June 29, 2009

This is musically the best Cheap Trick album in years...and years! Some of these tunes (like "Sick Man of Europe") are up there with the best songs they have ever recorded. However, DO NOT order this CD from Amazon. I unfortunately did and failed to read the fine print... This is a CDR. The packaging is a REALLY cheap trick... super thin crappy paper that is printed and put together horribly. The booklet and tray card aren't even trimmed correctly. The disc face art is okay, but it's a CDR, not an actual replicated disc. I can't believe they are trying to pass this off as a major release at a normal CD price. I want my money back! Will this ever see a proper release on CD????

This product is manufactured on demand using CD-R recordable media. Amazon.com's standard return policy will apply.

June 18, 2009

We're very excited to announce a brand-new process to submit your music (or your band's music) to Pandora.

You'll need:
* a CD of your music
* a unique UPC code for that CD
* your CD to be available through Amazon (must be a physical CD, not just MP3s for download)
* the legal rights to your music
* MP3 files for two of the songs from your CD
* a free Pandora account, based on a valid email address, which can be associated with your music

June 11, 2009

How can this be? How can the best jazz artists in the world earn so little? Might this be the work of coercive commercial powers?

Possibly, at least to some extent, in the case of musicians. Big companies do have a lock on distribution. Or anyway, they have had (things are getting a lot more interesting, distributionwise, in the age of the Internet and iTunes). But the real the problem here, we suggest, is not with the operation of commerce but with its failure to operate, or with its failure to operate with adequate sophistication. Something has gone wrong with the market for jazz musicians when such musicians this good get paid this badly. Richard E. Caves, economist and author of Creative Industries: Contracts Between Art and Commerce, argues that artists get paid poorly because they will do their work anyway. An inner drive makes artists grateful for the opportunity to work, so you can get by without paying them much.

June 09, 2009

The bottom line, says Jones, is that data is kept under lock and key and doesn't get transferred to CBS, though it's no secret that the music industry does research the site's publicly accessible data.

June 08, 2009

June 05, 2009

...from a financial perspective, the perfect eMusic customer is the one who signs up, pays every month, and then never downloads anything (like joining a gym and then never going). The rabid consumers of obscure indie music who max out their downloads every month are, in this context, a liability. Ironically, eMusic wouldn't be in this position of having to choose between casual and rabid consumers if they hadn't done such a good job of attracting and retaining indie music fans.

June 03, 2009

My favorite thing about eMusic was that I would test out albums I never heard before. I've learned about so much great music by taking a gamble and downloading albums based on short previews. With this new pricing I definitely won't be taking that gamble anymore.

Like any subscription business (such as health clubs, mobile phone plans, and cable companies), our model is based on a consistently substantial percentage of subscribers downloading none or little of their paid allotment. Because these subscribers aren't downloading their full allocation of music, there is more revenue to be divided amongst labels. In other words, this "unused" revenue is part of the gross that is split among labels.