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.

Albums Don't Sell Anymore, Unless They do

The 2014 sales figures are in and album sales have dropped another 11%. If you look at that figure you'd think that the album as a concept is done for, except that there are 3 examples that shows that the right album by the the right artist can still sell even in this Music 4.0 age of streaming. For instance:

1. Up until November there wasn't a single million selling album by an artist (the Frozen soundtrack aside) and none were even close. Taylor Swift then released her 1989 album and sold more than 3.6 million copies in less than 2 months. Sam Smith's In The Lonely Hour also edged above 1 million at the last minute.

2. Adele's 21, which was released in 2011, went on to sell more copies in 2014 than releases by Mariah Carrey, Sia, or Skrillex. The total sales now exceed 30 million units, which many said would never happen again.

3. The best selling compilation album of 2014 was one that was released 30 years ago! It was Bob Marley and The Wailer's Legend.

Also interesting was the fact that 41% of all albums were digital downloads last year, the same as 2013.

What this goes to show is that there are fans who will still buy music if it touches them in just the right way. Unfortunately, just as in the rest of music's history, no one can predict what they way is as it's a constantly moving target.

PJ Harvey Sells Her Recording Sessions

One of the things that the new digital economy has taught us is that people value experiences more than products. In fact, many times consumers are willing to spend far more for an experience than they would ever spend for a digital product, considering that many think digital products should be free.

This was recently illustrated once again when PJ Harvey offered her fans a look into the recording process for her next album - for a price.

PJ made 3000 tickets at around $22 each available, and the demand was so great that it took her server down as it sold out in a few hours. There was a limit of 4 tickets per household, with two slots available per day for the length of the project.

Obviously this isn't something that a new artist could do, but for an established artist, it's a way of recouping at least the costs of recording and maybe more.

Of course, it will be interesting to see the reviews after fans have to watch a couple hours of the same part being played over and over, or the engineer doing a tedious Pro Tools vocal comp or edit. They may decide it's not exactly must-see TV.

Using YouTube's Audio Library

Click To Enlarge

YouTube has become quite the profit center, thanks to the Content ID feature that determines if someone is using one of your songs on a video. You then have the ability to either force the video to be taken down, or monetize it (and you keep all the money). Until recently, the problem was that most YouTube users didn't know what songs were available or what might happen if they used them before they uploaded their video.

That's all changed as the platform's Audio Library now allows someone to check on the availability and consequences of using a song on their video before they even make the video.

The video library now offers a array of free songs and sound effects, as well as outlines the availability of popular songs.

As you can see from the screen shot the left, the Library now shows in what territories an ad-supported popular song is available, if you can monetize the video or not (which is usually never), and the current popularity of the video.

For the free category, you have the option of hearing the song, searching by genre, mood, instrument or genre.

If you want to check out your own music, just put the song or artist name in the search box.

The Audio Library can be found by going to Creator Studio, then looking under the Create category.

Beatport To Offer A Streaming Feature

In an interesting development, the DJ/EDM portal Beatport will soon be launching a new streaming service. The feature will be part of Beatport.com, which currently offers downloads of beats and songs used by DJs and EDM producers everywhere.

Contrary to what you might thing, the streaming feature is not intended to compete with other streaming services like Spotify as a "jukebox in the sky." Instead its aimed at professional DJs who want to access a library of beats and songs on the fly.

Artists and record labels will be paid if a song is streamed, since this will be a paid service, although the royalty rate has yet to be revealed. Currently the Beatport library is composed of 90% independent label material.

Beatport was purchased by SFX Entertainment in 2013, and the company has steadily tried to revamp the service. It now consists of Beatport Pro, a desktop media manager and player for DJs, and Beatport.com.

This is an application for streaming that hasn't been tapped yet, so it should be interesting to see how well it works in real life with sometimes flakey Internet connections.

How Much Time Do We Spend On Social Media?

People are much more comfortable online and with social media than they've ever been before, but what does that really mean? A Cowen and Company poll across all age groups found out exactly how much time we spend on social media and which platforms benefit the most.

• All age groups spend about 42.1 minutes per day on Facebook, with millennial's (ages 10 to 29) dedicating 51 minutes to the platform.

• In a surprise, Tumblr finished second overall, with 34.2 minutes per day

• Instagram was next with 21.2 minutes per day

• Pinterest received 20.8 minutes per day

• Twitter narrowly beat out Snapchat for 5th place (17.1 to 17 minutes)

• Surprising, the alternative Ello came in next at 13.2 minutes per day, although the platform (which promises no advertising) is used predominantly by 45 to 60 year olds) 

• LinkedIn comes last at 9.8 minutes per day

What this means is that people spend a good bit of time on social media, but you probably can't reach them if you don't have a plan.

Once again, just being on social media doesn't mean that you're using it for promotion (if that's what you want to do and it's important to your music brand and career). Starting next week, I'll give you a number of concepts that will help you to reach more of people online, engage them, and convert them into fans.

Happy New Year! Hello 2015

I want to wish every who reads this blog a very happy and prosperous New Year.

We're all striving for the same thing - to be part in the creation of some great music - and hopefully this blog helps you a little along the way.

As always, if you have any suggestions as to how I can improve this blog so it helps you even more, please send them to me at office @ bobbyowsinski dot com (sorry there's not a link as I'm trying to avoid the spammers).

Let's make 2015 be the best year ever!

"Gangnam Style" Breaks The YouTube Counter

You'd think that after all this time, Psy's viral hit "Gangnam Style" would be history, yet it lives and and still receives massive views. So many, in fact, that it broke YouTube's view counter.

"Gangnam Style" hit 2,147,483,647 views (yes, more than 2.1 billion), which was the maximum limit of the 32 bit integer that the view register was based on. "We never thought a video would be watched in numbers greater than a 32 bit integer, but that was before we met Psy," the company stated.

YouTube has since updated its view calculator so its based on a 64 bit integer, which means that the max views is more than 9.22 billion before it hits it busts again.

This seems like an impossible number to hit, but then again, now one knew Psy before this song, so you just never know when the next viral star might break the counter again. "Gangnam Style" now sits at a bit more than 2.91 billion views with the new counter in place!

10 Out On The Limb Music Business Predictions For 2015

Here we are again at the end of another year and it’s time to gaze into the crystal ball to see what 2015 might have in store for the music business. I hit on about half of my predictions last year, with most of the others still pending as the story lines developed slower than anticipated. Here are 10 music business predictions for the upcoming year. 

1. Apple launches a new music service. Beats Music doesn’t have a huge number of subscribers so it can be retired without fear of killing a well-liked brand. In its place Apple will launch a new on-demand streaming service that’s cheaper than the competition and features high resolution audio.

2. High resolution audio becomes a standard streaming feature. TIDAL and Deezer set the precedent, and soon all streaming services will offer at least one tier of hi-res audio. Of course, the definition of high resolution will continue to be a moving target, as some services equate the term with CD quality while others offer higher sampling rates and/or 24 bit depth.

3. The digital pie gets larger. As consumers become more comfortable with on-demand streaming, larger numbers of them register for the various platforms. More of them than ever are willing to pay for their service of choice than ever before.

4. Downloads continue to slide. Downloads fall below $1 billion in total revenue as music consumers find that having access to millions of songs is a lot better than owning just a few.

5. Vinyl soars again. Once only a blip on the radar of the industry, vinyl sales continue to grow to the point where they make a very small but significant contribution to the bottom line of many record labels. For the first time in 40 years, new vinyl production gear is produced to meet the demand. Read more on Forbes.

The All Time Most Shazamed Songs

Shazam has been an amazing success, as it provides the answer to the never-ending question, "What's the name of that song?" The app has 100 million monthly users, and recently has attempted to up its game with a relaunch earlier in the month.

Users can now see how many queries that a song has, and can now vote for the next artist to join it's new Hall of Fame (artists must have collected more than 15 million queries). Users can now also stream their Rdio or Spotify playlists through the app as well.

What are the most Shazamed songs of all time? Here we go:

1. "Wake Me Up" by Avicii - 19 million
2. "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke - 18 million
3. "Somebody That I Used To Know" by Gotye - 18 million
4. "Let Her Go" by Passenger - 15 million
5. "Rather Be" by Clean Bandit - 14 million

I guess that means that we have a new metric to worry about besides all the social metrics that have now become common in the industry. That said, the number of Shazam's don't mean a thing unless you have a hit, but the app can be a really helpful if you're an artist trying to break through.

2014 Year End Review On The Latest Inner Circle Podcast

On the latest Inner Circle Podcast, I look back at the biggest stories in both the music industry and the world of recording and audio in the last year.

So much happened in 2014 that it almost seems like two different years, with many of the biggest stories happening in the first half. It just goes to show how much things can change during the course of 12 months.

I'll take a look at the 10 biggest stories that happened in the music business, as well as the big stories in the world of audio, then I'll tell you my Top 5 audio products for the year. It's all there in this year-end special.

Remember that you can find the podcast either on iTunes or at BobbyOInnerCircle.com, and now also on Stitcher.

Google Now Provides Automatic Song Lyrics

For years dedicated lyric sites have been both the bane and glory of music publishers. If the lyrics were unlicensed, then that was obviously taking money form the the artists that the publisher represented as well as the publisher itself. Of course, if the lyrics were licensed then that was another source of income. As a result, quite a few fully licensed lyric sites like LyricFind and Musixmatch began to dominate the space.

They may be in for a rough time though, now that Google is incorporating lyrics into the results of any search for a song, as you can see from the graphic on the left. The lyrics are now part of Google Play (as you can see here for the Foo Fighters song) and are in a large database that's totally licensed from the publishers. No, you don't need to be a Google Play subscriber to access them.

Many of the current lyric sites are crowd sourced, so you can never be sure if the lyrics are correct or not. With Google's licenses in place, this is no longer the case, plus the lyrics are now easily accessible via the link in the search results.

Why did Google do this, you might ask? For Google, the search experience itself is paramount. You can see this in its rankings, where a page with a good user experience consistently ranks higher one where info is difficult to find. It seems that Google is using the same criteria on itself as well.