virtualmusic.TV » ipod

Price Point Game

Ryan Van Etten — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 21:17:54 +0000

The median price point on RocketHub…and other crowdfunding platforms for that matter…is 20 bucks. … Make your $20 price point really jump off the shelf. –Brian Meece, RocketHub co-founder.

Crowdfunding website RocketHub was launched in January 2010 by three musicians/entrepreneurs—Brian Meece, Vladimir Vukicevic, and Jed Cohen. (tonic.com) Meece was speaking above in his August 2010 interview with CDBaby podcaster Kevin Breuner. Meece continued with more details:

“The single most popular price point on RocketHub, by far, across the board, is $20. So what that means is make your $20 price point really jump off the shelf. Make it really exciting, make it really fun, because that’s what you’re going to move the most of likely. Another very popular price point is the $100 price point, which I also found very intriguing. The $100 price point typically are folks that have built up a lot of trust, or have been following you a little longer. They may be inner-circle folks, you know, your Uncle Bobby from Texas that loves everything that you do and buys 20 of your CD’s everytime they come out, but, you know just loves the fact that he’s got a nephew who’s making records. That’s where he’s probably gonna’ land. You’d be surprised who lands there, but it’s a very, very popular price point. … As a result the average contribution, it hovers day to day, but it’s in about the upper $50s. $57–$59 is the average across the board. So that’s very interesting because when we look at that average number, we could start to say if I wanna’ hit $500, then I need about 8–12 people to really hit that number—not a lot.” (CDBaby Podcast #098)

Guided by my own DIY business rule #6, I don’t need to waste time or money researching market price points for people who buy music. There’s already a company who’s perfected them—Apple:

2010 Apple iPod price comparison (source: apple.com)

Earlier this year Shamal Ranasinghe (@shamalman) presented marketing data from TopSpin Media at MIDEM 2010 in Cannes, France in series of slides. This one displays the advantage of selling at every price point—everything from frequent cheap buys to rare premium package deals:

“Consider Premium Offers”—slide 11. (source: Topspin Media)

On tour » another issue to consider is that location changes value/price.

Graphics: iPod, Topspin, and ‘price shuffle‘ graphics were remixed by RVE.

Best Xmas Gifts For Musicians [Poll] Get On Bits

Ryan Van Etten — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 20:56:45 +0000

Anyone who’s already finished their Xmas shopping is an overachiever!

Okay so I obviously “planned” to write this post a little earlier. I even planned to write it last year. ;)

Giving gifts can be really hard, but if you really know someone, it’s much easier. Everyone is different.

virtualmusic.tv/polls/

Especially for a musician who is eager to promote themselves and be out there, I really like the idea of a pocket HD camera. If you want people to find you YouTube is the place. Get it on tape—not literally. Get it on bits. I won a Kodak Zi6 from Mashable in 2008 and the quality is unreal. Now there’s also the Zi8. I think the right book could be really good, like something on mixing for someone who does that. The best non-fiction book I read this year was Rework by the people from 37signals.com.

More Ideas:
Audiofanzine » Christmas Shopping 2010
Hypebot » 10 Christmas Gift Ideas For Old-School Record Execs

Merry Xmas (or whatever your holiday of choice is:) and be safe! My end of the year posts are coming up next week. If you’re not already, tune in via RSS or Facebook. I better go start my shopping. Don’t worry I steer clear of the mall and I’ve already done some mental preparation. I’m going to hit Barnes and Noble, Campmor, the Polish store (for chocolate), and Total Wine. That should cover everyone!

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.

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