Tag Archive for 'iTunes'Page 5 of 8

Singles and Fame: Stephan Jenkins and Eminem

published
on October 21, 2008
by
ACtual
in culture, future of music, genres, interview, music, and music business
. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

At the San Francisco Music Tech Summit, which MixMatchers have written about and are currently attending, Stephan Jenkins of Third Eye Blind spoke yesterday regarding the music industry and its future. While I have inside word that the introduction given to Mr. Jenkins’ was a bit gaudy and overblown, he had some interesting thoughts on the future of music and music downloads. What I found most intriguing about his comments was the support he seems to exhibit for the thought process I’ve followed the past couple months, especially in the “What I’m Hearing Now” posts, that the more control the consumer has over what they buy, as opposed to what they’re forcefed by labels (think full albums for $17), the more interested they’re going to be, and the less potential for album filler will exist.

While I think the album can remain an integral part of the music industry, the time when it ruled the Earth is done and gone. There’s a lot of bands out there that don’t deserve full albums, or simply don’t have enough quality material to fill one. Furthermore, with more and more options in terms of buying music, consumers have no reason to buy larger albums when they can save money and have only the music they want. Let’s not forget that not only does the full album raise the price considerations, but simultaneously eats into storage space which can cost additional money in CD and external hard drive back up options. Personally, I’ll listen to every song sample of an album on iTunes. I then make an album purchase decision based on the number of tracks I like enough on their own to buy, and if the difference between that cost and the full album cost makes sense. When I speak of albums remaining an integral part of the industry, I’m speaking of concept albums and others where the coherency and enjoyable aspect of the music is tied directly to its place in the entire album. I think Radiohead’s Kid A, Dave Matthews Band’s Before These Crowded Streets, and edIT’s Crying Over Pros for No Reason are all examples of albums where the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

In other music news I found interesting, Eminem has been out interviewing with folks in advance of his new release. Apparently, in hiding, Em has been working on the album Relapse with Dr. Dre for quite some time. Given that chatter is starting to heat up regarding Dr. Dre’s long-awaited Detox album, one has to wonder how much cross-over work is being done by these two, and if and to what extent they influenced each other on albums coming many years after their most recent predecessors. But it’s nice to know that Eminem has had his share of fame and now would just like to make music…he’s been at his best when he concentrates on what brought him to the dance.

MySpace Music

published
on October 7, 2008
by
ACtual
in collaboration, future of music, music, music business, music history, and technology
. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

Social networking site MySpace jumped into the music industry recently, setting up deals with the major labels to stream free music to the users of the site. The news I read yesterday stated that in only the first week, over 1 billion songs were streamed. The commentators seem to view this as a monumental feat, despite the fact that a) they’re free, b) there’s millions and millions of users on MySpace and c) they’re instantly and readily available. In fact, the majority of the press I saw yesterday centered around the idea that this was a sort of challenge to Apple’s iTunes.

Let’s be clear. Streaming music that is paid for by advertising is not the same as music sales. The record labels may use the income from the deals to pad their sales/income numbers, but a streamed song does not a music purchase make. The purpose of the move from CD to mp3 rather than CD to stream is that people like owning their music, taking their music around with them and playing it for others. The stream is great as a form of promotion and introduction to the music, but you can’t take it with you.

This isn’t to say that I’m against streaming music in any way. Pandora is pretty genius, and I would never knock my old home, USC’s streaming radio station that can be found at KSCR. But for industry writers, who in some part can help influence the record execs that read their work, starting to compare a free streaming music service on a social networking site to the largest music retailer in Apple’s iTunes is like comparing tap water to wine. Just because it’s free and easily accessible doesn’t mean that it can trump the demand for quality and the ability to save something far into the future. Of course, if users find a way to “bottle” the stream to their music library, how interested in continued streaming would the labels be?

As for where this turns the music industry, I think the only answer everyone has for sure is that no one has any answers. The labels are still looking to make money off of solid media sales, as mentioned previously, data companies like SanDisk are looking for ways to make albums smaller and more accessible, and artists are still trying to figure out how the industry would work without them given that they only make 9.1 cents from a song royalty, but there’s no money for the labels if they don’t have the song to exploit in the first place.

So for now, we watch. I’m sure it won’t take long for MySpace to surpass 5 billion streams, but how the labels will react to that and attempt to use it to influence other sectors of the music industry will be interesting to see.

iTunes, DRM and Artist Royalties

published
on October 3, 2008
by
ACtual
in future of music, music, music business, music law, and politics
. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

Earlier this week, alarm bells were ringing when a quote from Apple in 2007 found its way back to the top of the news heap. That quote? That if royalties were to change to a point of being unprofitable to Apple, it would shut its iTunes store down. Now even the thought of this, among Apple and its competitors, has been brewing frightening thoughts for the consumers for a while due to the fact that virtually all the music these stores sell is DRM protected. Of course, the DRM is built into the song, so what exactly happens if the company selling the songs ends their existence? Well, it looks like the DRM for the material would expire, leaving consumers with hundreds if not thousands of “purchased” songs that will no longer play anywhere. As a music lover (and legal buyer of mp3s), this kind of news, even if it is an undeveloped thought, causes a good deal of frustration. Here the studios want consumers to pay for music, foregoing the option of downloading all the music they want illegally for free, but the copyright protection within the music means that if the retailer goes down, the files go down with it? That’s like buying a CD at Tower which is then erased when Tower goes out of business (you all do still remember Tower, don’t you?)

So what can we do about it when the very mechanism that has allowed music labels to go digital, and therefore the infrastructure that controls all of our legal downloads, is compromised by companies willing to close their DRMs? Unfortunately, not much. Short of burning all of your DRM tracks to a CD and then re-ripping them to mp3s to strip of them of their DRM (and some sound quality in the process), if a store goes down and discontinues its DRM licensing, all the tracks you’ve bought could die on your iPod. This to me seems like the ultimate Trojan horse of the music industry…we don’t want you to have mp3s, but if you do, we’ll create a way so that once they’re in your music library, should the stores you bought them from close, we’ll demolish your entire music collection from the inside.

I understand the purpose of DRM, but unfortunately its just not a viable business model if there are ways to stop the music playback at any point after the purchase. The point of buying music is that you have it forever. All the CDs I bought are still mine and will be mine for as long as I manage not to lose or damage them. The idea that you could buy a song which at some point in the future becomes unusable is, to me at least, outrageous.

The reason that all of this has come about this week is because the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) was weighing a decision to raise the artist royalties on digital downloads from 9.1 cents per song to 15 cents a song. From what I can ascertain from the article announcing the steady royalty fees, a .99 cent iTunes song is sold like this…

1) Apple sells the song for .99. 2) Apple keeps .29. 3) Apple gives .70 to the record label. 4) Record label gives the artist 9.1 cents, keeping 60.9 cents. I don’t know about you, but even at 9 cents a song, it seems like the labels and iTunes are getting over on the artist. Are we really supposed to believe that the iTunes store deserves to keep almost three times as much money for a song it sells than the artist receives?

What this scare does do is make it painfully obvious that the record labels and online music stores need to create a way and find a method to allow consumers to legally retain their music, no matter what happens to the store you buy it from. Should royalty rights eventually be raised in favor of the artist, it would be a travesty for Apple to claim it can no longer operate iTunes profitably (with the number of sales they have per year and the fact that they’re getting money just to be a middle man, it would be very hard for me to accept the idea that they aren’t profitable), disable the DRMs and leave music consumers with a bunch of dead and unusable files. Apple needs to show a little more foresight and decency when it comes to wolf cries of lost profits with a change from 9.1 to 15 cents of royalty. This could have been Apple simply playing politics in order to protect its profit margin, but even then the greed factor, given what the artists out there are making, comes into play.

For now (the CRB’s decision lasts 5 years), it appears we can rest easy. But it makes it clear that more thorough examinations of the digital music sales industry, DRM technology and what the rules and technology mean to consumers are necessary and should not be ignored.

What I'm Hearing, Vol. 6

published
on September 30, 2008
by
ACtual
in artist/album reviews, collaboration, culture, dance, genres, and music
. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

For a taste of what I was hearing last month, click here.

September’s iPod update featured some fantastic new music from the month, including a number of debut albums from upcoming artists. R&B, Soul, Hip-Hop, Rock, Electronica and Pop music all make their appearances over 91 new tracks ushering us into Fall.

eLZhi, The Preface: Most rappers who have been recording material since 1997 have a large body of work to show for it. While this is the case for eLZhi, the majority of this work is unreleased or in featuring format on other artists’ work over the past 7 years or so. 2008 marks the debut full length album from this Detroit native, and while quite a few hip-hop fans may not have heard of eLZhi yet, the strength of this album should help make his second effort eagerly awaited. With production from fellow up and comer Black Milk, eLZhi uses a mixture of darker beats and old-school sounding fresh production to leave himself with a diverse group of songs which he raps over with ease. Whether he’s rapping about love, poverty and socioeconomic divisions or his experiences growing up in the streets, elZHi’s lyrics are complex yet effortless, coming out the polished product of a rapper with an extreme amount of comfort in his delivery. With a fantastic string and vocal sample and his laidback flow, “Transitional Joint” is the kind of song that’s an instant classic on the first listen. Don’t Sleep On: “The Science,” “Transitional Joint,” and “Save Ya.”

Lykke Li, Youth Novels: I covered Lykke Li’s US EP release here back in June. The full album finally made its way stateside, and the result of Li’s command over an entire album is impressive. While most songs retain the soft-spoken and delicate feeling of the EP, Li uses the full album to spread her wings into esoteric melody pieces (“This Trumpet In My Head”) as well as emotionally semi-detached pieces with simple backings (“Hanging High”). However, what is more enjoyable is when the album delves further into the dance and pop ideals that her voice and musical judgments help to raise above the standard radio fare. Even while being forceful, Li’s voice manages to be light and airy without disappearing against the background of the heavier songs. With guest remixes by The Black Kids (WIH,V.5) CSS and DiskJokke, a few of the EP songs get a new feeling. The range of tracks on this album speaks of a promising and diverse future body of work from this young singer out of Sweden. Don’t Sleep On: “Breaking It Up,” “Complaint Department,” and “I’m Good, I’m Gone (Black Kids Remix)”

Raphael Saadiq, The Way I See It: When I picked up this album, I had to make sure that the published date of it was correct. Saadiq, formerly of Tony! Toni! Toné!, has reinvented his music on this album that feels at times like it could have and should have been released in various portions of the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. Soul, R&B, Funk and sounds of Doo-Wop all permeate this album, and some of the production makes you think you’re listening to an old classic that you’ve never heard before…It feels like a vintage Sunday afternoon. The musicianship behind him allows Saadiq’s voice to soar through tracks both melancholy and joyful. Fans of The Four Tops, The Supremes, Stevie Wonder (who makes an appearance on the album), Dusty Springfield and their contemporaries will all find reason to smile here. “Just One Kiss” features Joss Stone, and the remix of another album song “Oh Girl” features Jay-Z. Don’t Sleep On: “Love That Girl,” “Big Easy (feat. The Infamous Young Spodie & The Rebirth Brass Band)” and “Kelly Ray.

Rumble Strips, Girls and Weather: In case you weren’t aware, the perforations on the freeway shoulders that rattle you if you stray too far outside the lines are called rumble strips. I certainly didn’t know that before sitting down to review the band I’ve been listening to for two weeks. While most bands hopping the pond are taking up the power punk and alt-rock sounds of Bloc Party and the Young Knives (WIH, V.3), the Rumble Strips infuse it with at times Bosstones-like frenetic horns and ska sensibilities on their debut album, without losing a strong rock value. The arrangements are tight and Charlie Waller on lead vocals, while sometimes a bit reckless in his reach, provides the emotion necessary to keep up with the pace and energy of the sound. While they made their breakthrough with the rollicking and enormously fun “Motorcycle,” there are a variety of enjoyable sounds to be found on Girls and Weather. Don’t Sleep On: “Cowboy,” “Time,” and my personal favorite, “Girls and Boys in Love.”

Stacy Epps, The Awakening: Multi-faceted (I’ve been told she attended law school at USC) Stacy Epps brings her life experiences and spiritual vision to the table in an album that exudes passion that is sometimes overwhelming and unreachable in its scope. Using trip-hop beats and spacey melodies with jazz influences Epps at various times flows, speaks, sings and fades away on an album that exhibits a vocal talent sometimes lost in the more convoluted soundscapes. If there’s a drawback to this album, it’s that a few too many songs have “The Awakening, 2008, Stacy Epps” or some combination of these in the background, almost in an attempt to subconsciously advertise in the aural space of the listener. It gets frustrating at times, like endless self-promotion polluting the music. Fans of Bjork and Alice Coltrane will have a field-day here, but it might be too dense for casual listeners. Don’t Sleep On: “Floatin’,” “Heaven” feat. Bilal Salaam, and “Who Knows.”

Throw Me the Statue, Purpleface EP: One of the most promising signs of a relatively young band is the sign of continual tinkering with the sound and style, and a refusal to be tied too tightly to any one genre, while making music that all sounds somehow, on a fundamental level, right for them. This four track EP that fell in my hands last week courtesy of Gavroche exhibits this growth while retaining the emotional ambiguity and lyrical earnestness necessary to make them work. One of the original Moonbeams tracks, “Written in Heart Signs, Faintly” gets a studio makeover of its concert alter-ego here. “Honeybee” is a simple and direct piano backed and reverb laced track with glimpses of clarinet. “That’s How You Win” uses plaintive guitars and a kick and run drum roll to back Reitherman’s echo-like and airy vocals. “Ship,” however, is the standout track of this set both musically and lyrically. The drums combine with a drum machine to back a building piano that crashes into the main melody of the song, an incredibly beautiful piece of music that contentedly fades out at the end, free to repeat in the space between your ears. Don’t Sleep On: It’s a 4 track EP people, what’s to sleep on?

Tough Alliance, The New School: Taking pop and electronic music and blending it is the outcome of this album from the duo of Henning Fürst and Eric Berglund. At times repetitive and even slightly annoying, at its best, The New School offers video game blip electronic music that is mindlessly catchy. Not my normal cup of tea in its entirety, but Don’t Sleep On: “Take No Heroes,” “Tough II,” and “Koka-Kola Veins.”

Is Last.fm the Profit Mechanism DIY Musicians are Looking for?

published
on July 12, 2008
by
Alan Khalfin
in DIY, music, and music business
. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

The $18 billion music industry includes a relative handful of famous acts and tens of millions of independent and semi-professional artists who have very limited opportunities to profit from their art. Because of the Digital Audio Workstation (music software) revolution, more people are recording music than ever before. And through the use of music discovery sites, more people are distributing music than ever before. But, what we haven’t seen from the music discovery model is a way for DIY and unsigned artists to profit from their art online. Last.fm hopes to change that, apparently.

Starting July 1, Last.FM (or rather, CBS, I should say) will have an Artist Royalty Program, where artists get paid whenever their music is streamed from the site. The most important thing is that this program is intended for and marketed to unsigned/DIY artists, as Last.fm already pays royalties to signed acts via SoundExchange. According to Last.Fm: “This is a big day for DIY artists. We’re leveling the playing field by offering them the same opportunities as established bands to make money from their music. The young musician making music in a bedroom studio has the same chance as the latest major label signing to use Last.fm to build an audience and get rewarded.”

Here’s how royalties will be paid:

  • If your track is played on their free radio service you will accrue a 10% of the share of Last.fm’s net revenue from the free radio service.
  • If your track is played on their personalized premium radio service, you will accrue the greater of either 10% of the Share of Last.fm’s Net Revenue from the personalized radio service, or US $0.0005 for each complete transmission on the personalized radio service.
  • If your track is played on their free on-demand service, you will accrue 30% of the Share of Last.fm’s Net Revenue from the on-demand radio service.
  • If your track is played on their premium on-demand service, you will accrue the greater of either 30% of the Share of Last.fm’s Net Revenue from the premium on-demand service, or US $0.005 for each complete transmission on the prepaid or subscription on-demand service.

While the royalties to be paid aren’t much, they’re a good start, demonstrating the larger issue of finding ways for DIYers to profit form their works. Since most people have their music on several (if not all) music discovery sites, hopefully other sites will follow suit (myspace, are you listening?). Imeem implemented a rev share program last year, but it has failed to produce any real revenue for unsigned musicians. With these moves, however, Last.fm has elevated itself past the clutter of music discovery sites, to become a premiere destination for on-demand music discovery. While I personally prefer music recommendation sites like Pandora, after I discover an artist on Pandora, I want to hear more tracks, see more content, and learn more about the artist. That’s where sites like myspace, last.fm, and ilike come in. And while music recommendation sites would be crippled by paying royalties, sites like myspace and last.fm should do so.

Unfortunately, neither Last.Fm nor Imeem is the answer. Rather, they are both part of a solution that will require DIY musicians to aggregate many sources of revenue in order to make some money. But, there are not many of these sources currently available. A lot of DIY musicians have been distributing under Creative Commons (“CC”) for the last 7 years, but nobody has figured out exactly how to monetize CC works. You would think that the collective strength of CC music could be leveraged to make some money for the artists, but this hasn’t happened. The only caveat to this is Magnatune. For this reason, CC has proven to be a valuable alternative to copyright law for reference and informational works, but not for works of art.

So what other profit mechanisms are there for unsigned musicians? There are a ton of iTunes style sites where people can purchase MP3s, but lets face it, most people aren’t buying tracks from us DIY guys. Certainly sites like PumpAudio, YouLicense, and AudioMicro have helped, but the go-to-profit mechanism has yet to be unveiled. Stay tuned!