredibly lean and efficient so they can actually profit off something that sells only 10,000 copies. Most indies can profit off of 10,000 sales, but majors simply can’t right now.

Do you think an independent artist needs an agent or a manager today?
Most musicians feel if they just had a good manager, agent, or promoter they’d be all set, but most managers, agents, and promoters will tell you that most artists aren’t ready yet.

I think it’s the artists’ responsibility to develop themselves to the point where they’ve proved their persistence and ability to make music and to put on a show that people love. Once they’ve got more bookings than they can handle, it’s a good time to hand that job to an agent.

As for a manager, I think that should be like a business-minded band member whose sole job is to handle the business and marketing. It doesn’t have to be a professional manager. But yes, someone of that mind-set should definitely be included always. Don’t go too long without one!"


 Visit Derek Sivers' website at sivers.org for lots of ideas and inspiration.

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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.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

iTunes Still On Top After 10 Years

iTunes logo image from Bobby Owsinski's Music 3.0 Blog
As anyone who spends a lot of time online knows, the shelf life of web service providers is fairly short. For instance, in 2005 MySpace was the largest service on the Web with about 100 million users. Today it's half that, but far outdistanced by Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and about 100 others. Media darlings Friendster, Yahoo 360 and MSN Spaces prospered for a bit, but are now but entries in Wikipedia. It doesn't take long to be replaced if something better comes along.

That's what makes iTunes so amazing. After 10 years, it's still going strong with 63% of the music distribution market in 2012, according to research company NPD Group. Not only that, there's no competitor for the crown on the horizon, although Amazon has increased its marketshare to 22%. What's more, 8 in 10 people still downloaded their tracks from iTunes, making it still the juggernaut of the music distribution world.

Indeed, 44 million Americans purchased at least one song from iTunes last year, a figure that's remained about the same for the last 3 years. And all this with the ever increasing popularity of streaming services.

What may be the most interesting aspect of the study though, called "Anual Music Study 2012," is that 38% of the population still feels that it's important to own music, and 30% still listens to albums.

There's no doubt that these figures are going to drop eventually, especially if Apple's new iRadio streaming service comes online soon, but for now, there's still some business left in the download.

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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.

Monday, April 15, 2013

Stars And Their Fake Twitter Fans

From the very beginning of the Internet being used for music promotion, artists have been trying to game it in order to gain an advantage. For some, it's a marketing advantage, for others it's an attempt to get noticed, but whether it's fake MySpace followers, fake website hits, fake Facebook Likes, or fake YouTube views, it's still fake. Now comes a Fake Follower chart from Status People that shows just how many fake Twitter followers even the biggest pop stars have.


As you can see from the chart, the worst offender is Justin Bieber, with about 45% of his followers classified as fakes. A "fake" follower classified as one who has less than one follower and has never tweeted themselves. Even President Obama has a fair amount of fake followers (for shame, Mr. President).

What the chart does prove is that Lady Gaga still has the most legit followers, with about 19 million of her nearly 36 million deemed real. That's still a huge amount of followers by any measurement.

According to Mashable, anyone can buy Twitter followers for about $1,000, but unless you're trying to impress your friends, it's probably a waste of money. Building your following organically is still the best way to promote yourself online. Always has, and always will be.

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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.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Are Cassettes The New Vinyl?

Every time you think the novelty has worn off the resurgence of the lowly cassette, it seems to come roaring back again. As unlikely as it seems in this age of instant access libraries of millions of songs online, this technology from the last century still has some life.

The great Hypebot blog recently posted an article regarding the number of cassette-related articles found in a Google search, which showed the revival still gaining speed. That's difficult to quantify in numbers, since most units are distributed by micro-labels who only do limited runs and don't report to SoundScan.

That said, this report and video from the Wall Street Journal shows the mindset of the typical cassette buyer and seller very well.



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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.

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