Music 3.0 Music Industry Blog

Thursday, June 30, 2011

5 Reasons For The Downfall Of MySpace

It's no secret that MySpace has been on the decline ever since it was purchased by NewsCorp in 2005, and now that it's been sold for about 6% of its purchase price, it's probably a good time to look back on the reasons why it's in the dumper.

1. It's all in the interface. MySpace has an interface that worked great for the year 2000, was looking a bit long in the tooth by 2005, and feels ancient in 2011. The fact that something newer and friendlier never came to pass has been one of the factors that caused the user exodus to other platforms. For artists and bands, that meant BandCamp, Nimbit, etc (see yesterday's post on artist helper services).

2. The rise of Facebook. When NewsCorp bought MySpace, Facebook was still a relatively small social network confined to only colleges. Soon afterwards it was opened up and social networking really took off, thanks to it's clean modern interface and interactive features like gaming. MySpace just couldn't compete.

3. Social media and music don't mix, yet. While MySpace was a social network in essence, it almost felt like it was built around music. Facebook is built around true social interaction and isn't particularly great at music, but that hasn't hurt Facebook one bit and maybe even lead to its success. As we've seen from iTunes Ping, social networking built around music hasn't attracted a huge audience yet.

4. The culture of NewsCorp. Let's face it, large corporations aren't particularly noted for their innovation. Small companies headed by entrepreneurs push technology forward, but Big Inc. speed is that of a glacier. MySpace needed to get better fast, but that never could happen in a big public company culture of Newscorp or any other, for that matter. This marriage was doomed from the start.

5. The march of technology. An online tech company seems to have a somewhat short lifespan almost by nature. Already we're beginning to see some user attrition on Facebook, which looked like a juggernaut that would only keep increasing its user base. It wasn't that long ago that Google was unbeatable, but several of their ventures have ground to a halt and the perception is that they're turning into the new "evil empire." No matter how big, it's not beyond the realm of reason that an online company can either be gone overnight or it's business model changed completely. Why should we be so surprised it happened to MySpace?

In the end, MySpace could have lead the revolution. Instead, it's just a speed bump in the social networking road. Can it be reinvented? Only time will tell.

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Wednesday, June 29, 2011

The Big List Of DIY Helpers

These days most artists or bands are in DIY mode ("do it yourself") in order to develop an audience, promote themselves and further their careers. Of course, there are a host of services that will gladly help you for a fee, and more seem to be coming online all the time. Some of these services have an advantage or two over the others, but most offer more or less the same services. If you're not happy with the service you're using now, it's pretty easy to find another that might better meet your needs.

Here's a list of the top 30 services, courtesy of Digital Music News:

1. ReverbNation
2. TuneCore
3. CD Baby
4. Topspin
5. Nimbit
6. VibeDeck
7. Bandcamp
8. Bandzoogle
9. FanBridge
10. Sonicbids
11. ArtistData
12. Headliner.fm
13. Soundcloud
14. BFM Digital
15. Zimbalam
16. ONErpm
17. Ditto Music
18. Rebeat Digital
19. Valleyarm
20. Mobile Roadie
21. BlueHaze
22. StageIt
23. ThingLink
24. GigsWiz
25. Slicethepie
26. Sellaband
27. Beta Records
28. Next Big Sound
29. Musicmetric
30. Dropcards

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Tuesday, June 28, 2011

The Evolution Of Email

Regardless of the general wisdom around the net these days, email is still a major way for us to communicate, especially for business. It's true that texting is more popular with the "natural" generation (those teens and younger who've never known anything else), and direct messaging from Facebook and Twitter is a growing trend, but if you're serious about getting a message of any kind across, your world still revolves around email.

Still we've come to think of email as a stunted technology that hasn't changed much since it was invented in the 60's. That's far from true, as you'll see in the following chart. Email is a living and breathing piece of tech that continues to grow until this day.

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Monday, June 27, 2011

Marvin Gaye's Facebook Campaign

If you ever had any doubts about the wisdom of promoting on Facebook, look no further than r&b singer Marvin Gaye. Even though he's been dead for almost 30 years, MG’s become a viral sensation right now. The reason? Universal Motown, Marvin Gaye’s record label (which was pretty much gutted by parent UMG recently - but that's another story), recently launched a successful Facebook campaign to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his What’s Going On album where the campaign asks fans to post photos of “What’s going on” all over the world.

Fans have responded by loading photos, videos and even editorials, but more important, the campaign drew more fans that I think even Motown thought could happen. Gaye began with fewer than 300,000 fans at the beginning of the week but had increased to more than 940,000 by today. Gaye’s name even became a trending topic on Twitter.

Granted, MG has a legion of built-in fans, but the fact was that they were mobilized and made aware of the new release thanks to the social media campaign. The lesson? Don't take social media promotion lightly. It's been shown to work and work well time and time again.

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Sunday, June 26, 2011

Michael Jackson Still Raking In The Dough

Superstars never really die, they're estates just get richer. That's certainly the case with Michael Jackson, who was on the edge of bankruptcy at the time of his death. Now two years later his estate has collected a huge amount of income, and is poised to make still more in the coming years.

Billboard Magazine reported in June 2010 that the Jackson estate had generated over a $1 billion in the year since his death. The revenue was generated by a combination of music sales ($429 million), film/TV revenue ($392 million), music publishing ($130 million), licensing ($35 million) and a $31 million recording contract. That was a year ago, so the figures are even gaudier today. How did this happen? Consider this:

According to Box Office Mojo, Jackson's posthumous concert film, "This Is It," has grossed more than $72 million to date domestically and $189 million in foreign markets for a worldwide take over more than $261 million. It ranks as the #2 music documentary of all-time behind Justin Bieber's "Never Say Never." The film has also generated nearly $45 million in DVD sales in the U.S.

There have been 2 posthumous albums released since Michael's death in June 2009. Last year's Michael has sold just over 510,000 copies to date, while the This Is It collection has moved nearly 1 million copies to date in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan, remarkable numbers considering the state of the music business and the economy. Then in May, Jackson lodged his first #1 on the Billboard magazine Dance/ Club Play Songs chart in 16 years with the latest single from his posthumous Michael album, "Hollywood Tonight."

Michael has sold more than 16 million digital tracks since June 28, 2009, the first sales week following his passing, according to Nielsen SoundScan. To put that in perspective, from the time Nielsen began counting digital tracks in 2004 until the week before Jackson's death, the singer had sold just over 8.1 million digital tracks, a figure that has doubled in just the past two years.

The Jackson estate is making anywhere from $25 million to $50 million per year thanks to his stake in the half-million-song Sony/ATV publishing catalog, which includes titles by Elvis, Lady Gaga, Eminem, Beyoncé and Bob Dylan.

There have been more than 3 million copies sold of the Ubisoft's "Michael Jackson: The Experience" video game worldwide.

Considering that there will soon be two Cirque du Soleil shows (one permanently set in Las Vegas and the other travelling), it looks like Michael Jackson will continue to be a hot property for some years to come. For more interesting figures on MJ's sales, check out this MTV story.

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Thursday, June 23, 2011

Who Uses Social Networks?

A few days ago I quoted some stats from the Pew Internet & American Life Project regarding Facebook use. Today we'll look at some of the other interesting tidbits that came from the studio regarding social networking. It really gives you a good idea of exactly who is using the most popular social networks.

92% of those that use social networking use Facebook, 29% participate on MySpace, 18% are on LinkedIn and 13% use Twitter.

Overall social networking usage has nearly doubled from 2008 to 2010. Back in 2008 26% of adults were utilizing a social networking service (SNS) whereas 47% of adults were using a SNS in 2010.

Only 18% of Internet users over the age of 35 used a social networking service in 2008, but by 2010 that number was up to 48%.

The average age of an adult SNS user jumped from 33 years old in 2008 to 38 years old in 2010

Social networking users skew female. A notable change showed the discrepancy actually grew from 6% more females in 2008 to 12% more female social networking users in 2010.

The average MySpace user (32 years old) is younger than both the average Facebook user (38) or Twitter (33) user. LinkedIn skews the highest out of all the networks with users having an average age of 40.

LinkedIn is the only social network that has more men than women and the disparity is rather large, with men nearly doubling the number of women. Twitter, on the other hand, is almost exactly the opposite of LinkedIn with woman making up 64% of the total users.

African-American users have the lowest presence on LinkedIn, making up only 2% of the total users. The highest saturation of African Americans is on MySpace with 16% of the total users.

Hispanic users are not prominent on social networking services either. LinkedIn is comprised of only 4% Hispanics, compared to the approximate 14.5% Hispanic makeup of the national population. Hispanics do however make up 12% of both the Twitter and MySpace user base.

LinkedIn is far and away the most saturated site when it comes to white users, who make up a whopping 85% of the user base.

While Twitter finished in last place out of the four main sites, the frequency of use of Twitter is quite high. Facebook leads the pack in frequency of use with 52% of users checking at least once a day, but Twitter is close behind with 33% of users checking in on a daily basis.

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Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Could This Someday Be An Alternative To Ticketmaster?

I'm all for anything that can make concert or gig ticketing more fair and efficient. Just about everyone except Ticketmaster employees hates the current system, with the "convenience charges," the extra charge for printing your own tickets, and the general perceived contempt for the customer.

If there was an alternative, I bet it wouldn't take long for venues, promoters and artists to switch. Now maybe there is.

A company called Gigswiz is trying to build an alternative way to ticketing as they try to bring the process to social networks and reward artists for direct contact with their fans. Recently they even implemented a Fan Loyalty program with British band Human League, where the band was able to pass on ticket discounts to the fans.

The way it works is artists sign up to GigsWiz Backstage and connect the service to their Facebook and Twitter accounts. GigsWiz then automatically promotes all upcoming gigs with ticketing links, for which the artist or band gets credit. Event organizers can also create events on the GigsWiz Tickets service so that they can reach a band’s fan base.

In addition to those updates being pushed automatically to social media channels, GigsWiz provides embeddable widgets and Facebook apps for artists, promoters and venues that list upcoming gigs and link directly to a page to purchase tickets. The artist is awarded anywhere from 5 to 20% commission on the sales, which they can either keep or give back to their fans.

I'm sure Ticketmaster isn't shaking in their boots, but here's hope that Gigswiz gets a foot in the door and gives the market an alternative. We really need it.

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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Comparing The Music Services

My buddy Gary Myer sent me this chart the other day. It's from an LA Times article about the competition that Spotify will have when it's finally able to operate in the US. As you can see, one of the things that both Spotify and Rdio have going for them is the fact that they have your music available in the cloud and on-demand at any time, plus streaming radio service. The downside is that they're subscription services that charge you a monthly fee to listen on your computer, and about double the normal fee to add mobile access as well. iCloud will be a single charge per year.

Will this make a difference to the consumer? Will iCloud add radio streaming (don't see why not as you can get it with iTunes now)? I guess we'll have to wait until both Spotify and iCloud are available to actually see.

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Monday, June 20, 2011

How People Use Facebook

Last week Pew Internet & American Life Project, a project of the Pew Research Center, launched a detailed report on how social networking affects our lives. Among the things it detailed is just who is using Facebook and how they use it.

First of all, the most active Facebook users tend to be women. 19% of women update their status at least once a day, while only about 11% of men provide daily status updates.

Breakdown of Friend Relationships
The report also found some interesting info about friend relationships.

22% people from high school
12% extended family
10% coworkers
9% college friends
8% immediate family
7% people from voluntary groups
2% neighbors

Some of the most interesting stats that prove social networks are more than just online relationships are:

Only 3% of users’ Facebook friends have never met in person. While 89% of all Facebook friends have met in person more than once.
Internet Users are more trusting of others than non-Internet users. Facebook users are over 3 times more likely than non-internet users to agree that “most people can be trusted.”

Comments And Likes
According to the report, Facebook users are not only active in posting, but in interacting as well. For instance:

22% of users comment on another’s post or status
26% of users “like” another user’s content
15% of users update their own status
20% of users comment on another user’s photos

In addition to commenting and updating statuses, Facebook users do “like” quite a bit of content.

44% of users in the 18-22 age range “like” content on a daily basis.
Men are less likely to “like” Facebook content than women. 20% of women “like” content several times a day compared to just 9% of men.

That said, private messages are not frequently used. Only 38% of users claim to use Facebook’s private messages at once a week or more.

Facebook is truly a community, but you respond to your friends in your community differently than in real life, as the report shows. With that in mind, remember to be mindful of what you're posting and how you treat your online friends. They deserve the same respect as if they were in the room with you.

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Sunday, June 19, 2011

The 25 Highest Paid Musicians And What It Means For Music

Forbes Magazine recently presented their annual financial ranking of musicians in their Celeb 100 issue, and while it may look as business as usual for a bunch of high visibility names, there's actually some good news for the music business in the numbers.

While the list has its share of the musical old guard with names like U2, Bon Jovi, Elton John, AC/DC and The Eagles, the good news is that there are so many newer and more diverse acts on the list than in recent years. That's especially good news for the concert business, who've been accused of recycling the same old acts because there were no news ones that could pack the house. Apparently that's not the case anymore as Justin Beiber, The Black-Eyed Peas, Michael Buble, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Usher prove that there are viable new acts that people will pay their hard-earned dollars to see. And while the charts seem to be dominated by women, gender-wise that's not the case on the big stage, with only 5 acts being women. It's diverse too, with 10 rock acts, 6 country acts, 5 r&b/hip-hop acts and 4 pop acts.

Here's their list.

1. U2 - $195 million
2. Bon Jovi - $125 million
3. Elton John - $100 million
4. Lady Gaga - $90 million
5. Michael Buble - $70 million
6. Paul McCartney - $87 million
7. The Back-Eyed Peas - $61 million
8. The Eagles - $60 million
9. Justin Bieber - $53 million
10. David Matthews Band - $51 million
11. Toby Kieth - $50 million
12. Usher - $46 million
13. Taylor Swift - $45 million
14. Katy Perry - $44 million
15. Brad Paisley - $40 million
16. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers - $38 million
17. Jay-Z - $37 million
18. AC/DC - $35 million (tie)
19. Beyonce Knowles - $35 million (tie)
20. Sean "Diddy" Combs - $35 million (tie)
21. Tim McGraw - $35 million (tie)
22. Muse - $35 million (tie)
23. Rascal Flatts - $34 million
24. Kenny Chesney - $30 million
25. Rihanna - $29 million

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Thursday, June 16, 2011

The Lesson Behind Rebecca Black Pulling "Friday" From YouTube

Today comes the news that Rebecca Black’s “Friday” video is no longer available on YouTube. No great loss there, but what is intriguing is that apparently the video was pulled due to a copyright claim filed by Rebecca Black herself. While it’s not exactly clear what's behind this, the video had amassed 167,370,534 views before it was taken down.

The second interesting piece to this is that ARK Music Factory, the company that produced the song and video, had experimented with a $2.99 YouTube rental earlier this week. From a sales perspective, this was about 150 million views too late, but that's not the point. Regardless if you like or abhor the song, there's a bigger lesson here.

Just a little background: Rebecca's mother paid ARK Music Factory $2,000 to produce the song and video. As these things go, no one expected anything other than a vanity release with a few thousand views if she was lucky. Much to everyone's surprise, the video blew up, went viral and was quite the rage for about a month or so, although more for the general awefullness (is that a word?) of the song and video than anything else.

Now here's where the business part of it gets intriguing. If ARK/Rebecca had the presence of mind to set up as a YouTube affiliate after they saw it blowing up, it's possible that about $100,000 could have generated from adverts (which is a pittance for 150 million of anything). It's also rumored that there was about 300,000 digital sales of the song (although there's no way to verify that), which would've brought in about another $200k. The big question is - who got the money?

This is where the lesson comes in. Was the $2000 Rebecca's mom paid ARK a buy-out? If so, what did it buy out? Who owned the song? Who owned the publishing? Was there even a contract that stipulated any of this? Did ARK or the Black's try to get around a signed agreement?

Without knowing any of the details, on the surface it seems like ARK wanted to generate some last minute revenue so they slapped a $2.99 rental on. The Blacks, unhappy with their end of the payout, retaliated by filing a copyright claim to take the song down. YouTube doesn't necessarily care who owns the rights; all it cares about was that someone claimed copyright infringement, so they play it safe by taking action, so the song came down.

So the lesson? This is a highly unlikely scenario that probably won't be repeated for a long time (at least in this fashion), but it's always, always, always best to have these things worked out ahead of time just in case some unforeseen success occurs. Establishing ownership of any intellectual property up front is by far the least painful scenario in any creative venture - even one as far fetched as Rebecca Black's "Friday." You've been warned.

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Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Should Lip-Syncing Videos Be Illegal?

One of the things that non-musicians love to do is make videos where they lip-synch to their favorite song. And it's not just kids either; there may be as many 30 year olds as 8 year olds doing it. While this all may seem innocent enough, it's actually a copyright violation, and the new U.S. Senate bill 978 would toughen the copyright laws and make it illegal to upload lip-synced videos.

Just as an example, this kid has over 40 million views for his lip-sync of Katy Perry's "Teenage Dream."

Up until now most record labels would let a lip-sync like this one slide or at worst issue a take-down notice where YouTube or the posting service would delete it. However, the new bill would take the penalty a new level, like up to five years in prison, even if you're not making any money!

There are several schools of thought on this:

* From the record label: "This is a copyright violation. They're illegally using our song without paying us."

* From the Music 3.0 artist: "This is great promotion. Fans like my song enough to make like they're singing it."

* From the fan: "I'm just having a little fun. I'm not making any money on this and I'm not hurting anybody."

Which one do you agree with?

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Help Support This Blog

Thursday, June 30, 2011

5 Reasons For The Downfall Of MySpace

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

The Big List Of DIY Helpers

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

The Evolution Of Email

Monday, June 27, 2011

Marvin Gaye's Facebook Campaign

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Michael Jackson Still Raking In The Dough

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Who Uses Social Networks?

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Could This Someday Be An Alternative To Ticketmaster?

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Comparing The Music Services

Monday, June 20, 2011

How People Use Facebook

That said, private messages are not frequently used. Only 38% of users claim to use Facebook’s private messages at once a week or more.

Sunday, June 19, 2011

The 25 Highest Paid Musicians And What It Means For Music

Thursday, June 16, 2011

The Lesson Behind Rebecca Black Pulling "Friday" From YouTube

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Should Lip-Syncing Videos Be Illegal?

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