Whole Foods Now Selling Vinyl

We know that vinyl is making a comeback, but this might be a sign that the trend has peaked. It seems that hipster food retailer Whole Foods has introduced a vinyl section in five of its 340 stores (all in Southern California) for a test run.

You'd have to wonder why this would be a match, since there's no way music could contribute much to the bottom line of a $12 billion retailer, except for the fact that the people who shop there have made a lifestyle choice, and a vinyl record sort of plays into that lifestyle.

It appears that there's around 150 records available, which is a pretty good selection, and it ranges from Eric Clapton, Daft Punk, Paramore, Bob Marley and CCR to even some of Pitchfork's best new music picks. As you'd suspect, hip hop and metal are not well represented.

Of course, there is some irony in the fact that they're selling a petroleum-based product that's pretty far away from green, but who knows, maybe there's some sort of biodegradable record on the way that we don't know about yet.

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

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The Most Important YouTube Metric

If you were to ask most people what they considered the most important YouTube metric, they'd probably say "views" without much hesitation. On the surface that seems like the right answer, but if you were to ask the experts, they'd all say that engagement, or the amount of time people spend watching the video, is the most important.

That's because views can be deceptive. People can watch your video because it's funny or cool, yet not connect with your music or product. A viral video, for instance, does not mean that you have a YouTube audience. It only means that a number of people have found something about your video interesting, but they won't necessarily watch any of your videos again or subscribe to your channel.

So here's the balancing act - you want a video that's interesting enough that people will watch it and be exposed to your music, but you don't want a video that overpowers the music so much that it becomes secondary. Remember, videos with a single static picture or the song lyrics get millions of views, because in the end, it's the music that counts.

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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.

New Tools Reveal Music Industry's Secret Strength

If you believe everything you read, the music industry is swirling the financial drain. There’s always some new study or article that purports to show how business is much worse than it’s ever been. But every industry goes through changes at some point and either evolves or dies. Why should the music industry be any different?

The fact of the matter is that if you combine the global revenue from recorded music, licensing, publishing, merchandise and touring, 2012 was better than ever for the music business as a whole, with over $67 billion in global revenue. That said, revenue for the recorded music business slipped about .3% last year, according to the International Federation of Phonograph Industry (IFPI). 

But there are some bright signs even in the recorded music part of the business. Take Adele, for instance. Read more on Forbes.

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Best Cities For Music Jobs

If you're looking for a job in the music business in the United States, the places you can live to do so are limited. On the other hand, there's more of them than you might think, and according to Billboard Magazine, there are actually 10.

1. Nashville - 7.8 jobs per 1000
2. Los Angeles - 2.8
3. Austin - 2.6
4. Charlotte - 2.1
5. New York - 2.0
6. Atlanta - 1.8
7. Memphis -1.8
8. Seattle - 1.8
9. Chicago - 1.7
10. New Orleans - 1.7

On the other hand, the amount of money you can make from a music job rates those same cities differently. Here's the percentage of money that you can make from a music job compared to a regular job.

1. Los Angeles - 175%
2. Nashville - 156%
3. New York - 147%
4. Chicago - 113%
5. Seattle - 105%
6. Charlotte - 99%
7. Austin - 94%
8. Atlanta - 85%
9. Memphis - 79%
10. New Orleans - 73%

When it comes down to it, LA and Nashville are still the best place to be if you want to be in the music business, while New York has dropped in influence in recent years. On the other hand, Charlotte wasn't on anyone's list 10 years ago and now has a very active music scene.

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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.

Nirvana's Original Contract

Here's a great piece of music history. It's part of the original recording agreement between Nirvana and the indie label Sub Pop. There are a number of interesting things here if you take the time to read it:

1. There are 4 people on the agreement, and drummer Dave Grohl isn't one of them, since he didn't join the band until a year after the deal was signed. Jason Everman had originally paid for the sessions for the band's first album Bleach (a grand total of $606.17), and was kindly included on the deal.

2. The deal is only for one year with two option years, which is pretty short when compared to a major label deal, who usually try to hold onto an artist for at least 5 to 7 years.

3. The advance for the first year was $600! The first option year was $12,000 and the the second was $24,000. The option year advances turned out to be blessing and a curse. Bleach sold about 40,000 copies the first year (a pretty good amount for an indie), but Kurt Cobain was dissatisfied with Sub Pop's promotion of the album and wanted off the label. The advance amount for the second year was too much for most indie labels to absorb, so they were forced to look for a larger record label, which turned out to be David Geffen's DGC, a label that was distributed by Warner Bros at the time.

The rest, as they say, was history, as the band's second album Nevermind blew up and sold 25 million.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.