Don’t Leave Me Sunshine was recently featured on Indie Music Sampler!  Check out this great podcast to hear some excellent independent music.

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.

Check out my latest video about working at Vibe Dial Studio.

One of many blogs I read on a regular basis is by the writer of Guerilla Music Marketing, Bob Baker.  I read an article a while back about how software developers were using a simple strategy to get people interested in their software:

1. Tease
2. Preview
3. Launch

I immediately thought this would relate to what we do as musicians, but I didn’t have time to flesh it out.  I figured Bob was just the man to spell it out and share it with the world, so I emailed the article.  I just got an email from him today saying he read the article, blogged about it, and gave me a credit and link!  Thanks Bob!

I have never liked the idea of subscriptions for music.  You pay $x amount per month and you get to play all the music you want.  Stop paying, you’re outta luck.  It just seems mobster-ish to me, which is par for the course for record labels, but not for Apple.  So I’m a little queezy about the idea of iTunes offering the same thing.  There seems be a giant void for details, so here are my questions:

1. There is something floating around about paying a premium for a player that comes with a lifetime (of the device) of music.  Is there a pre-determined lifetime for said premium device – as in, even if it’s still working, the premium expires after x years?
2. What happens to that music after the device dies or the premium ends?
3. Is this the mobster-esque, pay a fee every month and we’ll provide music.  Stop paying and it’s nite-nite time?  I hate this idea.
4. Will there be DRM if it is the mobster route  I also hate this.  I was planning to avoid Rhapsody, Napster, and others who force DRM.  I wouldn’t buy this and I wouldn’t sell it either.
5. Will this work more like eMusic and Limewire, where you pay for a subscription that allows you to download x amount of tunes per month for free and pay per track after that?  This one I could go for…

As you can see, Christopherjoel.com is all new! I’m so glad to get my domain name back and this site up and running. I’ve got one gig lined up already and hopefully more on the way. 2008 is going to be a great year for CJ and the band.