Best solution for online sales of music?

Started by thebrushwithin, April 10, 2013, 10:41:26 AM

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montyrivers

Actually, you don't have to feel so bad about that ipad.  In recent years, apple has been bringing more and more of their labor stateside.  Apple employees are also paid fairly well (even their retail positions).

Also, we must consider the fact that music is intellectual property, and we all know that in this day and age you can't really buy sell and trade in information without having it pirated.  Even worse is that emerging artists are disenfranchised by the hobbling corporate legacy left behind by the previous generation.  It's hard to gain recognition amidst the rehashed classic rock and "mainstream" throw together groups, and even that doesn't mean you'll make money as a result.


Toby Krebs

Read the Dave Mathews band story. He kept doing exactly what he wanted to do with the band and instrumentation he wanted to do it with.Every "record" company turned him down until he started selling out 20,000 seat theaters. Then they each took him out to dinner one after the other and offered him a "record" deal. He responded by asking"What do I need you guys for?" after which a bidding war for his music broke out. True story.

Kevin M

Quote from: Toby Krebs on May 29, 2013, 08:12:31 PM
Read the Dave Mathews band story. He kept doing exactly what he wanted to do with the band and instrumentation he wanted to do it with.Every "record" company turned him down until he started selling out 20,000 seat theaters. Then they each took him out to dinner one after the other and offered him a "record" deal. He responded by asking"What do I need you guys for?" after which a bidding war for his music broke out. True story.

Probably helped that he had an amazing cast of musicians surrounding him!  Great band, interesting bit of info!

thebrushwithin

I did follow some great advice, on this thread, and went with Bandcamp. Love it! It tied right in to my website, made it look like another page on my website. Within the first day, I was approached by a media licensing company, that checked it out. Good start! Love the Bandcamp protocols as well, as I can upload flac files, and they will put it for sale in all formats, with virtually unlimited upload capacity. Thanks for the suggestions, friends!!!

cell7


Elantric

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jul/18/thom-yorke-atoms-for-peace-spotify-soundhalo



RadioHead's Thom Yorke's  Atoms for Peace slam Spotify – but back Soundhalo app

Radiohead frontman's band pulled their albums from streaming music services, but will be selling gig videos direct to fans

Fans of Atoms for Peace can't listen to their albums on Spotify and other streaming music services, after Thom Yorke's other band withdrew their back catalogue earlier in the week in protest at payouts to musicians.

Other digital music services are more to the band's liking though. Next week, Atoms for Peace will be selling audio and video of two gigs at London's Roundhouse venue during the performances, making each song available shortly after its performance.

The band have teamed up with British startup Soundhalo, which launched earlier this year with a similar partnership with Mercury Music Prize-winning band Alt-J.
http://soundhalo.com/
Fans will be able to download and play the Atoms for Peace live tracks and videos through Soundhalo's website, or its apps for iPhone, iPad and Android devices.

It costs £9.99 to pre-order an entire set from one of the two sold-out gigs through Soundhalo, compared with the £49.50 (plus booking fees) it would have cost to buy a ticket to one of the concerts.

Band-member and producer Nigel Godrich – whose tweets ignited the row over Spotify payouts earlier in the week – claimed that selling official audio and video of gigs provides an alternative to user-generated footage elsewhere on the web.

"Part of the reason soundhalo was interesting to me was that I found myself wondering why, whenever you go to a gig, the next day there are a million shaky, horrible sounding YouTube videos already online," he said.

"But you go and look because you want to see something of your experience. Soundhalo provides something really functional – an experience that you want to remember in front of you as soon as the concert has happened. To be able to relive that is a really great thing."

Godrich and Yorke have continued to respond to criticism and questions of their stance on Spotify and its streaming-music rivals over the course of this week.

"Not enjoyed being target for facile mudslinging we've the right to discuss and optout of #Spotify. debate is important," tweeted Yorke on Wednesday, with a link to fellow artist Sam Duckworth's article for the Guardian criticising Spotify.

Godrich has focused more on retweeting supportive comments and links to articles backing the band's stance, even as Spotify execs have been retweeting messages of support and articles backing them.

Spotify has also published a report by its director of economics Will Page using the Netherlands as a case study to prove that streaming music services have eaten into piracy much more than they have cannibalised legal sales there.

The company remains embroiled in the debate sparked by Atoms for Peace around its value for new artists, but the band's Soundhalo partnership may provide inspiration for those peers in two other ways.

First, it's a reminder that there are more opportunities than ever for bands to work directly with technology startups, rather than purely leaving these kinds of deals to their labels.

Second, that while sales (and streams) of recorded music remain the biggest source of income for most musicians, there are a growing number of other ways to make money from their music.

Selling digital access to concerts isn't a new trend, from pay-per-view webcasts and subscription-based services like Concert Vault, through to websites like Nugs.net where bands including Metallica, Pearl Jam and the Black Crowes sell MP3s of their concerts.

thebrushwithin

Nice article, and I am not surprised that Radiohead, always innovative, are setting an example for others in the business. Thanks for posting!

GtrGeorge

Re The Dave Mathews Band story...
that is always the case  ..don't ask anyone to do anything for you...just build build build and if anyone comes along, scrutinize their offers..to quote Frank Zappa back in like 1981 "Record Companies can't do anything for me that a Bank can't".  Think about it.
               GtrGeorge

Elantric

#33
http://bgr.com/2014/05/29/apple-beats-music-royalties/





Apple on Wednesday confirmed it plans to purchase Beats for $3 billion, just as rumored in previous weeks. But the deal isn't necessarily good news for all music creators, Bloomberg reports, especially for smaller artists who fear that Apple's music streaming service will negatively impact their earnings.

Cellist Zoe Keating told the publication that Apple iTunes sales netted her $38,196 last year, while sales from three other download services accounted for about $34,000. Meanwhile, streaming from five different services, including Spotify and Pandora, only brought in $6,381.

"iTunes downloads help me pay my monthly mortgage," the artist said. "Unless you're a mega-star, you can't count on the same for streaming services. Me and a lot of my music artist friends are worried about the switch from music buyers to music listeners."

''Something we've been waiting for and something we've been dreading is the day when Apple gets into streaming," she added. "If they can get the fact across they care about the artist, want to get their story told and still make purchasing of tracks possible, that's all anybody'd want."


Meanwhile, Apple's Eddy Cue said that Beats will make Apple's lineup even better, "from free streaming with iTunes Radio to a world-class subscription service in Beats, and of course buying music from the iTunes Store as customers have loved to do for years."

This isn't the first time musicians have complained about the royalty rates paid by music streaming businesses, which are higher than conventional radio on a per-listen basis.

Indie rock band Cracker's David Lowery last June revealed that he received $16.89 for a song that was played 1.16 million times on Pandora. Spotify, which played the song 116,260 times, paid him $12.05. During the same time, Sirius XM paid him $181, while terrestrial radio paid him $1,522, according to documents posted on his website.
http://thetrichordist.com/2013/06/24/my-song-got-played-on-pandora-1-million-times-and-all-i-got-was-16-89-less-than-what-i-make-from-a-single-t-shirt-sale/

Meanwhile, Pandora disputed Lowery's claims saying that it paid a total of $1,370 for the song, of which $585 went to the band after fees, of which $234 reached Lowery, including songwriting and performing fees. Pandora also said that terrestrial radio only paid him songwriting fees, but not royalty rates for also performing the song.

Pandora told Bloomberg it paid more than $340 million in royalties to rights holders last year, while Spotify paid $500 million during the same period.

However, music streaming won't generate enough revenue to compensate for the declining music purchases in the near future.

"The question everyone in the industry is asking is whether spending on streaming will grow to compensate for declines in physical spending, which will never rebound, and downloads, which are flatlining," Strategy Analytics analyst Leika Kawasaki said.

The firm expects worldwide music revenue to decline in the next few years from an estimated $19.6 billion. Mobile and online streaming services will become the second-largest revenue source behind physical album purchases according to Strategy Analaytics.



More thoughts here:
http://musictechpolicy.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/respect-act-soundexchange-takes-steps-to-protect-artists-from-sirius-xm-and-pandora/
http://musictechpolicy.wordpress.com/

Elantric

#34
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2014/06/age-beats-spotify-winners-opportunities/#more-33686

In the Age of Beats and Spotify, Winners – and Opportunities
BY PETER KIRN
iphone-now-playing-spotify
There is an accelerating transformation of music listening; that much is clear. And if you change the way people listen, you will change the way people produce. So who and what wins in this brave new world? Let's consider.
The month of May brought still more signs of tectonic shifts, with Apple buying Beats and Spotify showing no signs of slowing. The Apple acquisition of Beats can't really be measured in dollars, because Apple has so much cash on-hand. (US$150 billion – and expect that dry powder to start getting loaded into cannons.) At least unlike Facebook or Google, Apple doesn't just randomly burn that cash on speculative purchases – you know, like Oculus Rift or robots. So this is really about strategic value, given they've waited this long to touch their war chest.
Apple with Beats, of course, combines two leaders in a whole mess of categories; it's obvious, but it's worth saying again. Apple makes the most popular computers for producing music, the most popular mobile device for playing music, the most popular computer software for listening to music, and the most popular store for buying music downloads. Beats makes the most popular hardware accessory for listening to music, and while they don't have the most popular streaming service, they've got perhaps the closest relationship to the music industry of any streaming service. (Remember, Apple's last acquisition got them ... NeXT, and Jobs. This time, they get Jimmy Iovine, a veteran of Interscope-Geffen-A&M, and loads of connections from both Dre and Iovine to the music scene in LA.) Beats are a huge player, whether you like them or not.
Then there's Spotify. No one else doing streaming is currently playing in the same league – not even Apple – and streaming continues to grow as download sales continue to sink. (35% growth in streaming versus a 13% drop in sales, as in the USA? Yeah, like that.) Add to that the appearance of Spotify in very-usable form in DJ apps (in the form of Algoriddim's djay), and – relevant to us music makers, anyway – there's something big going on.
Here are, I think, the winners in that landscape:
The whole consumer widget. Consumer listening – hardware, software, and service all together.
Streams for everyone. Streams for listeners and casual DJs.
Pros for the stuff you don't stream. Downloads, physical media, and production-friendly tools for more serious DJs, enthusiasts, and producers.
Humans. The ongoing power of the human being.
In other words, music just got a lot more holistic and a lot more human than ever – even against the backdrop of music as a service as available as electricity or running water. You need everyone from good, quirky DJs to branding specialists and industrial designers, and everyone matters. So strap in.
Yeah, those. But there's something to the ubiquity of this logo. Only Apple and Sony have done it before quite like this. Photo (CC-BY) pooliestudios.
Yeah, those. But there's something to the ubiquity of this logo. Only Apple and Sony have done it before quite like this. Photo (CC-BY) pooliestudios.
Winner: the consumerization of music listening. Complain all you like about the quality of Beats headphones. They've captured the imagination of the public in a way no other brand can – not Shure, not Sennheiser, not any of your favorite brands. (Not that that's stopped respected makers like Audio-Technica from doing brightly-colored cans for retail in the hope of getting in on the action. Look at DJ headphones, and your local music store now looks more like Best Buy than ever.)
There just isn't a brand that says headphones to people – not other than Beats. Beats have done that, and convinced consumers to pay premium price for mobile listening, something that only Apple and Sony have done before. That's no small accomplishment. Remember, most kids today have no idea who Dr. Dre is. This is the power of the brand Beats now – and Dre deserves some serious credit for fighting to make that happen.
The upshot in all of this is that brands matter; consumer impact matters. And you'll notice one brand in each category: Apple. Beats. Spotify. This isn't Coke versus Pepsi. It's Coke, and then some small niche players (a nice bottle of organic Cabernet for the specialists, sold in small batches).
Winner: those Beats headphones. Sorry, but that also means you're going to keep seeing those headphones. (Apple Store placement has probably helped that over the years, too.) And, hey, they're actually not that bad. A CDM reader who works for Beats quietly handed me a white pair of Beats Studio headphones at Musikmesse last year. To my surprise, they're actually rather good in terms of sound, they're insanely rugged (more so than my studio headphones), and reasonably comfy, if rather heavy; I've even traveled with them to give my ATH-M50s a rest. These aren't the same Beats made by Monster, the company's earlier partner, some of which were absolutely horrible. They're fine.
Would I recommend them to someone? No. You can get a significantly better-sounding pair of headphones for literally half the price. But that comes back to the marketing issue. I'm betting a lot of people who buy Beats haven't ever tried the other headphones. Be glad they're listening to your music on these and not white earbuds.
Spotify
Winner: Spotify – and streaming. Apple's investment is a second vote of confidence in streaming – on top of iTunes Radio. Otherwise, they could have simply bought some headphone manufacturer and stuck their logo on it, and that's not what they're doing. And the numbers don't lie: people are streaming more, downloading less. That trend should only accelerate as Internet access, both wired and wireless, gets faster.
Spotify wins even with Apple buying Beats, because it validates their market-leading position – which means they can get more capital if they need it, and their value has gone up in any future acquisition deal. Paradoxically, I think that means Apple buying Beats guarantees the future of Spotify – they've already got the mindshare, the listeners, the subscribers, the music collection, and now they're valuable enough that it's hard to imagine anything driving them out of business, at least for now. The only wildcard is if Apple finds some ingenious way to build a better streaming tool. But if Tim Cook is to believed, Beats has done that already – and it hasn't made much of a dent in Spotify's listeners.
With Spotify's future secure, and with Apple investing in streaming, no amount of wishing on the part of artists or labels can make the streaming model go away. And that means –
Drip
Winner: Music as service. The success of streaming doesn't have to mean the end of downloads, but it most likely will mean a change in how people buy those downloads. Downloads will still be the medium of choice for serious DJs, for audiophiles, for collectors. But all those markets are streaming these days, too, which means they're likely to expect to be able to get those downloads via a service. That's why Drip.fm, the startup from the folks behind Ghostly International, makes sense – and why they're signing cool labels at such a speed. By providing a "wine of the month"-club model for your favorite artists and labels, they allow those aficionados hooked on music to pay a monthly fee for a steady stream of their favorite work. (Another clever idea: Hyperdub offers a member card that gets you guest list to events along with downloads.)
beatportpro
Winner: Downloads for "pro" DJs (for now). Serious DJing is likely to remain the one haven for downloaded files – for now. Licensing rules mean that no DJ app appears to be able to access music from a streaming service offline — yet. Slow access, especially in clubs (called "underground" for a reason), means you'd have to be nuts to rely on a streaming connection to DJ any serious gigs – yet. All these variables could change in the future, but you've got to gig this weekend, so that doesn't matter.
That also means download sites (like Beatport) that cater directly to the DJ market and dance music fans are likely to thrive. See also: labels' own stores. (Now's the time to invest in making those things you'd want to actually use.) And Bandcamp looks great for the same reason, especially as artists discover labels are too oversaturated to take on more artists.
The importance of iTunes, however, might continue to shrink, unless Apple figures out smarter ways of driving download sales from streams. (iTunes Radio actually works beautifully in this regard, but the problem is no one uses iTunes Radio, and the radio itself is poor — too many repeated tracks. Maybe a Beats/iTunes mash-up will solve that; we'll see.)

Winner: Internet-connected DJing. All of this said, streaming DJs are going to be a thing, too. If you're playing a wedding, or a friend's party, or a small bar, or any number of casual gigs that make up a huge part of the DJ market, streams start to make sense. The pressure is lower in those situations, it's more likely you can check for a reliable Internet connection in advance, and the importance of requests is greater.
All that was missing was an app that made DJing with streams nearly as easy as playing from Spotify. Algoriddim's djay is that app. I expect other DJ app developers like Native Instruments and their immensely popular Traktor on iPad to follow soon. It's also clear that streams pair nicely with mobile DJing.
Minus Records jewelry. Okay... maybe. Something physical, though.
Minus Records jewelry. Okay... maybe. Something physical, though.
Winner: Tangible music. The more downloads shrink, the more vinyl and other physical releases will start to look appealing. And actually, with computers streaming music, it seems at least some DJs will win back dance floor respect by looking to vinyl. Maybe Pioneer really is going to make a turntable. Not everyone can go the vinyl route, so expect more other creative physical products – books and color photos, for instance, still retain value even with digital counterparts, because you flip through them and set them on coffee tables. Music has a different problem: arguing about analog versus digital aside, the reality is that everything eventually reaches a speaker.
Can you expect these to be a significant revenue source? Frankly, in a lot of cases, no. But you can expect a lot to try, and some artists and labels will find some winning formulas, especially if they have the right fans and the right designs behind those tangible goods.
Yes, this is happening. Products like "sounds" at Beatport, for producers, may eclipse track downloads - while the listeners go streaming.
Yes, this is happening. Products like "sounds" at Beatport, for producers, may eclipse track downloads – while the listeners go streaming.
Winner: Stems, samples, apps, content. With pros gravitating toward downloads as consumers go streaming, it also makes more sense than ever to sell a release to other producers. Beatport's Sounds section is already growing fast – and could be what that business needs to protect itself against the growing incursion of streaming, even into DJ apps. The DJ market itself continues to grow. And these formats provide content that streams can't; I don't imagine Spotify or Beats successfully streaming individual stems any time soon, nor would any sane artist or label release them to them. Add in other delivery methods, from custom apps to Ableton sets or Traktor Remix Decks, and you have a spectrum of digital releases that aren't threatened by streams.
Winner: Industry insiders. Bad news: the Internet didn't quite work out the way we expected. It's wound up with kingmakers, just as radio and record labels once had. So, sure, the cost of making music has gone down. But making music was always potentially free: go to a street corner and start singing. Distribution and marketing is what ultimately costs, and the reduction in studio time hasn't changed that. Now, Spotify and Apple are in powerful positions. And they've turned back to that industry to get the biggest, most successful acts. Apple has so much as said in no uncertain terms that they bought Beats partly to get closer to the industry in LA.
beatsmusic_collage
Winner: Human selectors, human personality. Commonly called "curation," I think "selection" and "personality" are better words. A funny thing has happened as computer algorithms for automatically selecting music have gotten better: people realize that the human beings were there for more than just picking the music. What humans can do is both select music and tell a story about it, in a way an algorithm really can't. They also can provide a personality around those selections. Beats has invested heavily in this model, even as Spotify has put more into the algorithms. It hasn't paid off yet, but it could – look how valuable radio still is. (See Evolver on the Beats curators, apart from the celebrity ones.)
Don't get me wrong: I actually enjoy the algorithms. It's like a more interesting take on "shuffle." But the reason radio and hand-picked mixes and podcasts survive is because people don't just want a playlist, they want a person to go with it. They listen to the radio because it keeps them company. And the more machine algorithms dominate music, the more they may long for that company as a point of differentiation and a way of enriching the experience.
So, the flipside of the staying power of insider industry culture is something more positive: the human DJ matters more than ever.
A must-read that sums up a lot of these trends. BBC's Radio 1 today exemplifies the new breed. It's radio, and it's popular for the reasons radio has always been popular. It has human selectors. They are still kingmakers, still mass-media. They still work with power brokers, even if that landscape is transposed. We're talking mass media – but mass media on the Internet, driven by statistics in followers on YouTube and the like.
Radio 1?s playlist secrets uncovered: the battle of the 'brands'
Windows of opportunity. And that to me is the bottom line.
The early days of the Internet came with a lot of illusions. We imagined indie labels and artists would blossom. They did – but the long tail turned out to get so crowded, those same artists often got lost, and revenue streams shrank and were watered down rather than growing. We imagined big power players would go away. Wrong: the big kingmakers might shuffle about, but a few winners would become more powerful than ever. We thought technology would trend toward greater fidelity. It didn't – not exactly. We imagined quality, in our own eyes, would always win out. That's always naive.
But there are cracks through which the independent artist and label can survive. The explosion in production and DJing is one. For all that people complain that DJing and making tracks has gotten too easy, that might create the very enthusiast audience that saves a lot of music. It just means that musicians are the ones consuming. Another is the fact that the more our musical world tends to machines producing intangible music that switches on like radio, the more people may seek out human beings and physical goods.
The one thing you can't expect is for things to stay stable. It seems that if we want to play in this new musical world, we'd better be up for a challenge.
CDM welcomes your thoughts – and any guest posts on these topics.



http://createdigitalmusic.com/2014/06/age-beats-spotify-winners-opportunities/#more-33686

Elantric


Elantric

http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/permalink/2014/09/26/streaming-isnt-saving-music-industry-2014

Sorry, Streaming Isn't Saving the Music Industry In 2014...
Friday, September 26, 2014
by Paul Resnikoff
According the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), overall recording sales dropped 5% during the first half of this year, despite double-digit gains in streaming revenues.

The situation looks like this:

I. Streaming is booming...
(first-half 2014)





II. Everything else is basically collapsing...
(first-half 2014)




Kevin M

Wow...vinyl is on the rise!  The music industry is definitely floundering.  Maybe that explains the increasing presence of talentless clones posing as artists in pop music!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Hurricane

 8)

Quote from: Kevin M on October 01, 2014, 09:32:17 PM
Wow...vinyl is on the rise!  The music industry is definitely floundering.  Maybe that explains the increasing presence of talentless clones posing as artists in pop music!

:-[

Was watching SNL last week and the act they had

- - well - - -

Sucked Big Time
All the major TV night shows have a whole lot of nothing burger acts .

EZ :


HR

8)

Elantric

Where I live it's not aired - thankfully