Facebook's New Embedded Posts Feature

In an effort to keep up with Twitter, Facebook has introduced a feature that not only allows its content to be more accessible outside it's network. This allows anyone to embed public FB updates like photos, videos, hashtags, or posts from other people or pages on their own websites.

It's also possible for viewers of this embedded content to like or share it, as well as like or follow the person who originally posted or authored the content.

The new embed feature unfortunately isn't available to everyone yet, as only a hand full of news outlets (CNN, Huffington Post, People Magazine among others) have access to it.

When it's available, the embed feature will be part of the drop-down menu on the right (see the graphic on the left). When selected, it will generate the html code needed to embed on a site or blog.

You have to hand it to Facebook, they really do keep on trying to improve, and that's being reflected in their stock price, which briefly topped their offering price yesterday. Embedding has been a missing piece for Facebook, which was fairly irrelevant when it came to breaking news. This will only strengthen the network going forward.

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

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

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 A New Royalty Could Change Radio For The Better.

North Carolina Representative Mel Watt (D) has announced that he’s going to introduce new legislature before the next Congressional recess that will require broadcasters to pay performers a royalty on all the music that they play. Unbelievably, terrestrial broadcasters in the United States are not currently obligated to do so, thanks to the strong lobbying effort of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). Broadcasters in most parts of the world already pay these royalties, and US broadcasters on the Internet, satellite and cable do so as well.

Terrestrial radio is a different beast though. Right now radio pays only the songwriters, not the performers, for the songs they play. That means that the writers of a song like “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” (the most played song in the US in the 20th century) get paid for every one of it’s more than 8 million plays while the Righteous Brothers, the recording artists of the song, never made a penny from any of it.

Read more on Forbes.

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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.

5 Tips For Connecting With Music Supervisors

One of the biggest income streams open today to artists, bands, musicians and songwriters is getting your song placed in a movie or on television. The good thing is that there's a constant need for new material in our 200 channel cable universe. The bad news is that there's a lot of competition, since everyone else is aware of this avenue as well.

Here are some suggestions from music supervisors in how to get your music in front of them.

1. Take advantage of YouTube, Soundcloud and music blogs. They're the go-to way supervisors find new music these days.

2. Have a great song, but have a great story too. A story lets you rise above the competition.

3. Be specific in your pitch. Find out exactly what kind of music each show is looking for. It wastes everyone's time to send alt rock songs to a show that's looking for electronic pop, or vice versa.

4. Use IMDBPro to figure out what producers and supervisors are working on.

5. Be persistent, but don't cross the line. Be friendly and to the point, but don't be a stalker. Also don't take it personally if no one gets back to you initially, so don't stop submitting either.

Music supervisors are your key to television placement, but it takes time to cultivate those contacts. Be patient, because if you've got what they need, the doors will open.

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

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

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.

Indies Labels Now Have 34% Of The Market

Once upon a time the music world was dominated by the major labels, who had the vast majority of market share. Today that's no longer true as the mid-year numbers from A2IM reports that indie labels now own 34.4% of the overall market share. This is based on the number of masters, not distribution, but it's still a radical departure from the days when the majors rules and such an idea would have been laughable.

It's truer than ever that you don't need a major label to get ahead in the music business. As an example, here's the top selling indie artists so far this year:

Mumford & Sons - 1.1 million albums (combines total of all their releases)
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - 670,000 albums
The Lumineers - 660,000 albums
Taylor Swift - 650,000 albums
Jason Aldean - 310,000 albums
Vampire Weekend - 275,000 albums
Alabama Shakes - 250,000 albums
Queens of the Stone Age - 150,000 albums

We are definitely in a DIY age. It's not just a dream anymore

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

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

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.

5 Social Media Myths Busted

There's a lot of myths when it comes to social media, and most continue to be retold as truths. Let's bust 5 of the bigger ones. I've personally busted these with my own testing, but there's a lot of research to back them up as well.

Myth 1: Get as many friends/followers as you can. What good is it if you have 30,000 Twitter followers and only 30 care about what you're posting? The quality of these friends and followers is more important than the quantity.

Myth 2: The more you post, the better. Study after study has found that the less you post, the more effective it is. Once again, it's the quality of the post that counts, not the quantity.

Myth 3: You should focus on social media and forget about your website. If fact, your website should be the center of your online universe and all of your social media sites should point to it.

Myth 4: Broadcast any activity on one site to all your social sites. In other words, if you post a video on YouTube, you have the ability to automatically post that fact on your social sites as well. Yes, that's potentially a good strategy, but it's a better if you customize the post to each one. People tend to ignore mass posts.

Myth 5: Social media is all about your personality. Yes, personality has something to do with social success. People like dealing with other humans, but too much personality can also be a train wreck, as evidenced by celebrities and athletes everywhere who continue to put their foot in their mouths. When it comes to using social media to promote your brand, a mix of professional news along with personality works best.

Remember that using social media for marketing and promotion is a different animal from using it personally.

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

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

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.

Reality Popstar Versus Producer Pay

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know that most hit music stars make most of their money from everything but their recorded music. For that reason, this infographic about reality show popstar revenue versus what the show's producers make should be no surprise.

The real fact of the matter is that, expect for a few rare exceptions, the winners of shows like American Idol are reality TV actors, not music celebs. They should consider the fact that they make anything from music a bonus.

Infographic by: clickitticket.com

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

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

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.

What Younger Fans Want

MTV recently asked Millennials (those born between 1980 to 2000 and sometimes known as "Generation Y") just what they expected from their favorite musical artists. The results are decidedly different that what you'd get from other generations.

• They think music should be free, but they might buy it as a gesture of support.

• They really want an inside look at things. Nothing is too personal or mundane.

• They really want to be engaged. The more they're asked to be involved in creation or branding, the better.

• They crave interaction. Using multiple platforms to do so is okay.

• Shuffle-mode is just fine. They're really into musical diversity.

• There's no such thing as selling out. Blatant commercialism by an artist is almost expected.

We live in a new world where the concepts of old no longer apply. Anyone who doesn't evolve will be left behind because the music world, and music consumption, changes with new consumers. All you need to do is ask them.

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

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

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.

Buying Music Stimulates Our Brains

It turns out that there's a little more to buying music that was previously thought. A new study at McGill University has found that buying (or liking/sharing) a song is almost as good as hearing it for the first time, as far as the brain is concerned.

It turns out that the reward center of the brain is stimulated when we purchase music, and the amount of activity there even corresponds to how much we paid for it. In fact, researchers can even predict the likelihood of purchasing by the amount of activity in that part of the brain.

The interesting thing is that this also closely corresponds to other basic needs and rewards in this brain center, like eating and sex.

If we were to look at this another way though, the study confirms a theory that music is something that we need. Some might argue that life would go on perfectly well without it, and perhaps that's true on some level, but the fact of the matter is that our lives are much more pleasurable when we have music available.

That's also one of the reasons that people will continue to purchase music, even as streaming becomes more and more ubiquitous. We'll buy music because it makes us feel good to support an artist we enjoy, or to have a collectable that reminds us of a time or place. We may buy less of it, but we will buy it. Because it feels good.

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

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

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 Next Step Beyond Crowdfunding

One of the the things about crowdfunding is that raising the money you think you need is only half the battle. After you've reached your goal, that's the end of the line with the crowdfunding platform, since they're not designed to help beyond that. That's also the point where you need the another round of marketing help.

A new site called Shopstarter wants to be the next step beyond your crowdfunding campaign. The platform is designed to help the project creator manage backers and preorders after the campaign has ended.

The platform makes a lot of sense, since it allows the project's backers to create accounts with all the shipping information for the reward packages (which are updatable if people move), stay in touch with the backers, and even allow them to pledge more if they want.

Shopstarter also can import all the information from your Kickstarter campaign, which includes any videos, images or text.

The individual project "shops" are hosted for free, but are subject to 5% of the transactions plus 30 cents.

I see Shopstarter as only the first to jump into this area. What I'd like to see is a company that actually helps on the fulfillment side as well, since artists (and creators in general) are generally really good at making things and not as good on the operations beyond that. It's a potentially lucrative market, since the clients are already funded.

If anyone decides to use Shopstarter, please report back with your experience.

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

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

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.

Has The Time Come For A New Collection Society?

Performance royalty collection societies like BMI and ASCAP have been around almost a hundred years (in the case of ASCAP), and while they've been essential to the well-being of the songwriter and publisher, some wonder whether they're a product of another time that hasn't quite kept up with our Music 3.0 age.

For one thing, in our new streaming world, some publishers and record labels feel they can do the job better than these companies, and have made their own deals with Internet broadcasters, something that would have been unthinkable even 5 years ago.

Now it seems that a new collection organization in Germany may show the way for other territories.

Currently GEMA is the equivalent of BMI or ASCAP in Germany, but the new Cultural Commons Collecting Society (also known as C3S) began in 2010 especially for musicians and songwriters that did not wish to be represented by GEMA. The company is now in the middle of a crowdfunding campaign to raise the necessary funds to go head to head with the big dog of the marketplace, and already has close to 500 supporters.

I'm not sure that C3S can make a dent in GEMA, given that it doesn't have the deep pockets required to be a player (at least at the moment), but it does exhibit an emotion that many are feeling; that it's time for something new and fresh.

We'll check back from time to time to see if C3S is gaining traction. If it does, you can bet that execs and songwriters in other parts of the world will be watching.

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

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

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.

Diddy Attempts To Revive MTV Model In A World That's Moved Past It

Rapper/entrepreneur Sean “Diddy” Combs is set to launch a new cable music channel in December called Revolt TV, which will be available on both the Comcast and Time-Warner networks. According to various interviews, Diddy’s vision for Revolt is that it look more like MTV used to (playing music videos and being music-centric) rather than what it’s now become (a lifestyle channel based around reality programs). Indeed there may be a hole in the market for it, since Fuse now seems to be the only music network dedicated to current music. Still, some might wonder if a network based on early MTV can be successful in our current Music 3.0 world.

Many within the industry would like the answer to be yes, since the music business rose to its greatest financial peak during the years that MTV played videos and had programs built around them. Read the entire article on Forbes.

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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 Reality Of QR Codes

Here's a great infographic from Lab 42 that shows the reality of QR codes. As you'll read, only 42% of people are actually familiar with QR code, but 62% of those have used it as a ticket. Check it out.

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

Follow me on Forbes for some insights on the new music business.

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.