David Emery OnlineBBM Music aims to make song-sharing even more social for BlackBerry users
BBM Music will be a subscription service costing $4.99 a month in the US, although how that converts elsewhere in the world has yet to be announced. Users will choose 50 songs from the BBM Music catalogue for their profiles, which can be used to create playlists, and cached locally on their BlackBerry smartphone for offline listening.
50 songs? That's not much, but this is where the BBM angle kicks in. Users will also be able to access the 50 songs of any of their BBM contacts who subscribe to the service. That means a theoretical choice of 100 songs if one friend signs up, 200 songs if three do, and 2,000 songs if 39 do. And so on.
I can’t see this succeeding – the concept is just too complicated, and I can’t see the BBM user base (who primarily use it because it’s free) shelling out $5/month – but it’s certainly an interesting idea.
There’s a lot to be done in the area of ‘social music’ – this isn’t it (in the same way iTunes Ping wasn’t either) but it’s way more interesting then another iTunes clone, or another Spotify clone for that matter.
Visit ➔How Social Media Is Hurting Your Ability To Obtain New Fans
Using Google+ as a marketing tool is EXACTLY THE SAME as using Facebook or Twitter; while they’re might be small differences with the interface or how to specifically do something, the actual value in using them only comes from exactly how you use it. Do you post interesting an engaging content? Do you thank fans and respond to them? Do you make being a fan or follower a rewarding experience? Awesome, your doing the right things.
The problem is, most musicians are not doing this. Nope, they sign up for each and every new thing thinking that JUST BECAUSE it’s the new thing, thinking it’s going to help them. So they post songs, spam friends with events, do the whole “wave my hands in the air look at me” typical bullshit, and then sit on the porch and pout because they don’t have any new “fans”.
I do love a good rant, although he does lose the point a bit when he starts talking about Digg and Reddit – those places are great for getting lots of traffic, but it’s not necessarily the kind of traffic you want.
Visit ➔Beirut Pushes Up Digital Release Date
Beirut's new album, The Rip Tide, is out August 30 physically via bandleader Zach Condon's own Pompeii Records. If your music collection largely consists of ones and zeroes, though, you can hear it a lot sooner: the album's digital release date has been moved up to next Tuesday, August 2.
This sort of thing really frustrates me; there’s no doubt this is just a reaction to the record leaking, and actually it does far more damage then a leak could ever do. Firstly, it’s a pretty good advertisement that the record has leaked but more importantly rushing the digital release just screws up any change of the release making a big impact when it properly comes out. Beirut – I would have said – is in a prime place to establish themselves as a serious band, and a good chart entry would have done a lot to aid that; by doing this, the album will look a lot less impressive when it does finally come out properly.
And sadly, chart positions do matter; I don’t think – unless you’re in the top 5 – they make a huge amount of difference to fans, casual or not, but they make a massive difference to the rest of the industry; a good chart position opens doors, a bad (or lower then expected) chart position closes them.
A leak only really impacts people that probably weren’t going to buy the record anyway – rushing forward a digital release can – in some cases, not all – destroy your campaign.
Visit ➔Ninja Tune on Leaks
It was with considerable disappointment that we learnt in the last week that two records we have been working on have been leaked, despite the use of watermarked CDs. Toddla T's Watch Me Dance (Ninja Tune) and another upcoming release were both leaked from copies sent to the journalist Benjamin Jager at the offices of Backspin magazine in Germany.
For my non-music industry readers, most releases these days are distributed to journalists, radio DJs and other folks that need the music before an album release either via watermarked CDs or digitally via watermarked downloads or streams.
Watermarking does actually work – it’s a pretty advanced technology, and you really can trace things back as shown by this Ninja Tune post. The thing is, though, is that it actually doesn’t do anything at all – technically speaking, at least – to prevent an album leaking; it’s not like the days of copy-protected CDs that would only play in certain CD players if you looked at them in the right way (on a Tuesday. When it’s sunny.). You can take a watermarked CD, rip it to MP3 and upload it anywhere you like unrestricted.
Watermarking is protection by fear.
Fear that if you did leak it the person who sent it to you would find out and there would be repercussions.
Figuring out what those repercussions actually are is pretty difficult, however. Obviously you stop sending them music, which is you’re a freelance journalist could be an issue I guess, but it’s hardly the end of the world. I have heard of people suing, but most of the time that’s going to be a bit of an extreme measure. So, naming and shaming as Ninja Tune have done seems like an effective solution – if they didn’t do anything, their social copy protection goes out the window.
Although as Darren from PIAS mentions on Twitter, they better be really sure they know who leaked it…
Visit ➔Experiential Rights
Call it Kaplan’s Law: the more value a non-music company adds to the fan/artist relationship, the bigger the threat to those who’s business depends on being between the two.
Ethan hits the nail on the head here. Rights is hardly a sexy subject to talk about, but it’s an undeniable anchor that the whole industry is moored to (which – to stretch the metaphor to breaking point – is no good if you sitting in your speed boat, ready to set off).
turntable.fm is the perfect example, as it’s now blocked outside of the US due to “rights issues”. What this really means is that the US current has an easy way of licensing the specific model that turntable.fm uses – that of an online radio station – that other places don’t have (in exactly the same form at least). It’s the same system that Pandora (similarly US-only) uses, and to be perfectly frank I’d be surprised if it continues past 2015 (when the setup is up for renegotiation) as the major labels think they should be paid far more per play then the currently get from Pandora or turntable.fm (and damn them if they can’t stay in business as a result).
It’s a pretty complicated mess, it has to be said…
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The Horrors - Skying
Love the new album by The Horrors – ‘Endless Blue’ (wait for the guitars to kick in about half way though!) and ‘Moving Further Away’ (wait for the guitars to kick in about half way though!) are particular highlights.
Visit ➔Lil B, SwagSec, and the Gay Hacking Parade
But some of this didn’t add up. ‘Gay hackers target Amy Winehouse’ still seemed too good a headline to be true.
Then I saw that Lil B was releasing his new album today. Apparantly his album ‘I’m Gay’ (named so in support of the LGBT community, though Lil B is himself a heterosexual) had been released without any notice.
Convenient? I later hear through the grapevine that Winehouse and Pritchard share the same PR guy. Would it be too cynical to imagine he has a new client in Lil B? Yes, it would. Until you see that Lil B had a ‘secret’ meeting with Universal staff back in March.
Does this smell even a tiny bit like a marketing campaign? Is it possible that the site owners and label did this purely for press coverage?
Pretty crazy if true. Pretty lousy marketing if it is.
Visit ➔Soulwax's mashup marathon
Realising that getting clearance for all the samples would be a headache, they found a loophole and applied for radio licences, becoming an internet radio company instead. The upside was no tussles with lawyers. The downside was they couldn't charge a bean: the app will be completely free.
The whole thing is pretty nifty, but I particularly like the idea of being able to release mashups and mixtapes as ‘online radio stations’.
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