Neil Young’s Pono Finally Launches, But Will Anyone Care?

Noted music artist Neil Young’s pet audio project Pono Music finally launched with a big sendoff at this year’s CES show, complete with a website full of high-resolution downloads and an unusually shaped player that will be in the stores on Monday. That’s all well and good, but will there actually be a market for the offerings? 

It’s difficult to start a new music service these days, and Young should get props for following through on such a laudable idea. Anyone who creates music on a high level (especially music using real instruments and players) hates to hear what happens to it after most audio compression algorithms that are in use today get hold of it. So much of the emotional impact that the artist lived with during recording is drained from it as frequencies are literally stripped away in order to decrease the file size. 

That said, artist’s have traditionally always had a complaint about the final distribution package sold to the public, whether it be vinyl records, cassettes, CDs, downloads or streaming. It just never sounds the same as in the studio, although many will tell you that the current state of digital music distribution is the worst it’s ever been in that regard.

The fact that Young has followed his heart and tried to do something about this is very cool. The problem is, Pono the company seems to be selling the ecosystem as a mass consumer product when there’s about zero chance it will be received that way. Here’s why.

1. It’s now a streaming music world, but Pono Music is a download service. No doubt that when Young first conceptualized Pono downloads sounded like a good idea. However, in 2015 there’s no sign that fans will come rushing back to the format any time soon when they’re just discovering that they can have millions of songs at their fingertips for anywhere from zero to 10 bucks a month via streaming. Which brings us to…

2. It’s expensive. First you have to buy the Pono music player at $399, which is far more than the majority of music consumers want to pay considering that their phone has become their playback device of choice. There’s also a lot of player competition on the market for less money (check out the FiiO series of players). Not only that, then you have to buy the music that you want to listen to from the Pono store and it’s not cheap (anywhere from $18 to $25 for an album and $1.99 a song). Considering that you can purchase the same album for $7 on Google Play, the cost of the extra audio quality will be a non-starter for many. See more on Forbes.

Billboard 200 Album Chart To Incorporate Streams

You have to hand it to Billboard - the company recognizes that it has to change with the times and does so on a regular basis. The latest update will come on Dec. 3 when the Billboard 200 album chart will incorporate on-demand streaming and digital track sales as well as the Nielsen Soundscan point-of-sale data that the chart has been based around since 1991.

The Billboard 200 chart will now consider all major streaming services, including Spotify, Beats Music, Google Play and Xbox Music.

In determining the chart, the company will equate 10 downloads to equal 1 album sale, and 1,500 song streams to also equal 1 album sale.

Billboard will continue to publish a traditional equivalent to the former Top 200 chart called Top Album Sales that will rely on traditional Nielsen data to determine rankings.

It's been estimated that there have been more than 100 billion (yes with a "B") streams that have been listened to this year so far. It's great that those streams can now be figured into actual chart rankings.

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Analyzing Apple’s U2 Mistake

By now everyone is familiar with the blowback received from the ill-fated U2 album giveaway on iTunes. Apple and the band thought that giving a free album to all iTunes users would be heralded as a huge win, only to find that many of them objected to the album being forced on them, even when it’s by a legendary superstar group like U2. Let’s analyze what’s going on here.

1. People want pull, not push. By and large users of any platform hate to have info pushed to them. Yes, there are exceptions like email and text notifications, but by and large, we hate being shouted at, even if it’s being done electronically. A better strategy in this situation might have been to say, “Here’s the new U2 album. Take it if you want it.” While that wouldn’t have amounted to the same ability to say that it was the biggest album release of all time, it would have alleviated the feeling that people were getting an unwanted musical virus planted on their phone or computer.

2. Downloads are over. When the entire world (except Japan, which is still stuck in the CD world thanks to oppressive laws) is turning to streaming music wholeheartedly, why would Apple hold on to this vestige of the past by thinking that anyone wanted to download an album’s worth of files? Oh, that’s right, the company has this vested interest in downloads by virtue of the fact that the music side of iTunes is still a huge business that features a billion downloads a year. The fact of the matter though is that the company and band could have looked a lot hipper by providing a free 90 day Beats Music account that included a proprietary playlist of the album along, and used the iTunes downloads as a secondary offering.

3. The band isn’t as cool anymore. Let’s face it, they’re all in their 50s, and while they’ve done an admirable job staying relevant far beyond the life span of most artists, to a great number of younger people it’s just, “Who is U2 and why are they sending me their spam music files?” The fact that the song that’s featured in the ad (“The Miracle of Joey Ramone”) is about another dinosaur rocker (although well-deserving) doesn’t help the cause either. Read more on Forbes.

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Apple Removing Music Download Apps From Its App Store

There's something brewing in iTunes land as Apple has removed many of the popular music downloading apps from the iOS App Store, which also includes those from third-party file sharing sites. Users that search for "music download" in the App Store now get a message inviting them to try out iTunes Radio instead. Most apps for streaming music services that don't have a download feature are unaffected, although both Soundcloud and YouTube have also made the blacklist.

The speculation is that there may be an update of both the iTunes Store and App Store coming in preparation for the upcoming iOS 8 operating system, and that Apple wants to pump up its flagging download sales. The new App Store reportedly will employ a new search algorithm, app bundles, and improved discoverability.

But it's not only music apps that have suffered. The App Store has also removed apps that include social sharing and ad watching as well, plus many developers report that Apple has asked them to alter their apps to remove any trace of music downloading.

It looks like the Apple Police are on the march, although that's not always a negative. Both iTunes and the App Store have a low degree of malware as a result, especially compared to other platforms. Let's see how this plays out when iOS 8 launches.

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The iTunes Store Shows A Hint Of Panic

There’s talk coming from various sections of the music business that Apple’s iTunes Store will soon offer high-resolution tracks for sale, and that the introduction might coincide with the future release of three Led Zeppelin masters. The unconfirmed details have the hi-res tracks in their full 24 bit glory encoded using Apple’s lossless audio coding, and priced a dollar more than the current lossy AAC tracks.

Mastered For iTunes To The Rescue, Maybe

The fact is that Apple has been accepting 24 bit tracks at up to a 96kHz sampling rate for more than a year now in their Mastered for iTunes program (called MFIT within the industry), but the final encode for the iTunes store was still done at the lossy AAC resolution, although they sounded better due to starting with a higher quality master.

Supposedly, the hi-res track launch is in response to the fact that Apple is seriously concerned about how quickly download sales are diminishing, with Nielsen Soundscan’s Q1 report finding that downloads have diminished 13.3% over the same time last year. Apple missed the boat when it launched iTunes Radio, thinking that it was a way to increase download sales instead of realizing that people stream because they don’t want to purchase their music anymore. Now it’s faced with sales falling far faster than anyone ever anticipated as streaming gradually takes over the music delivery space.

But offering hi-res tracks might be only a temporary ace in the hole for iTunes, record labels and artists alike. It doesn’t cost the company extra to offer hi-res tracks, since most are already delivered that way, and it increases the per track revenue. The only problem is that the majority of buyers probably aren’t interested in the higher fidelity in the first place, and would rather pay the least amount of money possible if they choose to make a purchase at all. Then the fact of the matter is that many pop-oriented tracks aren’t recorded that well to begin with, or use distorted samples or loops that probably won’t provide much of a difference in the end for the average listener. Buy one hi-res track that doesn’t seem worth it and you’ll probably never buy another again. Read more on Forbes.

CDs Refuse To Die, And That’s Bad For The Music Business

The 2013 global music industry revenue numbers are in courtesy of the IFPI (International Federation of the Phonograph Industry - an outdated name if there ever was one), and streaming is now a huge part of not only digital sales, but all music sales. According to its latest Digital Music Report, streaming and subscription services climbed 51% last year, which accounted for $1 billion, over 27% of the total digital music revenue. When downloads are taken into consideration, digital music totaled $5.87 billion in 2013, up from $5.63 billion the previous year, despite download revenues dropping 2.1%.

While streaming and subscription appear to be the immediate destiny of the music business, the physical product side of the business refuses to die. Despite predictions that the CD format would be just a memory by now, physical sales of $7.73 billion still made up 51.4% of the total global revenue. Granted, that amount was down 11.7% from the previous year, but a $7+ billion business segment is still substantial by any measurement you want to use. In fact, it’s decreasing at a much slower rate than anyone ever predicted, and actually even grew by 0.8% in France.

All that said, total global music revenue fell by 3.9% last year to $15 billion, most of which was due to a stagnant and slowly changing Japanese music economy, the second largest music market in the world. Japan still centers mainly around physical product, which took a big sales hit last year, while its digital sales have yet to gain much traction. Japan, along with South Korea, was dominated by local artists, who held the top 10 sales positions for the year. It’s not known if that might somehow be a factor in the 16.7% sales slump that occurred in 2013, but it does show that Japanese music consumers are beginning to exhibit their preference for other types of music delivery. Read more on Forbes.

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iTunes Wants Exclusives

Faced with a downturn in download sales, Apple is now seeking exclusives and additional content from artists in order for iTunes to retain its edge on various competitors. Using the Beyonce exclusive from her fifth album that was released in December as an example, Apple hopes to convince other artists that providing iTunes with a window of exclusivity can be an advantage for all concerned.

Although Beyonce's album became a big hit and was the fastest selling album in iTunes history, she suffered a backlash as a result of the exclusive when retail giants Target and Amazon.com refused to carry it. Few artists are able to sustain a retail boycott of any kind, which makes providing Apple with an exclusive all the more dubious. Plus, is this really serving the artist's fans in the long run? You really don't want your fans to jump through hoops to get your latest release.

Streaming is clearly picking up steam and iTunes, which has around 80% of the download market in the US, wants to maintain sales for as long as possible. That said, using Beyonce as an example is a little like saying you get a good ride in a Rolls Royce, when few of us ever get to experience it.

There seems to be little incentive in giving iTunes an exclusive, and a lot to lose if you do. Maybe it would be better if Apple concentrated more on iTunes Radio instead.

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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 and Facebook 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.

A Look At Music Sales So Far

At the half-way point in the year, we can look at music sales and wonder where everything is going again. Here are the facts:

• Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience is the years biggest seller, with just over 2 million sales.

• No other album sold more than a million, with Bruno Mars Unorthodox Jukebox at 985,000, Mumford & Sons Babel at 600,000 and Blake Shelton's Based On A True Story at 703,000

• Album sales are down by 5.6% over last year.

This just goes to show that we really do live in a single's world. When the business was at its peak, these would've been poor sales for a week, let alone 6 months. On the singles side:

• Macklemore and Ryan Lewis sold 5.56 million dowloads of "Thrift Shop," which is the fastest selling song for the first 6 months of any calendar year.

• Pink's "Just Give Me A Reason" was second with 3.5 million, Bruno Mars "When I Was Your Man" with 3.4 million, and Rihanna's "Stay" with 3.3 million followed.

• Digital singles are down by 2.3% from last year.

Obviously some big releases by Jay-Z and Kanye West don't figure into the numbers here, so by the end of the year the overall sales performance can look completely different, but so far, sales aren't setting the world on fire.

Could it be the fact that more people are streaming instead of buying? Perhaps the music isn't compelling enough? 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.

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.

Music Sales Up 1% In 2011

It's hard to believe but as of December 15th, music sales were actually up 1% over last year, which represents the first time in about 10 years that has happened. That's more impressive when you consider that sales for 2010 were down about 13% from 2009, and prior to that they were down an average of about 8% in the 2000's.

Why the turnaround, you may be asking? For one thing, there were some actual blockbusters this year. First of all, Adele's 21 had sold 5,281,000 with two weeks of sales yet to be recorded. That means that her sales will be a lot closer to 6 million by the end of the year, considering the holiday buying season. million. But hold on; that doesn't include an additional 750,000 copies she sold this year of her last album, 19. Then consider that her single "Rolling in the Deep” has sold 5,665,000 downloads, followed by “Someone Like You” with 3,352,000, “Set Fire to the Rain” with 963,000, and “Rumour Has It” with 551,000. All in all, a banner year for any artist at any time.

There were other big sellers as well, but keep in mind that these numbers are a few weeks old.

1. Adele, 21 - 4,817,000 copies sold
2. Lady Gaga, Born This Way - 1,973,000
3. Michale Buble, Christmas -  1,964,000
4. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter IV - 1,776,000
5. Jason Aldean, My Kinda Party - 1,389,000
6. Mumford & Sons, Sigh No More - 1,328,000
7. Jay-Z/Kanye West, Watch The Throne - 1,124,000
8. Beyonce, 4 - 956,000
9. Lady Antebellum, Own The Night - 908,000
10. Katy Perry - Teenage Dream - 907,000

What does this mean? Music is still alive and well and people will gladly pay for it in one form or another if they love it (not just like it). Sales like this prove that there's a lot of great music being made today, and fans will buy it when they find it.

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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.