March 26, 2010

March 25, 2010

One thing seems true for the moment: if you’re gonna rely on video (or other streaming plays) as a means to lining your coffers, you be counting pennies for some time. Consider this: according to a November 2009 report, one of the most popular tracks on Europe's Spotify -- Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" -- was played more than a million times, and the artist supposedly netted a whopping $167 (or just under two ten-thousandths of a dollar per play). The veracity of these numbers has been challenged, but they do highlight the difficulties of monetizing on-demand streams at a significant level.

The reason more people don't share music more often? It's all but heresy to suggest it, but what the heck, I promised a stunning conclusion: people don't share music more often because for most people, the connection to music is not primarily social at all but, rather, internal and personal.

This contradicts what the music futurists and social media mavens are telling us (24 hours a day), but I contend that most engaged music fans do not relentlessly look to their friends either for new music suggestions or to make suggestions to them. Some do, quite joyfully, but they are the vocal minority. And many who do enjoy sharing their musical discoveries with friends tend to have very specific friends with whom they do this. They are not parading with their music down the hallways of their lives on the off chance someone might connect.

I know that most times re-recorded music is not as good as the originals. But you have to give them a chance because once in a while they are very good, maybe even better than the originals. Sometimes re-recording breathes fresh life into tired old songs that have been overplayed till I never want to hear them again.

March 24, 2010

Thirteen, as covered by Mike Porter of the Layaways -- mp3

March 19, 2010

March 15, 2010

Almost 70 percent of our revenue is paid to royalties. In most businesses, as you get bigger, you get advantages of scale. Things get cheaper by the pound, cheaper by the minute. But that's not true in our case. It's the same price.

March 12, 2010

2009: 654,000 albums, 1.71 million digital tracks
2008: 760,000 albums, 1.35 million digital tracks

March 10, 2010

Contrary to the statement that only 10 artists earned more than $2,000 for their play on Internet radio, Williams revealed, "In fact, more than a thousand artists received more than $2,000 from SoundExchange for non-interactive webcasting only..."

Williams further revealed to RAIN that more than 500 artists earned "well above $9,000 in 2009" webcasting royalties. Beyonce, who allegedly topped the list of non-interactive streaming royalty earners, "made exponentially more than the $5,000 reported by Billboard, and actually isn't even close to #1 among earners." Although SoundExchange won't disclose exact earnings of specific artists, they revealed 2009's top-earner made "well into 'six-figures'" from Internet radio.

Labels: Jonathan Segel, Pandora, SoundExchange

March 08, 2010

March 04, 2010

Stein knew there was only one way to prevent even more labels from jumping ship: raise prices for subscribers. He also knew that eMusic couldn't get away with another price hike without offering something in return. He sought ideas from his executive team and eMusic subscribers, and he held a series of focus groups. All the feedback pointed in the same direction: eMusic needed to broaden its catalog. And given that eMusic had nearly exhausted the universe of independent labels, Stein says, "It was pretty obvious that in order to take a big swing, we needed to start working with the major labels."

By fall, the dust appeared to have settled. Despite the uproar in the blogosphere, the site's subscription base held steady, rather than dipping slightly, through the traditionally slow summer months, and by year's end it was growing again. Among new subscribers, first-month turnover, or churn, was down 7 percent by early fall and has continued to decline.

March 02, 2010

...I don't think we've seen more than a couple hundred bucks in CD sales in the past decade. Digital sales are meaningless. Digital royalties are even more meaningless -- do you know anybody who's actually been paid by SoundExchange? Right's holders' royalties (BMI) make us a couple hundred dollars a year each, mostly due to Michael Moore having used Take the Skinheads Bowling in Bowling for Columbine in 2004 and its subsequent play on television. My own cds outside of CVB that I have released over the last 20 years are still hovering in the ~$10k region of debt.

The only money we make nowadays is touring, and the only way for a band to make money touring is

a) playing to large audiences in venues that will actually pay you and
b) scrimping.

It's not super fun much of the time, especially at our "advanced" ages (with respect to rock and roll!) and obviously we can't do it all the time due to market saturation, not to mention the fact that we have to go back to work. David is the only one who is full time professional musician, when he's not playing with Camper, he's playing with Cracker, and he bears a hellish touring schedule to make ends meet that way!

Anyway, the whole "fanbase as patrons" idea that was so touted at the onset of the digital music age has proven to be very much like the old patronage system -- if you have a patron (advertiser, record company, whatever will pay) they will pay and the rest of the peasants listen to what's been paid for. The masses don't pay for much of anything.