David Emery OnlineAn industry with a great future behind it
Sister Ray Records in London… was my favourite record store in the capital. Or at least – I thought it was. In fact, Sister Ray was not my favourite record shop because I liked Sister Ray. It was my favourite record shop because it fitted a romantic, nostalgic notion about London independent record shops.
Great article, and I firmly agree – small indie record shops are great in theory but less so in practice. However, I do quite like the new Rough Trade East although it’s telling that I’ve never bought anything there – I like it for the instores…
Visit ➔NIN Edition of Tap Tap Revenge
In what may well stand as a defining moment in the maturation of Apple’s App Store, Tapulous has announced that it has partnered with the band Nine Inch Nails to release a premium version of its popular game Tap Tap Revenge some time in October.
I find it quite interesting that this NIN version of Tap Tap Revenge will be a premium version, considering that the normal version is free (and has been very successful).
I’ve been thinking a lot about the pricing models of music related iPhone apps recently – it’s the traditional ‘free, but with promotional value’ versus ‘monetized, but with less promotional value’ debate that music videos also have to face. My general conclusion is that the ‘free with promo’ option is probably the best to go for – if the game you are in is selling music then the surrounding content you generate that isn’t part of the body of work (like you could argue a music video is) should be seen as promotional value only, there to increase music sales.
That being said, if the content you create is compelling enough in its own right then it seems reasonable to think about charging for it, but then is that worth the development time and resources? This NIN/Tapulous deal seems like a nice bridge between the two, although I think it would have made far more sense to have the NIN version free – with the value being in increased music sales – and the normal version for-pay.
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YouTube - experiencewii's Channel
To explain it would be to ruin it, but this is a masterful piece of online advertising for the new Wii Wario game (which sadly I’ve heard isn’t that good).
Visit ➔Radiohead Reckoner Remix
We’ve just launched the second Radiohead Remix project, this time with Reckoner (which I think will be a hell of a lot easier to remix then Nude was).
Visit ➔Bandcamp - A free hosted CMS for bands that (hopefully) doesn't suck
Most of the time, these products are poorly built, poorly customizeable and then want to charge artists money (for these amazing services). Bandcamp seems simple, easy to use and free, though they do have some plans to make money.
It’s amazing how many of these type of products there are out there, and still not one I’d choose to use. Bandcamp seems better then most, but only does the ‘music’ bit (playing/downloading/purchasing) for the time being and in all honesty ecommerce from a small band’s site generally isn’t worth the time and effort (not enough sales and you have to do all the promotion yourself).
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