The 10 Most Expensive Records Of 2014

People love to collect things, and paying stupid amounts of money for a collectible is something that's pretty common to feed the obsession. Vinyl records are no exception, but you have to wonder why some records are worth so much.

The Vinyl Factory recently posted the 10 most expensive records sold on the Discogs trading site so far this year. If you've heard of more than 2 of these then you are indeed a serious collector.

1. Coil – Gold Is the Metal (With the Broadest Shoulders) (1987), $1,889 
2. Bernard Purdie – Lialeh (1974), $1,875
2. Necros – Sex Drive (1981), $1,875 
2. Mammut – Mammut (1971), $1,875 
2. Dr. Z – Three Parts to My Soul (1971), $1,875 
2. Nicholas Greenwood – Cold Cuts (1972), $1,875 
2. Lee More – Free and Easy (1981), $1,875
2. Vicious Visions – I Beat You / No No’s (1983), $1,8752
2. Old Man & The Sea – The Old Man & The Sea (1972), $1,875 
2. Various – Sonatas for Violins (1964), $1,875

If you take notice there are 10 titles, but 9 of them sold for the same amount - $1,875.

What's the big attraction? Most are limited collectors items. For instance, the Coil record was one of only 55 pressed (you can listen to a sample here).

It's pretty cool to see the great drummer Bernard Purdie on the list though.

Any bets that the buyers of these records never actually listen to them?

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Soundcloud And Warner Music Make A Deal

Soundcloud has been trying to become more than just a way for artists, bands, and DJs to showcase their music, and the service took a big step forward yesterday with a new licensing deal with one of the major labels in Warner Music.

The deal means that Warners and Warners artists (hopefully) will get paid anytime someone plays one of their songs on the platform. This includes any of the very popular DJ mashups that the service is becoming noted for.

Warners will also take a cut of the ad revenue generated, as well as a cut of the revenue from Soundcloud's yet-to-be-introduced subscription service.

On top of that, the Wall Street Journal reports that Warners will also get a 3 to 5% stake in Soundcloud as part of the deal.

What the Warners deal does is legitimize Soundcloud in the eyes of other labels and in the investment community, allowing the service to raise additional capital and make the next major label deals a bit easier. For artists, it means that they'll finally get paid if someone plays their music on the platform (providing they're signed to Warners, at least at the moment).

On a related side note, I always suggest that people use Soundcloud if they want me to listen to their tracks. It's so much more convenient that sending a file.

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The Logic Behind Taylor Swift Fleeing Spotify

Taylor Swift and her label Big Machine made a bold statement today by pulling all of her music from Spotify. Here’s another case of a music superstar railing against the new delivery norm, as consumers increasingly move that way, and artists and record labels complain about it.

It’s ironic that Ms. Swift has such negative feelings toward music streaming (as evidenced by her recent Wall Street Journal editorial), yet has long been a champion of social media, using Facebook and Twitter to its utmost to build her fan base. Her engagement is through the roof as she walks the walk and makes her fans feel like they’re a part of her life and she a part of theirs, which is really difficult to do with 46 million Twitter and 70 million Facebook followers. That said, if she’s really all that socially aware, she of all people should know that streaming is where the future lies, as more and more music consumers move that way every day.

Already there’s somewhat of a negative blowback from her fans, with many reacting with outrage via Twitter to label Swift as greedy. After all, a huge amount of her fan base does live there, with 16 million of the company’s 40 million subscribers having played one of her songs in the last month, and 19 million having her on their playlists. And now her music is gone, and to what end?

If I had to make a guess, I would think that the thinking behind this decision was to try to eek out every last sale of her new 1989 album as possible, and maybe there’s actually some sound reasoning behind that. The opportunity to cash in on a physical product might not be possible the next time Swift drops an album, as tastes and trends move on, so it makes sense to sell as many as possible while there’s still a market for it. Read more on Forbes.

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Pianist Asks To Remove Review Under "Right To Be Forgotten" Ruling

Did you ever get a review that you hated (or hated you) that you wanted removed? That's what happened to pianist Dejan Lazic, who received a less-than-flattering review in the Washington Post way back in 2010. Lazic, who lives in Zagreb, Croatia, decided to fight back by invoking the little known "Right To Be Forgotten" rule in the EU to get the the newspaper to remove the review from its website.

It wasn't the review itself that hurt, according to Lazic. It was the fact that it showed up on the first page of a Google search for the last 4 years that he claims is detrimental to his career.

What's more, he does have some legal standing here. The European Union has ruled that individuals have the right to their personal information, so they should also have control over their personal search results. If your name comes up in a search and the links turn out to "inadequate, irrelevant or ........ excessive," an EU court ruled that you should be able to ask the search engine to remove them.

The problem is that the court ruled that the newspaper doesn't actually have to remove the review, since they own it. Google and other search engines, on the other hand, must remove the review from their search listings, and they have.

In the end, this might have been a just a great PR stunt. Most of the links on a Lazic search refer to him asking to remove the review, and his name certainly got out there a lot more from this incident than from his performances.

Still, most people don't know about the "right to be forgotten" rule in Europe, so it's worth noting if ever needed. That said, this doesn't apply in the US - at least not yet.

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5 Ways To Get Fans To Buy Your Physical Product

Even though most of us have changed to listening to music via online streams, physical product is never going away. People still buy CDs and vinyl is a very hot commodity, even though the sales number aren't what they once were. So what does it take to get people to actually buy your product?

Nick Moorhead wrote a great article on this over on the Sonicbids blog. I'm going to use some of his points with my explanations here, but you should still read his post because he offers a lot of good info. Here's my take on the 5 things to remember.

1. You need a visually compelling cover. Artwork sells and it always has. Back in the days before the CD when all we had was vinyl records, people would actually buy a record of an unknown artist just because they found the cover interesting. That still applies today.

2. Make it a limited addition. People can't resist something they think is a collectible. Sometimes by just numbering the products (#14 of 500, for instance) can make them more attractive, and allow you to charge more too.

3. Include some bonus tracks. A fan will buy the product if he knows that there are two songs that can't be found anywhere else. It's the ultimate enticement.

4. Provide a bundle. Sometimes just selling a record or CD isn't enough; you have to include some of your swag as well. Either include a T-shirt, sticker, patch or poster - it doesn't matter what's included to make the package seem like more of a bargain.

5. Make the liner notes special. Once again, back in the days of vinyl records, many people bought records based on the liner notes as well as the artwork. The more info you include (studio, additional players, behind the scenes trivia, etc.) the more fans are likely to purchase it. Including lyrics is also a plus as well!

It's surprising what just a little thought and a little bit of extra effort can do for the sales of physical product. Sometimes it's just that one extra thing beyond the music that gets someone into a buying frame of mind.

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TIDAL Starts The Streaming Race To The Top

While Spotify may be the current king of the hill when it comes to interactive music streaming, and Apple and Google threaten to enter the fray in a big way, a new kid on the block may have changed the game for everyone. This week the Swedish service WiMP launched its new TIDAL service and from here on out, streaming music is not going to be the same.

So what does TIDAL have that the other services don’t already? Real CD quality audio for one, with 44.1kHz/16 bit tracks streamed in either FLAC or ALAC compression formats, depending upon the device you’re listening on. TIDAL is also the first streaming service to be able to stream this level of audio quality to a mobile device, with apps available for both iPhone and Android.

To be fair, you can also get roughly the same sound quality with the new Deezer Elite tier as well, but that only works if you have an Sonos audio playback system available, which means that at least at the moment, it’s not available to the masses.

As good as TIDAL sounds, the downside is that it costs $19.95 a month, which is way outside the comfort zone of most music consumers. For audiophiles, it’s probably a no-brainer, but I don’t think you’ll see the average music lover subscribing given what’s available for a lot less or even free. For some, sound quality is just not that important. Read more on Forbes.

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The 3 Elements Of An Artist's Online Promotion Strategy

If you're an artist or band it's very easy to be overwhelmed by all the options online. That's why you need a solid strategy to make sure you don't spend more time than is necessary, and really getting the promotional value you want from your online presence. My Social Media Promotion for Musicians book lays out a strategy for this, and here's an excerpt that provides an overview of the 3 elements of online promotion that should bring it all into focus if you have any confusion at all.

"There are a lot of online elements that every artist, band or brand has to be involved in these days in order to be an effective online marketer. It’s pretty easy to get confused and either not know where to begin, or throw yourself scattershot at all of them, which usually means that your efforts will be ineffective when it comes to promotion. If we just look at the major components, it looks something like this:

• Your website
• Your email list
• Facebook and Google+ posts
• Twitter
• Music releases
• YouTube video posts
• Blog posts

Throw in any of the 100+ additional networks available and it’s no wonder why artists, bands and music execs become bewildered by it all. We can make things a bit simpler by separating these components so they fall into one of three categories; content, interaction and tactics. If we break all this out, it looks like this:

1. Content: the places online where you place the material that you generate, like information about your band, music, videos, or blog posts. Interaction is all the social networks where you might interact with your fans and followers. These include:

• Your website
• Your mailing list
• Your blog
• Your videos on Youtube and other video sites
• Your music files on Soundcloud or other music hosting sites

2. Interaction: the places where you regularly communicate with your fans, followers, clients and customers. These include:

• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google+
• Pinterest
• Bookmarking
• Instagram
• Any other social network

3. Tactics: everything required to define and refine who you are and your position in the online world. These include:

• Branding
• Strategy
• Measurement

All this gets more interesting when we put into the form of a Venn chart as in Figure 2.1 and watch how the categories intersect.

Figure 2.1: A Venn chart of your online presence. 

As you can see, where all three category circles cross, a new element pops up - promotion. This isn’t possible without all three elements combined, which goes to show just how synergistic they all are. Use only one or two and you fall short; use all three and new possibilities for promotion arise. That’s not the strategy though, only the general overview."

To read additional excerpts from Social Media Promotion for Musicians and my other books, go to the book excerpts section of bobbyowsinski.com.

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The Reason Why Opening Acts Lose Money

You've signed you first major label record deal, the new album is about to drop, and now you're scheduled to be the opening act for a major headliner. What could be better? Well, it helps if you actually make some money, but that's usually not the case because touring costs are so high.

How high? This article in Billboard illustrates the costs for an opening, mid-level, and superstar act. An example of the opening act costs from the article is below.

The big takeaway is the final note. If you're not careful, you'll be on the hook to the label for much more than you think.

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What Smart People Listen To

Here's an interesting chart the looks at what people listen to based on their college SAT scores. Basically, if you have a really high score than you probably listen to Beethoven, if it's moderately high it's Sufjan Stevens, Counting Crows, U2 and Radiohead. If it's on the low side, then you tend to listen more to hip hop, pop and rock. One of the more surprising parts of the chart is that jazz is pretty low on the "smart scale." We always think of the genre as more cerebral, but the chart doesn't bare that out.

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Pandora Teases Streaming Subscribers With A New Ad Model

Streaming music platform Pandora has tried a lot of things to both raise its income and increase its subscriber base, but the company is getting especially aggressive with a brand new ad model that promises an hour of ad-free music for just clicking on a banner ad. 

The new ad product, named Sponsored Listening, has a couple of big brands that are eagerly joining in the beta testing, which is initially launching only on Pandora’s mobile app. That’s a shrewd move since about 80% of its users listen on a mobile device, although the company projects a desktop version to come a few months down the line.

So far Fox and Sony Playstation have signed up for the new format, with Fox pushing its shows Gotham and Mulaney, and Sony’s campaign to launch in a few weeks. The ads will only be available to a small group of users targeted by the advertisers for now, but a full rollout to all sponsors and subscribers is expected to begin in latter half of 2015, according to the company.

Pandora currently has around 77 million users but around 3.5 million of those are paying subscribers. A subscriber pays $4.99 per month for ad-free listening, so the Sponsored Listening campaign is a way for more listeners to be exposed to the ad-free environment. For advertisers, not only do they the exposure via the banner ads, but also hope that users will associate the positive Pandora ad-free experience with their brands. Read more on Forbes.

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Pandora Releases Data To Musicians

Pandora AMP data

Pandora takes a lot of heat for the royalties that it pays, so it's trying to make up for it by launching what it calls the Artist Marketing Platform, or AMP for short, which provides extensive analytics not previously available. The service is free to any artist that Pandora plays.

The major data points that an artist can now track are

• which cities have the most fans that listen to the songs, which are included in an interactive heat map
• the number of "Thumbs Up," which is Pandora's version of the Facebook Like
• the basic demographics of the people that listen to their tracks or make playlists contain their music

About 80% of artists on Pandora don't receive terrestrial radio airplay, so this is a way for them to receive some valuable data that they wouldn't ordinarily be able to get.

Information is power in the music business, just like in any other business. By knowing where most of the fans are, an artist can better plan tours. By knowing which songs best resonate with the fans, an artist knows how to plan sets or even what musical direction to follow.

It may not be more money, but AMP is something that can valuable nonetheless.

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Apple Asks Labels For Discount

Artists, bands and songwriters are complaining about what they're making from streaming services, but new negotiations by Apple and the major labels might have a big bearing on future royalties.

While $10 a month seems to be the going rate for most interactive streaming services like Spotify (Pandora charges $5, but it's non-interactive), Apple thinks that's too much. The company would like to lower that to $5 per month for Beats Music, but says it can only do so with a new licensing deal with the majors.

A new economic model could go either way for artists. If subscriptions increase, as analysts (including me) predict, then artists will make more money than they are now, and some cases, a lot more. Apple thinks that a lower price would accelerate growth, but it would also mean that subscriptions would have to at least double to just stay even.

This might sound far-fetched on the surface, but the fact of the matter is that there's only around 20 million paying subscribers globally for all services at the moment, so doubling the growth seems like a no-brainer.

That said, the general thought is that we'll reach 100 million subscribes with a few years anyway, and that's with the current model of $10 per month.

Then again, apple has more than 500 million credit cards on file on their iTunes stores worldwide. It seems like they're pretty sure that they can do some steep conversion at that lower $5 price. Hard to say which is the better way to go right now, but getting the labels to give in on this is certainly going to be an uphill climb.

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