January 2009
10 posts
4 tags
Post-Ustream Wrap Up: The Straddle
On Wednesday (1/28/09) we fired up Ustream for the first time in an effort to connect with you, our reader base, and answer your questions. Our half-hour discussion was centered on an article George Howard wrote for his 9GiantSteps blog about ‘The Straddle’, or how musicians can balance their real-world and internet marketing and build something meaningful for their fans. In spite of...
Jan 30th
7 tags
Facebook Friends Are Not The Holy Grail
I read an interesting article on HubSpots Inbound Marketing Blog this morning about how traffic generated from “buzz” translates into actual customers (or doesn’t). (see Stop Begging TechCrunch to Write About You) In music marketing, there is a lot of emphasis placed on the number of friends, pageviews, MySpace plays, etc. as if these numbers correlate to a musician’s or...
Jan 29th
4 tags
Join Us For A Live Video Chat
Join us today, Wednesday, January 28, at 3:30 PM (Central Time) for a live video chat! George Howard (bio) will be discussing the balance musicians (and any business for that matter) must find between online and offline strategy, a concept he has coined as “The Straddle:” Musicians and others too often feel that the new tech allows them to forgo what is really important: building...
Jan 26th
1 note
3 tags
Pirates As Underserved Customers: Borrowing...
News flash: the music industry has a problem with piracy. Shocking, right? The p-word has become the center of industry attention ever since the mass-acceptance of digital music about a decade or so ago, and a viable solution has yet to be found. Industry luminaries are still spending the bulk of their time trying to figure out a way to make customers pay using the existing channels of...
Jan 26th
2 notes
Weekly Wrap-up
There were some GREAT articles and news-bits this week - here’s a summary of some (ok, a lot) of the highlights in case you missed them! NEWS Isle of Man launches blanket music licence for ISPs http://ow.ly/4fK CD Baby Physical and Digital Sales for 2008 http://ow.ly/4MF iMeem starts charging for mass uploads: http://ow.ly/5tz RoyaltyShare Adds Indie Asset Storage http://ow.ly/5tx ...
Jan 24th
Global Digital Music Stats
The IFPI, an organization that represents around 1,400 record companies in 73 countries, has released its 2009 Digital Music Report. Here are some of the key numbers presented in their findings: Just over 1.4 billion legal singles were downloaded in 2008 The top-selling digital single was Lil Wayne’s Lollipop with 9.1 million downloads Digital album sales grew by 36% in 2008 Digital now...
Jan 19th
4 tags
Music Business Links - Wed. Jan 14
In cased you missed it, here are all the music business links we tweeted about yesterday: Remix: Lawrence Lessig’s Take on the Music Industry http://ow.ly/3wD iTunes Drops DRM – So What Does it Mean? http://ow.ly/3wC Hip Hop News From ProHipHop.com http://ow.ly/3wB Test Market Your Merchandise For Free http://ow.ly/3wz The Orchard Closes Vice For Distribution http://ow.ly/3wx Repeater Radio...
Jan 15th
5 tags
Ruminations on Bundling Music
A report I read this morning on Coolfer regarding Nokia’s “Comes With Music” initiative really caught my eye, and has got me wondering about logic behind music bundling solutions and whether they could prove to be a lucrative source of revenue for some segments of the music industry. Examining the Concept: The essential logic of such a service is pretty straightforward. People download music for...
Jan 13th
6 tags
The Music Business in 2009, Numbers And Thoughts
2008 was another important transitional year for the music industry. There are many ways to represent and interpret the end-of-year numbers for the industry, but there were a couple numbers in particular that were interesting to me. 1.07 billion digital tracks were sold in 2008, a 27 percent increase over 2007 Digital album sales reached 65.8 million units, a 32 percent increase over 2007 ...
Jan 8th
11 tags
Artists House Vault: Understanding Copyright
Nothing is more integral to your career in the music business than having a solid understanding of copyright. This is the “business” side of the music business that DIYers need to be able to understand in order to compete with the big boys. To help you understand how copyright works, we have filmed some videos with Maggie Lange, an attorney and Professor of Music Business and...
Jan 2nd