New YouTube Music Service Might Finally Launch

It looks like YouTube will finally launch it's long-awaited paid music service in late October, but it also looks to be  a little different than what we expected.

While YouTube's Music Key has been in beta testing for about 6 months, the rumors are that the service will now be called YouTube Red and it will consist of 2 main features:

1. The elimination of ads on all videos.

2. Access to Google's Play Music Unlimited catalog.

This all comes at a price of $9.99 per month. It's unclear whether users who have purchased Music Key will still be able to pay their $7.99 price or if their cost will also be the higher $9.99.

Supposedly the new service will also provide offline access to music and videos as well as background play (so you can listen to a song while working on another app on your phone) and more.

There's no word yet on the royalty structure for artists, songwriters, labels and publishers.

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Bobby O Interviewed On Inspirational Creatives

I want to thank Rob Lawrence for having me on his Inspirational Creatives webcast.

He asked a lot of thoughtful and insightful questions regarding the creative process that I'm not often asked.

He also got me thinking and talking about a lot of people that have helped me in the past, that I can probably never thank enough.

Check it out if you get a chance.

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Pay For Play Infiltrates Online Playlists

Just when you thought that the record business couldn't get any sleazier comes this. Record labels are now paying some big dollars to influence online playlists of streaming services.

This is what many in the industry call "Playola" (named after the old payola practice of illegally paying a DJ for airplay on the radio), and is yet another way that an established label, manager, or artist gets a one-up on the indie artist.

Believe it or not, the practice is legal, and even if it weren't it would be difficult to police. It's easy for a label or promotion company to slip $100 (or way more) to a blogger with a hot playlist for "consulting" without anyone being none the wiser.

While a small blogger might only cost that much, owners of popular playlists with hundreds of thousands of followers cost considerably more, with a six week campaign going anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000, according to an article in Billboard.

This is one area of the music business that most of us thought was still pristine and untouched by big money, but I guess that's too idealistic a vision.

That said, Spotify is taking a stand and forbidding its playlist owners from taking money from outside sources, which is an excellent reason to keep supporting it.

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Cassette Tape Makes A Comeback

It looks like another format that was left for dead is making a dramatic comeback. Believe it or not, the cassette tape is selling better than it has in years, and new tape decks are again being made.

According to National Audio Company, the largest of the companies still involved in cassette manufacturing, the company sold nearly 10 million units last year (remember that vinyl only did 13 million with a lot more hoopla about it).

Of that number, a surprising 70% was actually production copies made for two of the major labels Sony and Universal, along with a few small indie labels. The other 30% were blank tapes.

The company sees such an upturn in cassette sales that it persuaded Teac/Tascam to reintroduce tape machines long out of production.

So who's buying most of the tapes? You'd be surprised (or maybe you wouldn't).

Just like vinyl, it's the under-35 crowd who's gravitating back to the format. After listening to digital music all their lives, they've found they preferred analog.

Although many have looked down on the cassette as an inferior playback format, a fresh tape in a well-aligned machine can actually provide surprisingly good performance.

That's too much to hope for in this new resurgence, but it's nice for people to experience analog audio once again.

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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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Pay Attention To Regional Streaming Services

When we think of streaming services we automatically think of the global players like Apple Music, Spotify and Google Play.

It's true that they have the a great deal of the current streaming subscribers, but they don't have them all, and probably won't get many in certain areas of the world.

A good example is Africa, who streaming abounds, but not so much with the big players.

The reason is that many people there don't have bank accounts (along with some 2.5 billion people in the world), but most of them do have mobile phones.

Check out the following services are tied primarily to mobile carriers (in order of total revenue):

1. Simfy (South Africa)
2. Spinlet (Nigeria)
3. Tigo (Tanzania/Ghana)
4. Mdundo (Kenya)
5. iRoking (Nigeria)
6. Vuga (Nigeria)
7. Miziiki (Tanzania)
8. Mkito (Tanzania)
9. Orin (Nigeria)
10. LasGidaTunes (Nigeria)

The point is that if you want to address a regional fanbase, you can more easily target the country if you know which streaming services they listen to. Don't rely on just on the global services as they may not be popular with the fans or potential fans you want to address.

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People Still Not Willing To Pay For Music Subscriptions

Despite all the hype over the entry of Apple Music into the streaming music arena, people are still hesitant to spend money not only on Apple Music, but any streaming service. That’s the conclusion of the latest edition of Nielsen’s annual Music 360 report.

While every day there are new articles regarding the growth of streaming music, it turns out that good old fashioned radio not only refuses to die but is actually growing in importance in regards to consumers discovering new music. Music 360 found that 61% of people say they discover music that way, which is up from 57% in 2014. 

On the other hand, only 27% of consumers said they discovered new music via a music streaming service (and that includes YouTube).

This shows that the much talked about migration to subscription music isn’t the exactly the flood that was expected by now.

One of the major reasons for the slow start is price, an opinion that industry analysts have long held and was born out again in Music 360. According to the study, the top three reasons that consumers gave for not subscribing was that services are too expensive (46%), they can stream music for free elsewhere (42%), and they didn’t think they’d use a service enough to justify the spend (38%).

Although the current $9.99 per month seems like an ideal number in terms of the music industry’s wants and needs, that figure doesn’t seem to correspond to what consumers have in mind.

The general feeling among industry analysts is that $3.99 to $4.99 is a much better ballpark for a monthly price. It’s an easier psychological barrier to breach, and addresses two of the three objections sited in the report. You might feel that your 10 bucks a month is being spent unwisely if you only listen for a few hours during that time period, but it doesn’t hurt nearly as much at half that price. 

The chances of getting just about any music licensing body to sign off on a $4.99 per month price seems to be somewhere between slim and none at the moment though. Even the mighty Apple couldn’t negotiate a reported $7.99 per month price, which signals that it’s going to take some time before a continued low adoption rate causes a re-think of that position. Read more on Forbes.

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Too Many Choices Can Be A Bad Thing

There's an old salesman's adage that goes like this - "Never give a customer more than 2 choices." The reason why is that the customer may just get confused, throw up his hands, and walk away with a "never mind."

That could very well be the case today with the huge catalogs offered by all of the streaming services. Millions of choices is actually no choice at all.

Industry consultant Mark Mulligan of MIDiA has some interesting statistics on the subject (shown on the left) where out of a catalog of 25 million songs, only about 5% (1.25 million) is frequented and just 1% (250,000) is played often.

As a result, a $9.95 subscription price just seems like too much to the average music consumer. It's too many choices and they're walking away from a paid subscription.

Mark suggests that niche services would offer much more value to the average fan (the superfan is happy as is). That means a service that only serves a genre of music, like metal, hip-hop or jazz, with the catalog limited in the number of artists, titles and playlists. Of course, a lower price of $3.99 to $4.99 would help it be a winner as well.

That would get rid of all the covers, copies and karaoke versions that just clutter up the  streaming app and currently haunt Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play and virtually every other music service.

This is idea who's time has not yet come, as the industry pushback would be enormous, but it's an idea worth considering. Read Mark's full article and his great blog here.

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10 Steps To Being More Creative

Here are some great tips that that have been floating around various blogs for a while about how to get creative and stay that way. Regardless of who created the list, it's still pretty good advice and something I wish I would refer to more often myself. Take a look:

10 Steps To Being More Creative:


1. The best way to get great ideas is to have lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.



2. Create ideas that are 15 minutes ahead of their time…not light years ahead.



3. Always look for a second right answer.



4. If at first you don’t succeed, take a break.



5. Write down your ideas before you forget them.



6. If everyone says you are wrong, you’re one step ahead. If everyone laughs at you, you’re two steps ahead.



7. The answer to your problem “pre-exists.” You need to ask the right question to reveal the answer.



8. When you ask a dumb question, you get a smart answer.



9. Never solve a problem from its original perspective.



10. Visualize your problem as solved before solving it.


It's easy to let a creative block slow you down, but it doesn't have to. Even one of these ideas can get you those creative juices flowing again.

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Russia Changes Copyright Rules, Then Beats Critics

Russia has long been one of the countries that's been least hospitable to songwriters and artists because of its arcane copyright laws. Piracy and corruption has always been the order of the day there, and it's home to some of the most notorious hackers and torrents.

When the Russian Communications Ministry announced a new proposal aimed at changing the existing system of copyright royalty collection, it didn't get the response from the Russian music industry that it expected, according to an article in Billboard.

Currently, a single Russian agency can collect royalties without having the rights holder sign a contract. Obviously, that's a practice ripe for plundering since it enabled "insufficient transparency" in accounting.

The new proposal requires contracts to be signed between the collections agency and the copyright holder, and it enables other collection societies besides the state appointed one to enter the market. Obviously this is a step in the right direction.

That didn't sit well with the Russian music establishment though. After the announcement, Andrei Krichevsky, head of the state-run Melodiya label, was quoted in a Russian newspaper criticizing the proposal, stating the current system was working well and very efficient. He was then attacked and beaten after leaving his office in Moscow.

For once, this actually seems like the Russian government is coming down on the side of the little guy, although beating its critics is a throwback to the old KGB days. One wonders if this new law will actually change anything.

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Get Your Metadata Right

One of the major reasons why artists often don't get paid is because of missing metadata from their songs.

No matter if you're submitting to an aggregator like Tunecore for digital distribution, directly to a digital distributor like Soundcloud, or even a music supervisor for consideration, it's imperative to have the following metatags filled in.

1. Name(s) of artist(s)
2. Names(s) of composers
3. Name(s) of performers
4. Song Title
5. Album title (if any)
6. Label
7. Publisher
8. Year Released
9. Track Number
10. Genre
11. Producer
12. Contact (yours/management)
13. Performing Rights Society Affiliation (ASCAP, BMI, etc.)
14. Mood
15. BPM

Mood and BPM might seem incidental, but they're really important for music libraries and music supervisors, so take the time and fill them in.

Yes, filling in all the metadata takes some work, but not only does it ensure you'll more easily get paid, but it will give your song a better shot at being placed as well.

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Deezer US CEO Tyler Goldman On My Latest Inner Circle Podcast

You may not be hip to the streaming network Deezer yet, but it's available in 189 countries and has an impressive 6 million paid subscribers. Deezer's US CEO Tyler Goldman joins me for a conversation about the what's happening in streaming music now and what might happen down the road.

In the intro I'll also take a look at why the "Happy Birthday" song is not in the public domain and the new evidence that might finally get it there, as well as the things you should know if you're going to book your private studio out to other people.

Also, I'm happy to announce that the podcast has been selected as one of the Top 10 music industry podcasts by Indie Connect.

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

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