MUSIC SALES UP AND DOWN

File under 60% of all stats are correct 50% of the time.

Report: Overall U.S. Music Sales Up in ’08; Albums Down 8.5%

Americans bought more music in 2008 than ever before

2008 CD & Ringtone Sales Fall, Digital Growth Slows

The Numbers are in – Revenue Down

Some of the headlines look misleading, but then again, no one loves the music biz! Obvioulsy people are covering different things here – it seems those covering the “growth” are covering transactions, and those covering the drop are talking revenue.

Here is a good reference point to start the year and disucss new areas of growth:
Some raw data (from coolfer)
Album sales: down 15% to 430 million units
CD sales: down 20% to 362 units
Digital album sales: up 32% to 62.8 units
Track sales: up 27% to 1.07 billion units
LP sales: up 92% to 1.9 million units

Digital gains not making up for cd losses. LP growth small but exciting and an area that is bigger than indicated in units because of revenue.
In 2009 I’ll be working on some very cool things with a new d2c vinyl site. Check out becausesoundmatters.com to see the products WBR creates, and stay tuned for a complete re-launch of the site early this year.

METACRITIC “BEST OF” LISTS

As I’m cleaning up and getting ready to go back to work, I’m using Metacritics year end top lists and listening to 2008 one more time!
Metacritic seems to have it all in one place, their own reviews, and many top year end lists from other mags and sites!

METACRITIC.COM

Their year end best of lists also go all the back to 2001 which is fun to explore

A few other year end lists that make it easy:

Imeem 08 playlist (log in required – but worth creating an account once)

top 20 albums of ’08 at Bands Under The Radar
Kami has great taste and after hours on Metacritic, I still found a few new things on her list that were amazing!

SOCIAL NETWORK ADVERTISING CHALLENGES

One of my Favorite “New” Marketing blogs “Big Picture Advertising” featured a great quote from Barry Diller.

Challenge for 2009

“You really want to get a headache? Try to understand Internet advertising. Social networking advertising is being discounted because there is so much inventory [of available ad spots], and because methods have not yet been found to make it very effective. Will that get figured out? I absolutely believe it will. What form will it take? Absolutely unknown.”

Social media is great for music discovery, community, and a natural buzz amplifier. But BUYING social media advertising has not moved the mark in any accountable way for me – from driving sales to increasign traffic, I havent found anything that is cost effective. It seems being a great band, getting radio airplay, community engagemnt, and touring drive more results through social media than advertising. I’ve bought facebook, myspace, widgets, and more in many differnent ways, and never get the return. Warner Bros Reocrds also gets add inventory in several social network sites as part of our liscensing deals, so I get to play around alot. Maybe Big Picture Advertising will figure out some magic!

THE 8-BIT SCENE AND GETTING OUT OF YOUR PERSONAL BUBBLE

When I need new ideas for a campaign, I go into worlds I am not used to. The 8-bit music scene is worth checking out. I’m not a big fan of the music myself, but there are some very cool and creative things happening there. I particularly liked Peter Kirn’s post at Create Digital Music about how the 8-bit scene is growing and remaining relevant. Good advice – check out his post here!,

THE DEBATE OVER FREE MUSIC

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’

Mark Mulligan under ‘Music as Free’: Solutions

digital audio insider

JOE SATRIANI VS COLDPLAY LAWSUIT

Good time to admit I am a huge Joe Satriani Fan! Did Coldplay rip off a Joe Satriani song. It would be a moral victory for me!

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jI-M_yr36FvwE1Mv7SDJiLqaJ0GA

MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE NEW SITE

They blog, they twitter, and its not lame.

www.mychemicalromance.com

Very cool to see the band use tools to talk to fans and each other! Strangely, their transparency leads to increasing the persona and mysteriousness of the band in a cool way, especially when they are having conversations with each other on their own site!

It’s also a great example of how bands work with WBR. There’s an amazing guy named Jeff who works in new media, and has been working with the band from day one. He believed in this band before many others did, and has stuck with them all the way, building trust, and keeping everyone at Warner Bros honest to the bands vision. He recently worked with the band to build them this new site, and the result is something special, artistic and fun!

Take a read, and tell me your thoughts.
Follow the band here:
www.twitter.com/gerardway
www.twitter.com/raytoro
www.twitter.com/bobbryar
www.twitter.com/michaeljamesway

NEW MUSIC PLAYLIST, upbeat and moody, Imeem vs LALA!

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!

THANKSGIVING – Dark but catchy

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

LIVE MUSIC FROM WARNER BROS RECORDS in burbank.

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!

Flaming Lips – Christmas On Mars Deluxe Edition

A very special project! With all the talk of 360 deals these days, here is an example of what they are supposed to be – a partnership between artist and a team to support them (call it a label or whatever!). Warner Bros has done a bunch of amazing things with the Flaming Lips, from music, to movies, to books – and we know how to stay out of the way. Check out the video the band made for their direct to fan DVD of their new movie.