David Emery OnlineSting’s iPad app cost “in the low seven figures” to develop
Earlier this week, we reported on the launch of Sting 25, an iPad app celebrating Sting’s solo career. But how much did it cost to make? More than one million dollars. This is according to the Wall Street Journal.
The app itself – if you’re a Sting fan – is pretty nice, but over $1million to develop is just plain ridiculous. A quick glance at the credits – which is several pages long – tells you why: when you involve big agencies, they’re very good at spending your money.
I find it interesting that Chevrolet and AmEx feel they are getting enough value from having their logos slapped on the splash page to finance such an endevour (assuming that is that they’re together stumping the cost). By then, sponsorship is the only way to go if you’re spending that much money on an app like this as you sure as hell aren’t going to sell 100,000 copies at $9.99.
Visit ➔St. Vincent 4AD Session
Recording these songs live for the first time, St Vincent has performed four tracks from Strange Mercy for the tenth visual installment in the 4AD Session series.
This is super awesome (click through for the full 4 track session):
Visit ➔Thom Yorke at the Boiler Room
More on Flickr here.
Some thoughts on Facebook
“Boom!”
It came about a third of the way into Mark Zuckerberg’s F8 keynote, but it was obvious far earlier that he was putting on his very best Steve Jobs impression. And, to be honest, he didn’t really do that bad a job of it; sure, his presentation style needs a lot of work – he really needs to stop laughing as much at his own jokes for a start – but the products they announced definitely had an Apple feel to them.
The new timeline profile is the perfect example of that – great visual design, coupled with innovation and a willingness to cast aside something extremely popular for something completely different, but better. I’ve so far been quite unimpressed by Google+, but what Facebook are doing now just makes them look silly – they are leagues ahead, with Google struggling to catch up to where they were a couple of years ago (again – see also Apple versus other tablet makers).
So, what about the music elements? Another constant around Apple keynotes are the wild rumours that fly around before hand, that don’t quite get fulfilled, and we had the same here. The talk of a service-agnostic playing system, where it...
Read more ➔Two Key Features Of Facebook Music: Scrobbling And Track Unification
One thing we’ve heard from a very good source is that a key aspect of the service will be “scrobbling”. The term, made popular by Last.fm, means that when you listen to a song, it gets sent to your profile without you have to do anything. I assume there will be a way to turn this off, or a way for you to selectively share songs, but this is a key to the service.
I’m loath to speculate on rumoured products like this – who knows what it’ll actually be – but this sounds like it could be massive. Facebook is already the biggest single driver to artist websites, and this will just make it even more powerful.
It also – sorry to say – sounds like it could be the final blow for Last.fm; why have a social network just for music when the biggest social network has most of the features (that mainstream users want, at least).
Visit ➔Apple's iTunes Match beta doesn't technically stream music
Despite evidence that appears to show streaming playback through iTunes Match, an Apple spokesperson confirmed to Peter Kafka of All Things D that content played from the service must first be "stored" on an iPhone or iPad. The service appears to be streaming because it begins playback instantly, but instead of true streaming it is downloading and storing the file while beginning simultaneous playback.
"Apple's system, as it's currently constructed, still requires users to keep stuff on their machine in order to play with it," the report said. Kafka speculated that files that are not "downloaded" through iCloud but still played will sit in a "temporary cache" on the machine.
The semantics of this are pretty ridiculous – every major streaming service works in the same way, using a local cache. iTunes Match is streaming just as much as Spotify is.
And it’s also not very surprising that iTunes Match does supports streaming – it’ll be interesting to see what other features it gains before it launches (my bet: a web based version of iTunes, alongside a whole new version on the desktop).
Visit ➔BBM 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.
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