Is This iPad App The 21st Century Album?

There have been a lot of attempts to build a new digital album format that properly represents what people might want today, with very little excitement or penetration so far. Now EMI (of all companies) seems to be on the right track with a new iPad app version of Swedish house producer super group Swedish House Mafia’s ‘Until One’.  The product is actually an app version of the trio’s book and album combined with additional features layered on top (see screen shots below). The features include:

  * 9 tracks from the album

  * All of the photos from the book

  * Live and behind the scenes footage

  * Interviews

  * Social feeds

  * Dynamically updated news content

The app/album costs $9.99 and is available at the iTunes App Store.

This is very cool because it's thinking outside the box, but it's really not that far out. It's more of a natural extension of what the album can be. I see it as the wave of the future.

Here's a look at what the app can do.

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Has Social Media Growth Hit The Wall?

It may be that the excellent growth in social media that we've all been experiencing may be at an end. According to a new eMarketer study, 63.7% of US web users already use social media and they only expect that number to climb to 67% by the end of 2013.

More than 90% of 18 to 24 year old users already use social media regularly, as does 80% of 12 to to 34 year old online users, which means that you can't rely on simple organic growth anymore - you got to work for it the old fashioned way. It you don't cement those relationships now, you may not get a second chance.

Here are a couple of charts that tell the story.

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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 New Word For Spam - Bacon

There's a new classification of annoyance in your email box and it's called (I'm not making this up) "Bacon." Spam is unsolicited, unwanted email from an unknown sender that's trying to get you to buy something or scam you out of something. Bacon is legitimate email sent from legitimate senders that's trying to get you to buy something (you probably even asked for at some point).

It's also turning into a huge business and much more profitable than Spam. As the infographic below shows, once a marketer has you on their list, it's unlikely that you'll try to, or be able to get off. Everything you need to know about Bacon can be found below.

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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.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

The Court Decision That May Change The Music Business

There's just been a decision by the United States Supreme Court that may have major financial implications on the major record labels that could very well push some of them over the edge into insolvency. I've been reporting on the legal battle between Universal Music Group (UMG) and Eminem's FBT Productions for a couple of years, and it now looks like the case has finally been decided in Eminem's favor. Here's the gist of the decision and why it's important.

FBT brought the suit against UMG stating that a download sale shouldn't be treated like it is in a normal record agreement, but as part of a license deal. The difference is that in a record deal, the record label manufacturers the product (CDs) and pays the artist a royalty of anywhere between 12 and 20% of the wholesale price. In a licensing deal, the record label provides the licensee (such as a distributor in another country producing CDs) with a master, and they in turn manufacture the product. The record label and the artist split the proceeds from the license deal 50/50.

FBT contended that since UMG was only providing a master to an online distributor like iTunes or Amazon, and the distributor was manufacturing the product (in this case making a copy of a digital music file), all online sales are in fact license deals and should be paid as such - at a 50% rate instead of 12% in FBT's case.

You can see the financial implications here. If FBT won, not only would UMG owe them a ton of money, but every other artist at every other label would then sue for more money using the case as a precedent. The entire major label economy would be rocked!

UMG won the first round of the case, but FBT appealed and had the ruling overturned. Then UMG essentially appealed the appeal and took the case to the US Supreme Court for a ruling. The Supreme's refused to hear the case though, and sent it back to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to determine the damages.

There's some speculation that this is at least a $50 million decision for Eminem and FBT, and every other major artist will now go back to their record labels with their palms open wide. Lady Gaga and newer artist's will not have this ability however, as labels have since tightened up their contract language regarding downloads, but anyone with an older agreement can probably expect some dough.

The reactions from the industry over the next week or so should be very interesting.

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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.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Apple's Cloud Music Strategy

While most music industry pundits have been predicting that music streaming would soon hit critical mass, it certainly isn't here yet even though it continues to grow. Those same pundits also declare that if Apple would change iTunes to a streaming instead of a download model tomorrow, the rest of the world would follow, which is no doubt true.

The Apple streaming anticipation has grown to a fever pitch, especially after last year's acquisition of Lala, but don't expect that to happen any time soon. Here's why.

1) Downloads are still a big business.

2) Streaming requires new license agreements with the record labels.

But aren't there rumors abounding about Apple in new license talks with the major labels? Yes, they're having those discussions, but not for the reason you think.

Indeed, Apple will soon be announcing a new cloud service (storage via the Internet instead of on board your device), perhaps as soon as the beginning of April, but the idea is that it offers a sort of "insurance" for the end user in case her songs are wiped out on her computer, iPhone or iPod. If all your songs live in Apple's cloud, you can access them from any device instead of storing them locally (although you can do that too, or both). Hard drive died? No problem, the songs are stored in the cloud.

The problem is that the record labels wanted to get paid for a second download for the cloud privilege, so Apple had to enter into new licensing discussions as a result. Who wants to buy the same music twice?

Want another good reason why you'll see an Apple cloud service soon? We'll all soon be living in a tablet world, where iPads replace laptops so you won't have as much on-board storage. But you won't need that storage either, if everything lives in the cloud. Expect Apple to call it something other than "the cloud" though. Right now, the bets are on "personal locker."

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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.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

How Many Friends See Your Facebook Posts?

Robin Davey posted an interesting article on Hypebot yesterday called "Only 10% Of Your Friends See Your Facebook Posts, And Only 1% Like It." The underlying premise was that the number of Friends that respond via a "Like" is small, so as a result, Facebook posts are just marginally worth it.

Robin used the empirical evidence he received by a post on his  personal wall asking his friends to "Like" it, and received about a 10% response. He determined the 1% portion of the article by looking at the following (an excerpt from the post):

"The Black Keys have 800,000 fans and they get around 800 likes per post, although they did reach 7,000 when they said 'Lotsa Grammys".

Justin Bieber has 22,000,000 fans and gets between 25,000 and 50,000 likes per post.

Mumford and Sons have 1,300,000 fans and have recently pulled an impressive 17,000 likes on one post that simply said, "TOUR!!!"

But how impressive exactly is that?

Well the Black Keys, at 800 for the less popular posts, works out significantly below 1% of their fans choosing to like it, and just under 1% for their most popular post. Bieber's rampant fans achieve similar numbers. Mumford's impressive number is actually only just above 1%."

I think the flaw in this thinking is that if someone doesn't register a Like, then they're not actually reading the post at all. We all know that's not the case, and in fact many of us see and react to posts without actually registering a Like.

The reason why an artist should continue to post without worrying about getting Likes is the same reason why advertising works - it's all about the impressions. The more impressions, or views, the more likely the viewer will take some action, like download some music, go to a show or buy a T-shirt. 

As long as the information you post is valuable to the reader in some way, it's worth doing because you're reaching him in some way. In other words, it's nice to be "Liked," but it's not necessarily a sign of a successful post.

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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.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

The Internet In Numbers

Royal Pingdom recently posted everything you wanted to know about the Internet in the last year As always, the numbers are staggering, and each year they get more so. Here's a sample.

• 07 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2010.
• 294 billion – Average number of email messages per day.
• 89.1% – The share of emails that were spam.

• 255 million – The number of websites as of December 2010.
• 21.4 million – Added websites in 2010.

• 8.8 million – .COM domain names at the end of 2010.
• 13.2 million – .NET domain names at the end of 2010.
• 8.6 million – .ORG domain names at the end of 2010.
• 79.2 million – The number of country code top-level domains (e.g. .CN, .UK, .DE, etc.).
• 202 million – The number of domain names across all top-level domains (October 2010).

• .97 billion – Internet users worldwide (June 2010).
• 14% – Increase in Internet users since the previous year.

• 152 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
• 25 billion – Number of sent tweets on Twitter in 2010
• 100 million – New accounts added on Twitter in 2010
• 175 million – People on Twitter as of September 2010
• 7.7 million – People following @ladygaga (Lady Gaga, Twitter’s most followed user).
• 600 million – People on Facebook at the end of 2010.
• 250 million – New people on Facebook in 2010.

• 2 billion – The number of videos watched per day on YouTube.
• 35 – Hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.

Truly staggering. It's pretty easy to feel small.

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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.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Will We Be Buying By iPhone Soon?

It's rumored that the upcoming iPhone 5 will employ a new technology called Near Field Communications, or NFC, that will let a mobile device owner wave their phone over a short range wireless receiver or tap the device to make a purchase. This technology is already widespread in Japan and used in Europe, but still hasn't broken through here in the States. But of course, if Apple adopts NFC, it's a whole new ball game.

Pay-by-cell phone, like subscription music, has been a dream of technologists and entrepreneurs alike for some time because of it's many advantages. Like what, you say?

How about an instant purchase without having to worry about the whole credit card process and the time it takes? Or all those purchases going automatically to just one bill - your cell phone bill? Or how about a jump start to the most sought-after transaction ever - micropayments? And as you'll see, it can be used for music discovery too.

Just like most improvements in our technological lives, convenience always triumphs over everything else, and an NFC enabled phone would certainly be the next step.

Interestingly enough, I first heard about NFC two years ago when I interviewed my friend Ken Rutkowski, the host of the World Tech Roundup at KenRadio.com and facilitator of the Media Entertainment Technology Alliance, for the Internet music guidebook Music 3.0. Ken hit it right on the nose about NFC, only his take was more about music discovery and sharing. Here's what he had to say.

"There’s a new technology in Asia that’s trickling down here called NFC, or Near Field Communication. It’s like Bluetooth in that it allows us to sync with other devices, but it’s more specific. 

If I walk into a room of 20 people, my device will know which of those 20 people I want to sync with and what areas of their device that I want to sync with. For example, say five of these people are trusted friends that have trusted libraries on their phones. When I walk into this group, my phone, through NFC, might intelligently connect to all my friends’ phones and download a playlist or certain types of content. It’s all invisible to me. So the next form of communication and technology is the personalization of my community while I’m with my community. 

Any time I’m with you I get to experience the music that you’re listening to, for example, without having to go download it off the Internet. When I get back after hanging out with you, I’ll see my phone blinking and realize that I just exchanged content with you. It’s a new type of discovery that you don’t have to manually engage. That makes meeting people one-on-one more important than having that distance that we have today. It’s more about “I want to discover, but I want to be with my friends when I’m discovering.” It’s hard to wrap your head around it, but I believe that it’s going to make people want to get together more."

As you can see, there are a lot of benefits that an NFC device can hold. iPhone 5, hurry up and get here soon.

Check out my website to read more excerpts from Music 3.0.

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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.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

The Marketing Of DeadClubs

I always love marketing ideas that find a product niche where there wasn't one before, where you hit yourself in the head and say, "Why didn't I think of that?" Well, here's a good one, and it's called "DeadClubs."

DeadClubs.com is a site that offers new T-shirts from popular clubs from around the country that have long been closed. It's a great idea because enough people remember those clubs that whenever anyone shows up with a seemingly vintage T-shirt in prime condition, it always sparks interest. It's an automatic conversation starter.

DeadClubs.com is a work obviously in progress, as many of the other aspects of it such as "Dead Vinyl" and "Dead Air" aren't populated yet, but you can see where they're going with it. I bet this becomes a thriving little business in no time.

So if you're an artist or band, how can you use a similar idea? How about a T-shirt connecting your band at a show at a revered but long gone local club (make sure you get permission first, though)? How about a tour T-shirt at all the favorite dead clubs (maybe you can ask DeadClubs for help)? Why stop at venues. How about an association with old radio stations, record stores, pizza parlors, etc. (again, it's important to ask for permission first)?

The idea is to have something other than a normal artist or band T-shirt; one that strikes some extra interest or controversy. Anything that starts up a conversation with your name in it is the goal.

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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.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

The Music Industry Is Not Dying

There's a lot of doom and gloom about the music business out there, and I've certainly been responsible for my little piece of it. But if anyone thinks the music business is really dying, they're absolutely wrong. It’s evolving, morphing, transmuting, adjusting, adapting, reconfiguring, transitioning and progressing; but it’s not in any danger of dying.

While it’s absolutely true that album sales are down 65% from 2000, that still means that 326 million where sold in 2010 in the US alone. That’s a lot of music being sold. 2010 also saw nearly 1.2 BILLION digital downloads sold. Again, a huge amount. Internet radio service Pandora has over 80 million registered users and 30 million active users a month, which is almost one in ten Americans. As of the beginning of 2010, more than 278,000 artists sell their music at CD Baby and over 5 million of their CDs have been sold online to customers. So there are a lot of people out there willing to part with their hard earned money for music.

Now comes the best reason to believe in the industry. As of last week, British singer Adele has sold over 1 million albums in the UK alone since her album 21 was released at the end of January, plus another 325k in the US (check out my Big Picture production blog for an analysis of her hit "Rolling In The Deep." People are willing to pay for quality music; they just haven't seen or heard enough of it in a while to get really excited with their pocketbooks in big numbers like they used to.

Remember, the music industry only dies when people stop listening. See any evidence of that lately?

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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.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Bigger Is Better Online

Most visual items online are small, be it a video, a picture, or album artwork, and one of the things that can defeat the entire purpose of these items is if they're not made with that fact in mind. It's really difficult to get the point across in 320 pixels or less, but it can be done if you keep the following in mind.

1) When shooting videos, wide shots don't usually work unless your shooting items that are really large. Most of the time you need to shoot at least medium close-ups to get the point across.

2) The same goes for pictures. There's not much impact with a wide shot so you have to go in close. Take a look at the two shots below. Which one works better?

3) On album artwork, make sure the name of the artist or band is large enough. Always think about if you can identify the artist if the artwork was shrunk to 150 pixels. Remember, what works on a CD doesn't necessarily translate to a smaller version. Which one works better here?

It's very easy to overlook when shooting video or designing artwork, but it's really worth the effort in the end. The chances of your pictures, videos or artwork appearing in a reduced form are great, so best to prepare for it up front.

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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.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Music Marketing With Gummy Skulls

I just love out-of-the-box marketing ideas, but this one may be the best of many already great ones this year. The Flaming Lips will soon self-release their as-yet-untitled, four-song 12 inch EP featuring Neon Indian, which is cool but nothing too outrageous in itself.

Soon thereafter, however, the band will begin to sell gummy skulls - yes, that's replicas of a human skull made out of gummy. As FL leader Wayne Coyne explains, "It's a life-sized human skull completely made out of edible gummy bear stuff. It also has a gummy brain inside of it and, inside of that there's a USB flash drive that has three new songs on it. It's pretty outrageous."

OK, the gummy skull is a novelty, but what I really find cool about this is that they're releasing their music on a flash drive. The great part about distributing music this way is you can not only have your music available in MP3 and AAC format, but also as a higher resolution Wave or AIFF file as well. I don't know if FL are going that far, but I sure hope so. They've gone to this much trouble already, they might as well go all the way.

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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.

Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.