VirtualMusic.tvmusic industry

NMS NYC 2010 Photos

Ryan Van Etten — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 01:38:56 +0000

New school and old school collide here. New Music Seminar in New York last week was a 2.5 day collision of industry minds talking strategy and technology in today’s music market. NMS, which first took place in the early 80s, was relaunched last year by its original founder, Tom Silverman. You’ll see a mix of photos from the discussions and performances which included the Artist On The Verge contest, where three bands from OurStage were voted on to perform and compete—Yonas, Comic Book Heroes, and HotSpur (the winner). (28 photos total. Photos are by yours truly via flickr except for #28. Editorial coverage about ideas/strategy/tech. to follow.)

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.

VideoSong Schooled The Video Star

Ryan Van Etten — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 17:56:16 +0000

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.

DIY Musician Podcast #096 19:30

Kevin Breuner: Why do you think the videosong, just in your opinion, has caught on so well on YouTube? It seems like it’s becoming this, like, genre of its own just on YouTube with lots people really interested in checking out other people’s videosongs and creating them themselves.

Jack Conte: Right. I think there’s a couple reasons for that. One, it’s an educational experience. There’s a lot of DIY musicians out there who want to learn about production, who want to learn recording techniques, and are interested in what other people are using. Stuff is changing so fast right now and it’s tough to keep up on what’s going on. I watch other people’s videosongs for cool recording ideas. You know, ‘oh wow that’s an awesome sound.’ If you’re listening to a record in your car, you know hear a sound you go, ‘man what a great sound—gee wish I knew how to make that.’ You know? And when you’re watching it on YouTube it’s, ‘wow what a great sound, I’m going to try that because I know exactly how to do it’, and then you can put your own little twist on it. So that’s the first reason—it’s a good educational experience. It’s fun to be able to pick out things that you enjoy and be able to replicate them yourself.

The second reason is because everybody loves music and people have loved music for tens of thousands of years. And now there’s this shortform content [that] is starting to catch on, you know—shortform videos. It’s a very popular medium because shortform videos are entertaining and it’s quick little snackable moments in your day that pick you up and make you feel good. [...] It’s something that’s really interesting to watch that’s almost mathematical to make. That’s what I enjoy about it. I’m a really functional person and as creative as the video end is, you know, it follows a strict set of guidelines, and it almost makes itself. Once you make the audio, the video can only be a certain thing—it can only be a certain way. I think that’s an easy thing to make, since there’s that set of clear rules and guidelines, it’s a relatively small initial investment, and you can create shortform content on a regular basis to engage a fanbase. That regular engagement of a fanbase is super important because it’s not just about one giant music video—it’s about a 10 or 15 little videos over the year that keep your fans interested in what you’re doing and interested in your music.

DIY Musician Podcast #096 33:00

Kevin Breuner: I would assume that people have approached you offering you deals—traditional record deals. What’s kept you from going down that path?

Jack Conte: When “Single Ladies” came out, we were approached by all four majors. [...] The labels don’t get it. And I know it’s so like stereotypically indie hipster to say, ‘they just don’t get it.” It angers me. we’re making a living. We’re doing fine. We get to keep our album sales. What exactly is it that you think labels do for you? I have a bunch of friends in the music industry, in the music world, and some of them play with signed acts and some of them are in signed acts. The labels give them, I would say, half the publicity that Pomplamoose can give itself.

By releasing a new video we get millions of hits and a ton of records sales, and usually when we release a big video we get some licensing deals that come in—some of them come to fruition and some of them don’t. That kind of publicity that’s available at your fingertips these days—for free! You don’t even have to pay to upload something onto YouTube. YouTube just lets you put video on their server and expose it to anyone you want. It’s an amazing time we live in. The backdoor around those gatekeepers is such an unervalued thing for musicians. So the reason we didn’t sign to the labels—first and foremost—is because we don’t need them. Anything they can do for us they subcontract out to smaller organizations that we could pay for ourselves and then not have to recoup those expenses and hand over all of our finances to the label.

For instance, if we want a PR team, which the label would just say, ‘hey we have access to PR teams, we have access to distribution, we have access to publication, blah blah blah…’ Well guess what? So do everybody. [...] It’s just such a backwards, antiquated, poorly designed system that is meant to f*** musicians. It’s so bad and none of them even know it. None of them even get it. They don’t get the power of online video. They still call it ‘viral video’ which just like kills me.

[...] You can’t make a viral video. A viral video is something that happens that has to do with the current culture, and the current norms, and the current blogs, and whatever it is that’s happening in society at that current time that causes it to expand like a virus. It’s not something that you can decide. And the labels don’t get that. And they don’t get how video can be used on a regular basis for musicians. I mean labels are still spending 10, 15, 20 thousand dollars on a music video, and if they were to spend that money across 10 videos that were more sincere, and less smoke-and-mirrory, and less flashy, then I think they would actually do way better.

In an Anti-VideoSong

1. What you see is not at all what you hear (all lip-syncing for instruments or voice).

2. If you hear it, you probably won’t see it (all hidden sounds).

Most of Jack’s videos are videosongs, but he has dabbled with the opposite too—a humorous spin-off, a fake videosong, dubbed the Anti-VideoSong: Anti VideoSong – Jack Conte

Anti-P2P = Denying Reality Now

Ryan Van Etten — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:36:15 +0000

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?]

Lala Shutdown: Twitter Top 20

Ryan Van Etten — Sat, 01 May 2010 02:23:08 +0000

Apple caused a Twitter storm today with the abrupt announcement that their newly acquired cloud-based music service “Lala is shutting down.” I won’t speculate today on what this may mean for the future of iTunes and the music industry. Instead, here’s our top 20 reactions to the news—reader discretion is advised.

#20

#19

#18

#17

#16

#15

#14

#13

#12

#11

#10

#9

#8

#7

#6

#5

#4

#3

#2

#1

RIP Lala, but let the music rock on. I’m optimistic—what’s your reaction?
previous post: iTunes Is The 7-Eleven of Media

iTunes Is The 7-Eleven of Media

Ryan Van Etten — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 17:42:50 +0000

Mac computers rock, but I’m no apple addict. When I talk on my iPhone 3G I feel my head melting like a $2 burrito, and even though iTunes launches every time I sync, I’ve never purchased music on iTunes. (I have downloaded apps.) The bottom line of this microwavable disclaimer is that I’m not your average music consumer.

Device Dependency

Apple continues to create a major dependence on iTunes through their mobile products—the iPod, iPhone, and iPad—and I don’t think that anything is going to “kill” iTunes without a war. iTunes is the 7-Eleven of media—it’s more convenient and expensive, but it’s closer to home. For many, the iTunes experience is ingrained behavior—a household name—and part of their daily commute so to speak.

7-Eleven is a major convenience store chain throughout N. America, Asia, and Australia. This one’s in Manhattan.
Photo: rhockens/Flickr

Generation Gap

The second huge advantage Apple has is the generation gap. Older people are more likely to have money to spend, and are less likely to adopt something new—especially if it’s less convenient. For Spotify to compete stateside, it will start through today’s youth. I love the Spotify concept, its mobility, and its adaptivity. They are smart to develop/test/improve their service in one location (Europe) before attempting to roll it out in another market (U.S.)—that’s business expansion 101. I hope that Spotify becomes a hit in the U.S. mainly for the sake of the music. Who wants an iTunes monopoly?

Spotify’s Game

Tuesday, Mark Mulligan from Forrester Research posted some great points on Spotify’s rise. He highlighted simplicity, social integration, and cloud-based infrastructure as factors that are rolling Spotify into an iTunes-plus-Last.fm experience:

Apple Affinity

Apple products have strong affinity, and an army of enthusiasts drinking their Slurpees. Anyone looking to compete with them has to have an equal or greater affinity, and/or introduce something totally disruptive (which Spotify has done to a degree). Spotify has game, but so does Apple, who made a calculated move with last year’s Lala acquisition. One big thing to remember is that music has always been about the experience, and it always has been.

Cloud Contenders

Source: Compete.com. Pandora, for example, is excluded here, because it’s on a whole other grid—it blows the rest away in traffic. Look here get a visual of the bigger picture.

Apple Shuttle

Source: FinViz. Apple stock continues its flight to the moon.

An Infinite Freeway For Music Business?

Ryan Van Etten — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 19:53:01 +0000

Infinite ‘free’ way? Photo: arunsundar/Flickr

On the road of sound, there are players, and there are consumessengers. Due to the increase in communication mediums, consumers—the fans—are spreading the message now more than ever. Hence, the consumessenger has emerged. These modern fans are still fueled by the music, but what we’ve seen is a shift to an era where musicians are the engine, and their fans are the only fuel that matters. Gassing up your car isn’t free, but in this hybrid music economy the fuel can be.

1. High-Octane Friend-Filtered Content

The voices of consumessegers are magnified by the network. Facebook’s upgraded social plugins (e.g. the epic like button integration) are putting fan-driven music into overdrive by making it easier to share your likes with your friends. Take a look at likebutton.me when you’re logged into Facebook and you’ll find an aggregation of your friends likes. Ask yourself, what is it that people share on the web? The answer is better content. Whether it’s entertainment or information, people tend to share the content that they regard as better a.k.a. worth sharing. A lot of shared content comes from mainstream sources, however—like unknown awesome bands—there is plenty of awesome less-discovered content. With the new like button integration, Facebook is changing the mentality around sharing—it’s as easy as liking now. They’ve made it extremely easy to share. The outcome of this is higher-octane friend-filtered content which should help us discover the best content out there.

Turbo-charged filtering for a friend-driven recommendation engine.
Photo: jmealins/Flickr

2. Different Strokes For Different Folks

For some, music is a career, for others it’s recreation, and many players feel stuck in the middle of the spectrum like a pedestrian on a highway median. The overall music scene is expanding and becoming more diverse genre-wise. There’s enough lanes for a steady flow, and that stuck feeling is mostly mental. Music selection is heading towards infinity. Listeners want what listeners want—each has their own taste—but they have to be exposed to it first (unless they decide to create it instead). Is there maximum amount of creativity in the world? Hell no! The roadblocks of physical world don’t always exist on the web. They are a mirage. But everyone sees from a different perspective. When you stop squinting and open your eyes wide, do you see the open road, of a traffic jam?

Is music in a traffic jam?
Photo: monster/Flickr

3. Fans Behind The Wheel

It all starts with a few people who believe in something to the point that they are motivated to share it with their friends. These fans create ignition sparks by influencing their friends. Who’s controlling the music-industry steering wheel now? It’s the fans who dominate social media and communication.

Fans find creative ways to promote their favorite artists—the power is in their hands (and fingertips). Bam!
Photo: aliciahanson/Flickr

4. Where’s The Free Petrol?

You’ll hear it argued that the supply of music is increasingly abundant, the demand for music can’t seem to keep up, and thus the price of music is speeding towards free. Keeping that in mind, what I’ll tell you is that the value of music is now in the ear of the consumessenger, and that free is a necessary—but often misunderstood—tactic. A top source on modern freeconomics theory is Wired‘s editor Chris Anderson, author of the book Free: The Future of a Radical Price (Amazon, iTunes). Last month CDBaby podcaster Kevin Breuner interviewed Anderson about how free relates to the music industry. They talk about freebies, artificial scarcity, the barrier of obscurity, and convenience vs. price. I highly recommend listening to the entire podcast. Read some key related quotes and excerpts from the interview below. One thing that Kevin and Chris really agree on is that there’s no single business model that works for all musicians—each has to find what works for them, their goals, and their fans.

Chris Anderson in 2008: From the consumer’s perspective, though, there is a huge difference between cheap and free. Give a product away and it can go viral. Charge a single cent for it and you’re in an entirely different business, one of clawing and scratching for every customer. The psychology of “free” is powerful indeed, as any marketer will tell you. (Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business)

7:30 Kevin Breuner: I find myself kind of caught in the middle of that being an artist myself who is making music and putting it out there for sale. but at the same time, someone passes me a band that I’ve never heard of, and technically it might be illegal to download the tracks. But at the same time I’m thinking I wasn’t going to buy it anyway, it didn’t cost them anything to get me this copy, and I might actually show up to a show because of it. (CDBaby Podcast #086)

8:00 Chris Anderson: Every band that puts there music on MySpace, which is to say every band, is on some level volunteering to give their music away for free in one form to drive demand for the others. (CDBaby Podcast #086)

9:10 Chris Anderson: Free music has been part of music for as long as there’s been radio. Radio is free music. No one—I don’t know of anyone—who objects to their music being played on radio, even though they may often get no money from that, because they understand the marketing value. (CDBaby Podcast #086)

Kevin Breuner in 2009: The future of music lies completely within the artist’s hands, period. If they want to focus on selling recorded music and their fan base will continue to buy it, selling music will be a big revenue stream for them. If they are fantastic live and want to give away a track to entice people to come to a show, then live shows may be their big revenue stream, but it’s all up to the artist and what their fan base will allow. The future of the music business is NOT in the hands of companies who dream up business models that artist should follow. The future is NOT free music because some guy with a degree and years working in the industry says so. The business plays by the artist’s rules now, and that scares the pants off the gatekeepers that used to make a living deciding what the artists could do. (Music will be free + Touring is where the money is = BS!)

Digital freebies are essentially a free source of advertising, but only if there’s a method behind it. For example, there’s giving away an mp3 in exchange for an email address. Why’s email important? Ian Rogers, the CEO of Topspin Media (an avant-garde service for midstream–mainstream musicians), reported that close to one-third of their artists’ revenue is driven through email alone and stressed the importance of “being where the fans are.” But here’s a question—does a single fan today account for more, or less, net revenue in the long run? What free tactics do you have packed in your trunk?

Consumessengers—fans to the nth degree. Thanks to VW for helping me drive my points. No V-dubs were harmed in the making of this post. Feel ‘free’ to rock it!
Image: virtualmusictv/Flickr

Music Business Driven by Data [Infographic]

Ryan Van Etten — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 21:31:02 +0000

In today’s fluxing music economy of freeconomics, ubiquitousness, and abundance, musicians are leveraging data and metrics tools to drive their careers. What answers can digital data deliver?

Full-size Infographic: Flickr/Virtualmusictv

Ultra Music Festival 2010

Ryan Van Etten — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:33:14 +0000

UMF is an annual electronic music festival in Miami’s Bicentennial Park, and is the official closing event for WMC—a music industry panel/workshop event for DJ’s, producers, label reps, and the like. This year—for the first time ever—UMF completely sold out, and announced that next year this 2-day multistage dancefest would expand to 3 days. 25 photos. Special thanks to Adam Jackson, the main photographer featured in this post, who helped fill me in on the details of UMF. Most of the captions come from the photographers.

01Deadmau5 takes the stage at UMF 2010. (flickr/adamjackson)

02will.i.am does a cameo on the David Guetta set. (flickr/adamjackson)

03The control booth—managing lasers, sound, and lights at the UMF Main Stage. (flickr/adamjackson)

04Inside the Drum and Bass Dome at UMF 2010. (flickr/adamjackson)

05The UMF 2010 Bay Front Stage. (flickr/adamjackson)

06Partiers wait for LMFAO to take the stage. (flickr/adamjackson)

07Inside the Drum and Bass Dome at UMF 2010. (flickr/adamjackson)

08On Saturday, Deadmau5 costumes take over! (flickr/adamjackson)

09The crowds at the UMF Main Stage. (flickr/adamjackson)

10Gareth Emery at UMF 2010. (flickr/matthouse)

11Faithless Sound System at UMF 2010. (flickr/matthouse)

12Sander Van Doorn at UMF 2010. (flickr/matthouse)

13The UMF Main Stage on Friday, March 26. (flickr/adamjackson)

14Swedish House Mafia at UMF 2010. (flickr/matthouse)

15Space Ibiza balloons at the Carl Cox Tent. (flickr/adamjackson)

16Psychedelic hula hoop action. (flickr/adamjackson)

17No sleep ’till bathroom!” (flickr/adamjackson)

18Inside the Drum and Bass Dome at UMF 2010. (flickr/adamjackson)

19Outside the Drum and Bass Dome at UMF 2010. (flickr/adamjackson)

20Hanging out in a tree. (flickr/adamjackson)

21Blowing bubbles. (flickr/adamjackson)

22The UMF Main Stage. (flickr/adamjackson)

23Tearing down after a long day. (flickr/adamjackson)

24Friends. Far right: photographer Adam Jackson. (flickr/adamjackson)

25Honk if you love techno! (flickr/adamjackson)

Emotional Attachment To Music

Ryan Van Etten — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 23:26:46 +0000

Terry McBride—CEO of Nettwerk—talks here about imagination. He argues that with music, context trumps content because music creates emotional bookmarks in our mind. Simply, the song is an emotion. These emotional bookmarks are significant because they enable us to travel backwards in our memories to when we experienced the music. Consumers are in control of the music industry, and access rules:

Excerpts From Terry McBride’s TEDxVancouver Talk

04:25: We hear a lot of discussion about “content is king.” Well we have to have content, granted, but content comes from your imaginations. But it’s the context that is now king. I mean think of what’s happened withinside the music business where over the last ten years, through litigation, through legislation, the business has tried to change the behavior of tens of millions of teenagers. When are we ever going to learn we cannot change the opinion of teenagers? We keep trying it generation after generation and you’d think that we would learn from history. You cannot litigate behavior and you cannot legislate behavior. What you can do is listen to it, and listen well, and understand behaviors. If the music business could accept the fact that a song is an emotion, then they’d understand that the monetization of that emotion is the business.

09:53: The iPod’s over. Apple knew that. They created something new—it’s called an iPhone. An iPhone is about behavior. It’s not about owning content. It’s about behavior. And then when they opened up that app store to allow everybody else to put their ideas in, that’s when it really took off. I mean eighteen months ago that business didn’t even exist, and now they’re doing 6.6 million downloads of applications a day. From zero. All they’ve done is crowdsourced the imagination of the world. So let’s crowdsource the imagination of that world to save the music business.

Human Brain Connections by ethanhein on flickr

Social Rocks. Mobility Rolls. Music Trends 2009–2010.

Ryan Van Etten — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:12:54 +0000

Pandora is blowing music consumption off the grid. Myriad digital choices are sending audio junkies into sensory overload—music wants to be everywhere.

Bloodred Erik Unedited by Luminis Kanto on Flickr

Shareability and community spin music in the social web. Pandora and Last.fm’s widely popular iPhone apps encourage users to share songs they like with their friends as they’re listening to them. Grooveshark’s web interface heavily encourages sharing, and its integration with Twitter via Twisten.fm and Tinysong have helped fuel its rapid growth in 2009. Nearly all of today’s free (ad-supported) streaming sites include links to purchase mp3′s via iTunes or Amazon. Vevo has them, but, YouTube—arguably the largest and most engaging music streaming site—does not.

The Delicious user base has a relatively high concentration of developers, designers, techies, nerds, etc.—individuals likely to have above-average internet savvy. As a group they are an acute filter for quality content. The chart below shows the popularity of the same music websites based on data from Delicious. You can see there is some divergence from the traffic heat map. The most notable difference is MySpace Music, which showed the highest website traffic, but shows the lowest Delicious rank. Pandora is the top-bookmarked music site on Delicious by far, with last.fm second, and Grooveshark climbing quickly. Pandora is also the top-ranked music site on Xmarks.

Musicians—many are at the center of the social mix lifecasting on Twitter, Ustream, YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace. They’re communicating like never before, and evolving the industry. Revenue comes in new forms. The urge to be “indie” is contagious. The amplifiers are on.

Mobility Rolls.

Top Free iPhone Music Apps

Techcrunch reports Pandora registers 600k new users/week and half of them come from mobile devices. GigaOM reports Pandora is driving towards car radio integration.

Seven of the top twelve are radio/streaming apps. But smartphones are not just for listening to music. Gigzee is an events app—a location-aware tool for finding shows/concerts in your area. With more people on smartphones, more people can take advantage of location-based services like this. Music creation apps like Virtuoso Piano, Drum Kit, freestyle, NLog Synth, Digidrummer, Looptastic, and Jamble Music Mashups are wildly popular. Every human is an artist in some way—as technology improves more people will find themselves creating, and collaborating remotely. Who’s at center stage now? Creative Commons-released music encourages open remixing via sites like JamGlue, ccMixter, Indaba Music, Jamendo, SoundCloud, and more. Maybe influenced by NIN, many musicians are releasing audio source files for open remixing, fan remix contests, remix apps, or fan music videos.

Music Gaming

Music games are going mobile fast—especially rhythm games. Rock Band came to the iPhone, as did DanceDanceRevolution, Hip Hop All Star, new versions of Guitar Rock Tour, and TapTapRevenge.

Reuters reports that Tap Tap Revenge has now been installed 20+ million times. New games releases in 2009 included The Beatles Rock Band and DJ Hero, but neither have mobile apps, yet. Harmonix rolled out Rock Band Network—an platform that will let indie musicians get their music in the game. Better mobile graphics are coming—it’s only a matter of time before we see mobile apps that let players interact with music in virtual worlds like Second Life or with real-life live concert streams. And this trailer for Guitar Rock Tour 2…well…you get the idea—Happy New Year. Rock on!

VEVO Launch Tonight—Do You Viva or Veto?

Ryan Van Etten — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 07:36:22 +0000

The major labels’ new video site Vevo is due to launch tonight. A potential upside is that Vevo’s backend is powered by Google and YouTube technology, which may make it easier to integrate social features. It might also fuse somehow with the Google music search. The potential downside is that it could be fueled by greed more than music. It’s limited to music from the partnering labels, but three of the “big four” are on board—Universal, Sony, and EMI. Vevo is owned by Universal, Sony Music Entertainment, and Abu Dhabi Media. Deals have been set to license media from EMI and CBS (CBS Radio and Last.fm).

Can Vevo compete with YouTube? “Unlike YouTube, it will not also contain user-generated stuff that potentially scares off advertisers, which Vevo hopes will allow it to charge more for ads.” (Wired.com). The videos are meant to be “premium” content such as hi-fi official videos, interviews, and behind-the-scenes footage. In addition to needing killer video content, deciding factors in its adoption may be whether Vevo will embrace open media enough—for example by allowing embedding—and whether they’ll deliver the social, mobile features needed to build a community. Thoughts? Do you say…

Let us know what you think in the comment section below or on our Facebook page.

Fatboy Slim—an EMI artist—in 2006. Photo: flickr/thejudders

Lala, Apple, Mobile Music, and Cloud-Based Streaming

Ryan Van Etten — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 00:54:35 +0000

Tweets about Apple acquiring Lala have been flooding Twitter for 3+ days now. A number of sources have provided news and analysis on the acquisition. Personally I think Apple aims to move iTunes to the web in an effort to control mobile cloud-based music streaming via iPhones and iPods. Mobility is paramount, and I think that buying Lala was a sound move for Apple. By combining the best features of iTunes and Lala, Apple should be able to make a more seamless streaming experience with a simpler payment process—a simple payment process leads to more people buying. You can bet there will be an iPhone app that enables buying and simplifies the buying process.

Die-hard Lala users hope that Apple will keep Lala’s key features in tact, and many are looking forward to new feature possibilities. Hopefully with the help of its Lala’s developers, Apple will be able to build onto Lala’s platform making music more accessible. Lala enables users to upload mp3′s from their computer so they can access them from anywhere through their Lala account. In Lala’s words, “Play it anywhere on the web. Most of your music will be matched to Lala’s catalog [and] any remaining unmatched MP3s can be uploaded to Lala.”

A massive user-submitted music library is being built in the cloud. What I’d really like to see is for everyone’s uploads to be available to everyone, much like they are in Grooveshark—a free music streaming service that lets users upload tracks to the cloud. Let’s compare their relative popularity with other some streaming/download services—Spotify, MOG, and Amie Street—in the graph below:

What’s worth noting about MOG having the most visitors is that MOG markets itself more as a social network—their tagline is “Discover People Through Music and Music Through People.” Having social features clearly plays a big role in web-based music discovery—it’s social music discovery. Extended stats and analysis are to follow in Part 2 later this week.

Photo: Lala Apple Logo Mashup by VirtualMusictv/Flickr
View Lala screenshots.

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