Photo: digital vincent/flickr.

Mr. Owl, How many clicks does it take to get to the rock n’ roll center of a retail mp3?

Let’s find out. A One… A two-HOO…too many!

Mr. Owl just BitTorrented right into your album because it was easier than buying it on iTunes. It took less clicks.

Jay Frank suggested counting “clicks to content.” iTunes and Amazon send you through more than 10 clicks if you don’t already have an account but P2P takes only four clicks on average, he said. Streaming takes one or two. Think YouTube or Google, who nailed it with OneBox—the player that appears in their search results. “Anything more than two clicks and you’re missing out on the majority”, said Frank, “Impress them fast.”

Ariel Hyatt asked NMS attendees to raise their hands if they’ve ever bought their own songs on iTunes. The crowd was split but most hadn’t. She used the analogy of cooking: you wouldn’t serve food to guests without tasting it first, would you?

“Make it easy to buy” said Tony Van Veen. Have “compelling offers” such as package deals or name-your-price, and “take away the fear of buying” with a money-back guarantee. He told the story about an 80s band (I forget the name of the band but please comment if you know it) who recently sold their entire back catalog + their entire future catalog + free entry to any of their shows forever all for $100. For a superfan that’s a compelling deal.

Ripping and Burning > P2P

Eric Garland and Tom Silverman talked about the so-called problem with illegal downloads. If it’s hosted on an upload site like RapidShare, then “there is a place we can bomb”, said Silverman, “but not with P2P.” Research showed that more music is actually ripped/burned than it is shared via P2P.

Bombing the service provider is no solution when “people and their insatiable appetite for free music are the real problem.” –Eric Garland, CEO, BigChampange.

The desire for free music isn’t going away. Don’t blame the consumer. Musicians need to find ways to work free into their strategy. e.g. Free downloads for email addresses. Use free to convert strangers into fans. Tony Van Veen said, “Free music is the way to do it. Aggressively offer free. Do swaps. Use P2P. …Don’t fear free. …Build your list. …Don’t be afraid to steal a good idea and make it your own.”

Photo: matthileo/flickr

“Why make your own website? You own it. You own the experience.” –Chris Vinson, Founder, Bandzoogle.

Since before you heard of Google, Chris Vinson has been designing musician websites. Like many today, he was in a band that needed a website. He did what anyone with enough determination would have done—he built it. 1000+ people were on his email list before email was a staple. Based on the success of his band’s site, he was later hired by his record label to build hundreds more. In 2004, he launched Bandzoogle—now a comprehensive, subscription, website platform for musicians.

“Decide an important action and encourage fans to do that action.”

Tracking website analytics for years, Vinson has concluded that “elaborate sites lose traffic.” Simple is better. Having a complicated, all-Flash website is self-defeating. “Flash sucks” was rule #1 in his 18-minute intensive at NMS about ‘how to make an artist website that rocks.’ He echoed these rules and really drove the idea of having exactly one concept per page. Have one call to action—e.g. ‘download this’ or ‘become a fan on Facebook.’

There are three phases according to Vinson: Attract fans from social networks a.k.a. “outposts.” Engage them with a “compelling fan experience.” Sell through simple calls to action. “Artist websites emphasize an artist’s own brand.” Make it personal. “Frequent updates = repeat visits.”

Bandzoogle founder Chris Vinson explains how to make an artist website that rocks. Photo: virtualmusictv/flickr

Brand isn’t something you sell. It’s not schilling other people’s products, and it’s not selling out. Brand is what you stand for.” –Liz Leahy, Co-Founder, Section 101.

What about fan mailing lists? What’s the right frequency? Ariel Hyatt suggests one email per month. Each should contain a single call to action—a different call to action each month. Disc Makers CEO Tony Van Veen said, “Retain mindshare. Don’t let them forget about you.” and “Add value in your communication.” Everything you do online is communication and should reflect your brand vision.

Photo: bjornkeizers/flickr.

10 seconds to engage someone—to impress them.

In his research for Futurehit.DNA, Jay Frank discovered an impressive trend: Shorter song intros lead to better sales. “2/3 of bestselling songs have an intro that’s less than 7 seconds.” The average intro length for Top 25 songs is 6.6 seconds. “You really have 10 seconds to engage people.” Get to the hook. “Make it impactable.”

Frank stated that “people are going to come to you first through song.” Through Google. Essentially, bands can expect fans to find them through song names and lyric clips because that’s how fans search and discover. “Make sure you search your own song.” That is, search the title before you release it suggested both Jay Frank and Ariel Hyatt. Based on the initial search results an artist can tweak their titles for SEO.

NMS NYC 2010 | Day 1 | First Movement: The Next Music Business Unveiled
LTR: Ariel Hyatt (moderator/Ariel Publicity), Jay Frank (Futurehit.DNA), Gwen Lipsky (SoundThinkingNY), Eric Garland (BigChampange), and Mike Doernberg (ReverbNation). On this slide they brought up the issue that a lot of artists are trying to monetize too early. Create, grow, and then sell. Photo: virtualmusictv/flickr.

“Don’t try to sell something if you’re trying to get fans because that’s an obstacle when what you want is their attention.” –Mike Doernberg, CEO, ReverbNation.

Even superstar Rihanna had trouble getting high in Google with “Russian Roulette” because there were already so many results for that term. What an artist can do is either make titles more unique, or, even better, tag-along existing popular search terms by using slight variations. Be clever—keep a handle on artistic integrity. Ralph Simon later pointed out that based on Google Trends, people search for ‘lyrics’ more than they search for ‘sex.’

10 seconds. You already lost me. 28 hours later a different panel, The Creative Conundrum, critiqued the three artists who made it to the Artist On The Verge finals. Only half the panel had seen the show the night before and the rest were judging based on a 10-second video clip. Were they insensitive? Yes. They were ruthless. But were they true to life? You tell me.

01The crowd was lined up outside Webster Hall for the NMS opening night party on July 19. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

02iPad DJ Rana Sobhany was first to perform on opening night, July 19, at Webster Hall. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

03$8 drinks a special?! I wasn’t drinking anyway, but this is pure craziness—even for NY. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

04Comedian Margaret Cho was hilarious—a nice surprise on opening night. Hurt locker! (flickr/virtualmusictv)

05On our way to Webster Hall for opening night. Left: Steve Klein (Sound Around). Right: Ryan Van Etten (me). (flickr/virtualmusictv)

06NMS NYC 2010 | Day 1 | July 20 | First Movement: The Next Music Business Unveiled.
LTR: Gwen Lipsky (SoundThinkingNY), Eric Garland (BigChampange) and Mike Doernberg (ReverbNation). Out of picture but also in this panel were Ariel Hyatt (Ariel Publicity) and Jay Frank (Futurehit.DNA). (flickr/virtualmusictv)

07British Tour:Smart author Martin Atkins explained 20 strategy tips like this one during his F-bomb-saturated 18-minute intensive. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

08NMS NYC 2010 | Day 1 | July 20 | Second Movement: The Future of Media.
LTR: Peter Kafka, Joe Kennedy, Courtney Holt, Richard Yaffa, Frank Cooper, and Alex Cameron. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

09Nimbit co-founder Phil Antoniades (left) and CEO Bob Cramer (right) perform a rockin’ intro to demonstrate ‘emotional connection’ before their 18-minute intensive geared towards direct-to-fan music. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

10Scott Klein—the engineer brain behind Sound Around—in Tahini on 3rd ave. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

11Jim Moeller from New York based jam-band artist mgmt. service Soulever Music. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

12Sound Around brothers Steve and Scott Klein. They stayed at my house during the seminar so I was hanging out with them quite a bit. Here we were on our way to Santos Party House on day 1. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

13Electro-rock dance duo The Fire and Reason opened at Santos Party House on July 20. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

14The Fire and Reason singer Bella Saona had some serious dance moves!
(flickr/virtualmusictv)

15Rapper Yonas was up next. Yonas was the first of the three Artist On The Verge finalists to perform. “I don’t sing, I rap” Yonas said as he worked a part of the next song out for the audience to sing. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

16Faces in the crowd during the set by Yonas. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

17Yonas gets the crowd moving. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

18Yonas brought some of the crowd on stage for a song at the end. Also you can see DeadStock Ric in this shot (on the left) who performed with Yonas. The next day, The Creative Conundrum panel criticized Yonas for not creating enough “separation” between him and the fans. In this situation—a small-medium club—I disagree, and—unlike half of that panel—I actually was at the show and not watching only a 10 sec. clip. The panel critiqued all three Artist On The Verge bands (Yonas, Comic Book Heroes, and Hotspur) without (flickr/virtualmusictv)

19Rock band Comic Book Heroes was up next. They played a tight set, but I had to leave right after it, and didn’t get to see HotSpur. I met the rhythm half of Comic Book Heroes the next day at the seminar. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

20Koz—Comic Book Heroes guitarist—at Santos Party House on July 20. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

21Steve—Comic Book Heroes bassist—at Santos Party House on July 20. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

22Aspacia Lindstrom from gen2media outside Santos Party House during Artist On The Verge on July 20. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

23Day 2 | Next Big Sound was upstairs at NMS. LTR: David Hoffman and Colin Willis. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

24NMS NYC 2010 | Day 2 | July 21| Third Movement: Your Live Tour
LTR: Martin Atkins, Steve Ferguson, Jim Glancy, Corrie Christopher, and Stephane Minier. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

25NMS NYC 2010 | Day 2 | July 21 | Fourth Movement: The Creative Conundrum
LTR: Bill Werde, Kelly Cutrone, Little Steven, Just Blaze, and Tom Jackson. (flickr/virtualmusictv)

26Just Blaze meets attendees after The Creative Conundrum. (He was one of the few smart enough to wear shorts.) (flickr/virtualmusictv)

27NMS NYC 2010 | Day 2 | July 21 | Fifth Movement: The Breaks
LTR: Margaret Cho, Nile Rodgers, Alex Suarez, Jesse Malin, Vin Rock, Swizz Beats, and Tom Silverman (NMS Founder). (flickr/virtualmusictv)

28NMS Artist On The Verge finalists. Top row: Yonas (DeadStock Ric and Yonas) and Comic Book Heroes (Ned, Steve, Koz, and Collin). Bottom row: the contest winners—HotSpur. These three artists were chosen by the OurStage community and the winner was voted on via text message on the final day of NMS. (NMS/Jen Maler)

More NMS photos: Launch slideshow.
Post-event coverage: What I learned at NMS10.

In a VideoSong

1. What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voice).

2. If you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds).

VideoSong is medium defined by Jack Conte with those two rules. In addition to his solo production, Jack is the orchestration half of the indie music duo Pomplamoose, who chose video as their social medium of choice largely due to the magnetic attraction emitted by YouTube. They popularized their music on YouTube with videosong—a format that seemed functional and easy—and inspired viewers.

Last Friday, Kevin Breuner at CD Baby interviewed Jack Conte in DIY Musician Podcast #096. I recommend giving the full podcast a listen. Jack explained why he and Nataly chose to cover the songs that they did, and how it helped them become sustainable on mp3 downloads alone—covers and originals. Here are two excerpts from the podcast—the first is about the attraction to videosongs, and the second is about why Pomplamoose resisted record deals from all four major labels.

Alkaline Trio singer/guitarist Matt Skiba waves from behind the microphone at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco on Feb. 18, 2010. Five days later they released their 7th full-length album, This Addiction.
Photo: whenwedie/Flickr | view set
alkalinetrio.com | thisaddiction.org | blood-pact.com
Epitaph | iTunes | Amazon | Insound

Last month I wrote about five tactics for finding music blogs. Let’s revisit this addiction with three more massive resources and a hit of punk rock.

1. MOG Music Network is a network of music blogs integrated with the social music community MOG. An estimated 800+ external music blogs are now part of MMN—including ours—so MOG it up.

2. CaptainCrawl is an extensive up-to-date music blog aggregator similar to elbo.ws. I even like CaptainCrawl better because of its cleaner design. Thanks to MTT for dealing me this one.

3. Image search engines that crawl the blogosphere can help too. Search for artist images on Google, Bing, NachoFoto, and Picsearch. You’ll be able to discover the blogs that posted them.

From MOG to Twitter to Facebook to Tumblr to last.fm, fans have the voice. Don’t kick this writing addiction. Alkaline Trio hasn’t. That is, they haven’t kicked their addiction to writing pure punk rock. Feeling the need to get back to their indie roots, they started their own label, Heart & Skull, and partnered with Epitaph Records, to release their seventh full-length album, This Addiction.

Alkaline Trio is on the Warped Tour this summer. The more I listen to This Addiction the more I get hooked. What sets the Trio apart for me has always been their clever writing and live energy. If you’ve seen them live, then you know the real thing. IMO this is their best album since their BYO Split Series in 2004. You hear the honest, raw vibe they were going for, but it’s larger, more fluid, and upbeat now—it’s most reminiscent of those champion BYO Split Series or “War Brain” days. The new song “Piss and Vinegar” is a worthy sequel to “Cooking Wine”, which, like “Radio” or “My Friend Peter”, is a gateway drug into the heart of the Trio’s sound. It’s rad that Alkaline Trio produced This Addiction with Chicago engineer Matt Allison, who produced their early albums/EP’s. His mixing is straight up.

Want to get in on this action and try Sound Around free for three months? Well, you’re in the right place because we have a couple promo codes to dish out to bands. To be eligible to win one: Use your band’s twitter (or disqus) account to sign in below, leave a comment, and check “share on twitter.” You can check out band apps already built by Sound Around in the App Store.

Update: Read post-event coverage here.

Graphic: VirtualMusictv/Flickr

When it comes to music, value is in the ear of the listener.

Value is always decided by the market. It’s a fundamental economics principle that Universal Music Group and the RIAA can’t seem to grasp—at least based on their latest propaganda initiative against music piracy in the US via Facebook, called Music Rights Now.

The lawsuits may have stopped, but that doesn’t mean the music industry and its trade group the RIAA has toned down its crusade against unsanctioned peer-to-peer file-sharing. Negotiations, label and lobbying sources say, have been underway with Internet service providers for more than a year, as the U.S. music industry is pushing ISPs to follow the leads of many European countries in adopting policies that limit or curtail Web access of those who are deemed as infringing users. Today, Universal Music Group Distribution took its fight online, launching a Facebook page in conjunction with the RIAA to promote the issue. (Universal goes social with ISP campaign | LA Times)

You can’t break nature. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. When it comes to music, value is in the ear of the listener—not any record company. Think about this: would you pay $400 for a Big Mac? Of course not. McDonalds knows this and they’ve based their prices to be competitive in the market.

Do we really want the music industry controlling our ISP’s? The group Music Rights Now would be more appropriately named Denying Reality Now. In time the laws will change because the market demands it. Instead of fighting piracy we should be finding ways to legalize/monetize its behavior.
[see An Infinite Freeway For Music Business?]

Sound Around: iPhone apps for bands.

Gee, Scott, what do you want to do tonight? The same thing we do every night, Steve—try to help music take over the world by building better mobile apps for bands and their fans!

In 2009, in a little place called Raleigh, North Carolina, brothers Scott and Steve Klein had been brainstorming tech startup ideas. Both were students at NC State, but with opposite majors—nearly yin and yang. Add entrepreneurial DNA, and they’re Pinky and The Brain. Scott (Brain) was preparing to graduate as a computer engineer, and his younger brother, Steve (Pinky), was studying business management/marketing. Their startup would be born, but the question was, what kind? Taking advantage of their student resources, they had access to mentoring and networking through the NCSU Engineering Entrepreneurs Program.

They started 2bros1blog.com to blog about what they learned on the startup road. Many early ideas were solutions aimed towards the university community. Scott had learned Objective-C, the programming language for iPhone apps, and they decided they really wanted to get involved with mobile apps. Everyone has a phone, and they always have it with them, right? But they needed to find the right niche. They thought about campus sports or news apps, but when they proposed building a news app for the college paper, they were met with perplexed stares. Scott and Steve realized that for their app service to fly, they needed to find people that were really interested in expanding and engaging their audience. Being music fans themselves, they took what seemed to be a logical turn that summer—towards musicians. Next stop, Sound Around.

Scott graduated in December, gave a speech, and started a job at an TransLoc—a startup that provides realtime location information to mass-transit users. He built their iPhone app. At the same time he and Steve (who was still in school and working part-time in Macaroni Grill) were developing what would soon be called Sound Around. At the turn of 2010, they took on 15 bands as closed-beta testers. In February Steve learned the ins and outs of web design and built getsoundaround.com.

With people skills and resourcefulness, they’d bootstrapped their expenses so far, but in early 2010 they got involved with TechStars in an effort to raise seed capital. In March they flew to Boulder and found themselves surrounded by like minds in the tech scene. Of 600 startups, TechStars funds only 10. Sound Around made it to the top 27 but not the final 10, and it was back to bootstrapping.

In a typical college scenario, the two brothers were living in a 4-bedroom apartment with two other students—David and A.J.—but when David moved out to live with his fiancé, Scott and Steve commandeered the empty room and converted it into a workspace—their current headquarters.

Having success with the beta apps, they started recording videos to demo the Sound Around platform, and, in the meantime started the application process for funding through another (more local) startup incubator, called LaunchBox Digital…which pretty much brings us to the present. Last night was a milestone for Sound Around. Their first apps were approved by Apple and are now live in the App Store. The party was on, but it’s only the beginning for Sound Around.

In the upcoming weeks, Sound Around will be running discount promos via Twitter. Stay in the loop: @VirtualMusictv and @getsoundaround.

Scott is on a 3-month sabbatical from his job at TransLoc to focus full-time on Sound Around. Steve would love to be able to dropout next semester and get Sound Around rolling without distractions. Funding would help them “scale faster” but with or without it they’re expecting to launch in public beta this summer. They considering finding a 3rd team member experienced in web and/or Android dev.

The ‘band apps as a service’ market is a wide-open frontier. There’s some fundamental characteristics about Sound Around that really make them stand out.

1. It’s the DIY mindset. Sound Around’s young, two-brother team is the core of all their development. They’re building it all from the ground up. By not hiring out their programming or design, they’ll be able to constantly address feedback and improve their platform. When demands of the app market change, they’ll be able to adapt the fastest.

2. Sound Around purely focused on developing apps for bands/musicians. They’re not leaving the music niche—immense as it is—and they plan on rocking it. MobBase is their only direct competition right now, and there’s plenty of room to coexist in this space.

3. In what I’ve learned about Scott and Steve, I can tell that they understand the importance of people in the mix. They plan on creating an interface for interaction—not one-way communication—and they have a lot of innovative ideas on deck.

4. Their pricing is user-focused. It’s not based on installs. Bands pay based on the number of fans that actually use the app each month. The starter $14/month plan covers 1000 unique app users per month. Above 1000 is $0.01/user until the next tier—$29/month for 5000 unique users.

5. Their mascot is a giraffe named Shirley. She’ll make you smile. :) Giraffes are a symbol of evolution, you know. She doesn’t always travel with the team of course, who’ll be attending events this summer, including Warped Tour in Charlotte, and would love to meet up.

Artists can get their music on the site by uploading it to SoundCloud. CitySounds launched last summer and released a 99-cent iPhone App earlier this year rated 2.5 stars on iTunes. The underlying idea is awesome, as is its execution on the web so far. Looking to discover new music…then why wouldn’t you want to search local? The flip side is you can travel the world via music.

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