Beats Music To Launch In January 2014

We've been hearing a lot about Beats Music, especially over the last 6 months, but now it looks like its introduction is at hand, with word that it will finally launch in January 2014.

According to a blog post by CEO Ian Rogers, “When I joined Beats Music in January I’d expected we’d get this out the door before the end of the year. Thankfully I work with people who have patience and are more concerned about getting Beats Music right than pushing it out the door. In retrospect we’ve accomplished far more this year than I’d imagined possible.”

Beats Music has a lot going for it, being owned by Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, and being run by industry veteran Rogers with creative director Trent Reznor. The service is based around the MOG streaming service, which Beats purchased earlier in the year. It's also backed by a $60 million investment from billionaire Len Blavatnik's Access Industries and Texas billionaire Lee Bass, so its pockets are potentially deep enough to battle it out with the likes of iTunes Radio, Spotify and Pandora.

That said, the differentiating factor between Beats Music and other services is the fact that it's based around curated content by music celebs and professionals. In fact, a new feature just revealed allows you to listen along to the same content as your favorite celeb in real time. It's yet to be seen if music curation is actually the attraction that the company thinks it is though.

Beats Music holds a lot of promise as a streaming music game changer. Very soon now we'll see the reality first-hand.

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

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The Tale Of Two Nine Inch Nails Masters

Don't look now but Trent Reznor has done it again. Always ahead of the pack in some way, Reznor just took a stand in the the so-called loudness wars by releasing the new Nine Inch Nails album, Hesitation Marks, with two different masters; the standard compressed-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life master, and a less compressed "audiophile" version.

For those of you not aware of the battleground, the loudness wars are basically a result of the insecurity of record execs, artists, producers and audio engineers everywhere that if their song is played right before or after another that’s louder, the listener will somehow deem it inferior. As a result, there’s a constant battle that rages behind the scenes in mastering facilities everywhere in an effort to make every song sound as loud as possible, even to the point where a mastering engineer (the specialized boffin who puts the final audio sheen on a song mix) will get the job based on being able to make the song louder than a competitor.

This is a battle that’s been raging since the 50s, and has resulted in mastering engineers usually violating their own collective good taste and judgement in making songs as loud as possible just to keep working. After all, lose a loudness shoot-out to a competitor and you might not get chance at ...Read more on Forbes.

Trent Reznor Changes The Paradigm Again

I'm pleased to announce that I'll be contributing to Forbes online, analyzing the new music business, and the "Trent Reznor Changes The Paradigm Again" story can be found there.

This means that there will be some changes in the Music 3.0 blog from this point on, in that the focus here will now be more on social media and how it effects the music business. The more music industry focused stories will appear on the Forbes blog site.

I invite you to follow me over at Forbes.

I'd dedicated to providing the most up-to-date information possible, and this change will allow me to more tightly focus on the area of social media and music here. Excerpts from upcoming book Social Media Promotion For Musicians will also be featured here when it's released. Also I may be reposting a story here after it's posted on the Forbes site from time to time.

Thanks again for following and reading. This blog surpassed a million views a few weeks ago, so I don't take your viewership lightly.

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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.

There's A New Music Service In Town

There are a lot of music services online vying for a piece of the pie that iTunes is leaving behind, but for every single one of them it's a tougher go than what meets the eye. The license fees demanded by the major labels makes it almost prohibitively expensive to get into the market, then the royalty payout makes it even harder to stay there.

That's why when headphone manufacturer Beats by Dr. Dre purchased the streaming service MOG earlier in the year for only $14 million, the collective industry reasoning was - why? After all, MOG only had 500,000 active users and the purchase didn't even include its advertising network.

But Beats founders Dr. Dre and Interscope exec Jimmy Iovine were apparently looking at the MOG acquisition in a different way from the rest of the industry. On Thursday they named Topspin CEO Ian Rogers as the new CEO to join Nine Inch Nails founder Trent Reznor, who had been previously hired to act as creative director, of a new unnamed music service going by the code name of "Daisy."

Ian and Trent are two of the smartest guys in digital media today, and right away you have to think that they'll come up some something out-of-the-box that hasn't been tried before.

But here's where the brilliance of the MOG acquisition comes in. Basically Beats could care less about the MOG infrastructure I'm guessing. Nothing special there. But the licenses with the labels hold real value. With licenses in hand, the company doesn't have to go through the elongated and expensive negotiating process (at least not until they have to be renewed), so that leaves them free to design their own platform on a more timely basis. And both of those guys know about software development and the user and artist experience, which is why we can look forward to what they come up with.

There's yet another big advantage that Daisy could have and that's the connection to Beats. There's a lot of customers who love the product and would be predisposed to trying a new service. Plus it could be offered with the purchase of a new Beats headphone in the future.

You can read an excerpt of an Ian Rogers interview that he did for the Music 3.0 guidebook. It's quite enlightening as to his outlook on the music business.

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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.

Is Trent Reznor Selling Out?

Trent Reznor has been an ongoing inspiration to DIY musicians everywhere, as he's written the blueprint for addressing your fans via social networks, tiered merchandising, unique marketing, and so much more (it's all illustrated in the Music 3.0 book). His announcement last week that he was going back to a major label raised some eyebrows, since signing to Sony Music is such a great departure from what he was all about for the last 3 or 4 years.

Now he recently announced on Facebook that he was collaborating with the horrendous Beats By Dre, the money play by Dre and Jimmy Iovine where they sell hi-priced yet inferior headphones to unsuspecting listeners in the name of "better sound quality." Here's his statement:

Some of you may have read that I have begun working with Beats By Dre. For the past year I have indeed been involved with Dre, Jimmy Iovine, Luke Wood, and the rest of the team on a number of very interesting projects that will start to emerge next year. I have been wanting to experiment and focus my energy and creativity in some different directions, and Beats has afforded me that very opportunity. The process has been challenging and fascinating and as much as I'd like to tell you about the things we've dreamed up... I just can't.Not yet...(I can tell you it's probably not what you're expecting!)

The Trent Reznor we know and love stands for principle and a "I'm doing it my way regardless what you think" attitude. Collaborating with Beats smacks of selling out for a payday. I guess he needs the money, but it's sure disappointing. TR was my shining example of the best of the DIY world. Time to find another hero.

If you really want to make a better sounding headphone look like Beats, here's how.

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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.

Trent Reznor Returns To The Big Label Fold

While we're constantly inundated with opinions that the major labels are on their last legs, that's simply not the case. Though we may yet see another step in the evolution of the majors soon, there's always going to be a place for at least a few of them. Case in point, the return to the major label fold by the poster boy for DIY, Trent Reznor.

Reznor described the reason for his newly minted agreement with Sony Music recently with David Byrne:

"In the last tour, we're playing Prague, we're walking around and playing that night at Prague.  But I see flyers up for Radiohead playing the same place we're playing, but six months from now.  And I walk into the record shop, and there isn't a section that says Nine Inch Nails.  And there's no kind of presence that we're even there.   

And I start to realize, the last few years all we've done... you know Mr. Twitter Bigshot with my bunch of followers right, but it's preaching to that choir of people that are important, but it's that camp.  The world's become so fragmented, you can tune into what you like, and a lot of things don't break though that, or cross over. 

And we're literally putting our records out on our own, and not using the labels.  And I don't know what the cool record shop in Prague is, and I don't know the good blog that comes out of there that I can give some attention to.  And I don't really want to do that, but there's a part of me that can't stop, so I get obsessed and I start thinking about marketing and I think, 'there's other people I can hire that can market this stuff, but no one else can write the songs I can write.' 

The great part of self-releasing has been controlling your own destiny.  Nobody having any approval.  Finishing a song at midnight and putting it out the next day.  Getting fans excited with no leak, because you have the only copy, and you uploaded it and you hit publish.  And wow, that's fun, it felt great particularly after a long career in the weirdness of labels. 

But to answer your question, it was to have a team of people that are better at that than I am, worldwide.  That felt like it was worth slicing the pie up, monetarily, but our main agenda of the moment was to make people aware of it in the right context versus a little more money we might or might not make.  And that's what it came down to, and so far, it's been pleasantly pleasant, actually having people that know what they're talking about and having a team, that's nice."

The above sounds more like Reznor was more tired of the DIY thing than anything else, and that's fair enough, but the fact of the matter is that the major labels are the only ones that have the infrastructure capable of either elevating an artist to, or maintaining superstardom. If an artist is going to break world-wide, that's still the way to go.

Now I don't want to come off as an apologist for the major labels because I'm far from it. I believe that until you're at a point in your career when you have some leverage, it's best to stay away from a label and do as much as you can yourself. Signing too early does an artist no good. But if you have a measure of success, that means that you can certainly be in a position for not only a better deal, but more attention from the label as well.

Not only that, after doing so much of the grunt work yourself, you're so much better at determining if the label is doing a good job or not, and helping them to do the best they can. It can be a win-win under the right circumstances.

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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.

Dead Drops - File Sharing Without P2P

Although it still seems pretty safe for people to illegally share files regardless of the many lawsuits by the RIAA, an artist in New York City has discovered a way to continue the practice of file sharing even if all online pirating could be shut down tomorrow.

Aram Bartholl has started a project called Dead Drops that utilize the same methods that spies use to share their info - by embedding USB sticks in walls and curbs across the city. Essentially what you have is a good old fashioned sneaker-net system that would be impossible for anyone to shut down in the event that all online piracy was neutralized.

There's not much chance that will ever happen, but it just goes to show how simplicity and the real world can sometimes top the virtual one.

I don't know if Dead Drops was inspired by Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, but it sure sounds a lot like something he's done in the past. Trent has been known to leave unmarked USB sticks in the bathrooms at concerts with either new material, or directions to a secret show. It was a great viral maneuver that also bypassed a widespread technology for a more physical localized one.

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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.

10 Major Milestones In Modern Music Marketing

Bruce Houghton wrote a nice post on his ever entertaining Hypebot blog some time ago about the 10 major milestones in modern music marketing. It's hard to argue with any of these, and they all are certainly milestones in some way, shape or form. I've added my comments in italics afterwards where appropriate.

In no particular order:

1. Seth Godin writes "Permission Marketing" way back in 1999 pointing the way towards a new era of artist and fan relationships. I personally thought that his book "Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us" is more of the milestone, but Permission Marketing certainly ranks right up there.

2. CD Baby offers indie and d.i.y. artists a home to reach a wider audience on the net.

3. The Arctic Monkeys parlay internet pre-release buzz into the fastest selling debut album in UK history.

4. OK GO proves the power of YouTube with an ultra-low budget "treadmill" video "Here We Go Again."

5. TuneCore tears down the last barriers to distribution offering low flat fee no strings attached access to the worlds top digital stores.

6. Radiohead releases "In Rainbows" asking fans to pay want they want for the download.

7. Trent Reznor grosses $1.6 million in first week sales by offering fans options from $5 to a $300 limited edition package of his latest Nine Inch Nails release "Ghosts". Whether it's calculated or just an inherent feel for Internet marketing, Trent is the master and deserves to be on any top 10 list.

8. Jill Sobule asks fans for help recording her new album raises more than $80,000. Pretty good considering she was only looking for $75k and could've raised more had she not cut the offering off.

9. David Byrne & Brian Eno release a new collaboration via Topspin. While more evolutionary than revolutionary, this was one of the first well planned and executed releases that took full advantage of modern music marketing techniques with impressive results.

10. Amanda Palmer made $19,000 in 10 hours on Twitter proving the music marketing potantial of micro-blogging platform.