The MusicIP team packed up and hit the road again - this time to sunny Austin (though it couldn’t have really been called sunny when we first flew into Dallas a couple of days ago…rain? in Texas? who knew?).
If you’re in the area, we can be found at booth I3-J3, near the front entrance - stop by and visit!
If you’re a musician or part of a band with a MySpace profile and a handful or so songs recorded and stored as mp3s…haven’t you wondered where your music was a hit?
The term ‘hit’ is pretty subjective of course - is it going platinum? gold? resonating with a fifteen year old kid who has track five on repeat the minute they get out of school? Or feeling the personal validation of knowing your stuff rocks?
Well, here’s another way to gain a little insight into the minds, or at least geolocation, of some of your fans, with MusicIP’s Artist Traffic Reports.
Lots of artists have happily been telling us and our listeners, subscribers and music fans about their unique sound over the past handful of months. Now we’re ready to give them something back. It’s easy for us to say “we’ll introduce your music in a whole new way” - with the Artist Traffic Reports, we’re able to show our artists how and possibly more importantly, where.
Here’s an example of what a map of where a band has fans might look like:
In addition to showing you where your music is gaining traction and growing a fanbase, we’ve taken the number of times your music has been ‘exposed’ to a listener, and the number of times a listener has clicked on your music as a result and broken them down by song.
Of course, we’re showing you a portion of your fanbase — in reality you’re even more popular than you know it! The numbers and geographical depictions you see here are are based on the eyes and clicks associated with the MusicIP Mixer and the Winamp MusicIP Plugin. To share your music and get reports on what new pockets of fans crop up as a result, you first need to have a MusicIP.com account - then you need to point us to a song, a few songs, or all of your music (it’s up to you, but we need to hear something).
Which song you decide to put on your Myspace page, which song you’re pushing to get on the radio, what towns you build street teams in, play concerts for…the ways you can use this information is limitless, and for that we think very valuable to the thousands upon thousands of musicians and bands eagerly looking to take advantage of the constantly evolving tools and resources they have for building an online following.
MusicIP is more than happy to help.
This week MusicIP will be over at the Royal York for Canadian Music Week — there will be no shortage of interesting ideas, discussions and great music to enjoy!
Here’s my top three picks for panel discussions (in no particular order):
We’ve been discussing which bands to check out for weeks, but at the end of the day at least half the nights will end up with us listening to who knows who at who knows where. And that’s a good thing. We all have our favorites, and sometimes those favorites are shared by lots of other people clamoring to get in the door — and I’m just not hardcore winter enough anymore to freeze outside for extended periods of time! But while we might miss hearing an album we’ve grown to love live and in person, we just might happen upon a new delightful find…you just can’t lose!
If you’re looking for some new bands, we’ve got 
several you can get a taste for on the MusicIP/Speakerheart Virtual CD.
Featuring music from The Guggenheim Grotto, Pan America and Crew, there’s sure to be something 
there for everyone!
Go to the Virtual CD, enter the password (”discover”), and you’ll find nine songs from nine different bands and musicians…you can even spread the word by sending a copy to your friends.
Special thanks to Blue Maze for putting the whole thing together!
If you’ve been following our blog, you know that we love free music, and we love making free music easy. Back in November, Rachel wrote a post talking about how artists can promote their music using our website. Now, we’ve finally got the next piece working, so the free music which is available on our site, is also now available through the discovery window right in the mixer. Here’s what the new window looks like:
The icons indicate where the music is coming from - if there’s a tiny MusicIP logo, that means the music came from artists who’ve registered with our site. If you see the SXSW logo, that means the music is from the SXSW website. If you see the… oops, that’s all I can say for now…
If you’ve been waiting for more free music to show up, now’s the time to take a gander down there, and see if there’s something you might enjoy!
Now, the discovery window will have little speaker icons next to the free music. You can click on these to preview the tracks immediately before deciding whether to download them. How cool is that? This feature is still experimental, so if you have problems with it, let us know.
It’s hard to believe a whole year has passed since I uploaded last year’s Valentine’s Day Playlist to FIQL. We’ve been busily working on some fun stuff for our users behind the scenes, but we’re not quite ready to talk about that yet…
So instead, I offer you this Valentine’s Day Pie Chart (ok, the only thing Valentine’s Day about it is the color red). We’ve been going through some of our stats recently, and here’s a different view which some of you might find interesting. This picture shows how often we are seeing songs in the different file formats.
Unsurprisingly, MP3 is the dominant format, at about 80%. AAC and WMA are running a distant second, but with similar penetration. Note, though, that protected AAC files are not included, because they are controlled by an unlicensed DRM model. Trailing those are the less mainstream FLAC and Ogg formats - if you are an audiophile, you might want to check out FLAC, as it provides an reasonably efficient, open format for lossless audio.
At the recent Music 2.0 conference, an executive from one of the labels discussed ways in which digital music may eventually be embraced by the major labels. I must say, though, I’m not especially impressed by the idea of being able to pay 99 cents per track for lossy encoded music. Let’s take a quick history review (apologies for any sloppiness in the details - I’m shooting for the general overview, not a scholarly treatise).
In 1878, Thomas Edison build the first working phonograph, creating the medium of the phonograph cylinder. It’s safe to say those were very low quality recordings by any standards. Lateral-cut disc records came out 10 years later, in 1888. By the early 1900’s, people were enjoying double-sided 12-inch records (with perhaps four minutes of music per side). The first vinyl records date to 1930, with lower surface noise, although it took some time to gain market acceptance.
The first stereo recordings show up in 1958, although the technology was around for some time before then. Mass production of cassettes dates to around 1964, and fought a brief battle with 8-track cartridges. Compact discs came out in the early 1980’s, and started paving the way for digital music which we all know and love today.
At this point, my history tour branches. On the first path, we have the evolution of compressed audio formats. By making song files small enough to fit onto the storage media of the day, a whole new category of technology began to grow. The first MP3 player was released in 1995, Winamp in 1997, and Napster in 1999. Today we have multiple peer to peer networks, BitTorrent, iTunes, and lots of ways to use these digital files.
Meanwhile, technologies were being created to reproduce ever improved sound quality (things like Surround Sound). Super Audio CD’s were introduced in 2000, as was DVD-Audio. The record industry, which had been making a good living re-selling music on CDs which people had already purchased earlier, was banking on a repeat cycle with ever higher quality recordings. Of course, these technologies require more data to encode a song.
It turns out, though, that for most people, CDs were good enough. What people wanted was flexibility in how they enjoy their music. Portable MP3 players, home audio systems, things like that. The record industry responded with DRM, and the DMCA (passed in 1998).
So what’s my point? We’ve now reached the point, where we’re being asked to pay more, for less. For years, we’ve enjoyed DRM-free music on CDs, which can be easily place shifted, and used in all sorts of interesting ways. Now, we’re being offered lower quality recordings, with ridiculous restrictions and the message “See, we get it! Here you go!” Even if Steve Jobs got his wish, and DRM disappeared tomorrow, we’d be buying lossy files.
For me, when I buy music online from artists, I’m looking for lossless, DRM free music (like the FLAC version of The Vanity Project). I’d like to see even higher quality formats take off, which can really take advantage of the surround speakers on my computers, or a really nice set of headsets. Disk space is becoming less of an issue, and movies have much higher requirements on storage than even a surround sound audio file.
Is that too much to ask?
(Never one to pass up an opportunity to point out some good, free music… during the show, I also found a cool new music podcast, called The Plan Nine Rock Show. The host, Jasper, play mostly Punk and Rock music, and includes lots of local bands - in this case, that means Detroit. If that sounds like your thing, check it out.)
Our latest update to the MusicDNS reporting is now live. This includes one small adjustment - countries are now color coded to show hits per capita. Mostly, this makes the maps look a little prettier, but it does show some extra details which might be interesting. The map to the left shows our traffic for the month of January. (Compare this with the original reports we launched in November to see the difference.)
Uptake on MusicDNS is continuing to grow - the number of requests in January increased 28% from December! And we’d like to say hello to two of the most recent additions to the MusicDNS Projects page: Helium Music Manager and Jaikoz Mp3 Tag Editor. Welcome!
A wicked show, followed by an equally wicked flu bug has delayed my thoughts from appearing…
But, I’ll take a minute in between sleep and tea to talk a little about the two day show at the Bel Age, before discussing where we’re headed next.
First off, it’s interesting to see how different a show like Music 2.0 is compared to the overwhelming bigness of something like CES. Each is important and has something different to offer. In both cases, you’re talking to people. But at the big shows you’re talking to lots of people — at shows like Music 2.0, the crowd is smaller, the atmosphere more intimate, so more in-depth conversations are likely to occur. It’s a nice balance.
I was interested to hear the same sentiments about Country music still living and dying by the radio — as a genre, they’ve not crossed over much into the digital realm in terms of distribution, promotion, etc. This came up at Demmex a few months ago as well — keeping an eye out for how and when that transition starts to really happen will certainly be something, I imagine.
While we’re on the topic of genre, one question from the audience came up regarding ‘niche audiences’ and how those fit into the major labels plans for the future. She mostly got blank stares from the panel, minus one gentleman that was actually working with an artist she had actually represented at one time (who went from niche to millions of fans in less than a year).
A step forward, maybe, that she and wasn’t shot down as inconsequential, but at the same time there didn’t appear to be much thought on how to more effectively serve the artists sitting in ‘The Long Tail’ or under genres previously unknown or untapped.
The roundtable discussion with a group of “average” Myspace using teens was also pretty entertaining. Skewed, of course, and I imagine they felt a little pressure sitting up there on display for all the industry folks. But it is refreshing to hear outside opinions because our assumptions can easily get the better of us. While I can’t bring myself to pay more than $9.99 for most CDs and have purchased all my music that wasn’t offered for free legally, the general consensus among the teens was that file sharing is okay, and if CDs came down to $15.00 that’d be fair and they’d pay. I think my mouth actually dropped open at that point.
On to what’s up next…
We have a little bit of breathing room before the next show is upon us. Here’s how March is looking so far:
March 7-10 Canadian Music Week (Toronto, Ontario)
March 14-18 South By Southwest (Austin, Texas)
March 26 Mobile Entertainment Conference (Orlando, Florida)
March 27-29 CTIA Wireless (Orlando, Florida)
Whew! In the meantime, must rest up…
I love concerts. Who doesn’t love concerts? I don’t always love the price of admission though…and over the years I’ve grown wearier and wearier of nosebleed seats that empty my pockets.
The more I move away from what’s playing on the radio, and the more I pay attention to mixer recommendations, bands my friends mention, and the multitude of mix CDs that are a part of music festivals, trade shows, etc…the more reasonably priced the tickets become…the closer I feel to the band…
The more likely I am to spend money that actually ends up in the artist’s pocket - on tickets, tshirts, buttons, toques, etc.
Which is why I found Chris Anderson’s post today especially insightful. Well partially…
Music as a digital product enjoys near-zero costs of production and distribution–classic abundance economics. When costs are near zero, you might as well make the price zero, too, something thousands of bands have figured out.
Meanwhile, the one thing that you can’t digitize and distribute with full fidelity is a live show. That’s scarcity economics. No wonder the average price for a ticket was $61 last year, up 8%–in an era when digital products are commodities, there’s a premium on experience. No surprise that bands are increasingly giving away their recorded music as marketing for their concerts, which offer something no MP3 can match.
I agree — make the music free, charge me for the show. But then again, I don’t have enough weekends to see all the bands sitting in my music library right now…so I’d settle for just making the music reasonably priced at the moment.
From his list of top 10 grossing touring bands in 2006, I’d only really coughing up the money for Dave Matthews…beyond that, forget it. Why would I pay for a decent ticket to a Madonna concert when for the same amount of money (not to mention a more intimate experience, and just speaking for myself here but better music…, sorry Madge)…I could get myself, Wendell, and Adam in the door for a show at the Troubadour? Twice. At least.
Take today for example…
Step 1. Listen to Academik podcast.
Step 2. Rediscover Paolo Nutini.
Step 3. Visit Paolo’s website…then Myspace.
Step 4. Find out that Paolo will conveniently be playing at one of my favorite Toronto clubs while I’m back in town in a few weeks.
Step 5. Spread my delight to five friends.
I haven’t tried Tourfilter and SonicLiving yet (which were also mentioned in Anderson’s post)…but I’m intrigued by how the podcasts, promotional downloads, Myspace streams…etc., etc….all these digital music outlets are helping me to get out of the house, into the club and in front of the band.
Fine, yeah - people aren’t going to stop paying for Madonna tickets anytime soon…But isn’t it more interesting to see more people investigate, take risks, and check out the affordable other guys/girls/groups anyway?
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