David Emery OnlineGiving it away.
Kayne West' cover for Vman magazine, comes with a dollar stuffed in Yeezy's mouth, wow.
Sometimes we joke at the end of an unsuccessful campaign that we might as well have just stapled £10 notes to the CD and it would have been just as profitable…
Visit ➔Spotify should give indies a fair deal on royalties
Last year, major labels Universal and Sony received more revenue from Spotify than any other Swedish music service or digital and physical record store, according to local newspaper reports.
The news came as a surprise to many independent labels and to Swedish songwriters, as their royalty statements tell a very different story. It appears that not only do the majors own shares in Spotify, they – and their artists – also get much better streaming rates than the indies. Some of the indies threatened in early December to withdraw their music from Spotify in response.
An interesting look into the ridiculously complex and convoluted world of music licensing and monetization; should give you a grasp on some of the reasons why new music services struggle to get legal (in short: it’s really complicated to do).
Also, from where I’m sitting all this talk about Spotify not making labels/artists money is rubbish – would any label be signed up if that were true?
Visit ➔MTA.me
At www.mta.me, Conductor turns the New York subway system into an interactive string instrument. Using the MTA’s actual subway schedule, the piece begins in realtime by spawning trains which departed in the last minute, then continues accelerating through a 24 hour loop.
Lovely stuff, and a great example of what you can do these days without using Flash. I’d love a London Underground version as a screensaver…
Visit ➔Uni' Lever Downloads
Sony and Universal’s announcement last week that new music will be released to the public as soon as its played on the radio has really put the cat among the pigeons.
Have they thought this one through?
Very interesting article by Steve Lamacq about this whole “put singles on sale digitally at the same time as you go to radio” issue. Interestingly this is the way the US market has worked for a while now, although radio works quite differently over there.
My take: I think it would be great if we move to this model, as if you hear something on the radio it’s a little silly you can’t buy it but probably can download it for free; however, I’m not sure if it will necessarily get wholly embraced by the industry.
Visit ➔Soundcloud and How Major Labels are Spoiling Things…Again
Towards the end of December I started receiving emails telling me that Soundcloud had taken down certain tracks at the request of the rights holder. Ever since they started, the emails have been trickling through a few every week or so. Three days ago I had twenty-two in one go. All of these tracks have been deleted from my account.
Now, my beef is not so much with the legality and official policy of Soundcloud, rather it is with the principle and backward nature of the major labels attempting to regain control in somewhat tyrannical and damaging ways (to Soundcloud and their own artists).
This is a complicated issue (and I’m writing from the position of someone who has asked SoundCloud to take down tracks before). I think the ideal would be the setup mentioned at the end of the article; YouTube style attribution to the label if you upload a track you don’t hold the copyright on.
However this would be very complicated the was SoundCloud is set up at the moment, as – to my knowledge – they don’t have any revenue sharing deals with labels at this time, which is what the YouTube setup hinges on. I guess the key thing to remember is that – just like a download – a streaming track has a value. Sure, it might be a lot smaller then the 79p you pay for a track download but it still exists nevertheless – it’s just that the consumer doesn’t pay it, the hosting site or service (think: YouTube, Spotify, MySpace et al) does.
Don’t get me wrong – I think there’s definitely a promotional benefit for embeding songs but it needs to be coming from a source sanctioned by the label or artist; sometimes that might be a SoundCloud player, sometimes that might be a player direct from the artist or label site (which is what we do) and sometimes that might just be a YouTube embed.
Just like uploading any MP3 you like to your blog isn’t cool, neither is uploading someone else’s track to somewhere like SoundCloud.
Visit ➔Listening Room
Listening Room is a website for listening to music with your friends. Anyone in a room can play mp3s from their computer, and everyone hears the same thing at the same time.
So simple, but really nifty.
Visit ➔Sony's Qriocity music service leaves Spotify, Pandora, Last.fm and we7 unruffled
Someone should have told Sony that trying to get people to pay a monthly subscription for a service just like people can get for free is probably not a winning business model
Come on guys, surely you can do better then that?
Also, “Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity” really rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?
Visit ➔Isle Of Tune Lets You Compose Music By Um, City Planning
Isle of Tune lets you create whole songs by building a little town using objects like streetlamps, houses and trees to make sounds. There is even a collection of pre-built loops for those of us less musically inclined.
Loving this, especially considering that the iPad version of SimCity has kickstarted that particular addition again… (p.s. if you haven’t got it yet, get it – it’s a steal for 59p).
Visit ➔