I saw this posted on Hypebot today and thought it was worth sharing. The band C-Mon & Kypski got over 19,000 people to submit video of themselves performing the same things the band was doing in the original video and then started pulling one frame from each video and replacing the band’s performance with the submissions. There are parts where its hard to tell what’s actually happening, but over all, I think this is a really cool concept. The song is called “More Is Less”, check it out:
Hypebot Guest Post
December 10, 2009 By View Comments
My post from yesterday about Square from Jack Dorsey got republished (by permission, of course!) on Hypebot, one of my favorite blogs about music industry news. Check it out!
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/12/the-square-more-mechandise-sales.html
Speech Restricted by Visa Changes
December 2, 2009 By View Comments
The US Citizenship and Immigration Service has decided to take a more strict interpretation of the laws that govern them, which is making like more difficult for touring musicians. Hypebot says the new strictness may cost up to $6000 in additional fees, but from what I’ve read, it seems that would only be if they may mistakes on their applications. One artist that has already been affected is British rapper and Mercury Prize winner Speech Debelle. She was unable to attend SXSW and the CMJ Marathon due to visa headaches.
It’s too bad for her, I actually like her stuff and I’m sure her career would have benefited greatly from playing those two festivals. Hopefully, the USCIS will get it straightened out and loosen up so we can enjoy foreign artists more frequently. Until then, check out her song: Spinnin’.
Music Retail Graphs
November 3, 2009 By View Comments
Here’s a really cool set of graphs from Hypebot (read my thoughts below):
Physical vs Digital:
16% growth in the past two years, wow. Part of me is still surprised that physical products still outsell digital products. The other part of me realizes that labels seem to do everything they can to prevent themselves from making money in the digital realm, so it’s not that surprising that physical products still provide most of their income. Their only hope is that they open up to digital, learn how to make money with it, and reap the benefits.
Digital Retailer Market Share:
No surprise here. iTunes rules the roost. I can’t wait to see this chart the year after Spotify gets here. I bet it will take a sizeable chunk of this chart. For now, I’ll have to check out this “Other” store though, they seem to doing quite well. (j/k)
Monthly Transactions Per User:
I really have to wonder if the variable pricing thing has anything to do with the chart going up. The new iPhone 3GS also came out in July. In any case, even the modest boost in Rhapsody‘s numbers show that people are very interested in music, we jsut need to have access to it.
Spending:
Simple version:
Subscription services have a steady, predictable, going-along-with-the-pricing-plans numbers here. Napster lost a bunch of customers while Rhapsody and eMusic gained.
iTunes has the lowest spending per transaction, but has had a slight growth per user. I’m betting $.69 to $1.29 per track is too high of a price point, otherwise their numbers would be higher in both categories.
FYE and CD Baby have the highest per transaction numbers because people are forced to buy the entire CD at retail prices. You’ll notice people aren’t spending as much there as before.
Long Tail Fans
August 14, 2009 By View Comments
A few years ago, Chris Anderson from Wired wrote an influential book called The Long Tail. Owen Kelly, from the The Indie Digest, put together this great chart showing the Long Tail concept and how it applies to your fans. I’m a sucker for cool graphics, especially ones that use typography in a fun way. My favorite part of this is how he uses each section to describe the fans and where they are in relation to you. The goal is to move everyone into the far left column, true fans. Unfortunately, this is more difficult than ever.
Chris Anderson recently released a book called Free, which explains how “free” works as an economic model. I’m still working my way through it on my iPhone version. I recently read a blog post on Union Square Ventures that stated value comes from scarcity. When information was scarce, it was more valuable. One example: encyclopedias used contain vast amounts of expert-based knowledge and were expensive, but Wikipedia allowed anyone to share their expertise and knowledge and everyone gets it all for free. So information is no longer scarce and, while still useful, it’s not as valuable. What is and always has been scarce is attention. We only have 24 hours in a day, so our attention is more precious and valuable than ever, which is what advertisers have always known and constantly vying for with an ever-increasing amount of annoyance.
Our challenge as artists is to make what we do valuable enough for people to spend some of their precious attention on us. The keys are truly simple: make good music, play it extremely well live, and connect with fans.
Sliimy = Prince?
July 29, 2009 By View Comments
Perez Hilton recently announced a deal with Warner Brothers to start his own record label. Many in the music industry wondered if Perez has the expertise to find real talent and show them to the world. It seems Perez has signed his first artist, a French singer name Sliimy (it’s pronounced Sl-ee-my). After seeing pictures and videos, I couldn’t help wondering if this guy is somehow related to Prince…
Spotify
July 28, 2009 By View Comments
I’ve been hearing for months about this music service in Europe called Spotify and how it’s simply amazing. They say it will be the death of the MP3. They say it will rival iTunes. They’ve said that about alot of stuff and none of it came true.
However, I just saw the demo video of the Spotify iPhone app and I have to say I’m pretty impressed. I can see how this will make buying songs obsolete. Why would you store songs on your iPhone when you could just stream them, anywhere, anytime, nearly instantly? Plus, you’re not limited to the songs you own, you get all six million+ songs in their catalog. That doesn’t even mention the fact that you can sync it with your iPhone to play them when you’re not connected to the Internet. I know Elliot Van Buskirk at Wired really likes it. Am I a new believer? Yep, call me converted!
Recent news says that Spotify is coming to the US, but I’m sure our greedy labels and the RIAA will find a way to screw it up and/or make it ridiculously expensive. Let’s also hope that Apple doesn’t get a case of the stupids and reject the app.
Check out this video. You’ll be blown away. I’m thinking this is exactly what The Future of Music described. This IS the future of music. If you’re an artist, you gotta find a way to get your stuff onto Spotify!
Surprised by Pandora
July 23, 2009 By View Comments
Recently, Pandora announced new requirements for artists to get added to their radio streaming and recommendation service. One of the new requirements was that artists would need to sell their physical CDs through the Amazon Advantage Program, which costs $29.95. This means artists, like myself, who don’t currently have any physical CDs would not be allowed into the Pandora system. Bruce Hougton’s blog, Hypebot, posted the news and a poll to gauge what his readers thought about this development. 55.7% of the responders had a negative reaction, so Bruce sent a letter to Pandora asking for a response. Pandora’s CEO, Tim Westergren, posted a response to Bruce, but several of us weren’t quite satisfied with his response and left comments asking for further explanation.
I was happily surprised to check the post later and find a personal response from Tim answering my concerns directly. How many times do you get an answer directly from a well-known company’s CEO? Kudos to Pandora for having a CEO that cares enough to have a conversation with artists.
Amazing Collaborative Music Video
July 7, 2009 By View Comments
I’m on a video kick this week! From one of my favorite blogs, Hypebot, I learned that Japanese band, Sour, put together this incredible video of their fans recording themselves on their webcams. At first, I thought this was just going to be a bunch of randomness somehow put into a video, but it appears everything is very well choreographed. I just keep wondering, “how did they get each person do to the right thing at the exact right time? To top it off, the song is catchy too, even though its in Japanese. Here’s “Hibi no Neiro (Tone of Everyday)”, enjoy:
Basic Social Media Strategy Outline
May 20, 2009 By View Comments
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