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.

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.

A Social Network Changing Of The Guard?

By most accounts, a strange thing happened at the South By Southwest (SXSW) conference this year - a new social network dominated.

While last year was the year of Twitter for most of the communications between attendees, and the year before it was Facebook, this year foursquare was the social network of choice for learning about what and where things were happening at the show.

If you haven't joined the foursquare craze, it's a combination of social network and game. Everyplace you go you "check in" to receive points, and you can see where your friends are as well. The more places you go (even if they're the same ones over and over), the more points you receive and you move up the rankings amongst your friends and players, unlocking prizes, secrets and suggestions as you go. While it started as strictly a consumer network, businesses are now getting in to the act by giving free items to players after 10 or so visits.

But foursquare is more than a game. It's a way to explore and share your experiences with your friends. If you check in at a restaurant, for instance, you might receive some suggestions regarding the best item on the menu, or the best place to sit.

There's a foursquare app for most mobile phones and that's where this network shines, making it one of the new generation of mobile apps that can truly exist without it's web counterpart. And at the rate it's exploding, it may soon become one of the most used phone apps ever.

Is foursquare just this years fad and will it have some legs? It's too early to tell. But even though Twitter use seemed to slow down at SXSW this year, it shows no signs of overall diminished use, which is also true of Facebook. But remember that there are over 100 social media networks that have more than a million subscribers with new ones coming on line ever day, so don't be too surprised if a new social media app that hasn't broken out yet dominates at next years conference.

SoundExchange Money

A few weeks ago, Billboard magazine reported on the dismal returns that artists were making from digital royalties, and we even followed up with a post about it here. Now SoundExchange, whom we've also talked about a couple of days ago, has responded with some numbers that they claim are reality, and they're quite a bit different from what was previously reported.

Here are the numbers:

• a total of 1,602 artists were paid more than $2,000 in 2009 
• 500 of those received more than $9,000
• more than 60 earned more than $50,000 
• 4 cleared $100,000

The amounts are only for royalties paid on recordings played on non-interactive digital streams in the US (Internet radio and satellite) and don't include publishing.

As I said the other day, there may be some money waiting for you, but you've got to register to get it. Do it at SoundExchange.com.

SoundExchange is currently at SXSW attempting to match an estimated $1 million in royalties to performing artists that are not yet registered.