Apple Music Just Might Prove Skeptics Wrong

There have been plenty of naysayers willing to condemn Apple’s new Apple Music service before it was even launched, but they might just have to take back their words if today’s presentation outlining the service was any indication.

It’s certainly true that Apple has fallen behind its competition when it comes to music streaming, and that Apple Radio wasn’t the resounding success that everyone anticipated. It’s also true that Beats Music, which the company paid a bundle for last year, wasn’t exactly setting the world on fire and quite possibly wouldn’t even be around today had Apple not thrown it a life preserver.

Then there’s the fact that while Apple touts 850 million credit cards on file for iTunes, more of them apply to the app side of the store than music, making the number slightly dubious when anticipating subscriber numbers.

All of that could lead you to believe that Apple Music could easily come and go after the initial wave of enthusiasm from today’s announcement died down.

If you watched today’s presentation however, it was readily apparent that there were a number of features shown that differentiate Apple Music from the competition, any one of which could make a big enough difference to help it dominate the industry in no time.

First and most important is its ease of use. Apple Music appears to be very easy to navigate, with My Music, For You and New tabs designed to help you negotiate the music that you’ve already purchased, find recommendations based on your previous playlists or listening trends, and discover recently released music. A mini-player complete with artwork also provides easy to access control of the music being played as well, and a playlist function makes it easy to add your own graphics, reorder songs in the list, and search the library to find additional music. Read more on Forbes.

---

Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this blog at no cost to you (just click here).

How To Submit Your Songs Directly To Pandora

If you're an indie artist, you want your songs on as many music streaming platforms as possible. An easy way to do that is to use a distribution service like CD Baby, Tunecore or Distrokid, but it will cost you some money as a result.

Here's a video of how you can submit your songs directly to Pandora without a distributor in the middle. It's from my Selling Music: MP3s, Streams And CDs course on Lynda.com.


Get 7 days of free unlimited access to lynda.com.

----------------------------------

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

Aimee Mann Sues An Invisible Distributor

While a variety of high profile artists like Thom Yorke, Nigel Godrich and Pink Floyd are all railing against the perceived royalty injustice at the hands of streaming music services like Spotify, singer-songwriter Aimee Mann has taken a different tact in her new lawsuit against a low profile company called MediaNet. Mann claims that the company has been using more than a hundred of her songs while not paying her any royalties in a suit which could add up to as much $18 million in statutory damages.

Everyone is by now very familiar with Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, Slacker and all the other streaming services that seem to be constantly in the news, but not many can say they know anything about MediaNet. (Check out the rest of the article on Forbes).

----------------------------------

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

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 New Way To Distribute Music Digitally

If you want your music on iTunes, Spotify, and other digital services, most artists choose to use either Tunecore or CD Baby as a distribution method. Each have their upsides and downsides, with the downsides mostly being financial, with Tunecore charging a flat per year for each release and CD Baby taking a percentage of the sale. Now there may be a cheaper and easier way to do it, thanks to DistroKid.

DistroKid is an offshoot of Fandalism, the social network for musicians started by Philip Kaplan. What makes it different from most other distribution networks is that it costs only a subscription fee of $19.95 a year which allows unlimited uploads of your music. You can even upload one song for free before you enter any credit card information.

Kaplan started the service with an eye on democratizing music distribution even further than it currently is by making it a snap for anyone to release their music. While on the surface this seems like a noble idea, the big problem is that since there are really no record label gatekeepers to sift through the mediocre to find the brilliant, at least the service fees of Tunecore and CD Baby would make people think twice before they'd release something that might not be up to par.

The flip side of that coin is, who really knows what another person might like? Music history is filled with big hits that their writers, artists or record labels thought weren't very good and were later pleasantly surprised by the public's enthusiasm. The beauty of Music 3.0 is that if you look hard enough, you'll find at least a small audience for it somewhere. The downside is that it's hard for the consumer to sift through all the noise.

DistroKid is a boot-strap operation despite the earlier online successes of Kaplan (the ad network AdBrite and social shopping Blippy), so it's yet to be seen just how effective it will be in getting your music to all of the sites it claims. Plus, there's not a lot known about how the accounting is handled yet. That said, if you want to get your music on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play and Amazon in 2 to 4 hours (which is really fast), give it a try.

----------------------------------

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 for 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 Label Implications Of Neil Young's New Pono Music Service

As you may or may not know, Neil Young gave a brief peak at his new Pono high-resolution music service last week on the Letterman Show (see below). Young, who has railed against the quality of MP3s for years, wants to bring audiophile quality to consumers in what Neil is calling SQS, or Studio Quality Sound.

Pono is basically a cloud music service is combined with a new music player that seems to have the simplicity of an iPod, but with higher audio circuit quality. The recordings reportedly have all been transferred to 192kHz/24 bit, which while not as good as analog, does sound really good (CD resolution is 44.1kHz/16 bit).

Supposedly the Universal Music, Sony Music and Warner Brothers are totally on board for launch next year, and why wouldn't they be? There are so many up sides and not many downsides for them.

First, Neil has a lot of credibility within the industry and press as being a maverick who does things his own way. He's not beholden to anyone, could care less about being commercial, and has a high profile when he chooses to use it. That's a win.

Second, this is finally a way for labels to do something they've been wanting to do for a long time - sell you the music you already own yet one more time. If it really does sound that much better (it should, but there are caveats), there is a group of people that will buy yet another version of the records that they may have purchased several times already. That's a win for them.

And finally, there's been word that Warners even invested in the project with Young (and licensed 8,000 albums to Pono as well), which might not be such a great thing. The tech world is littered with projects that a major label has invested in to protect its interests, only to have it eventually fold because the project was better for the label than for its customers. That said, Young is ferocious in his independence, so maybe Pono might turn out to be something truly groundbreaking.

High-quality audio. Imagine that. For more on the tech side of Pono, see my post at The Big Picture Music Production Blog.

-----------------------------------

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

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 Comparison Of Online Music Distributors

Here's an interesting chart that I found (my apologies, but I can't remember where) that provides a nice overview of some of the popular online music distribution services. With all the hoopla over Tunecore recently raising their prices, it's interesting to see that they're really not that out of line when you look at a side by side comparison.

So which one should you choose? Price isn't always the most important element of your decision. Things like free UPC codes and which stores and subscription services they service are also important. Ultimately, the general feel of the distributor and their user interface may have more of an affect on your decision than anything, so make sure you check them all out before making your choice.

-----------------------------------

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

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

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.