What Different Generations Do Online

65% of adult internet users now participate in a social networking sites like Facebook or LinkedIn, but they spend a lot more time on doing other things as well. Pew Internet surveyed a number of people across all generations and came to a number of surprising conclusions:

1. Although article after article seems to state that email is dead, email is still the number one use across all generations.

2. Search is the #2 online activity, no surprise here.

3. This one is the real surprise.  Health info is the third most popular activity.

4. Government websites ranked surprisingly high with everyone except the millenials.

5. Blogging and virtual worlds were surprisingly low.

Of course, this survey was from 2010. It will be interesting to see how much things have changed in 2011.

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Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

11 Abused Twitter Trends

Here's an interesting article regarding Twitter etiquette. It's called "10 Highly Used And Abused Twitter Trends That Are Not Cool." I added an 11th at the bottom. If you use Twitter regularly, I'm sure that some of these items bug you too.
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"1. Follow Friday

Every Friday, we see our timeline filled with ‘#FF @thisperson @thisone, @thatone and @thisone too’.
Now why in the world would I want to do that? Who are they? What do they do? Why are you recommending them?

How to do it right: There’s only one way to get it right. Recommend one person per tweet and with a reason as to why, because they’re cool is not a reason. Explain why you think their tweets will benefit your followers or how they benefit you. Now that doesn’t mean that you recommend 15 people in a row – that’s just irritating. Tweet the recommendations throughout the day at intervals and never more than three at the same time.

2. Retweeting your own RT’s

If a person has more than a few followers, and is a nice, helpful person and tweets regularly, sooner or later, someone’s going to say something nice about them. Now had someone complimented them in real life, they’d say thank you and would have felt all warm and happy for the rest of the day. On Twitter though, they RT the complimentary tweet. I’m not sure why people think this is acceptable. You’re tooting your own horn! What happens to people in real life who toot their own horn a lot? They get ignored.

This is one mistake I often see otherwise Twitter etiquette savvy people making all the time. We get that you’re happy someone likes you so much. We like you too. What we don’t like is you retweeting every nice thing someone tweets about you.

How to do it right: There’s only one way to do it right and that’s by not doing it. Instead, grab a WordPress plugin called Tweetstimonials and install it on your website or blog and let it serve as testimonials for you.

Trust me, a person visiting your website for the first times wants to read testimonials. They want to know that you’re trustworthy and that you and your service/business will take care of their needs.
As a disclaimer, let me just say that there are some (very rare) times where it may be acceptable to retweet a complimentary tweet. For example, you’ve just published a blog post or released a product you worked really hard on and spent hours perfecting. Then you get a tweet saying how much your post, product etc helped the person. Retweeting that tweet with a prefix reading ‘This just made my day!’ or ‘All my handiwork just paid off’ will go down much better with your followers.
That being said – don’t do it often!

3. Auto DM

Auto DM’s make me want to scream. They’re a waste of space and no one takes them seriously. Yet, so many people still insist on sending Auto DM’s the minute someone follows them. A generic ‘Hi! Thanks for following. Hope to connect with you soon.’ sounds harmless but the receiver knows that it doesn’t mean a thing. The person doesn’t even know yet that I’ve followed them, let alone know me! It makes me wonder if the person is for real.

How to do it right: There’s no way you can do this right. Half the people have turned off their new follower notification in their settings so chances are they’re never going to notice you followed them unless you took the initiative and tweeted with them.

But you know what does make me sit up and take notice? Receiving the same message as a public tweet. It tells me you keep tabs on who follows you, that you’re online right now and genuinely interested in making my acquaintance. More over, it makes you real and I can’t wait to reply to your tweet and connect with you.

4. Auto follow/unfollow

If you have a program that auto follows everyone who follows you, then I shudder to think what your Twitter timeline would be like.

The whole point of Twitter is to follow people who interest you – not follow back every Tom, Dick and Harry who follows you. It doesn’t serve any purpose. You’re blindly following people who you don’t know anything about. They could be spammers, they could be bots, worse, they could be people who stand for things that you abhor.

Choose your own people to follow. That way, you’ll have relative control over your timeline, will be able to engage more and probably actually know a good percentage of your followers.
Twitter isn’t all about having a big number of followers. You’d be surprised at what just a couple hundred followers can do for you that your 20,000 auto follows can’t or will never be able to.

As for auto unfollows. Stop. Please. That’s just juvenile. You end up coming across as a petulant and spoiled kid. Worse, you’re doing this automatically so you don’t even notice when someone unfollows you. A program does and since you’ve set it to unfollow every one who unfollows you, it’s doing just that.

How to do it right: There’s no way to do this right. Build relationships and friendships on Twitter the old-fashioned way.

5. Twitvalidation

Oh man. This one never fails to boil my blood. You decide to follow someone because you like their bio and what you can see of their timelines and think ‘Hey! This person looks cool. It’d be fun to tweet with them.’ So you follow them and the next thing you know you’re getting a DM from them to click on a link to validate that you’re a human and not a bot.

Twitvalidation is a service that sends out DMs to anyone who follows you asking them to verify that they’re not a bot by clicking on a link.

I mean, wth?! That’s not only insulting but it’s like asking me for money when we’re only meeting for the first time.

No one has the time to click on a link that will take them to another page to click on another link and so on just to prove to you that they’re a human being.
If you can’t take the time to check out your followers for their authenticity then we most certainly don’t have the time to validate ourselves through a program you’ve installed to check your follower’s validity.

How to do this right: By not doing it at all.

6. Tweeting the same tweet numerous times

So we get that you have blogs to promote on Twitter. You’ve written a killer post that you’re dying to show the world. We get it. We really do. But  instead of sending out the same tweet 50 times a day, take the time to space them out over a few hours and change the message. Same tweets look like spam when tweeted numerous times.

How to do it right: Choose a program that let’s you schedule posts to be sent out at certain times throughout the day. Do a quick Google search, there are numerous free services. Next, take 15 minutes to write your tweet differently. If you can take the time to write a killer post, you can most certainly afford 15 minutes to write different tweets all linking to the same post.

Do this, and notice how your website visitors, followers and even comments increase.

7. Not hitting reply

With 20,000 plus followers, you’re a big shot on Twitter. But would it kill you to hit reply? This one is a pet peeve of mine and some of the most respected and prolific bloggers with thousands of followers are guilty of it.

Everyone understands that you’re busy, that you have hundreds of people vying for your attention on Twitter and we also understand that sometimes a tweet just slips your notice. But only replying to friends on Twitter is just plain weird.

Even if the person tweeting you has nothing interesting to say, after the third tweet, it’s time to send them a thank you for your time reply.

This is one of those trends that isn’t obvious. But try it out. Tweet 10 super popular folks with a large number of followers and see how many of them reply to you.

How to do this right: Just hit reply. It’ll take 10 seconds out of your day. Probably less.

8. Protected tweets

I don’t understand the point of protecting your tweets. If you want privacy, there’s Facebook for that. And if you want to control who reads your tweets or who follows you, again, go to Facebook!
If I have to tell you why protected tweets are irritating, irrational and just plain wrong, you haven’t understood what Twitter is all about.

How to do it right: Again, by not doing it. Unless you’re a 16 or below and just trying it out and are worried about the kind of people who might follow you, there’s no good reason for you to protect your tweets.

9. Facebook or LinkedIn connection request via auto dm

I’ve already trashed auto DMs but I felt this deserved a sub head of its own. If you’re sending out ‘Hi there! Thanks for the follow. Let’s connect on Facebook/Linkedin’ tweets then you need to stop.
For the love of Twitter, let’s first connect here on Twitter before moving on to LinkedIn or Facebook! Show me that you’ve noticed me first. Interact with me, say hi, find out what I do and if it’s compatible or related with what you do etc.

Asking to connect via Facebook or LinkedIn when I’ve just followed you on Twitter is like hoping for a feel on a first date. Which in case you didn’t get my meaning, is wrong. Just wrong.

How to do it right: By not sending these auto DMs. Once you’ve connected with the person on Twitter and have talked to them, they’re not going to refuse your Facebook or LinkedIn connection request if you know each other fairly well through your Twitter interaction.

10. Hash tag abuse

Seen those tweets that have so many hashtags that it looks like the entire tweet was just one big hashtag? Yeah, there are plenty of those out there and quite a few of them are probably showing up on your timeline.

This Twitter crime is committed by a lot of Twitter savvy people too. We realize that hashtags let you reach a wider audience and sometimes connect a tweet to a topic that would otherwise not have been obvious but use it relevantly!

How to do it right: Make sure that your hashtags a. make sense, b. are relevant and c. not more than 2 in a tweet. You can fit in three without pissing people off but still, don’t do it too often!"
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 11. Don't send a reply to all of your followers. 
This one is a pet peeve of mine (this is Bobby O posting now, not the article). If you're going to reply to someone, do it privately with a DM. The rest of us don't need to know anything that doesn't directly apply to us. It's just spam if we're not in on the conversation.

Okay, there you have it. Follow this 11 traits and you'll be observing great Twitter etiquette.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

14 Rules For The New Music Industry

I came across this post on the Tuncore blog recently entitled "New Rules For The Music Industry." It doesn't encapsulate the entirety of Music 3.0, but does get most of the points.

1) STOP ASKING FOR BIG ADVANCES – Understand that the economics of the business have changed for both the artists and the labels.  The goal for artists and labels must be the same: create sustainable working relationships for both parties.  Disproportionate advances only add tension (economic and otherwise) to an already tense dynamic. Create financial working relationships based on realistic expectations of ROI.

2) EDUCATE YOURSELF – It’s no longer acceptable (or charming) to be the un-informed artist who doesn’t know the difference between a mechanical royalty and a mechanic.  You can’t claim that you’ve been taken advantage of by anyone at this point; the information you need is out there, and it’s not that hard to find.  Learn it, once you have this knowledge you can then make informed decisions and decide if the other entity is doing its job.  Not to mention, the labels etc already know this info and so should you.

3) TAKE RESPONSIBILITY – Stating that there is any person or thing standing in the way of you and success is a cop out.  No longer can you say, “If only my records were in stores, people would buy them,” or, “If only people could hear my music they would love it.”  The gatekeepers have vanished; the gates are open…go through them.

4) TAKE ACTION – Waiting for a booking agent before you tour? Waiting for a producer before you make a recording? Waiting for a label before you distribute or promote your music?  Guess what, someone else isn’t waiting for anyone, and he or she is leaving you in the dust.  The worst thing you can do is nothing.

5) SELL – Get over the fact that you’re the artist, and asking people for money in exchange for your art is awkward.  The reality is that if your work is good, people will want to compensate you for it. You must not only give them the opportunity to do so, but make it easy for them.  Be clear and transparent, and tell your customers that your music is valuable, and that if they want to ensure that you are able to keep creating the music that they enjoy, that they must pay for it. Then give them a wide variety of things to buy at different prices.

6) GIVE WITHOUT ASKING FOR ANYTHING IN RETURN – It’s not all selling, of course, and we are all in this together.  Look for ways to help other artists. Share information, share resources.  This is not a zero-sum game; the overall pie can expand, and we will all benefit proportionately when it does.

7) DEMAND ANSWERS – if you don’t understand something, ask.  If the person you ask can’t give you a clear, understandable answer then he or she is either clueless or trying to hide something.   Demand a clear, understandable answer or walk away from the deal.

8)  MARKETING DOES NOT ALWAYS EQUAL SUCCESS – The major labels spent hundreds of millions of dollars marketing and promoting bands.  Only 2% of them succeeded, the other 98% were deemed failures.  If marketing = success, they would have had a 100% hit ratio.  The reason an artist succeeds is because the music caused reaction.

9) LEAD TIME FOR STREET DATES MATTER LESS – It’s not like the old days where you only had a limited time for prime real estate in a retail store and if the CDs did not sell they would be returned.  In the new model you can release music today, and market later, with little detrimental impact.

10) IT’S ABOUT A CONSTANT STREAM OF MUSIC AND MEDIA, NOT A ONCE A YEAR ALBUM RELEASE ­  – The new world moves fast.   The best strategy is to roll out songs, videos, pictures, blog postings, tweets and anything else you can think of on a constant basis.  This keeps your fans engaged and stops you from losing momentum and going stale.

11) IT’S GLOBAL – The new music industry is a global one.  At the click of a button your music is available to buy, share, stream and download around the world.  Keep this in mind when you think about where your money is being held, generated and how to get it.

12) YOU ARE NOT POWERLESS – Music is not food, shelter or clothing, but everyone likes it and needs it.  The music industry currently generates around $30 billion dollars a year.  The entities and people getting this money is shifting from the legacy companies to you.  Within another five years the collective power of you will be bigger than any of them.  You have the power to change things, and you already are.

As just one example, in the past two years, TuneCore Artists have earned over $170 million in gross music sales and have sold over 400 million songs by paid download or stream.  TuneCore Songwriters have earned over another $120 million dollars.
As you sell more, they sell less.

13) DEFINE YOUR GOALS – Know what it is you are tying to accomplish.  Are you looking to be the next Vanilla Ice or just sell some music without touring?  Is your goal corporate sponsorships or having others cover your songs?  Whatever it may be, have a goal in mind and then work towards accomplishing that objective.  With that one conquered, you can move on to the next.

14) DON’T EXPECT SOMETHING FOR NOTHING - It’s going to take work to make things happen.  Either you need to do the work or you must hire someone else to do part, or all of it, for you.  If you understand your rights, how money is made, and how much you should make, you can make educated decisions.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

The Music Industry Loses A Big One

The "music industry" (also known as the major record labels and publishers) needs revenue. Everywhere they look the income pie is shrinking, and they're desperately trying to staunch the financial bleeding. One way they had hoped that would happen is to have the owners of the so-called "digital music lockers" pay them a license fee when a user uploads their music to the locker (also called "the cloud").

But neither Amazon nor Google went for that proposition, taking the bold step to wait and see what would happen in a test case of EMI (and 14 music publishers) versus MP3tunes.com. MP3tunes is the brainchild of Michael Robertson, the creator of the original thorn in the side of the music business - MP3.com, one of the companies that started the digital revolution in the first place. The site beat Amazon and Google into the music locker business, allowing the user to store all of their songs in their own virtual locker in the cloud so he/she could stream the music to any of their digital music devices at any time and not have to have all of their songs stored on that device.

In a lawsuit that has major industry ramifications, EMI wanted to get paid if any of their songs were loaded onto MP3tunes. What's more, they asked that MP3tunes effectively police their users to determine if any of the songs were stolen, then make them take them down.

In a ruling yesterday (August 23, 2011), Manhattan district judge William Pauley ruled that MP3tunes (and as a result, any other music locker) is not responsible for what their users upload, clearing the way for people to mix songs they have bought with those that have been offered for free on the internet without worry of having to pay a license fee.

The one stipulation in the ruling is that if a copyright holder finds that a user has uploaded pirated content, the locker company must take down those songs if they're notified.

OK, let's look at the winners and losers here.

The Winners
MP3tunes, Amazon, Google Music, any digital music locker - They don't have to pay a license fee to the labels, and they don't have to police their customers.

The user - They can store their music in the cloud without having to worry about being asked to pay a fee for music they can't prove they own.

The Losers
Music Publishers/Record Labels - They lost a potential major income stream.

Songwriters - Likewise.


Artists - They were bound to make something from that income stream, although probably a pittance of the total amount.

We all seem to leap for joy when the middle man takes a beating, but usually that also means that the creators are taking one too. Virtual music lockers threaten to become the next big thing in music and we'll see if that actually comes to pass by the end of the year or so, but that won't mean much for the real people that need the help - the ones that make the music.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

4 Tips For More Targeted Press Releases

While it can be argued that press releases are a tool of the past, bloggers and journalists still find them to be very useful. There's nothing better at delivering a short, pointed story about a product or event, and they're great for archival purposes on websites. Regardless of the medium, a press release has to be targeted to a potential outlet to get it into the hands of someone who might find it useful. Here are some tips from an article in mediabistro.com regarding targeted press releases.


What’s the news? Part of crafting a quality press release is having a clear sense of what exactly the big news is. Your press release should focus on the most newsworthy element of your announcement with supporting details (including multimedia links) that clearly lay out why this news is significant. If you have a good story with good visuals, a press release can be quick, succinct, and to the point; all things that make everyone’s job easier. Journalism 101: Don’t bury the lede.

And, keep in mind, audiences are now able to search and find your press releases online. So making them consumer-ready — clear, interesting, and shareable — is also important.

Update your media list. Staff changes in the media are happening at a rapid clip. Before you send out your release, take another look at the list to be sure the reporters you’re targeting still cover the beats that are relevant to your story.

Proof, edit, and proof some more. Many press releases go out with poor grammar and unclear sentences that make it difficult to decipher what the heck you’re talking about. PR Daily, which has frequent grammar stories, and the AP Stylebook are just two of the sites out there that can help you clean up your writing. Reporters don’t have time to crack a code to understand what you’re saying.

Understand that the news you’re announcing isn’t for everyone. If you follow tip number one, it should be clear who would be most keen on the news you’re announcing. While it would be nice for tons of reporters and bloggers to report on your client’s news, there may only be a small number of reporters who will actually do so. Sending your release to a select list of reporters or bloggers is a more efficient use of your time than sending it to the The New York Times when that clearly won’t happen.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Sell A Million, Make Zilch - Part 3

I've been giving examples of how recording contracts are stacked against you in recent weeks (other articles here and here), and here's yet another good example that comes from none other than Courtney Love. Like her or her music or not, in this Salon rant she is extremely cogent and describes what happened after her very brief flash of music stardom. Oh, and by the way, it's from 2000, but the basic premise still holds today.
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"Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist's work without any intention of paying for it. I'm not talking about Napster-type software.
I'm talking about major label recording contracts.

I want to start with a story about rock bands and record companies, and do some recording-contract math:
This story is about a bidding-war band that gets a huge deal with a 20 percent royalty rate and a million-dollar advance. (No bidding-war band ever got a 20 percent royalty, but whatever.) This is my "funny" math based on some reality and I just want to qualify it by saying I'm positive it's better math than what Edgar Bronfman Jr. [the president and CEO of Seagram, which owns Polygram] would provide.

What happens to that million dollars?

They spend half a million to record their album. That leaves the band with $500,000. They pay $100,000 to their manager for 20 percent commission. They pay $25,000 each to their lawyer and business manager.

That leaves $350,000 for the four band members to split. After $170,000 in taxes, there's $180,000 left. That comes out to $45,000 per person.

That's $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released.

The record is a big hit and sells a million copies. (How a bidding-war band sells a million copies of its debut record is another rant entirely, but it's based on any basic civics-class knowledge that any of us have about cartels. Put simply, the antitrust laws in this country are basically a joke, protecting us just enough to not have to re-name our park service the Phillip Morris National Park Service.)

So, this band releases two singles and makes two videos. The two videos cost a million dollars to make and 50 percent of the video production costs are recouped out of the band's royalties.

The band gets $200,000 in tour support, which is 100 percent recoupable.

The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations -- the unified broadcast system -- are getting paid to play their records.

All of those independent promotion costs are charged to the band.

Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company.

If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record.

Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals ... zero!

How much does the record company make?
They grossed $11 million.

It costs $500,000 to manufacture the CDs and they advanced the band $1 million. Plus there were $1 million in video costs, $300,000 in radio promotion and $200,000 in tour support.
The company also paid $750,000 in music publishing royalties.

They spent $2.2 million on marketing. That's mostly retail advertising, but marketing also pays for those huge posters of Marilyn Manson in Times Square and the street scouts who drive around in vans handing out black Korn T-shirts and backwards baseball caps. Not to mention trips to Scores and cash for tips for all and sundry.

Add it up and the record company has spent about $4.4 million.
So their profit is $6.6 million; the band may as well be working at a 7-Eleven.

Of course, they had fun. Hearing yourself on the radio, selling records, getting new fans and being on TV is great, but now the band doesn't have enough money to pay the rent and nobody has any credit.

Worst of all, after all this, the band owns none of its work ... they can pay the mortgage forever but they'll never own the house. Like I said: Sharecropping. Our media says, "Boo hoo, poor pop stars, they had a nice ride. Fuck them for speaking up"; but I say this dialogue is imperative. And cynical media people, who are more fascinated with celebrity than most celebrities, need to reacquaint themselves with their value systems.

When you look at the legal line on a CD, it says copyright 1976 Atlantic Records or copyright 1996 RCA Records. When you look at a book, though, it'll say something like copyright 1999 Susan Faludi, or David Foster Wallace. Authors own their books and license them to publishers. When the contract runs out, writers gets their books back. But record companies own our copyrights forever.

The system's set up so almost nobody gets paid."

There's more to the article. Read it in its entirety here.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Why Your Trademark Is So Important

Here's an excellent video from entertainment attorney Marty Frascogna all about trademarks. In it he describes exactly what is a trademark, why bands need a trademark, how to get a trademark, and even better, how to use it as leverage with a label or merch vendor. It's a great explanation of a difficult subject that's easy to understand, and an important aspect to doing business in the new world of Music 3.0.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.