Prince CD Sales Up, Bombing Online

Prince might think the Internet is over (or maybe not), but one thing is for sure, hype still works to sell product. As I posted a few days ago, Prince's comments on the Internet were well-planned in order to make people aware of his new album 20TEN.

As he did with his previous Planet Earth album in July 2007, 20TEN was released as a free giveaway attached to the London's The Mail on Sunday newspaper. In this case, the sales of the paper were up 27% (from 1,230,000 to 1,572,000). Planet Earth reached more people (2,801,000), but the increase was only 23% for the newspaper.

But that doesn't mean that the album has any Internet P2P traction though. According BigChampagne's Eric Garland, who's company measures the file sharing world, 20TEN has seen very little online activity, with downloads only in the low thousands. According to Prince, the album will not be available for digital distribution, but it seems that so far no one online cares anyway.

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Who's Getting Paid In The Music Business

There's a big disconnect when it comes to musicians and where they think the money for their efforts comes from. Although in the Music 3.0 world the view has changed somewhat, artists and bands always believed that if they sold a lot of records (meaning CD's, vinyl, digital downloads and recorded music in general) that they'd make a lot of money in return in a major label deal. Well, not from the sales of music they won't.

In the chart above from high-power industry attorney Don Passman, author of the excellent book All You Need To Know About The Music Business, we see just where the money goes and it's not pretty.

I think that the figure on the bottom says it all - "For every $1,000 of music sold, the average musician makes $23.40!"

But this isn't all that different in the grand scheme of musical things than it ever was. Another high-power attorney, Ken Hertz (who handles Beyonce, No Doubt, Christina Aquilera and Alanis Morrisette among others), once told me that it was an acknowledged industry insider fact that bands and artists have always made 95% of their money on the road, not from records. Records are the engine that make everything go, but not the real breadwinner, as we see from the chart.

There's a nice article about this chart at the Root.

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Fan Purchase Motivations

Here's an interesting chart that outlines the purchasing motivations of everyone that might buy music from a band or artist and how to take advantage of them.

The chart pretty much nails music purchasing in a very simplistic way and the suggestions on how to sell to each group are excellent.

Sorry, but I don't remember where the chart came from and I can't find the source after multiple searches (their SEO obviously isn't that great).

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6 Ways The Biggest Artists Use Social Media

Sandbox recently had a great post regarding how the biggest musical artists use social media these days. The data came from famecount.com, a most interesting site that measures the number of fans, followers and subscribers for all sorts of popular entities.

While you can read the original article for yourself, there are a number of conclusions that can be drawn from the two charts on the left.

1) MySpace participation is clearly an afterthought by major artists these days. Katy Perry and John Mayer’s MySpace sites haven’t been updated since mid-November last year, while Britney Spears’ MySpace profile boasts a single blog post from 2010 so far. Other MySpace blogs gathering tumbleweed in June include those of Ashley Tisdale, Coldplay, 50 Cent and Justin Timberlake.

2) The stars keep in touch with their fans often. The 20 top artists on Famecount’s rankings posted (or had posted for them) an average of 25.5 Facebook status updates in the first 28 days of June, 81.9 tweets, and a only 3.4 MySpace blog posts.

3) The most prolific user when it comes to social engagement is Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em, who racked up an astounding 113 Facebook updates and 367 tweets in the first 28 days of June. That's a rate of 13 tweets a day, not including retweets and replies (of which there were many). Other prolific tweeters included Justin Bieber (336 tweets) and Diddy (335 tweets).

4) All three appear to be tweeting themselves most of the time, and while there’s a lot of self-promotion going on for new releases and products, they also retweet and reply to fans a lot. Only two more of the top 20 artists tweeted more than 100 times in the period covered, Demi Lovato (151) and Katy Perry (106), and in both cases they appeared to be tweeting personally too, rather than having someone do it for them.

5) Alicia Keys, Demi Lovato and Eminem all use Facebook mainly to blast marketing messages at their fans. In fact, that reflects a wider trend for these top-tier artists to use their Facebook presences to promote content – particularly new videos and iTunes releases.

6) Photos posted from backstage, in the studio or at promotional events, livestreams and webchats, and shout-outs to cities after playing a gig there, seemed to be working well on Facebook and Twitter for these artists.

The article takes the reasonable position that none of this may account for an artist's popularity, and they may be popular on social networks just because they're popular in the off-line world. The problem is, there's no way to really know at this point. But it's clear than the social networking of these artists are not hurting them and they feel it's well worth their time.

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Check out my Big Picture blog for discussion on common music, engineering and production tips and tricks.

Hashtags Redux

I wrote about Twitter hashtags frequently in the past, but it's worth bring up again because not enough people using Twitter seem to get the idea. If your tweets are personal, then hashtags aren't necessary, but if you're a band or artist or a business, they're extremely important to helping potential visitors find you.

Using a hashtag (the "#" symbol before a keyword) is like including a keyword in your tweet. It's an unofficial feature of Twitter but now widely accepted and supported, and is an easy way for people to search for and find a particular topic.

Here's how it works, using some of my own tweets from the last couple of days.

"Rock Of Ages" - Def Leopard Isolated Vocals. An unusual vocal in many ways. http://bit.ly/xnQ1b #recording #producers #vocals #bands

This is a simple tweet regarding a post from my Big Picture blog last week, complete with a shortened url link. At the end are the hashtags #recording, #producers, and #musicians. How did I select them? First of all both "recording" and "producers" appear in the tweet, but I researched them first to see what kind of searches there were by going to twitter.com/search. There I searched for "#recording" and determined that there was a sizable enough search so it was worth using, as was "musicians." I figured that bands would be most interested in this tweet and the blog post, so I did a search and found that "bands" was also sizable, so I used it as well.

Here's another way I could've used the hashtags in this tweet.

"Rock Of Ages" - #Def Leopard Isolated Vocals. An unusual #vocal in many ways. http://bit.ly/xnQ1b 

In this case I embedded the hashtag directly into the tweet text. This works too but I find it too difficult to read and it can turn quickly into a negative for less sophisticated users, so leaving some room at the end for the tags seems to work a lot better.

Here's another example.

"The Magic High-Pass Filter. Some tips for using the mixer's secret weapon. http://bit.ly/dpL9bv #highpass #filter #mixing"

Same thing here. I did a quick search and discovered that #highpass had a lot more searches than #high-pass and #mixing more than #mixer (there was also some confusion with a food processor as well).

Since I've been using hashtags the traffic to my blog sites have gone up by about 50% and I've gained some more Twitter followers as well. Using hashtags is a great way to help people find you, but don't forget to include a link to take them to your blog or website as well, since that's the real goal.

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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.

How Mobile Phones Are Changing Social Media

Here's a great infographic from Mashable that was sponsored by Ben & Jerry's (which seems kind of strange).

A couple of statistics that are not in this graphic are:

1) Mobile users are twice as active on Facebook as non-mobile users.

2) 18 to 34 year olds account for 50% of mobile social networking usage.

3) Female usage of mobile social networking is higher than male.

I haven't drawn any major conclusions from this info except that it confirms that the phone is for more and more day to day business and pleasure, and it sure looks like that trend will continue.

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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.

What Recent Hit Songs Have In Common

The Future Hit DNA website just did a great summary of the characteristics that make up the recent 2010 hits. Jay Frank does an excellent job of looking at the Top 50 biggest selling downloads, which amounts to 75 million download sales and over $100 million in revenue. He's also written a great book on the subject called FutureHit.DNA.

I'm not suggesting that you write a song like you'll find outlined below, because that's just going to take a tired genre and make it even more so. But it is interesting to look at what makes up a hit these days. You can read the article for yourself, but allow me to summarize.

• The average intro length is 7.76 seconds. It's always been about getting to the point, and that never seems to change.

• The average song length is 3 minutes 47 seconds. This is a lot longer than it used to be, when 3 minute songs were the norm.

• Most songs have an ending. In fact only 10% of the songs have a traditional fade. Now that's refreshing, and apparently practical. According to the article, hard endings play better in the digital world, where a fade is more likely to make the listener skip on to the next song.

• Most songs are upbeat. In fact, only one song was a ballad. There were some songs with slower tempos, but for the most part, higher bpm songs played better with the listener.

• More songs by each artist. Most top artists now release more songs more often. Lady Gaga had 4 titles, Black Eyed Peas and Ke$ha had 3 and B.O.B had two in the top 10.

• The song's about "me." Where once upon a time, most songs were about "you," that's changed in today's hits. You see a lot more "I," "I'm," and "me" lyrics than "you' and "you're." Today's songwriters are a selfish bunch, it seems.

Check out this article and website. It focus on songs in a way that you won't find anywhere else.

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Prince Says "The Internet Is Over"

By now everyone has heard about the exclusive interview that Prince gave to the UK's Daily Mirror newspaper where he was quoted as saying, "The Internet Is Over," among other things that seemed pretty out-of-touch.

Haven't heard? Ok, some more quotes:
"The Internet is like MTV. Once it was hip and then suddenly it was outdated."

“The Internet’s completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it, and then they get angry when they can’t get it.”

"Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."


Prince has shut down his official website, and he's never been on any social network, so it appears his online presence is nil. But are we being manipulated here?

Could it be that he knows very well what he's saying, and just saying it to get the maximum exposure for his new album, 20TEN? If so, wouldn't it be better that we were discussing how great his music is rather than a controversy?

Prince's new album will again be distributed as a CD inside the Daily Mirror, and he may even have a distribution deal Warner Brothers again, despite the major falling out they had some years ago. When the album comes out, let's see what the comments are then.

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Apple Ads That Launched Careers

I saw this article on Mashable recently and thought it would be good for a repost. Apple has had a great effect on a number of music careers thanks to the artist's songs being included in their television advertising. Let's look at a few.

• Jet - "Are Your Gonna Be My Girl." Used for the iPod campaign of 2003 and 2004, the band went from unknowns to selling more than 3.5 million copies of their Get Born album thanks to this commercial.

• Feist - "1, 2, 3, 4." Part of the iPod Nano campaign of 2007, over a half-million people searched Google to find out what the song was after it first aired. Her YouTube plays also jumped 1000%, and her digital downloads doubled. Here's the link to the music video.

• CSS - "Music Is My Hot, Hot Sex." Talk about the ultimate in user generated content, British student Nick Haley made a fan-boy video for the iPod that caught the attention of some Apple execs. They then flew him out to the States to do the official version with their ad agency. Funny thing is that Microsoft used the same tune for a Zune commercial a year previous that did absolutely nothing. Of course, Google searches for the song and band were over the top as soon as it aired.

• The Ting Tings - "Shut Up And Let Me Go." Used for the iPod 2008 campaign, the band had already had some success in the UK, but the commercial was their breakthrough in the States. The song eventually hit #1 on Billboard's Hot Dance club chart.

There's a school of thought that says that exposure on television doesn't necessarily help your career, but these artists have found otherwise. Of course, the musical landscape is far different in 2010 than it was in 2003 or even 2008.

For more examples see the full Mashable article.

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Social Sites And How They've Boomed

Here's an interesting graphic that shows how social media networks continue to thrive and grow. The lower the circle, the older the network.

While everyone knows Facebook, Myspace and Flickr, there are a number that you might not be familiar with that have big numbers.

Orkut.com is owned and operated by Google and is big in India and Brazil.

Wayn.com is a network for travelers and is an acronym for Where Are You Now.

HI5.com is the third largest social networking site in terms of unique visitors, but bigger in Latin America than in the US.

Netlog.com is a Belgium network aimed primarily at European youth.

Viadeo.com is a French network that's a competitor to Linkedin.

Draugiem.lv is a Latvian social network.

Multiply.com is a network with an emphasis on shared media and aims to be a one-stop shop for their users Web 2.0 experience. They have some major financial backing.

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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.

Another Interesting Music Survey

One of the great things about the Internet is that there are so many media companies that do surveys so there's always something new to discover the thirst and demographics of music consumers. Here are some highlights from a survey that Myxer.com did. They're a site that supplies various media for the phone, which is important to remember as you read this. My comments in italics.

• The company found that 47 percent of the people polled still used traditional radio to discover new music. Wow, who would've thought. I guess they didn't get the message that radio is over. Or maybe they know something we don't.

• What's more, 45 percent reported that they discovered local music by radio, and only 31 percent discovered music by word-of-mouth. Is local music even played on the radio any more? I know that many stations have an hour a week that they allocate for local music, but that usually comes during the slowest possible airtime late on Sunday night.

• Believe it or not, 74 percent of its respondents by at least one CD a year. I guess the real question here is, "What are they buying and why?"

• 32 percent listened to music on their phones from 1 to 5 hours a week, and 26 percent listened more than 20 hours per week. Remember that this is a mobile-centric audience. 1 to 5 hours per week makes sense, but 20 hours? I guess that also ellicits the question, "Exactly what are they listening to?"

• 49 percent consume most of their entertainment on the Internet. This falls in line with other polls and studies I've seen.

• 39 percent attended 1 or 2 live events a year. This one is surprising. I would have thought the number would be a lot higher. If this figure is real, the concert business is in greater trouble than anyone thought.

This study is skewed because the audience is so targeted to mobile, but that still doesn't mean that some of the stats aren't surprising. It will be interesting to see how these numbers correlate with some of the new studies that are upcoming. I'll keep you posted.

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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.

Music In The Cloud - 3 Companies To Watch

The "cloud" is a synonym for off-sight computer storage accessed by the Internet. So many companies have huge server farms with excess storage capacity that they're making available in order for you, your band, or your company to store your data securely. You actually do this already with any company that hosts your website.

But storing your music "in the cloud" is something new altogether. What that means is that all the music that you own no longer needs to be stored locally and can be accessed at any time from the secure cloud storage via the Internet.

So why is that useful? Right now, if you have 20 gigs worth of music stored on your laptop, you can only copy some of it to your phone and iPad, and if you have a desktop computer, that same 20 gig also has to be stored there, taking up twice the storage space. Wouldn't it be easier if you had all your music stored somewhere else that you could access at any time with any device connected to the Internet? That's the idea of music in the cloud.

While it's only a matter of time until iTunes and Amazon jumps into this area of the business, there a 3 companies that are already there. The following is from a 6/28/10 article in the Technology section of the New York Times by Brad Smith that describes what available in the cloud right now.

mSpot. A mobile media company based in Palo Alto, Calif., mSpot is rolling out a so-called “music locker” service on Monday. Users of the service can upload their music collections to the Web and stream their songs to any PC, Macintosh and soon, a variety of mobile devices (starting with Android; an iPhone app is on the way.) The first two gigabytes of storage (around 1600 songs) are free, and there’s a variety of fees for extra storage.

It seems to me that mSpot is taking a legal risk here: it has not secured special cloud music licenses from music labels and publishers. Darren Tsui, mSpot’s chief executive, says the company does not have to, since consumers have a “fair use” right to make a  copy of their media collection, and mSpot is storing separate copies of everyone’s songs in their own individual online locker. Still, Mp3Tunes.com, a similar service founded by music pioneer Michael Robertson, was sued by EMI back in 2007 and that litigation is still going on.

eMusic. The 12-year-old Internet music store has one of the most complex propositions in the digital music scene. Its 400,000 subscribers pay a set monthly fee, starting at $11.99, entitling them to download a certain number of songs per month at an average price that amounts to around half what songs cost on iTunes. The service is known for offering unencrypted music files from mostly indie record labels. In the last year, Sony Music, then Warner Music, agreed to license selections from their catalog to the service.

Though eMusic is not showing much subscriber growth, it says it is breaking even, and its private equity owners, Dimensional Associates, seem to have high hopes for the company. A deal between eMusic and the largest music label, Universal Music, for Universal’s back catalog, is “imminent,” said a person briefed on eMusic’s plans, who asked for anonymity because the discussions are confidential. This person said that the labels are increasingly giving eMusic the latest songs, not just back catalog. The person added that eMusic is also working on a cloud music service to let users access their music collections from any computer or mobile device. It could be introduced early next year.

Thumbplay Music: This New York-based company is more widely known for selling ringtones and video games on mobile phones. Earlier this year, it introduced a mobile music service for BlackBerrys and Android phones; earlier this month, it added an iPhone application to the mix. The service costs $9.99 a month and entitles subscribers to unlimited access to over 9 million songs from all the major and independent music labels.

Evan Schwartz, Thumbplay’s chief executive, calls this “the first cloud-based music service to be live across all mobile platforms.” Mr. Schwartz, who incidentally recently hired Pablo Calamera, former Apple MobileMe chief, as Thumbplay’s chief technology officer, concedes that Apple is the competitor to watch in the digital music market.  “The thing about Apple, though,” he said, “they will launch a cloud music service that only works on their hardware. That leaves wide open the other tens of millions of smartphones that are sold everywhere.”

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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.