Recording Academy Tries To Bring Liner Notes To Digital

To those of you old enough to have experienced the joys of vinyl records, you know that one of the best things about a record album was the liner notes. Many times the liner notes (the description of the album and credits) on the back of a record was just as entertaining as the album itself (sometimes even more), and sometimes even lead to a record being purchased on impulse without knowing anything about the music inside.

As many have pointed out through the years, the liner notes are one of the things that are sorely missed in our Music 3.0 digital world these days. While the metadata (the data that describes the data) of the digital file can supply some of the info, it's usually not filled in by the record label to the degree that would inform a listener, and even then, isn't versatile enough to supply anything near the description of the old printed cardboard album cover.

The Recording Academy (the people that sponsor the Grammys) are aware of this discrepancy and have initiated a new program called "Gives Fans The Credit," in an attempt to encourage a return of liner notes to digital files. The problem is that they don't have a specific recommendation for exactly how to do that, so they have enlisted a team of industry "ambassadors" to speak to the various record labels and digital delivery services to bring the subject to the forefront. These ambassadors include T Bone Burnett, Jimmy Jam, RedOne, Sheila E, Lamont Dozier and Don Was.

I usually have issues with some of the Academy's policies, but I can't see any downside on this. Fans, especially super fans, are voracious in collecting information about their favorite artist, and the more info made available to them, the better. Depending upon how it's displayed, it may even help facilitate a few impulse buys as well.

While no specific plan on how the digital liner notes would be implemented was presented, you have to believe that the Academy has some ideas about this, at least I hope so. Going into any discussions without any ideas would be a disaster. Still, you have to give them credit for wanting to bring back the credits.

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8 Reasons For A Bad Band Picture

A friend recently showed me the latest pictures of his son's band and unfortunately they were pretty terrible. That led me to dig out a post from about two years ago regarding bad band pictures.

Band or artist photos are an essential part of the business of music. You need them for promotion, you need them to help get you gigs, and you need them so your fans know what you look like. They're extremely important, so why are they taken so lightly by so many bands?

Check out this site for a collection of the worst band photos. It's totally hilarious thanks to the captions (I can't remember when I laughed that hard for so long), but as you'll see, it's also sad that they have so little regard for themselves and their photos.

Here are some of the things I noticed that you can put to good use the next time you need a band photo.

1) Get the best photographer you can afford. An iPhone shot won't do and neither will one by your local wedding photographer. Get someone who has experience taking band or fashion photos.

2) Stay away from brick walls and train tracks. That's been done to death. Your sound is original, right? Why make yourself look like everyone else with pictures that use the same background?

3) Posing in your underwear isn't cool. You might think you're a revolutionary, but most people just think it's unprofessional. That doesn't shock anyone anymore.

4) The bathroom is not the place for a band picture. No matter what anyone tells you, it's just bad taste unless you have a genius photographer. Once again, it doesn't shock anyone anymore.

5) Giving the finger doesn't shock anyone anymore either. It makes a promoter, booking agent or club owner say, "Next!"

6) Try not to feature the lead singer too much (unless his name is in the band's title). Lead singers love to take their shirts off or wear a see-through shirt. Nothing screams "I need attention" more than that. Unless it's the lead singer and his or her backup band, make it seem like you're all in it together.

7) Eye-liner went out with the 80's. Give it a rest, unless you're an 80's band.

8) Make an effort. Wearing the same clothes that you wore all day doesn't make for an interesting picture. It screams "I don't care." At least give your wardrobe a little thought and wear something clean.

I can think of a lot more items, but hopefully you get the idea. You'll see all of these things for yourself when you check out the bad picture site at rockandrollconfidential.com. Just make sure you're not at work when you look at it. You'll laugh for a long time. By the way, check out The Musician's Video Handbook for some good technical hints for better pictures.

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Radio's Dim Outlook

While it's true that a lot of music discovery still comes from terrestrial radio, and today the industry is rejoicing in those recent numbers, all is not well in radioland. There are a number of things occurring beneath the surface that may cause a major upheaval sometime soon. Let's take a look.

• The industry is highly leveraged. With large station groups rolling up smaller groups and independent stations, there's a lot of money money that's owed as a result. That means that even if they wanted to, Clear Channel, Citadel, Cumulus or any of the major groups couldn't take a chance on anything remotely forward thinking even if they wanted to. To keep the banks and shareholders happy, the safe and sure route is the only route, but that will just lead to more programming homogenization than we already have, especially when it comes to music.

• A bigger yet mostly unseen problem that is the fact that the most popular on-air personalities are all baby boomers. Just look at the top 5:

      Rush Limbaugh, 61: The Rush Limbaugh Show (Premiere Networks) -- 15 million listeners per week      

      Sean Hannity, 50: The Sean Hannity Show (Premiere Networks) -- 14 million listeners per week      

      Michael Savage, 70: The Savage Nation (Talk Radio Network) -- 9 million listeners per week      

      Laura Ingraham, 48: The Laura Ingraham Show (Talk Radio Network) -- 6 million listeners per week      

      Ed Schultz, 58: The Ed Schultz Show (Dial Global) -- 3 million listeners per week

If we look at music, much of the time music radio doesn't even have a radio personality any more, using the cheaper and impersonal taste of automation instead. Granted Ryan Seacrest is big, but even he's 37, and Carson Daly is 39. The real problem here is that there's not a new generation of radio personalities in the wings.

• And the reason for that is that college radio is falling by the wayside. When radio station consolidation began to happen in earnest in the 80s and 90s, the one bright spot for music was the hundreds of local college radio stations that spawned not only a new generation of radio personalities and executives, but also exposed new music to eager listeners as well. Since the radio broadcast program was always operated at a loss for most schools, the majority have recently opted to either close their stations or sell them. Online radio is so much cheaper that it makes sense for educational purposes, but online college radio doesn't have nearly the cache or listenership that the radio station had. What's more, since the lure of a "real" station to work at is no longer there, there's less interest than ever in radio by students.

All of this means that terrestrial radio is in much bigger trouble than previously thought. In a way, that's a good thing, since a major implosion might actually cause the industry to reboot for the better. Until then, we'll all just have to suffer along. For some background on the problem, read this excerpt from Music 3.0: A Survival Guide For Making Music In The Internet Age.

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Why You're Losing Facebook Fans

CD Baby's DIY Musician blog recently ran an article entitled "10 Reasons Why You're Losing Facebook Fans." You can read the entire article on their site, but I thought I'd pick out a few that I feel are especially relevant.

• Constantly asking for people to vote for you. Contrary to what shows like American Idol and The Voice may tell you, music isn’t a competition. Sure, you can take your career to new places and get your fans engaged with the occasional songwriting, performance, or fan-voting contest, but stop entering every damn one you come across. It looks a little desperate.

• Posting your stream of consciousness updates every 20 minutes. If you’re posting more than a few times a day, it better be good stuff! Don’t use your Facebook band page as your personal profile. The few folks who might care what you’re up to every day will stop caring quick.

• Requiring someone to do something before they can hear your music. People don’t like to jump through hoops. Let fans listen to your music right away– even if it’s only a couple tracks.

• Advertising by posting on someone else’s wall. Remember MySpace? This is the kinda nonsense that would happen on MySpace all the time– and why people stopped using it. Do NOT put your marketing messages on other people’s Facebook walls. That is what YOUR wall is for.

• Begging for “likes”. It’s probably OK once or twice a year to ask your friends on Facebook to “like” your band page. Don’t make a weekly habit of the practice, though. Your band page won’t get “liked,” and you might just get de-friended.

There are five additional items that are worth taking a look at, but these are the ones that personally bug me the most. Remember, online etiquette is just as important as personal etiquette.

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The Reality Of EDM's Global Popularity

Depending upon who you listen to in the music industry, EDM (Electronic Dance Music for the uninitiated) is either the next big thing, the biggest trend in the music world right now, or a passing fad (although it's been 30 years now and it hasn't passed yet). Recently EMI did a pretty comprehensive survey of over 750,000 consumers and presented an interesting paper at the Ibiza Music Summit). These were some of their conclusions (taken from their slide show).

● There are 7 high level genres of EDM, 45 detailed ‘sub-genres’. 

● The biggest countries for EDM are Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, UK, and the US.

● The US is a special case because Dance/electronic music has only half the passion that Rock music has, even for young people. It has a similar level of passion to Urban music, and it's rivaled or beaten by Country music, even for young people.

● The US has little passion for dance (16th out of 17 countries), but it has the most people who are passionate (1st of 17).

● In the UK, passion for Dance/Electronic music rivals that for Rock music up to age 25. It’s consistently more loved than Urban music. It has no rivals beyond Rock, Pop and Urban.

● In the US, the most passionate age group (16-24) are only half as passionate (57%) about dance/electronic music as they are about the biggest genre. In the UK they’re almost as passionate about dance as they are about the genre they’re most passionate about (87%).

● There is no evidence that dance is ‘older’ or ‘younger’ in the UK or the US. The pattern by age is similar in the UK and the US – it’s just proportionally bigger in the UK.

● In the UK dance is pretty mainstream (less engaged consumers are about 75% as passionate about dance as the engaged consumers are) whereas in the US it’s not very mainstream at all (less-engaged consumers are only about 56% as passionate about dance as engaged consumers are).

● Passion for the different genres of dance music are similar in the US and the UK, except for Drum n Bass, which is more popular in the UK. And except for Techno because the word is often used in the US to describe dance/electronic music overall.

● There is a language problem. The most popular dance genre amongst people passionate about dance /electronic music is … ‘dance’ – they don’t know how better to describe what they like.

● People passionate about dance/electronic music describe it as: Cool, Upbeat, Energetic and Edgy.

● People not passionate about it describe it as: Boring, Annoying, Intrusive, Superficial and Noisy.

● The same artist is often described very differently in different countries. Always as ‘Energetic’, but sometimes as Edgy and Upbeat (France), sometimes Cool (Germany, UK), sometimes Catchy (UK).

I found this to be a great study in that instead of relying on numbers exclusively, it got into the essence of EDM's standing in the music world. Plus, this was very insightful for a major record label to do as well. It would be great if we could see more of this in the future.

The upshot is that the genre is certainly the current trend in that it's getting a lot of press and label attention, but it's still not as large or as passionate as that same press leads us to believe. There's much more to the study, which can be read here.

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Radio Still Tops In Music Discovery

Yesterday I looked at the portion of Nielsen's latest Music 360 survey that pertains to CDs. Today we'll look at some of the other sections.

The one that intrigued me almost as much as teens listening to CDs is how much people still use normal terrestrial radio. According to Nielsen:

• 48% discover music most often through radio
• 10% discover music most often through friends or relatives
• 7% discover music most often through YouTube

Radio is supposed to be dying, but you wouldn't know that looking at the info outlined here. If we go even further into the data and look at teens:

• 64% of teens listen to music through YouTube
• 56% of teens listen to music through radio
• 53% of teens listen to music through iTunes
• 50% of teens listen to music through CD

There's that radio thingy again. Conventional wisdom says it's not supposed to be that high, especially with teens, but apparently it's not dead yet. But there's more:

• 54% have music player apps on their smartphones
• 47% have radio apps on their smartphones
• 26% have music store apps on their smartphones

What I'm surprised about here is that the numbers are so low. I would've expected entertainment apps to be closer to 100%.

There's some other fascinating info that can be gleaned from the survey.

• 38% of males purchase rock most often (no surprise here)
• 15% of females (compared to 9% of males) purchase top 40 most often (much lower than I thought)

• 33% of teens purchased a digital track within a week of release (lower than it once was)
• 21% of persons 18+ purchased a digital track within a week of release

• 7% of 18 to 24 year olds attend a music event once a week (that's a lot lower than it used to be)
• 30% of 18 to 24 year olds attend a music event once a month

What's most interesting in all this data is that people's listening and purchasing habits have changed in some ways and not much in others. CDs and radio are still in widespread use, but the overall enthusiasm for consuming music seems to be down. What this shows is that uur Music 3.0 world continues to be full of surprises.

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CDs Still Important States New Study

Nielsen Research just came out with its yearly Nielsen Music 360 study, and like every year, it provides an interesting overview of the music world we live in. That said, it also provides a different look at reality of the music world we live in than we're led to believe.

You're going to see different parts of the study cited in the news in coming days, but I bet that most will overlook something that screamed out to me - CDs are much more relevant than most of the world thinks.

Let me say up front that I don't use optical discs of any kind and haven't for at least a year, so I have no love for the shiny pieces of plastic, but the fact of the matter is that there are a lot of people out there that still use them regularly, according to Nielsen. Here's an example from the study:

• 50% of teens still listen to music on CD.

Now it's also true that 64% of teens listen to music on YouTube, 56% on radio, and 53% on iTunes, but who would've thought that the number for CDs would be so high? If you listen to the media, you'd think that any kid that still listens to CDs is stuck in the back woods of Appalachia. still has a black and white television and only gets power for 4 hours a day. But the problem is that the media sometimes confuses the kids of Silicon Valley with the kids everywhere else, and let's face it, there's just no comparison.

Want some other figures that may blow your mind?

• 36% of teens purchased a CD last year. 

Now it's also true that 51% purchased some sort of download, but once again, most media savvy people wouldn't in a thousand years expect the CD purchase figure to be that high.

How about this one:

• 55% identified physical CDs as a very or fairly good value.

Once again, this was beaten by digital albums (63%) and digital singles (61%), but who would've thought that the CD would be anywhere near those on the chart?

This all goes to show that while the CD may a medium in a death spiral, it's a not buried just yet. It's much more viable as a distribution medium than we're all led to believe.

Tomorrow I'll provide some other interesting info from the same survey.

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Music Sales Needed For Minium Wage

A few years ago there was an interesting infographic that floated around the Internet regarding the number of sales of various music products in order for an artist to make the US minimum wage of  $1,160 per month. Based on an analysis of attorney Steve Gordon, the chart has been updated for 2012, and the good news is that there's more potential income streams than ever. The bad news is that the magic number isn't any easier to attain if you're in DIY mode.

Take a look.

If you take notice, you need a large number of streams on Spotify to make money as an indie, but it's almost impossible if you're on a major label, since they take most of the income. That sounds pretty bad, but the reality is that if you're getting a huge number of plays and you're on a major, then you're probably touring and making money that way. As is the premise of the Music 3.0 strategy, your music is your marketing.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

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Beck Releases New Album Only On Sheetmusic

Alternative artist Beck Hansen, who the world knows as just plain "Beck," has just come out with a new album that uses an "innovative" delivery platform - sheet music.

Yes, some clever publicist somehow has spun this to be a "genius" move that only the clever Beck would come up with, but I guess they never checked out the fact that sheet music has been available for every release by a popular artist going back to about 1900.

So the idea here is that if the album is not available on CD, digital, vinyl, etc., and only via hardcopy sheet music, is that it won't be pirated. Did Beck's management never hear of or use a copier or scanner? Granted, this is all a pretty good PR trick because it's gotten a lot of people talking about it, but I'm not sure why.

My question is, how will people hear about the album if they can't hear it? Yes, it's getting some publicity, but it can't be nearly enough. And what about the people that aren't musicians, or are musicians but can't read music (there are a lot out there)?

In all seriousness, his album Song Reader will be available in 20 full color booklets, one for each song, in a hard cover. The one interesting aspect is that the publisher Faber and Faber is encouraging fans to post their recorded versions online.

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Help support this blog. Any purchases made through our Amazon links help support this website with no cost to you.

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The Part Of Your Fanbase That Will Pay

I've written about this before both here and in my Music 3.0 Internet Music Guidebook, but thought it was worthy of revisiting again.

There's a common rule-of-thumb in business that states that 80 percent of your business comes from 20 percent of your customers (actually called the Pareto Principle). This usually rings true in that in most businesses you have you major customers who bring in most of your revenue, and all your other customers that supplies the rest. If you're in a subscription or mass marketing business where your collecting funds from thousands or even millions of customers (like online), you can still break it down to 80/20 where 80 percent of your business comes from a certain category of users.

The music business was always thought to work on the 80/20 rule as well, but lately there's been a general change of outlook about those numbers. In fact, many music marketers now feel that 90 percent of an artist's income (especially an indie artist) comes from only 10 percent of their fans.

The thinking in the 90/10 rule is that superfans (sometimes called uber-fans or your "tribe") are so passionate that they're purchase just about anything the artist offers for sale, and as a result the income is skewed more heavily in their direction than in other businesses.

There's at least some empirical evidence that 90/10 is indeed true, which means that for an artist to really break big, he has to move those numbers closer to the traditional 80/20 split. A superstar artist has to move those numbers even more. This is how it breaks out:

INDIE NICHE ARTIST
90% - income from tribe/superfan/uberfan (and anything else you want to call them)
10% - income from casual fans

MASS MARKET ARTIST
80% - income from tribe/superfan/uberfan
20% - income from casual fans

SUPERSTAR ARTIST
less than 80% - income from tribe/superfan/uberfan

more than 20% - income from casual fans

Once an artist establishes himself with a fanbase, regardless how small, the marketing goal from that point is always trying to move the 90/10 split closer to 50/50.

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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.

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Warner Music Loss Down Thanks To Digital Sales

Warner Music Group's 3rd quarter report is out, and if you look at it closely, it really is a indicator to the trends of the music business today. Here's what we discovered:

• Warner's loses were $32 million, which were down from $46 million last year at this time. This is considered a positive somehow, which is the crazy world of publicly traded companies for you. It always amazes me when a company gets hammered for having only a 14% increase rather than the predicted 15%, and this is much the same. WMG is still losing money, and even though it lost "only" $32 mil, that's not that great when you factor in that there was actually a $11 million tax benefit figured in.

• Total revenue decreased about 5% to $654 million, and much of that they attribute to an unfavorable exchange rate. 

• Recorded music sales slipped 8.4%, and publishing revue also slipped from from $97 to 84 million.

Now for the good news:

• Digital music revenue climbed 13% to $230 million and represented about 35% of WMG's income.

• 25% of the digital revenue came from streaming, which amounted to $54 million, or about 8% of total revenue.

• Domestic revenue was up slightly to $282 million from $276, mostly on the basis of hit records by Jason Mraz, Lincoln Park and B.O.B.

If you want to see exactly how their revenues break down, Digital Music News did a nice graphics below.

What does this tell us? Major record labels are sinking, but very slowly as they hold their own, at least for now. Digital music income may be rising, but it's not going to replace the sales of physical product, and streaming music makes the situation even worse, as that doesn't replace the income from digital downloads. Oh, and the most important piece of the puzzle - you still need hits to make money.

If you're from the musical old school, you're probably lamenting the fact that the business model is changing from the way it previously worked. If you're not tied to that paradigm, you're embracing the change, as a new business model will have to replace the old one at some point. None of us know what that that is at the moment, but we're all on the lookout for it. When you find it, let me know, please.

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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.

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Artists Warming To Facebook Timeline

In a study conducted by ReverbNation and Hypebot, it seems that artists and bands have a more positive opinion of Facebook's much maligned Timeline after using it for a bit. Here's what they found:

• 30 days after release, only 39% of artists would give Timeline a Like. After 90 days, that figure increased to 45%.

• 62% said that Timeline makes it easier to share videos and photos.

• 55% say that Timeline is better at publicizing shows.

• 54% say that Timeline is better at sharing music.

• 49.5% say that Timeline is just as good or better at growing their fanbase.

• 49% say that Timeline has helped their fan engagement.

• 68% are getting more likes since the switch.

• 61% thing that their "People talking about this" stats are better after the change.

• Only 15% say they have more comments since the introduction of Timeline.

• Only 17.6% are noticing more Shares.

It seems that the more artists live with Timeline, the more they like it. What do you think?

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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.