Pianist Asks To Remove Review Under "Right To Be Forgotten" Ruling

Did you ever get a review that you hated (or hated you) that you wanted removed? That's what happened to pianist Dejan Lazic, who received a less-than-flattering review in the Washington Post way back in 2010. Lazic, who lives in Zagreb, Croatia, decided to fight back by invoking the little known "Right To Be Forgotten" rule in the EU to get the the newspaper to remove the review from its website.

It wasn't the review itself that hurt, according to Lazic. It was the fact that it showed up on the first page of a Google search for the last 4 years that he claims is detrimental to his career.

What's more, he does have some legal standing here. The European Union has ruled that individuals have the right to their personal information, so they should also have control over their personal search results. If your name comes up in a search and the links turn out to "inadequate, irrelevant or ........ excessive," an EU court ruled that you should be able to ask the search engine to remove them.

The problem is that the court ruled that the newspaper doesn't actually have to remove the review, since they own it. Google and other search engines, on the other hand, must remove the review from their search listings, and they have.

In the end, this might have been a just a great PR stunt. Most of the links on a Lazic search refer to him asking to remove the review, and his name certainly got out there a lot more from this incident than from his performances.

Still, most people don't know about the "right to be forgotten" rule in Europe, so it's worth noting if ever needed. That said, this doesn't apply in the US - at least not yet.

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5 Ways To Get Fans To Buy Your Physical Product

Even though most of us have changed to listening to music via online streams, physical product is never going away. People still buy CDs and vinyl is a very hot commodity, even though the sales number aren't what they once were. So what does it take to get people to actually buy your product?

Nick Moorhead wrote a great article on this over on the Sonicbids blog. I'm going to use some of his points with my explanations here, but you should still read his post because he offers a lot of good info. Here's my take on the 5 things to remember.

1. You need a visually compelling cover. Artwork sells and it always has. Back in the days before the CD when all we had was vinyl records, people would actually buy a record of an unknown artist just because they found the cover interesting. That still applies today.

2. Make it a limited addition. People can't resist something they think is a collectible. Sometimes by just numbering the products (#14 of 500, for instance) can make them more attractive, and allow you to charge more too.

3. Include some bonus tracks. A fan will buy the product if he knows that there are two songs that can't be found anywhere else. It's the ultimate enticement.

4. Provide a bundle. Sometimes just selling a record or CD isn't enough; you have to include some of your swag as well. Either include a T-shirt, sticker, patch or poster - it doesn't matter what's included to make the package seem like more of a bargain.

5. Make the liner notes special. Once again, back in the days of vinyl records, many people bought records based on the liner notes as well as the artwork. The more info you include (studio, additional players, behind the scenes trivia, etc.) the more fans are likely to purchase it. Including lyrics is also a plus as well!

It's surprising what just a little thought and a little bit of extra effort can do for the sales of physical product. Sometimes it's just that one extra thing beyond the music that gets someone into a buying frame of mind.

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TIDAL Starts The Streaming Race To The Top

While Spotify may be the current king of the hill when it comes to interactive music streaming, and Apple and Google threaten to enter the fray in a big way, a new kid on the block may have changed the game for everyone. This week the Swedish service WiMP launched its new TIDAL service and from here on out, streaming music is not going to be the same.

So what does TIDAL have that the other services don’t already? Real CD quality audio for one, with 44.1kHz/16 bit tracks streamed in either FLAC or ALAC compression formats, depending upon the device you’re listening on. TIDAL is also the first streaming service to be able to stream this level of audio quality to a mobile device, with apps available for both iPhone and Android.

To be fair, you can also get roughly the same sound quality with the new Deezer Elite tier as well, but that only works if you have an Sonos audio playback system available, which means that at least at the moment, it’s not available to the masses.

As good as TIDAL sounds, the downside is that it costs $19.95 a month, which is way outside the comfort zone of most music consumers. For audiophiles, it’s probably a no-brainer, but I don’t think you’ll see the average music lover subscribing given what’s available for a lot less or even free. For some, sound quality is just not that important. Read more on Forbes.

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The 3 Elements Of An Artist's Online Promotion Strategy

If you're an artist or band it's very easy to be overwhelmed by all the options online. That's why you need a solid strategy to make sure you don't spend more time than is necessary, and really getting the promotional value you want from your online presence. My Social Media Promotion for Musicians book lays out a strategy for this, and here's an excerpt that provides an overview of the 3 elements of online promotion that should bring it all into focus if you have any confusion at all.

"There are a lot of online elements that every artist, band or brand has to be involved in these days in order to be an effective online marketer. It’s pretty easy to get confused and either not know where to begin, or throw yourself scattershot at all of them, which usually means that your efforts will be ineffective when it comes to promotion. If we just look at the major components, it looks something like this:

• Your website
• Your email list
• Facebook and Google+ posts
• Twitter
• Music releases
• YouTube video posts
• Blog posts

Throw in any of the 100+ additional networks available and it’s no wonder why artists, bands and music execs become bewildered by it all. We can make things a bit simpler by separating these components so they fall into one of three categories; content, interaction and tactics. If we break all this out, it looks like this:

1. Content: the places online where you place the material that you generate, like information about your band, music, videos, or blog posts. Interaction is all the social networks where you might interact with your fans and followers. These include:

• Your website
• Your mailing list
• Your blog
• Your videos on Youtube and other video sites
• Your music files on Soundcloud or other music hosting sites

2. Interaction: the places where you regularly communicate with your fans, followers, clients and customers. These include:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+
• Pinterest
• Bookmarking
• Instagram
• Any other social network

3. Tactics: everything required to define and refine who you are and your position in the online world. These include:

• Branding
• Strategy
• Measurement

All this gets more interesting when we put into the form of a Venn chart as in Figure 2.1 and watch how the categories intersect.

Figure 2.1: A Venn chart of your online presence. 

As you can see, where all three category circles cross, a new element pops up - promotion. This isn’t possible without all three elements combined, which goes to show just how synergistic they all are. Use only one or two and you fall short; use all three and new possibilities for promotion arise. That’s not the strategy though, only the general overview."

To read additional excerpts from Social Media Promotion for Musicians and my other books, go to the book excerpts section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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The Reason Why Opening Acts Lose Money

You've signed you first major label record deal, the new album is about to drop, and now you're scheduled to be the opening act for a major headliner. What could be better? Well, it helps if you actually make some money, but that's usually not the case because touring costs are so high.

How high? This article in Billboard illustrates the costs for an opening, mid-level, and superstar act. An example of the opening act costs from the article is below.

The big takeaway is the final note. If you're not careful, you'll be on the hook to the label for much more than you think.

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What Smart People Listen To

Here's an interesting chart the looks at what people listen to based on their college SAT scores. Basically, if you have a really high score than you probably listen to Beethoven, if it's moderately high it's Sufjan Stevens, Counting Crows, U2 and Radiohead. If it's on the low side, then you tend to listen more to hip hop, pop and rock. One of the more surprising parts of the chart is that jazz is pretty low on the "smart scale." We always think of the genre as more cerebral, but the chart doesn't bare that out.

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Pandora Teases Streaming Subscribers With A New Ad Model

Streaming music platform Pandora has tried a lot of things to both raise its income and increase its subscriber base, but the company is getting especially aggressive with a brand new ad model that promises an hour of ad-free music for just clicking on a banner ad. 

The new ad product, named Sponsored Listening, has a couple of big brands that are eagerly joining in the beta testing, which is initially launching only on Pandora’s mobile app. That’s a shrewd move since about 80% of its users listen on a mobile device, although the company projects a desktop version to come a few months down the line.

So far Fox and Sony Playstation have signed up for the new format, with Fox pushing its shows Gotham and Mulaney, and Sony’s campaign to launch in a few weeks. The ads will only be available to a small group of users targeted by the advertisers for now, but a full rollout to all sponsors and subscribers is expected to begin in latter half of 2015, according to the company.

Pandora currently has around 77 million users but around 3.5 million of those are paying subscribers. A subscriber pays $4.99 per month for ad-free listening, so the Sponsored Listening campaign is a way for more listeners to be exposed to the ad-free environment. For advertisers, not only do they the exposure via the banner ads, but also hope that users will associate the positive Pandora ad-free experience with their brands. Read more on Forbes.

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Pandora Releases Data To Musicians

Pandora AMP data

Pandora takes a lot of heat for the royalties that it pays, so it's trying to make up for it by launching what it calls the Artist Marketing Platform, or AMP for short, which provides extensive analytics not previously available. The service is free to any artist that Pandora plays.

The major data points that an artist can now track are

• which cities have the most fans that listen to the songs, which are included in an interactive heat map
• the number of "Thumbs Up," which is Pandora's version of the Facebook Like
• the basic demographics of the people that listen to their tracks or make playlists contain their music

About 80% of artists on Pandora don't receive terrestrial radio airplay, so this is a way for them to receive some valuable data that they wouldn't ordinarily be able to get.

Information is power in the music business, just like in any other business. By knowing where most of the fans are, an artist can better plan tours. By knowing which songs best resonate with the fans, an artist knows how to plan sets or even what musical direction to follow.

It may not be more money, but AMP is something that can valuable nonetheless.

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Apple Asks Labels For Discount

Artists, bands and songwriters are complaining about what they're making from streaming services, but new negotiations by Apple and the major labels might have a big bearing on future royalties.

While $10 a month seems to be the going rate for most interactive streaming services like Spotify (Pandora charges $5, but it's non-interactive), Apple thinks that's too much. The company would like to lower that to $5 per month for Beats Music, but says it can only do so with a new licensing deal with the majors.

A new economic model could go either way for artists. If subscriptions increase, as analysts (including me) predict, then artists will make more money than they are now, and some cases, a lot more. Apple thinks that a lower price would accelerate growth, but it would also mean that subscriptions would have to at least double to just stay even.

This might sound far-fetched on the surface, but the fact of the matter is that there's only around 20 million paying subscribers globally for all services at the moment, so doubling the growth seems like a no-brainer.

That said, the general thought is that we'll reach 100 million subscribes with a few years anyway, and that's with the current model of $10 per month.

Then again, apple has more than 500 million credit cards on file on their iTunes stores worldwide. It seems like they're pretty sure that they can do some steep conversion at that lower $5 price. Hard to say which is the better way to go right now, but getting the labels to give in on this is certainly going to be an uphill climb.

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Twitter vs. Facebook For Artists And Bands

Some recent Facebook and Twitter data have made it a little clearer which platform generally works best for most artists and bands. Here are the most recent numbers from the platforms themselves.

Monthly Active Users
Facebook - 1,317 million
Twitter - 271 million

Celebs With Biggest Followings
Facebook
Shakira - 102.3 million
Cristiano/Ronaldo - 94.7 million
Eminem - 93 million

Twitter
Katy Perry - 53.9 million
Justin Bieber - 52.4 million
Barack Obama - 43.4 million

Time Spent On Each Platform
Facebook - 68% mobile/32% desktop
Twitter - 86% mobile/14% desktop

But the biggest difference is the fact that Facebook drives more than 20x as much traffic as Twitter does.
Facebook - 23.4%
Twitter - 1%

There's always the people that will say that Facebook is dying, losing teens, or irrelevant, but the fact of the matter is that right now, it does a lot better job of driving traffic to websites of artists and bands that know how to use it (check out my Social Media Promotion for Musicians book to discover more about how to do this).

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2014 First Year Ever Without A Platinum Album

With all the albums that have come out this year it's pretty amazing that exactly zero have been certified platinum by the RIAA. Yes, you read that right - there have been no million selling albums this year yet!

What's worse, it doesn't look like there will be any by the end of the year either. The two closest are Beyonce's self-titled album and Lorde's Pure Heroine, but both aren't even reached the 800,000 mark yet and their sales have slowed in recent months.

Actually, there has been one million seller - the soundtrack to Frozen has sold over 3 million, but that's a soundtrack and not a popular artist.

Back when the business was at its peak, there might have been 20 to 30 million sellers by this time just about every year (both recent releases and catalog), but those days are long gone.

On the other hand, there have been 60 platinum songs so far this year, but even that's down about 20% from last year, as the music consumer moves to streaming instead of purchase.

Yes, we're definitely in a singles era where the song is vastly more important than the album, but we're also in a very important YouTube era where a song can get 100 million views yet sell less than 10,000 copies. And today, that's considered a bit hit.

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Be Careful Who You Steal Song Ideas From

All songwriters are influenced by those who came before them. It's difficult not to borrow something from a song or artist you love and include it in your work, but when that borrowed piece becomes too blatant, then you're opening yourself up to a lawsuit, even 40 years down the line.

Take the case of Led Zeppelin's iconic "Stairway To Heaven," for instance. In 1967 Zep opened up for the band Spirit, who was out on the road in promotion of their first album (the self-titled Spirit) and playing the song "Taurus" every night. If you listen to both songs, you'll find that there's a lot of similarities in the chord changes and feel, which has caused the family of Spirit guitarist/songwriter Randy California to file a plagiarism suit against Led Zep.

It appears that the first round in the court battle has gone against Led Zep, as a judge has ruled that the trial can take place in the United States District Court of Eastern Pennsylvania. Attorneys for the band had argued that since no one from the band resided in that area, there was no basis for the trial to be held there, but the judge struck the motion to change venues down.

Led Zeppelin has been down this path before, losing a lawsuit to songwriter Willie Dixon for changing his "You Need Love" into "Whole Lotta Love." There's also a case to be made that "Dazed and Confused," "How Many More Times," "The Lemon Song," "Bring It On Home," and a few more were not as original as the world thought when they were first heard on Zep albums.

We still don't know how the lawsuit will turn out, but the moral of the story seems to be that if you're making a lot of money on a song that sounds a lot like another, be prepared to share some of the cash and the credit lest you find yourself in a courtroom somewhere.

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