Still No Proof of the Existence of Bigfoot, Ghosts, U.F.O.s, or Music 2.0

From Register.co.uk:

"I think it was a one-off response to a particular situation," Thom Yorke said of the band's decision last October to let viewers pay what they wanted for digital downloads of the new album "In Rainbows."

"Yes. It was a one-off in terms of a story. It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do. I don't think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time."

Link

EMI's Ex-Google Merrill Clueless Out of Gate, Offers Platitudes, Panders to Pirates

Cayocosta

Piracy bad, file-sharing okay. The industry's fight against piracy just got harder now that EMI is on record stating that it all depends on how you look at it:

"I'm passionate about data," Merrill said during a phone interview Wednesday with CNET News.com. "For example, there's a set of data that shows that file sharing is actually good for artists. Not bad for artists. So maybe we shouldn't be stopping it all the time. I don't know...I am generally speaking (against suing fans). Obviously, there is piracy that is quite destructive but again I think the data shows that in some cases file sharing might be okay. What we need to do is understand when is it good, when it is not good...Suing fans doesn't feel like a winning strategy."

Try anything and see what sticks - never mind how long this is going to take to deploy (and quantify) and that we might run out of cash first:

More specifically, Merrill said he would see whether a Google ad model will work for music. But he's willing to try music subscriptions and even an ISP fee. Certainly, what came across about what strategies Merrill intends to use is that he's not married to any one idea.

We've already witnessed ten years of failed experimentation, with the looting worse now then ever - systemic and virtually unfettered - yet EMI is keen to embark on a costly super-complication of the distribution of otherwise free content:

"I think there is going to be a lot of different models," Merrill said. "Those are two (subscriptions and ISP fees) you can imagine. I'm not sure that either one of those will be the most dominant model. But they are both interesting. We should try them and see what the data says. Other options will be things like you can imagine supporting music through relevant targeted ads, the Google model. There is a dozen of other things...we should try them all. We should see what the data says and whatever it says, we should follow the data, and follow our users and let them help guide us. We should engage in a broad conversation about art."

Spoken like a true geek department; or, now might be a good time to study the history of Motown, Atlantic, etc.:

"I think it's important to figure out where can record labels add value," Merrill said. "I don't know the answer."

Link

Music 2.0 and the New Economy

Don't buy the hype.

From Wikipedia:

New Economy was a term coined in late 1990s by pundits to describe what some thought was an evolution of the United States and other developed countries from an industrial/manufacturing-based wealth producing economy into a service sector asset based economy from globalization and currency manipulation by governments and their central banks. At the time, some analysts claimed that this change in the economic structure of the United States had created a state of permanent steady growth, low unemployment, and immunity to boom and bust macroeconomic cycles. Furthermore, they believed that the change rendered obsolete many business practices. When the stock market bubble burst, analysts soon realized they had been wrong.

A lot of start-ups were created and the stock value was very high where floated. Newspapers and business leaders were starting to talk of new business models. Some even claimed that the old laws of economics did not apply anymore and that new laws had taken their place.

Link

New Music Model for Suckers

Cayocosta

Where once ten or twelve bucks bought as many tunes, thanks to new 'models' we now have the $300 elite collection and/or multi-thousand dollar package including a personal appearance. Offers that unfortunately bilk those most loyal fans while allowing everyone else a free ride - on their generosity.

New Music Model Experiment: Amie Street

Cayocosta

This is part 3 of a 3 part series on new music models. Part 1, Part 2.

I placed a couple of tracks on 3 different sites to get a handle on how these services work and how well they might help artists promote themselves and/or sell their music.

The Music:

The tracks used for the test were produced, engineered, recorded and written by professionals. Now, I'm not saying that the tracks are anything special; however, they are most certainly competitive with the bulk of offerings I have found available from these services.

Self-Promotion:

There is literally zero artist self-promotion. The tracks are to live or die based solely on the service itself. There are no artist websites, and the acts and songs are - for all practical purposes - unknown.

Amie Street:

Free service. Free streaming for purchased tracks, 60 second streams otherwise. Price per song determined by number of sales - from free to a maximum of 98 cents.

By far the best system of the three I tried, Amie Street does appear to afford at least an initial level of visibility for artists.

Signing up is free and setting up a page is very easy.

After uploading a couple of tunes about 10 days ago, and another track about 3 days later, in total they have received about 150 listens and 50 sales.

The charts are very comprehensive and facilitate the visibility of tracks for several days.

The most interesting aspect of Amie Street is the "rec" system. Recs are recommendations by listeners which entitle them to credit should the song they rec increase in value. Rather than get into the particulars, it appears that there may be a "crew" or otherwise core group of listeners that are responsible for the recommendations of quite a lot of content. What does this mean? Possibly that some of the rec activity is not from disinterested parties. In any event, in my experience this network of listeners help keep new music visible in the charts for a few days.

Interestingly, recs appear to cease at about 50 for any particular song - this seems to indicate that the diminshing potential return in credit for a rec eventually causes listeners to refrain from recommending more expensive (popular) songs. This phenomenon unfortunately betrays the integrity of the rec system in so far as its value as a guide to the best music - for artists with over 100,000 listens still only receive around 50 recs per song. In other words, recs appear to be more like "bets" on particular songs to increase in value, rather than genuine reviews on the material.

However, from a visibilty standpoint, the rec system works well; and in combination with the demand-pricing model for the sale of songs, Amie Street provides a reasonably good system.

Summary:

As with the other services reviewed, the ability to self-promote would increase the chances of success here, although the capacity to do so would render Amie Street, as well as the other services reviewed, superflous.

As far as income from the sale of songs, the recoupable storage fee of $5 per song means that before an artist sees the 70% of sale proceeds, each song must first sell over 100 times, with income commencing only after that point. So, while 70 cents per sale is great, to get to this point is not easy. Whether the Amie Street community is large enough to generate significant sales alone (without self-promotion driving additional traffic) is unknown.

Overall, in my estimation, Amie Street is a worthwhile service, and much better than BitTorrent or GarageBand.

New Music Model Experiment: GarageBand

Cayocosta

This is part 2 of a 3 part series on new music models. Part 1 is here.

I placed a couple of tracks on 3 different sites to get a handle on how these services work and how well they might help artists promote themselves and/or sell their music.

The Music:

The tracks used for the test were produced, engineered, recorded and written by professionals. Now, I'm not saying that the tracks are anything special; however, they are most certainly competitive with the bulk of offerings I have found available from these services.Self-

Self-Promotion:

There is literally zero artist self-promotion. The tracks are to live or die based solely on the service itself. There are no artist websites, and the acts and songs are - for all practical purposes - unknown.

GarageBand:

(Free storage, free streaming and downloads. CD sales)

After signing up and uploading a couple of tunes, I was prompted to enter each in the "contest" in order for my songs to be ranked in the charts and be reviewed (otherwise I assume they would be essentially invisible to visitors). At a cost of $20 bucks, I entered one song.

That was over 2 weeks ago. Since then, nothing has happened; no reviews, no rank, and the track is still at the bottom of the charts.

GarageBand maintains that should I chose to review other's songs - 15 pairs of them actually - I could forgo the $20 charge; moreover should I write a text review I would see my track go to the top of the pecking order for its review. However, after reading another member's account of the hour-long process (to review all the songs comprehensively) I decided to let it ride with just the contest entry for $20.

While searching for stats on how many listens my songs have received so far, I learned that to gain access to those stats, I would have to pay $99. Although this "gold" program includes a few other ups and extras, I decided to do without.

Interestingly, reviewers themselves are reviewed and scored, and from what I gather people get pretty angry with each other here; for essentially what appears to be happening is that a bunch of musicians are reviewing each other's material. Good grief.

With regard to artists selling music, GarageBand integrates CD Baby facilitating the sale of CDs.

Summary:

GarageBand appears to be a place where you will get absolutely nowhere without either paying or providing free labor in the form of reviewing tunes yourself. As for visibility, I'm still waiting for my first song to be reviewed (in the 1st round of 5 rounds, all with multiple reviews) so it could be quite a while that I turn into a skeleton before I can answer that question. Moreover, whether or not the community consists of anyone other than musicians is unknown, and as such the value of visibility in such an environment is questionable.

Overall, as with any other new-music model I've seen, without the ability of artists to successfully self-promote (which largely negates the need for such services anyway) the chances of getting anywhere on the service alone appear very slim.

As an industry friend remarked, "it looks like GarageBand is the only one making any money here."

Next up: Amie St

New Music Model Experiment: BitTorrent

Cayocosta

I placed a couple of tracks on 3 different sites to get a handle on how these services work and how well they might help artists promote themselves and/or sell their music.

The Music:

The tracks used for the test were produced, engineered, recorded and written by professionals. Now, I'm not saying that the tracks are anything special; however, they are most certainly competitive with the bulk of offerings I have found available from these services.

Self-Promotion:

There is literally zero artist self-promotion. The tracks are to live or die based solely on the service itself. There are no artist websites, and the acts and songs are - for all practical purposes - unknown.

BitTorrent:

(Free service, songs placed are generally free of charge.)

After uploading one track (and once it cleared the review process) my song appeared at the top of the "just added" list for a couple of days, during which it was downloaded around 3 times.

Later I uploaded a second track that stayed at the top of the same list for about a week, during which it was downloaded about 20 times.

To date (1 month) each song has been downloaded about 50 times.

There have been no comments or reviews.

As my tracks continue to slide down the "just added" list (displaced by new entries) it follows that the reduction in visibility will lead to fewer downloads and ultimately, stagnation.

Overall, it appears that the great majority of BitTorrent users (150+ million) rarely check the site for new music.

(It should be mentioned that BitTorrent features no preview capability, so there is no way for a user to discern the quality of a track before downloading. In other words, a bad song has just as much chance as a good one to be downloaded.)

Summary:

BitTorrent really doesn't afford much to the independent artist other than a storage/download platform with a little initial visibility to a small audience that happens to check the site. Therefore, without achieving placement among the longer-lived new-music lists, tracks are essentially doomed to fade from visibility over time with little action.

Moreover, depending on the timing of an upload, the visible life on the "just added" list could be anywhere from a few minutes to a couple of days. There is also a possibility that at any time someone else might add 3 or 4 pages of new material, consequently burying all that preceded it.

Due to the lack of interest in new music at the site level, BitTorrent offers little potential for viral propagation for the volume of downloads prior to virtual invisibility is small. As such, BitTorrent, in my experience, is of little value to relatively unknown artists seeking exposure; and of zero value with regard to selling music.

Next up: GarageBand and Amie St.