Bkstg Connects Artists Directly With Fans

There are many direct-to-fan platforms available for artists these days, but that doesn't prevent new ones from launching. Bkstg is a new app that lets artists own the entire experience of connecting with fans in one place. This includes posting videos and photos to selling tickets to selling merch.

In many cases, 5 to 10% of an artist's fan base drives 80% of the revenue, but the artist usually has no direct way to identify and directly connect with those fans, especially when using most social platforms like Instagram and Twitter.

The Bkstg platform allows an artist to see exactly who's buying tickets, engaging with content. and consuming exclusive content so they can be further targeted.

The platform also utilizes geo-fencing so that an artist on tour can send out a message about ticket or merch specials just to those fans attending the show.

Bkstg is starting with some heavyweight artists like Aerosmith, Justin Bieber, Usher and Maroon 5, and the app is free to use for both artists and users.

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Get More People To Watch Your Live Video Streaming

Live video streaming is pretty hot these days, and most of the major social platforms allow you to do it. The problem is that you only get a small portion of your available fans when streaming in just one place.

While it's possible to embed your player on a number of websites, that's a pretty time consuming process, and that's where StreamSpread comes in.

StreamSpread is a new network that finds compatible websites for you (called "publishers") so you can get your live stream out to more people. You have to pay for this service (you're an "advertiser") at a rate of either $5 per 1000 views or $0.03 per hour viewed, but you can quickly and easily expand your audience.

The service works with a stream you create from Ustream, Livestream or Twitch, and provides analytics such as number of viewers, time watched, viewer geolocation, concurrent views, and viewer's browser and device type.

You can also filter the categories of the websites that will serve up your stream to make sure that you target the exact audience for your message or music.

Here's a brief video below that explains the service.

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Your Music Won't Be Played In China Anytime Soon

China is one of the most populated countries in the world with over 1.3 billion people, 75% of which listen to music regularly.

That said, the revenue generated by music is stunningly small (see the chart composed of data from the IFPI) and it looks like it's not going to increase anytime soon, at least for Western artists.

Only 10% of the population currently listens to non-Chinese music and that's going to drop, thanks to the government's recent declaration that any kind of content from foreign media companies will be blocked starting March 10th.

Companies like Apple and the New York Times who have invested millions in China just may be out of luck, and if your music or content was aimed that way, so will you. The big windfall that China promised may never take place after all, thanks to the protectionist policies of the Chinese government.

Then again, if the video below is what they consider hip, then maybe we're not missing anything anyway. It's a communist corruption rap featuring president Xi JinPing.

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YouTube Now Lets You Selectively Blur The Screen

YouTube videos are so incredibly powerful that every artist and band has to do them in order to both engage their current fan base and also to expand it as well. That said, many artists shoot randomly and never think of the consequences of not getting releases from people and places in the video.

There are times that people and venues want money for using their name and likeness. That used to require a reshoot, which wasn't always possible, until now. YouTube now gives you the tools to selectively blur any part of your video for maximum anonymity.

Way back in 2012 YouTube launched a face blurring tool, but the current update allows other things to be blurred out in the video like license plates, phone numbers, wardrobe malfunctions, disturbing imagery, etc.

You draw a box on top of the part of the video that you wish to blur, and then the feature will track the object as it moves throughout the video. You can also choose when the blurring begins and ends.

This update is only available on the desktop version of YouTube at the moment, but they promise that the mobile version update will follow soon.

Here's a video that shows how to do it.

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Volvo Adds Phone-Free Spotify

Almost all new cars are blue-tooth enabled so you can stream music from your smartphone, but any driver who's tried this knows how clunky it can be while driving, let alone dangerous.

Volvo is making music streaming a lot easier by integrating Spotify directly into its new XC 90 SUB, S90 sedan and V90 wagon this spring.

All you need is a Spotify premium account to get going, and as the video below explains, it's pretty easy to use and doesn't require a smartphone to use. Is this the way of the future for car audio?

Read more about it here.

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7 Tips For Publishing Facebook Videos

Facebook is becoming more and more a force when it comes to online videos, so it's important that you optimize your videos for the platform in order to get the most out of them.

Here are 7 tips from Facebook video product manager Anaid Gomez-Ortigoza for get the most out of your post.

1. Schedule your videos so the most fans see it and the content stays fresh.

2. Set expiration dates to help with any licensing restrictions.

3. Add captions to tell your story without sound, since many viewers watch the video with the audio turned off.

4. Edit and manage your videos with Facebook's video library tools.

5. Take advantage of Facebook's embedded video player to be able to embed them on other platforms.

6. Utilize secret videos that must be accessed through a dedicated URL so they're only available to fans.

7. Track your metrics, especially your top videos, engagement and retention graphs.

Facebook videos allow you to reach more of your audience without have to pay for the privilege, so they're a powerful way in extending your brand and growing your audience.

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Bandcamp Launches Artist Subscriptions

For many artists, having their fans subscribe to a monthly subscription is the way to go. That way the artist gets a fairly predictable income, while the fan gets exclusive content and first dibs on wide release content as well.

The infrastructure for putting that together can be a lot more daunting than an artist wants to deal with however, so platforms like Patreon have sprung up to make it easier. Now the widely use artist utility Bandcamp has launched it's own subscription service.

When this feature was originally announced more than a year ago, I wrote a blog post about why I didn't think it would work. It's certainly not for every artist and the post explains why.

That said, Bandcamp makes it fairly easy to incorporate a subscription into your BC site, as well as set the subscription price and tiers. It also makes it easy for the subscriber to receive newly released material as well.

Bandcamp charges a 15% commission plus a 2.9% processing fee, while Patreon only charges 5% plus a processing fee, which is something that every artist wishing to use the feature has to take into account.

Here's a video that describes the feature in detail.

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Record Label In A Box

I don't know if it's a good idea or not to start your own label, but if do and you're in the UK, then Record Label In A Box from the music aggregator Ditto Music could be for you.

The Basic edition goes for  £99 ($152), the Premium edition is £249 ($383), and the Enterprise version costs a whopping £3499 ($5,378). The latter features a 12 month mentoring, one-on-one career building, and a full PR and marketing campaign and a branded website.

You can check it out on the Ditto website, but just remember that most of what they show you applies to the UK.

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Music Matters - A Movie About The Payola Law

Payola, which occurs when a record label pays to have a song played on the radio, was outlawed in 1960, but a new documentary called Music Matters tries to make a point that the law was created for the wrong reason.

The film states that it was actually a racist backlash against Elvis Presley, since he was singing a white version of songs made by black artists. The film also states that if payola was still in force, market forces would self-regulate the industry, so a bad song wouldn't play long on a station no matter how much the label paid since it would hurt the station's ratings.

Whether you agree or not with the premise of the film, it's still worth watching below.

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Making Your Videos Google Friendly

Video is an essential tool for artists and bands today, but regardless of the platform that you post it on, you want to make sure that people can find it if they do a search. Here are some tips from my Lynda.com course called YouTube For Musicians and Bands that will help to make your video Google search friendly.

Check out my other social media and recording video courses on Lynda.com, and get unlimited access for 7 days for free by using this link.

Spotify Unveils Touch Preview

When looking for new music, we're not always sure about what we like, but we always know what we don't. Most music services give you a 30 second preview of a song, but these days we want to be able to immediately move on if there's something that doesn't immediately tickle our fancy.

That's why the new Spotify Touch Preview feature is so cool. It's a change in the user interface on an iPhone or iPad (Android to come soon) that allows you to touch and hold to activate the preview of the song. Don't like it? Just touch something else. It's designed to make music discovery as quick and easy as possible, and I think it succeeds. Check out the video to see how it works.

Instagram Launches The Hyperlapse App

Every platform needs a "killer app" and while Instagram has always been about pictures, it's new Hyperlapse feature might be just the thing to push its use in video over the top. While time-lapse video has always been pretty cool, it's been a major production pain, requiring hours of shooting time. Hyperlapse allows the user to instantly get that same look without any pain other than holding your smartphone still for a while.

Hyperlapse is different from most platform apps in that it doesn't require an account since its a dedicated app that sits on your smartphone. You just tap to begin recording and it automatically defaults to 6x speed, although you can change it to something slower or faster if needed.

You can shoot the video for as long as you like (providing you have the arm strength to hold the camera still that long), but like all video shared on Instagram it's limited to 15 seconds and presented in its signature square format.

Music video directors should love it though, and here's a video called "Overblown" by Doctor Popular as a sample. If you have an iPhone, you can get Hyperlapse from the App Store here.

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Playing Vinyl With Your Smartphone - The Office Turntable

This is one of the best promo ideas ever. German dance label Kontor sent out 900 mailings that contained a vinyl record in a cover that folds out to become a 2D record player.

There's a QR code to download an app onto your smartphone, which you then launch and line up on the "turntable." The app then shows a virtual tone arm that allows you to play the record.

Kontor found that 71% opened and used the mailing, which was about 64% higher response than usual. The project won the Gold Lion Award at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity. Check it out.

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"We Don't Need More Copyright" Says Tom Bell

One of the things that the vast majority of songwriters are looking for is more copyright protection, or at the very least, a revision of what's already on the books. Chapman University law professor Tom Bell has quite a different viewpoint in that he believes that dialing back copyright law will actually spur greater creativity.

Bell has a new book out called Intellectual Privilege: Copyright, Common Law and the Common Good, and in it he states that the existing copyright law contradicts our constitutional right of free expression. His solution is to use common law instead, which means that we'd use the established laws that cover ordinary property that already exist and work well in courts instead. That would encourage artists to create works that are considered a legal gray area now, like mashups, tributes and parodies.

Have a listen to what he has to say, as he makes a very persuasive argument.

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A Peek At The Upcoming YouTube Mobile Features

Google is becoming more and more sensitive to YouTube video creators and has been hard at work developing new features to make posting more efficient. In this video preview of the upcoming YouTube mobile tools, you'll see some of the things they're working on, including:

• a community captions feature to help make a video more accessible overseas
• more royalty-free music available
• a way for artists to collect money from doing cover songs
• its own way of crowdfunding video creators (you can now link to Kickstarter and Indiegogo via annotations)

Musicians are receiving more and more of their income from YouTube videos, and anything that makes it more lucrative is most welcome. The real key is that you have to use the tools, including the existing ones, and not enough people are doing that yet.

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Was "Stairway To Heaven" Stolen?

Led Zeppelin is being sued for stealing parts of "Stairway To Heaven" from a song by Spirit called "Taurus" more than 44 years after the song was written. The estate of Spirit guitarist Randy California is preparing an injunction ahead of Zep's upcoming Led Zeppelin IV reissue.

All this stems from the fact that Zep opened for Spirit several times during their first tour of the States during which Spirit performed "Taurus" as part of their set, but why wait 40+ years to sue?

If you listen to the Spirit song below you'll hear some similarities to the intro of the song, but it's of a rather generic guitar pattern and nothing of the song's melody. I'd bet that this suit goes nowhere, but it does serve one purpose in that it got us talking about Spirit again, who were a great and very underrated band from way back when.

It's been estimated that "Stairway" has made the group $540 million over the years, so the 36 year old attorney for the plaintiff (who's younger than the song) is obviously hoping for a reasonable out of court settlement. The problem is that Zep obviously has deep pockets and it might not be as easy for that to happen as he believes.

So songwriters beware, there's nothing new under the sun given the 12 note scale that we use, so you're probably copying a previous song without even knowing it. That's enough to get you sued, but it's another story when it comes to actually winning in court.

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What To Do After The Album Is Finished

In many ways, the actual creation of an album is the easiest part of the job. Many artists and bands can do a great job of that, but then wonder what to do after their masterpiece is finished.

Here's a video from my new Selling Music: MP3s, Streams and CDs course on Lynda.com that shows the 10 steps you can take to take advantage of your latest release.

Check out more videos from this course and my other Lynda.com video courses with a free 7 day subscription.

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Scamming Spotify To The Tune Of $20,000

Who says you can't make any money on Spotify? An enterprising Los Angeles band named Vulfpeck figured out how to make $20,000 from it by doing absolutely nothing. That's actually not totally true, but they didn't make the money from their music.

The band wrote a completely silent album they called Sleepify and asked their friends to stream it while they slept. The group only has a fanbase of 1,000 or so, but soon all those plays started to add up.

At a rate of $.007 per stream, each fan generated about $4 while they slept. Before long the band was owed about $20k, which they intend to use to fund their next tour.

Spotify eventually caught on and removed the album, citing a violation of the platform's terms of service agreement, but you have to hand it to the band for thinking outside the box. On the other hand, why couldn't they just ask their fans to stream their real albums all night?

Here's their video that explains what they did.

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The Reasons Why Your Merch Doesn't Sell

All artists and bands today depend on merch sales for a good portion of their income, yet many find that the merch they depend upon doesn't sell like they expected. There are a number of common reasons this might happen, as outlined in the video below from my Selling Music Merchandise video course on Lynda.com.


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A Look Into The Music Business Crystal Ball

I've been interviewed a lot recently for publications and podcasts all over the world, and the latest one is on Music Business Facts, where Rodney Holder was kind enough to ask me to appear. Here's an excerpt from that interview (the full interview is on the site now) that looks into the crystal ball to show what I think the music business will be like in our near future.

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Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

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