Youtube Experimenting With Multiple Camera Angles

Artists that post frequent videos to YouTube will be interested to learn that the service rolled out an experimental feature that allows the viewer to be able to chose from multiple camera angles when watching a video.

When implemented on your video, the viewer can select the desired camera angle via a list of thumbnails on the right side of the video as shown on the graphic. The tool shows up under a special "Choose Your View" tab.

Here's an example of how the feature works using a live performance of indie artist Madilyn Bailey.

YouTube expects this feature to be used only on live events right now, although it would be interesting what could happen during a normal edited music video. There are some downsides, however, in that each camera angle eats up more bandwidth, and you can only stream a single angle from a mobile device at the moment.

Remember, this feature is still just being tested, so everyone can't access it yet, and you have to be in the US as well. That said, many artists might not even be interested unless they regularly work with multiple cameras shoots to begin with, but it's cool that YouTube is still pushing the envelope by adding new features.

If you're into trying it, here are YouTube's instructions for encoding multiple camera angles, and you can sign up to use it here.

iTunes To Block Sound-Alike Covers

Many up and coming artists have found cover songs to be the ticket to gaining a larger audience. While this is a tried and proven method on Youtube, taking it to iTunes will no longer receive the same reception. Digital Music News reports that sound-alike cover songs will now be banned from the service.

iTunes is really trying to clean itself up after years of complaints about people buying a song only to find out it's a tribute or cover, or even worse, a cover by the real artist. Many artists re-record a track in order to cut the record company out of the royalty pipeline. It may sound close, but it's not the original and usually you can tell.

The latest iTunes Style Guide (here's a link to the previous one) apparently says that track titles that state "Originally performed by," "In the style of," "Tribute to," or "Cover of" will be automatically rejected. Also, any songs that violate these guidelines that currently are on the library will eventually be taken down.

Karaoke and instrumental versions are the exception, however, as long as they're placed in the correct category.

iTunes will also no longer accept titles that include popular song lyrics either.

This problem is more acute on digital download services where you think you're getting one thing and instead pay for something else. With a streaming service you just move on, trying to find the version that you want, so they don't have the same restrictions in place that iTunes has.

Music Doesn't Crack The Pirate Bay's Top 100

There is good news and bad news when it comes to piracy. According to an MBW analysis of the newly returned online sharing site, music doesn't even crack the top 100 of most downloaded files.

That means that, like many have been saying for a while now (including me), piracy is no longer a major issue for the music business.

The bad news? It could mean that people don't care enough about music anymore to steal it, although I'm inclined to believe that it's more about the new streaming paradigm than anything.

So what dominates the top 100 most pirated files? As you can see from the chart on the left movies are about 50%, followed by television shows at 33%, porn at 9% and games and apps at 4%.

What were the top 5 most downloaded files?
1. Wild Card (movie)
2. The Interview (movie)
3. American Sniper (movie)
4. Nightcrawler (movie)
5. The Blacklist (television show)

The most pirated music?
1. True - Avicii (album)
2. "Shake It Off" - Taylor Swift (track)
3. "All of Me" - John Legend (track)
4. X - Chris Brown (album)

There will always be pirating of material that people can't either afford, think is too highly priced, or is inconvenient to get legally. As we've seen with music, once at least one of those barriers are broken, pirating decreases, except for in the case of some techies who will pirate things anyway just because they can.

5 Common Tactics Of Live-Music Sponsorship

Every artist or band wants a sponsorship, even on a local level, but they're usually hard to come by. That's because most potential sponsors aren't aware of the many ways to utilize a sponsorship, and neither is the act.

Group M Entertainment and Sports Partnerships, the world's largest media buying firm, discovered during a 12 month study of 2,000 people spanning all age groups that 44% of concert goers are more likely to respond to a brand that sponsors a show compared to 38% at a sporting event. The only problem is that most brands aren't as familiar with music as they are of other "passion points" like sports.

That said, there are 5 tactics that a brand can use to sponsor an artist or band:

1. Pre-sale promotion
2. Ticket promotions
3. VIP/on-site hospitality
4. On-site sampling
5. Social media messaging

These apply to just about any kind of sponsorship, even for a local band. For instance, if you get a local clothing store to sponsor you, you can have their name on all tickets, their promotional material and banners can be available during meet and greets and after-parties, or they can have some of their clothing at the venue for attendees to check out. Of course, having them utilize their social media to promote the show and vice-versa the band promoting the store, could also be utilized.

By offering a variety of alternatives, you're more likely find sponsorship than just asking to hang a banner behind the band.

Facebook Isn't Cool Anymore, But It Doesn't Matter

Once again research shows that Facebook's popularity among teens continues to wane, as a new report from Frank N. Magid Associates found that the number of teens that use the social network is down 6% from last year.

That said, 88% of US teens still continue to use Facebook, and that number rises among all age groups over age 25. In general, Facebook user numbers still continue to grow in all age groups, especially outside the US, so you won't see a panic in the FB boardroom any time soon.

In fact, teens that leave Facebook tend to go to Instagram instead. You know who owns Instagram? Facebook, of course, so the service is losing teens basically to itself.

What this means to  band or artist is that if your fanbase is comprised mostly of teens, then Instagram should definitely be part of your social media promotion mix. But don't forget Facebook, since a great many teens still do check it out, especially outside the US.

Katy Perry And The New Super Bowl Sales Bump

When Katy Perry takes the field to present her 12 minutes of Super Bowl halftime entertainment on Sunday, the reality of what that exposure brings will have changed greatly from previous years. Forget music sales, social media followers, viral music videos or any of the other recent analytics that an appearance of such magnitude usually measures by. Sure, those will still be there, but this time the prime metric of the expected Super Bowl bump will be different. Now it’s all about the sponsorships.

Last year’s headliner Bruno Mars watched his album sales jump more than 160 percent right after his Super Bowl appearance, and his earnings for the year topped $60 million, good enough to place 12th on the Forbes list of richest entertainers. Ms. Perry has already sold nearly 100 million units, and that should increase directly after a halftime of greatest hits (even last year’s guests Red Hot Chili Peppers saw their greatest hits package soar over 400%), but the sales are almost an afterthought to an artist in the current music environment. In the new Music 4.0 world we live in, the music is the marketing, not the product.

While Perry came in 23rd on that same list with $40 million last year, she can expect a big bump in revenue in 2015 thanks to a major increase in her concert asking price as well as a big jump in her sponsorships. What that means is that the overhead involved in any major tour she mounts will diminish greatly with sponsors signing on for big dollars, which is where the real money in music is today. Read more on Forbes.

Winter NAMM Wrap Up On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

This week's podcast is a little different in that I'll give you my Winter NAMM 2015 wrap up overview. 

You'll hear about the new trends from the show (like Pro Tools 12 going to the cloud) as well as a look at some of the cool new gear that I spotted, including some of the odd things that other blogs and magazines probably missed.

No guest on this one, but I'm sure you'll dig it anyway.

Remember that you can find the podcast at BobbyOInnerCircle.com, or either on iTunes or Stitcher. 

Apple's New P2P Patent Is A Head Scratcher

Apple has just been granted a patent that allows users to legally share music and videos with friends by using P2P technology instead of downloading from iTunes. This is curious indeed, considering the considerable resources put behind the tech industry in trying to kill P2P in the past.

Apple claims that this will save bandwidth costs by having users obtain the desired media files from other users, but they'll still receive the necessary licenses separately from Apple. That's actually the interesting part of the patent - decoupling the license from the content. Instead of getting a file from iTunes, users just purchase the license, which requires virtually no bandwidth and drops the delivery costs to almost zero.

While the company takes the stand that this will make piracy less attractive, streaming has already made piracy a non-issue, so it seems like this is a technology that's an answer without a question.

That said, the patent was filed in 2011 when it was a little more relevant than it is now, which goes to show how fast things run in the tech side of the business. Check here for the full patent.

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.

Are New Analytics Coming To Beats Music?

Musicmetric sample

Apple recently acquired a British analytics service company called Semetric, according to The Guardian, making many wonder whether improved analytics will be part of the new Beats Music when it relaunches later this year. Although an exact sales price was not revealed, it's estimated by the Financial Times to be around $50 million.

The interesting part of the deal is that Semetric owns the music analytic service called Musicmetric, which specializes in tracking sales, pirated downloads and artist social media for labels and independent clients (see a sample on the left). The company recently struck a deal with Spotify to include its dashboard on the service, although another analytics company, Next Big Sound, provides the data.

While virtually all streaming music services provide some sort of analytics, the presumption is that Musicmetric brings greater depth than what's normally available, which could be a factor in making Beats Music more attractive to some labels and artists.

Apple has also been attempting to renegotiate its current licensing deals with the major labels in order to bring the monthly subscription fee down to around $5, which could be the killer feature for consumers. This is no sure thing, however, as the labels have been very reluctant to do so.

Whatever the case, Beats Music is set to cause some disruption in the streaming music side of the business. Both Spotify and Pandora should be very concerned, as they don't have nearly the deep pockets to match an all-out effort by Apple to gain market share.

Even In Music It's The Top 1%

Most streaming and download music services have more than 20 million songs available, which should be more than enough for any one lifetime of music discovery. But music discovery isn't something that most people seem to be interested in, at least according to the numbers quoted in an article on The Atlantic.

• First of all, the top 1% of bands and solo artists now earn 80% of all the revenue from recorded music. That's pretty depressing.

• But it gets worse. The 10 most popular songs accounted to almost 2% of all streams in both 2013 and 2014. That means that 1 in ever 50 to 60 streams on Spotify, Soundcloud or YouTube will be a top 10 song.

• A typical listening session is around 3 1/2 hours, but no matter how musically cutting-edge you are, there will still be at least one top 10 song in the playlist.

The fact of the matter is that some people love to discover new music, but most people don't actively take the time to do so and would rather be spoon fed by radio or some other passive service. That means that social buzz means more than ever to a new artist. You can make new music, but the world isn't going to beat a path to your door to hear it.

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.