May 15, 2012

...I looked at the available tracks on iTunes for 10, randomly selected, top tier artists (see figure). The startling key takeaway is that on average just 10% of the tracks listed for an artist is actually music by that artist. And bear in mind that many of those tracks are duplicates. The average U2 song for example, is listed multiple times ranging from original albums, remastered albums, EPs, greatest hits, compilations etc.

It's an interesting game that Shutterstock is playing. Individual customers pay an average of about $3 per image. That's dirt cheap, but they make up for it on volume, bringing in $120 million of revenue in 2011. On the producer side, my read of their SEC filing is that they paid out $39.3 million in royalties to 35,000 contributors. So the mean contributor is making something like $1,100 a year by posting their work on the site. (I don't know exactly what the distribution looks like; we only know that no entity received more than 10 percent of the royalties paid out.)

Labels: iTunes, Long Tail, Occupy This Album

May 01, 2012

What they've done is create a site that is a separate front end for AMG's database, where you can pay for the opportunity to correct it.

If you stop paying, your Professional Profile will revert to a Basic Profile and the updates and corrections you entered will no longer be included in your profile.

Some members of the ensemble, most notably the guitarist Glen Campbell and the pianist Leon Russell, later became stars in their own right. But as hired hands the musicians had no ownership stake in or legal claim to the songs they recorded, and record company executives who may have felt a debt of gratitude for their contributions at the time have long since departed. As a believer in copyright Mr. Tedesco is philosophical about his situation.

"The reality is that I want to pay," he said. “But the problem is this business. There are just so many people involved, so much turnover, and so many licenses and contracts, at least two different parties for every song, the label and the publisher." He said there were more than 400 different rights holders to be dealt with.

The design philosophy of Dieter Rams, Braun's legendary designer, has shaped the feel and the look of Apple's latest products more than any other body of ideas. Since joining Braun in 1955, Rams--who likes to describe his approach to design as "less, but better"--began collaborating with the faculty at the Ulm School of Design, which tried to revive the creative spirit of Bauhaus with a modicum of cybernetics and systems theory. Eventually Rams produced his own manifesto for what good design should accomplish. His "ten principles of good design" encouraged budding designers to embrace innovation and make products that were useful but environmentally friendly, thorough but simple, easy to understand but long-lasting, honest but unobtrusive. Rams wanted his products to be like English butlers: always available, but invisible and discreet.

Labels: Albumcredits, Dieter Rams