New Ratios- of -music/technlogy/culture
UPDATE: Full dvd stream is over – check out a sample below!
LINKIN PARK ROAD TO REVOLUTION
Great concert, Great DVD, Amazing promotion. Great way to show fans what their missing, tied to a special limited offer from bands store to purchase. This show will blow you away, and you’ll realize you missed the perfect gift for many a music fan!
Several posts on some of my favorite digital music blogs talking about free music on the internet and what you can really accomplish by just giving it away. (links below).
Working at a major label, I have to balance the business side that wants to monetize everything, with the pressure of free music on the net and the need to market new music. There are no absolutes, and one advantage I have is that I work on a lot of projects and get to test things big and small.
Start with your goals
It’s too competitive to think just “giving away music” will advance your career and too many bands start and end with just wanting to give it away for free. Think harder.
Free may be a starting point if you’re a new act, but established artists have very different goals. Is a free download or stream designed to grow the fan base or reward your fans who may have already purchased from you?
First Goal: Establish a relationship with fans
Make the long term plan for you and your fans. If you are offering downloads, or streams, Make sure you have a community plan in place to capture the momentum new music can create. Collecting basic info fans can be a fair trade off for giving something away. If your an established artist, look beyond just giving your music away- there may be other ways to keep your community active. Give fans a place and incentive to extend the experience of your music and share their feelings with others. Are you strengthening the bond between existing fans? Adding new ones? Find the mix that makes sense and keep in mind there are bands serving thousands, and hundreds of thousands of streams on myspace, with very few fans. It take alot of dedication and great music to keep fans engaged.
What Can You Sell?
Fans are willing to pay. It’s the blend between quality and art that must be respected. I’ve successfully seen bands drive revenue, and keep fans happy by debuting new music in itunes for 99 cents.
Genre of music
Understand your scene and what is expected by fans of that genre. Culturally, fans of different genres have different expectations when it comes to sampling music.
What is the body of work?
is it a concept or collection of singles? Stream the album vs a download? Depending on your art, protect the best way for fans to sample and purchase.
What else are you trying to sell, tickets Merch? Your plans should tie this all together.
Timing
are there other things for you happening in the marketplace?
Where to stream?
There are many sites for major labels and some indies where its free to consumer, but you can get paid – imeem, myspace, lala, are a few emerging partners that allow artists to stream, and monetize.
Majors vs. Unsigned
Don’t assume this debate is about the majors vs indies or the unsigned acts. Colleagues at several major music services tell me that independent musicians are often much more concerned and protective about their music than signed artists and major label policies.
Its clear the early days of digital music are fading into a new reality – from bands, to new digital music services that are struggling to monetize, there is more to it than free. Some great links for further reading:
Experimenting With Free by David Harrell
Hypebot: free music only has value if…
More thoughts on the ‘Music as Free’ Debate
Posted by Mark Mulligan
Why Music Can’t ‘Just Be Free’
New playlist heading into the Thanksgiving holiday. Its upbeat and moody, with nice ups and downs all mixed into a nice flow. Make the most of it, listen twice, and try the new widgets from Imeem and LALA.
I like LALA’s site, and their interface has some nice improvements over Imeem. The first thing you have is their web credits business model. You can stream anything once for free, then you have to use credts to add to your streaming library. The site gives you 50 credits when you sign up, so I made this playlist for free. Their library had everything I was looking for, good interface, easy search and playlisting tools. The LALA music player is at the top of the page, and keeps your music going on the top of the site so you can navigate, and not lose the music while your surfing around making your playlist. On Imeem If you don’t “pop up” the player you lose the song your listening if when leave the page, which is annoying and tends to happen a lot. As for the widget, my users will only be able to listen to this playlist once, and then you’ll get :30 clips. Thats a real drawback!
The new Imeem player has a slightly updated look and feel, and they seem to be runnnig text adds now on some playlists. guess I’d rather have that then only one listen (although I fear to make these models work, well need both plus audio adds!). The widget has somewhat better player controls (loop and shuffle).
The Imeem playlist tool, once my favorite, seems to be falling behind. No images in the playlist search, and no ability to filter our some of the junk. For example the version of Cracker’s “LOW” on this playlist is different that the album version I love but I couldnt tell that when I was putting it together. Imeem and myspace use images, and better descriptions to help you when your adding content.
But the fact that this version was in there is cool. Imeem does retain the user and community elements much more than LALA. There is much more content on Imeem, and you get some rare gems from user uploads. The Imeem playlist has an extra Copeland song I found only on Imeem. I also like the download and ringtone links on the player – make it easy for me to continue to explore the music in other channels.
How does the music sound so far? The quality seems better in LALA. Agree?
Will i continue to use LALA if I have to pay 10 cents a song to hear it over and over? My users will only be able to listen to this playlist once, and then you’ll get :30 clips. Thats a real drawback, and while I support trying to monetize this and get everyone paid, it feels too restrictive and its a surprise when it happens the first time.
I am sticking with IMEEM for now, but I am seeing the LALA widget appear on more and more blogs, so my unofficial surfing tells me that the LALA player is gaining traction.
Happy Thanksgiving. Share your thoughts on these widgets, and new playlist
I set up a Ustream video feed in an old conference room at the Warner Bros offices in Burbank. With a simple sony hd camera, through a PC, into our network, I can broadcast Aritist ’s live when they come into the office (which is a lot!).
First was Eric Hutchinson The second was a live video chat with Wayne from Flaming Lips (ustream lost the archive on this one!)
But the best so far was Tyler Hilton. I need to edit this clip down, but for now jump to :50 seconds in and see Tyler light up when he finally sees all the fans on the site.
Free video chat by Ustream
You can see he connects to them and rolls into his first song as if his online community was physically in the front row with him! He played for almost an hour, and seemed to really connect with the experience.
These live shows are a great grassroots tools that connects with the fans with artists. We had over 10,000 people watch the first three shows.
Another goal of the live studio was to capture the spontaneous moments. The community of Artists coming through the building on a regular basis was one of the reason I went live. When neil young and lil scrappy are here at the same time, or Lyndsey Buckingham and The Used. The variety of WBR artist’a is impressive, and I knew id get some some random parings.
Sure enough – during Tyler’s performance i came close! I found out Talib Kweli an Eric Benet were in the building at the same time Tylere was playing! I didn’t end up getting them all together, but as everyone gets familiar with with the studio they will come ready!
Stay tuned!
I loved Genesis growing up. Growing up in WI, My friends and I listened to them in high school, and I can’t think about some of my friends without thinking of Genesis. Before videos, their old stuff was great stuff to inspire your imagination. Their artwork was cool too.
In the 90’s – something bad happened to them when thet started singing “we cant dance” and phil stopped drumming.
Is that a bandana!?!?
But i took a chance on the reunion tour this summer – they returned to form. Plenty of phil behind the drums, and they sounded great! an AMAZING SHOW. This footage is from third row at the hollywood bowl, 2007!
MAMA LIVE – HOLLYWOOD BOWL
