Neil Young's Pono Music Service Illustrates Hi-Def Audio's Problems

There’s widespread industry speculation that Neil Young’s dream of a higher quality consumer music service is slowly getting closer, although a launch date is still nowhere in sight. Pono, in which Young is heavily invested, is a high-resolution audio ecosystem consisting of a download service supplying digital audio files transferred from the original audio masters at 192kHz/24 bit, and a dedicated player with the ability to play back those files at that resolution. Along with Apple’s best kept secret in their Mastered for iTunes program, Pono is an attempt to raise the bar in audio quality, a bar that has been continually lowered since just before the turn of the century thanks to the public’s acceptance of the quality impaired MP3 format.

Through the years, Young has always been a notorious stickler for audio quality, being one of the first artists to build his own personal recording studio based around hand-picked vintage audio gear, then later investing in Pacific Microsonics, which developed the HDCD audio technology that was acquired by Microsoft in 2000. He’s also been a big proponent of high-res audio formats like DVD-Audio and most recently Blu-Ray. To read the rest of the article, go to 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.

The World's 10 Best Record Stores

Amoeba Music in Hollywood

While it's true that record stores are sadly dying, they're not dead yet. To prove the case, Buzzfeed Music posted a great article on the best record stores in the world. Here's what they considered to be the top 10.

1. Amoeba Music - Hollywood, CA. (I've been there, since I live near Hollywood - it's fabulous!)

2. 12 Tonar - Reykjavik, Iceland

3. Aquarius Music - San Francisco, CA

4. Tower Records - Tokyo, Japan

5. Princeton Record Exchange - Princeton, NJ

6. Spacehall - Berlin, Germany

7. The Thing - Brooklyn, NY

8. Waterloo Records - Austin, TX

9. Forever Young Records - Grand Prairie, TX

10. Mabu Vinyl - Capetown, South Africa

The article mentions 17 additional great record stores, so for all of you vinyl aficionados, consider this your bucket list.

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

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.

The Fan Relationship Pyramid

There are 5 levels of online relationship, and regardless of what we're selling, the goal is to satisfy our superfans first, then get the visitor or fan on the lower levels to make the transition up the ladder to the top level.

ReelSEO had a great article about the relationship pyramid that describes the various levels. I've changed them to reflect the music industry, but they are (from lowest to highest):

• Awareness: Know your music but don't regularly interact with you.

• Acquaintance: Has heard your music and sort of liked it and is willing to listen again.

• Friend: Regularly listens or visits your social media or websites, but hasn't engaged yet.

• Confidante: Has gone as far as to join your mailing list, become a friend or follower and even a regular listener of your music.

• Intimate: Has purchased your music or merch, regularly engages on forums or social media, sees every gig, and evangelizes about you to anyone that will listen.

As said before, the goal is to move the people on the lower rungs of the pyramid upwards, and this is done by offering more targeted content. The easiest way to do that is with video; either a music video, behind the scenes video at a gig, or during rehearsal or recording. This allows you to connect on a very emotional level as humans respond to moving pictures and pictures of other human beings more than any other medium.

So keep doing those videos. They're helping you in more ways than one.

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

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

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

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.

5 Ways To Get Free Music Promotion

Artists and bands often complain about the cost of promotion, but thanks to the Internet there are more ways than ever to do it for free. Marcus Taylor outlined 49 ways over on Music Think Tank. Here are 5 of them.


#1 Host a free virtual show With Stageit.com.

Stageit.com has long been a favourite music marketing tool. The fact that it’s free is just the icing on the cake. If you’ve not used Stageit before, it’s essential a ‘Skype for bands’, where you can perform gigs from your kitchen to fans all over the World. Many good friends have used it and also found that it was a good way to raise a few hundred dollars for a couple of hours of performing.

#2 Add a Bands In Town app to Your Facebook Page.

BandsinTown is a must-have app for your Facebook Page. In short, it displays all of your upcoming gig dates in a slick-looking Facebook App. A great way of passively raising awareness of your upcoming shows.

#3 Create a FanDistro project to help charities & reward your fans.

FanDistro is another favourite. After creating your project page and sending it out to your fans, each fan receives a unique link, which they can send to their friends. If their friends then share your music or buy any of your products, they are rewarded with free merch and 20% of the sales go to a charity in the fan’s name. FanDistro is a brilliant way of increasing your social media engagement – artists like Cosmo Jarvis generated ~19 new fans for each fan who shared his music on the site!

#4 Build an app for your music with BandApp.

Created by Adam Perry, BandApp is a great platform for getting a free mobile app for your band.

#5 Upload your music to Soundcloud.

Soundcloud is arguably one of the best sites to host your music on, especially now that they’ve announced heavy integration with many of Google’s services. If you haven’t already, upload your music on Soundcloud, tag it well, and encourage fans to leave comments on the tracks.

Read the rest of Marcus' list on Music Think Tank. Many are UK-centric, but there's still lots of great ideas if you don't reside there.

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

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

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

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.

Top Concert Draws

Here are the top concert draws as of last week, courtesy of Pollstar. The list indicates this weeks ranking, last week's ranking in parenthesis, total revenue, and average ticket price in the last column.

There are a couple of things to note here. First of all, most of the acts are decidedly "old school," although Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and Bruno Mars are strong. Secondly, the prices for the country artists are very reasonable, costing between $31 and $40, although Bad Company/Lynyrd Skynyrd and Styx/REO Speedwagon/Ted Nugent are reasonable as well.

1. (1) The Rolling Stones; $7,772,849;                                    $345.49.

2. (New) Paul McCartney; $3,620,049;                                    $131.27.

3. (2) Taylor Swift; $3,021,717;                                                  $86.51.

4. (3) Kenny Chesney; $2,246,701;                                           $75.53.

5. (4) Fleetwood Mac; $1,427,403;                                             $110.90.

6. (New) Phish; $1,391,413;                                                         $48.76.

7. (5) Justin Bieber; $1,267,409;                                                  $80.71.

8. (6) Dave Matthews Band; $1,134,333;                                   $55.10.

9. (8) Bruno Mars; $1,029,608;                                                     $71.36.

10. (9) New Kids On The Block; $830,439;                                $65.06.

11. (New) Blake Shelton; $672,657;                                           $32.24.

12. (10) Tim McGraw; $586,428;                                                  $38.25.

13. (11) Brad Paisley; $569,683;                                                  $36.13.

14. (New) Rascal Flatts; $567,025;                                              $40.02.

15. (12) Carrie Underwood; $527,808;                                        $70.00.

16. (14) Barry Manilow; $377,596;                                                $67.98.

17. (13) Widespread Panic; $376,122;                                         $47.11.

18. (16) Bad Company / Lynyrd Skynyrd; $311,304;                  $31.44.

19. (17) The Postal Service; $249,253;                                         $41.27.

20. (18) Styx / REO Speedwagon / Ted Nugent; $225,939;       $35.27.

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

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

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

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.

Spotify Versus Pandora: Which Is Better?

Most people that have switched to streaming music use either Spotify or Pandora. That may change in a month or so when iRadio comes to life, but right now both companies hold the lead in the streaming part of the business. But which one is better? Here's a quick comparison.

Spotify: available in 21 countries
Pandora: available in 3 countries

Spotify: 20 million active users
Pandora: 47 million active users

Spotify: 20 million songs
Pandora: 1 million songs

Spotify: users can search for specific songs
Pandora: users refine their favorite channels with "thumbs up" or "thumbs down"

Spotify:after 6 months for free, users are limited to 10 hours per month
Pandora: basic music app is free, but with ads

Spotify: users can create custom playlists
Pandora: suggests songs so you can discover new music

Spotify: integrates with Facebook so users find new music based on friend's recommendations
Pandora: rewind and repeat not possible

So who's the winner? There's pros and cons with both, but there's enough cons that both are open to some competition. With a lot of that soon coming from some heavy hitters in the business, it's no doubt that the streaming landscape will be different by this time next year.

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

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

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

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.

Mobile Music Booms

Here's an interesting infographic about the state of mobile music today.

As you can see, 31% of all smartphone users stream music, and 79% of them are listening to Pandora!

The other interesting thing is that the US is only #5 in smartphone users listening to music, behind China, Russia, South Korea and Brazil. We use our phones for a lot more than communicating these days.

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

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

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

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.

Can Kid Rock's $20 Ticket Change The Concert Business?

Kid Rock has gone completely against the grain of the concert industry by touring behind the idea that a cheap ticket makes more money than an expensive one in the long run. While the average ticket price across the industry is almost $80, Rock has decided that $20 is more in range with what he'd like to see his fans pay.

Rock got promoter LiveNation to buy in after he agreed to revenue share 50/50 on the proceeds, rather than ask for a guarantee like most artists, and so far it's paid off, as every show has sold out and multiple nights have been booked at the same venues. And it gets better than just the low ticket price for fans.

• Walmart offers the tickets with no additional fees. You pay a flat 20 bucks.
• Parking is included in the price of the ticket
• Beer is $4
• Tour shirts are also $20 (they're usually at least $30 to 40 for most artists)
• Free samples of Jimmy John's sandwiches at the venue
• Free coffee available at the end of the show.

Now there are a thousand premium tickets available at higher prices, but they're also being sold directly to fans to keep the scalpers at bay.

This is a great idea because not only does it expose Rock to potential new fans who can afford to check him out because of the cheap prices, but it reenergizes his fan base as well. There's nothing like seeing a great live show to get your fans talking, and buying.

Not wanting to sound too old school here, once upon a time concerts were cheap enough that you could go several times a week and still have money left over. That exposed you to music that you'd have never seen otherwise, and allowed you to make a musical connection in the best way possible - from a live event. Unfortunately, as the prices began to soar, that several times a week became several times a month to today's once or twice a year. There's no way to gain new fans since the artists are only playing to their hard core fan base.

Kid Rock's lower prices have already caused a stir in the business, as Bon Jovi has added a $19.50 ticket to the current tour and other acts are considering something similar as well. This is a healthy trend and good for everyone involved, at least as long as the venues are full. Let's hope it continues.

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

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

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

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.

Beats Music Launch Getting Closer

Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine's Beats "Project Daisy" streaming music service appears to be getting closer to reality. Not only does Beats Music now have a website (although there's nothing on it), but it's hired a number of high profile people as music "curators." It's also openly advertising for engineers and designers.

According to Billboard, among the new hires include:
   Scott Plagenhoef, former Pitchfork Media editor in chief
   Carl Chery, former digital content director at XXL
   Suzy Cole, a radio music director from Detroit
   Arjan Writes, Recording Academy music blogger
   Mason Williams, former Rhino Records A&R director
   Fuzzy Fantabulous, LA hip hop radio personality
   Ken Tucker, a country music writer

They all report to new hire Julie Pilat, a former top exec at Clear Channel.

As I've posted before, the big hook for the new service will be content curation, which Iovine believes is something missing from the other services. The human element promises to provide a better way to discover new music, something that's not only vital for the service but the music industry in general.

The new curators certainly are experienced in their genres, which is a good place to start. Whether high profile and experienced curators will be better than ordinary people steeped in their particular scene is yet to be determined, but it's a good place to start.

There's no date for the launch of Beats Music (or Project Daisy, or whatever it will be called), but it looks like it's not that far away now.

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

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

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

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.

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 Like As Positive Reinforcement

A new study has found that if an article or post if Liked on a site like Facebook or Reddit, new readers are more likely to approve of it. This is from a study published Science journal that says that Likes create a "herding" effect in that it makes other readers more likely to react the same way.

This seems like a pretty obvious conclusion, but sometimes the obvious needs real data behind it for verification, which is what this study did. Another thing that the study revealed is that negative views don't seem to have the same impact on readers, meaning that people aren't more likely to follow that trend if it's presented.

On an unnamed news aggregation site, the researchers manipulated the ratings of over 100,000 comments on the site. They found that the ones that got the positive boosts received an average of 25 percent higher ratings as a result.

The conclusion they drew was that Likes perform a sort of positive reinforcement for readers. If someone else Likes something, then it's safe for them to Like it as well. If there are few Likes, then there's less comfort in doing so.

That said, other studies have found that Likes are a function of the number of followers or readers that you might have, where a level of 1% is a good result. In other words, if you have 1,000 followers, you can expect as many as 10 Likes on certain posts, and far less on most others.

It just goes to show that you shouldn't overvalue those Likes.

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

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

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

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.

When Vocalists Don't Get Paid

There's a long list of hits going back to the 50s that used a different singer other than the artist that was credited on the record. The most famous of these may be Milli Vanilli in the late 80s, who when discovered, were forced to give back their Grammy. This actually caused a law to be introduced in the US making it mandatory to credit the correct vocalists on the recording in the aftermath.

But dance music has always been different, since many times a track is already complete when the vocalists is brought in. It's then up to the singer to complete the song by writing the lyrics and melody. The problem is that many times, even today, these co-writers don't get any royalties for what they've done. Case in point is singer Martha Wash on C+C Music Factory's big hit "Gonna Make You Sweat," who eventually resorted to suing the label to get proper credit and royalties.

Now one singer has had enough. Vocalist Antonia Lucas, after 20 years singing and writing on hits without credit or royalties, has started the Vocalist Songwriters Alliance (VSA). Lucas has found that the the problem has become more acute in today's EDM world, where the real singer of the song is usually replaced by a younger and prettier "singer" on the video, and therefore becomes the star artist. VSA is just trying to bring some equality to the situation. You do the work, you should get paid.

VSA now has over 300 members, and some of them are very impressive. Check out their site and the video below.

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

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

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

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.