There’s a lot of green—as a whole music consumption on the web is clearly increasing. One contributing factor to that is that the percentage of people that have internet access is growing. Notably extreme growth occurred for SoundCloud, OurStage, Bandcamp, Grooveshark, and ReverbNation. It’s understandable why SoundCloud is rocketing—it offers rock-solid tools, widgets, community, and an API. In summer 2010, SoundCloud launched a Creative Commons search page. Like Indaba Music, SoundCloud is heavily geared towards electronic music and producers. IMO electronic music is growing faster than rock and has more room to evolve. In my analysis of the 2009 heat map, I referred to Grooveshark as Jaws-like and this year was another feeding frenzy. Grooveshark now gets more visits than Last.fm. But let’s zoom out and view the bigger picture:

In February 2010, Sysomos reported that approximately 31% of YouTube videos are music—roughly one out of every three. The YouTube Music area on the map below represents this 31%. Its size is roughly equivalent to 3x everything else combined. Compared to YouTube, Grooveshark is a minnow. You want pop perspective? According to the Compete data, ladygaga.com had more visits in 2010 than any other artist, and although her traffic decreased 55% over the year, she still gets 5x as much traffic as nin.com. According to data from Next Big Sound, Lady Gaga videos got played 45 million times on Vevo* in December 2010. Dividing that number by the 2 million unique visitors that Compete estimated for Vevo that month tells us that the average Vevo user watches 23 Lady Gaga videos per month. Scream now if you have to. Who had the most visited website at the end of the year? I thought is was going to be paramore.net, who with over 400,000 website visits in December 2010 had Eminem, Bieber, and Gaga all beat. But it was taylorswift.com who had the most, with close to 600,000—that’s like half of Bandcamp right there.

Bonus tracks: Right now The Pirate Bay gets as much traffic as MTV.com. Based on its current trajectory Pandora will soon surpass The New York Times. The most popular music magazine online is Rolling Stone—2.2M visits in December 2010. The most popular music blog is Pitchfork—1.4M visits in December 2010—like two Hype Machines. NPR is in the same ballpark as Last.fm.

Update 3/20: Based on requests to add additional sites to the heat map, there is now an alternate edition on page two that includes 8tracks and We Are Hunted rather than Thumbplay and Deezer. All are now on the data table. Regarding Lady Gaga’s 45 million plays, Colin—presumably Colin Willis from Next Big Sound—commented that Next Big Sound’s Vevo play count included Vevo plays from YouTube and therefore the 23 Lady Gaga videos per month calculation is inaccurate.

If they’re stealing from you, then you’re on the right track.

“You’ve just got to be open and free, because that’s the way people want to get content on the web”, says Dallas Penn. “Don’t be afraid of someone stealing your work so much, just have more work to give, and, if people are stealing it, you know what you’re onto something. You’re moving in the right direction.” continued Penn, who runs the vlog internetscelebrities.com. Frank Talk summarized it in poetic terms, “If they’re stealing from you, [then] you’re on the right track.”

Everything can be adapted into digital content—think YouTube or think Flickr. Take hip hop producer Oddisee, who describes his internet-centralized strategy as being circular, wearing many hats, and promoting himself with content: “Everything I do is circulatory…You can’t just rap, you can’t just make beats, you can’t just do one thing anymore. It’s just impossible.” Oddisee uses free content as a means of promoting paid content. He distributes his music via oddisee.bandcamp.com.

If I Ruled the Blogosphere was a panel discussion hosted last month by the Future of Music Coalition and Words Beats & Life. The talk covers many sides of producing/curating music-related content on the web. It’s a bit long—in two parts below—and includes Q&A in Part 2. But when it came up in my Reader feed (via Digipendent) I put it on play while I was working and listened to it all. Anyone involved in blogging, music, or using the internet—pretty much everyone—should find insight from it.

The price of music on the web is heading towards zero. Artists need to use the web to centralize their fan base and reach out to them. But for that to work, fans need to connect with the individual as much—or more than—the music itself. “If people invest in you as an individual before they invest in you as an artist…you know…I mean’s there’s a lot of talented rappers out there…there’s a lot of talented poets…you know…painters…illustrators, but if nobody can connect with that person’s individual story, then they’re just another person doing it.” says blogger FWMJ of Rappers I Know.

As far as avoiding blog shutdowns, Meka Udoh from 2dopeboyz.com encouraged embedding players from other sites rather than posting mp3′s on your own server. I gave similar advice in February when several blogs were shutdown because of the DMCA. Especially in the case of Bandcamp embeds, the data goes back to the artist. It’s a win-win-win—it helps the blogger, the readers, and the artist.

Tagging (-verb): Applying a word or phrase as a label or means of description.
Tagaholic (-noun): A person who gets more than cheap thrills from tagging.

As a self-professed tag-a-holic I’m pretty stoked about the news, and especially so because I had emailed them suggesting a tagging feature. Bandcamp artists can now list themselves in up to five genres, they can add their location, and they can add specific traits to individual tracks in the form of tags. Adding the genre and location isn’t that groundbreaking on its own (almost all music sites have this to some degree) but this feature is positioning Bandcamp towards an indie music discovery community. When you click on the tags/genres/locations you can see all the other artists or tracks tagged the same way. There’s not a set list of tags that you are confined too either—you can describe your music how you see fit. I’ve written before about how I think Bandcamp is the best way to represent an indie artist’s music online. I’ve already discovered some new artists by just browsing through the tags, and because the presentation is so ace, it just makes you want to press play.

Bandcamp’s Tag Cloud on Day 1. bandcamp.com/tag

Bandcamp seems to grasp the importance of maintaining their already-superb platform but it’s great to see they’re continuing to fine-tune and add new features. I think the addition of more community features on Bandcamp like commenting (or fan reviews) would be welcomed, and in case not, they could leave it up to each artist whether they want to allow commenting on their tracks via having an option in their artist settings. Comments or fan reviews under each track remind me of Amie Street’s Rec’s which IMO in my opinion is that site’s best and most engaging feature. There you have to download (buy) the track to recommend (review) it. Another potential community-driver could be digg-like voting. However it’d be smart for Bandcamp to take things one step at a time and be sure to continue to deliver its core features as a service for bands.

Community Overload?

There is an abundance of online music communities, but there’s not many sites that offer the high-quality DIY service that Bandcamp does, and there’s room for them to keep advancing there too. Last year they added sales of physical goods. I’d like to see them add embeddable mailing list sign-up widgets—they already collect emails with downloads for you so this seems like an easy feature extension that would make them more of an all-in-one service for musicians. Or they could somehow integrate with YouTube or Ustream to have video on the Bandcamp page/storefront/channel/station (or however you want to call it). What’s your take on these ideas? I don’t think I’d go as far as having listeners create profiles—who needs another profile, right? I’d try to find a way to let people interact through a service that lets them login with their existing online profiles. In yesterday’s blog post on the tagging, Bandcamp says they originally had “no desire to create another online music community.”

Because there are so many other music sites, one can see what works, what flops, and and try to understand why. I don’t know if any of you have followed the story about TheSixtyOne’s recent redesign. TheSixtyOne is an indie music community where “new artists make music and listeners decide what’s good.” Think indie radio + voting + discussion + digital store. Last month they did a major redesign of the site with no warning and upset a lot of their users. The new design is what I call euro-style and looks cool but the community features are less prevalent. I give them credit for trying something new but they should have communicated the upcoming changes better with their uses. If they did, they might have realized that their users care more about the community than flashy design.

It’s All About The Data

Bandcamp’s new tagging should go over well. It’s subtle but powerful. I even think everyone would benefit more if Bandcamp takes this one step further by enabling the users (listeners) to tag tracks. We’ve seen that crowdsourced-tagging approach before on other music sites—Last.fm and Amie Street come to mind—and it’s a fun way to create data that engages fans (because they have to think about your music as they tag). Tag. Tag. Tag. I’m a tagging freak. I don’t try to organize, I just tag. I tag in excess because it makes things easier to find later. See, I can’t even help but over-tag my blog posts (you’re supposed to use at most 10 tags). My Delicious bookmarks total 7000+ tags. I’m not alone either. Widely-used social bookmarking apps like Delicious, Xmarks, and Google Bookmarks hold the tag data created by thousands and thousands of users. Combine all that and you’ve got a helluva lot of data to crunch. It’s like using humans to crawl the web instead of search bots. Humans zone in on content and label it in a way that’s effective and meaningful for, well, humans. Delicious is essentially a crowdsourced search engine. They provide a great service but they’ve failed to innovate. They’re owned by Yahoo. They have the data, but they don’t leverage it in their apps.

Back to music—think about how Last.fm powers its similar artists based on listener behavior. Think about combining listener behavior with crowdsourced tagging could make recommendation engines. Multiple tag queries or basic seach operators would be great for filtering by genre and location simultaneously—e.g. electronica + new york—but I wouldn’t stop at genre and location—I’d try to encourage mood tags and sounds-like tags too. If Bandcamp collected tag data from everyone they could better use it analyze trends and could bring their upcoming search that they mention to a whole new level. I hope they attempt to deliver more in the way of music analytics and music intelligence.

Read more posts tagged Bandcamp here.

Judo Paris Grand Slam 2010. Image: flickr/ryusha

Now if I got an email explicitly saying “you’re breaking our rules and we’re going to shut you down” then I would react immediately but apparently these bloggers missed this chance. I’m sure Blogger’s TOS states that they have the right to delete violating blogs, and to protect themselves legally they delete them. But I find it hard to believe Google didn’t warn them. I think the bloggers had to have known they were in a legal gray area. They should have exported a backup of their blog.

The DMCA’s ‘safe harbors’ for online service providers give linkers a strong incentive to remove links upon receiving a DMCA takedown notice, because if they do so, they are protected from paying damages in any copyright infringement case. (EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann via BoingBoing in 2006)

Regardless of whether we may be liable for such infringement under local country law or United States law, our response to these notices may include removing or disabling access to material claimed to be the subject of infringing activity and/or terminating subscribers. If we remove or disable access in response to such a notice, we will make a good-faith attempt to contact the owner or administrator of the affected site or content so that they may make a counter notification. (Google)

We need better laws surrounding internet music journalism that reflect today’s Internet behavior. We need better education regarding copyright so that writers know how to properly license intellectual property. Oftentimes music bloggers have gained permission to include mp3′s directly from the artist or their record label. The same may even go for some YouTube videos that have had their audio removed due to “copyright infringement.” Is anyone asking the artists or contacting the uploader first? Who exactly is making the complaints? Theoretically the DMCA criminalizes anti-DRM tactics and copyright infringement. In practice, is it working—or rather—is it worth it?

The trouble with filing a formal, legal DMCA counter-claim is, that most bloggers don’t know how. What’s more, many of Blogger’s DMCA notices allegedly omit the name of the offending song. Bloggers aren’t even sure what they are denying. (The Guardian)

From what’s being talked about from the blogs that did have their content removed, it sounds like the newer system (unlike the old system) did alert them to what was happening, but they just felt hopeless to respond. Google has put up a response, basically saying that if it doesn’t receive a counternotice, and it keeps getting DMCA takedowns on the same account, eventually it takes the blog down as a “repeat offender.” So we’re back to the point that I predicted in August, where your average everyday blogger has no idea what a DMCA counternotice is and how to use it — so it would be much better if Google made the process of filing such a counternotice a lot more intuitive. (Techdirt)

In order to prevent any legal confusion, I would include a disclaimer making it painfully obvious that that the artist (or label) gave permission to have the mp3 on the blog. Even better, I would use legal embedding tools such as Bandcamp, Soundcloud, or Grooveshark as opposed to a direct link to an .mp3 file. This saves bandwidth and covers your a**. In the case of Bandcamp, you would be helping the artist because Bandcamp downloads usually require an email address and ZIP code giving bands a direct connection to their fans and valuable location data. I think most Bandcamp artists would happily issue free download codes to mp3 bloggers. Another route would be to use Creative Commons-licensed content—there’s plenty of CC-licensed content on Jamendo.

All that said, the best solution is to set up a blog on your own domain with an opensource blogging platform like WordPress. But even still you should backup your posts. Blogger and WordPress both support exporting (backing-up) into a transferable .xml file. Mini-blogging platforms Tumblr and Posterous are also good free alternatives—Posterous supports transferring from another blog but I don’t think Tumblr does yet. See Mashable’s head-to-head comparison. Squarespace is a paid service that supports importing and is also worth considering as an out-of-the-box solution.

If you’re already using WordPress on a WordPress.com blog, I recommend buying your own domain and hosting. You remain in more control that way. Buy your hosting separately from your domain though—most domain registration services offer cheap hosting that sucks as an upsell. It’s worth paying for good hosting. Of course the DMCA could issue a complaint to you through you or your host, but it’s less likely and the complaint would be more direct to you and not through a 3rd party.

Update 2/12/09: Last night Google put back one of the deleted blogs and updated their response:

Last Friday I got into a discussion with James Marshall (@infinitestylez) about issues facing musicians in the current state of the industry. I had tweeted two links and James replied stating, “The internet is destroyin’ industries we all love.” It sparked a bit of a debate at first—my stance is that the internet is changing the music business for the better—but we found some common ground along the way. We talked about promotion, talent, middle-men, costs, and the viability of alternate revenue sources like subscriptions and endorsements. We decided to post the discussion here where it can benefit the community, and we want to hear your opinions in the comment section. Have a read below of the entire conversation, which went from tweets to DM’s to emails.

About James Marshall: I’m a hip-hop artist local to Detroit, 25 years old, and with 7 years experience in hip-hop. “I don’t care if you don’t love me, I don’t care if you don’t date me. Fear me, whatever, respect me…hate me as long as you pay me.”

About Ryan Van Etten: I’m a 30 y.o. writer/editor on virtualmusic.tv, an engineer, DIY multimedia producer, and the indie eclectic-rock artist from The Spin Arounds and Crimson Road. “I try to reinvent myself each day like the turn of a kaleidoscope.”

Listeners: There is music that you can download for free—legally or illegally—and there is music that you can stream for free. The trend is towards streaming. I support bands that are giving their tracks away for free. I’ll even admit it—I’m offended when bands expect me to pay for an mp3 download. Am I completely off base here, or do you agree?

Unlike these records, mp3′s can be easily duplicated and shared for free. We are in a new time and we need new rules. Welcome to the digital revolution.

Bands: Giving downloads away for free is an excellent promotional move. It puts out the message that you care about your fans, and that you want them to hear your music. It is a leader into other revenue streams. I recommend collecting fans’ email addresses in exchange for free downloads. This can be achieved nicely by Bandcamp, which, in my opinion is a super-slick service. Bandcamp enables downloads in multiple hi-res formats, and the platform encourages sharing on social networks. They even offer pay-what-you-want pricing options—the only drawback is that PayPal takes a percentage. [Demo: My Bandcamp Page]

I hope paid download services shift their business models to make the music more “free” for listeners. I think services could generate ad revenue that the artists could share in—in such a way that bands could choose the ads on their pages as to match the right advertisements with the music. I recently commented about Amie Street implementing this idea, but imagine if a mega-service like iTunes could work magic like that.