Will Apple Music Help To Get Artists Paid?

Will Apple Music Help To Get Artists Paid?

With The Demise Of Starbucks Instore CD Sales, Will They Continue To Promote New Music?

Starbucks to end selling cd's in all of their store locations

What will actually be the final nail in the coffin for the mass distribution of music retail? This is a juggernaut of a question and one to which many are seeking to find answers, but with little hope of a true resurgence of the sacred ground of what was once known as a record store. We have posted numerous other blog articles about this topic and where we personally think the music industry is heading. Listen to the speech at Midem about Digital Streaming or a great mini story on Streaming by PBS.

Are Music Sales Really Dead? CD Sales Are Still Huge and Digital Streaming Points To The Future

 

Are Music Sales Really Dead? photo - Lucas Jackson/Reuters

Vinyl records might be the next wave in the minds of diehard music fans, but as a label, I can tell you that we still sell more cd's overall. Even for one of our biggest selling albums, we still have not sold out of the original run of vinyl that was pressed, purchase here. Vinyl is ultimately the better medium relating to album art, sound, presentation and overall vibe, but is only for the true audiophile collectors. Hopefully these buying audiences will grow in volume as more of the bands within our music group, gain a larger foot hold and appreciate the superior packaging.

Are Your Songs Being Skipped on Spotify?

Are you ADD about getting to the next track?

Read more great articles on Inc.com

"Music blogger Paul Lamere recently analyzed Spotify's data for skipping frequencies.
He wanted to learn more about the circumstances under which Spotify users are skipping a song and moving on to the next one, rather than listening to the tune all the way through. 

For business leaders, who are constantly trying to hold the attention of a room during meetings or presentations, the insights are startling. For example, Lamere assessed how often a song gets skipped in the first five seconds that it's playing. His finding? "The likelihood that a song will be skipped within the first five seconds is an astounding 24.14 percent," he writes.

In other words, nearly one out of four songs gets skipped before it even has five seconds to make an impression. 

Lamere compared this five-second skipping rate to skipping rates after 10 seconds, 30 seconds, and before a song finishes. Here are the results:  

• First 5 seconds: 24.14 percent likelihood of skipping to the next song.
• First 10 seconds: 28.97 percent
• First 30 seconds: 35.05 percent
• Before song finishes: 48.6 percent

Lamere's numbers are an eye-opening reminder of how important it is to seize the attention of your audeince in the first few moments. Especially, the stats suggest, the younger members of your audience: "Young teenagers have the highest skipping rate," writes Lamere. "Well above 50 percent, but as the listener gets older their skipping rate drops rather dramatically, to reach the skipping nadir of about 35 percent."  

In other words, even ostensibly patient older listeners--you know, those who remember when you had to stand up and flip the vinyl record--skip more than one out of three songs. 

While Lamere's study is new, the business takeaway is something that meetings experts have been touting for years. For example, Patrick Lencioni, author of Death By Meeting, believes it's vital to hook listeners within the first 10 minutes: 

The key to making meetings more engaging--and less boring--lies in identifying and nurturing the natural level of conflict that should exist. One of the best places to learn how to do this is Hollywood. Directors and screenwriters learned long ago that movies need conflict to hold the interests of their audiences. Viewers need to believe that there are high stakes on the line, and they need to feel the tension that the characters feel. What is more, they realized if they didn't nurture that conflict--or drama--in the first 10 minutes of a movie, audiences would lose interest and disengage. Leaders of meetings need to do the same by putting the right issues--often the most controversial ones--on the table at the beginning of their meetings.

Writing a hooky tune or a Hollywood script is one thing. In actual meetings, what can leaders do to make sure the attendees are engaged and invested in the subject from the outset? One method is to ask questions that bring latent conflicts to the surface. "When people seem to be holding back their opinions, the leader must draw out feedback and put all issues on the table to be discussed," is what Jeff Gibson, Lencioni's colleage at The Table Group, once told me. 

The key: Don't think of conflict as a negative. Think of it as the natural by-product of an intelligent group discussing a complex topic.

As for presentations, it's no secret: Hooking the audience in the first 30 seconds is vital. If you're presenting to executives or investors, well, you know what they're usually looking for: bulletpoints and takeaways, up front. "Say you're given 30 minutes to present. When creating your intro, pretend your whole slot got cut to 5 minutes," advises presentations expert Nancy Duarte on the Harvard Business Review blog. "This will force you to lead with all the information your audience really cares about--high-level findings, conclusions, recommendations, a call to action. State those points clearly and succinctly right at the start, and then move on to supporting data, subtleties, and material that's peripherally relevant."

Of course, it's hardly a news flash that hooking listeners (or readers or viewers) at the outset is important. But there's a reason that experts like Lencioni and Duarte are in business: Sometimes, even talented executives need to be reminded about the fundamentals of one-to-many communication. On the subject of reminders, Lencioni is fond of quoting the legendary English author and critic Samuel Johnson (1709-1784). Johnson famously said: "People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed."

Keep that in mind, the next time someone on your team forgets an obvious step. And remember: Make it catchy, and make it fast, the next time you lead a meeting or give a talk."

SoundExchange Moves To Monthly Payments

Are you getting paid on streaming royalties? Find out more on SoundExchange

View a pdf on how SoundExchange works

"Let’s face it. No one likes to wait. Recognizing that sooner really is better, SoundExchange is pleased to announce it will begin offering monthly royalty payments to those artist and labels that are signed up to receive electronic payments beginning this month. Currently, the organization distributes royalties quarterly.

Initially, monthly royalty payments will be sent to those that are signed up to receive electronic payments, and have royalties due of at least $250. Artists and labels that do not meet this minimum threshold will continue to be paid on a regular, quarterly schedule under our existing guidelines. After the initial roll out period, SoundExchange will re-evaluate eligibility qualifications for our monthly payment program.

“While SoundExchange was already a market-leader with quarterly distributions, moving to monthly payments takes our service to the next level,” said SoundExchange President and CEO Michael Huppe. “By making performance royalties available sooner, we are making it easier for recording artists and record labels to focus on creating the music we all enjoy.”

SoundExchange is the first sound recording rights organization in the world to offer monthly distributions. Most sound recording performance organizations in other countries pay only annually.

Have questions? We are happy to provide you with any information regarding this new change. Please contact SoundExchange at accounts@SoundExchange.com or speak to a SoundExchange Representative at 1-800-961-2091."

- See more at: http://www.soundexchange.com/sooner-is-better-soundexchange-moves-to-monthly-payment-schedule/#sthash.J60EikvJ.dpuf

SoundExchange now is offering monthly payouts on digital royalties

Beats Music Plans To Crush Spotify Through Algorithms

Beats' Music aims to crush all other streaming music providers by using a complex and unique algorithm to find music specifically catered to your listening tastes

Read more on Wired

"Beats Music won’t be joining the most-tracks arms race when it launches Tuesday. Instead, the new subscription service brought to you by Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre will win converts through a potent mix of smarter algorithms and human curation. From the moment you first open the app, every interaction is recorded and used to determine the next album, playlist, and track to serve up. The result is more like a personalized mixtape than an online jukebox.

“No one was doing a music service; everyone was building a music server,” Beats Music chief executive Ian Rogers told WIRED. While services like Spotify, Rdio, and Rhapsody have some social discovery tools built in, they all launched similar products in an era when the rule was he with the most tracks wins. As a result, those companies got caught in a race to be the biggest. As they concentrated on the enormity of their music catalogs, their discovery mechanisms lagged. For instance, Rdio’s “Heavy Rotation” discovery option presents you with music your friends currently are enjoying, but it’s not smart enough to tell you to listen to David Bowie’s Hunky Dory because you love Lou Reed’s Transformer.

That’s where Beats Music is different. The service is betting on smarts instead of sheer depth. While it will have enough songs to compete — anybody entering the game at this point has to — with a library millions of tracks deep, it hopes its unique approach to music discovery tools will give it an edge.

As soon as you begin using the streaming service, Beats starts logging your “music DNA.” This serves as a personal profile used to determine which albums and tracks would be most relevant to you. To start generating your DNA, the service asks rudimentary questions, like which bands and genres you love.

But it takes other things into account. Your age is especially important to Beats Music. Tell it when you were born, and it figures out when you were in high school. The music of your youth — the stuff that was popular when you first got a Walkman or an iPod, the band that made it big when you got your driver’s license, the record that was all over MTV just before your freshman year of college — is the music with the strongest memories for you. It’s a fixed point in time that’s the most culturally and musically relevant to you. And it’s being crunched by the company’s algorithm.

Your sex matters, too; women and men usually have different tastes. Also important to Beats: the volume at which you listen to music. Which artists do you crank up? Who do you play quietly? It even tracks the music you send to Airplay speakers. The songs you use to fill your home are given a different mathematical weight than the songs you use to pass time at work.

But the system doesn’t solely rely on algorithms. It’s also backstopped by a small army of curators and behavioral scientists. This human element is there to help present music that doesn’t simply sound like the music you might enjoy, but also feels like it. Just because you listen to Mumford & Sons doesn’t mean you’d want to listen to a bunch of songs featuring banjos, for instance. You’d probably be more at home listening to Arcade Fire than Earl Scruggs. Humans can help make that determination. Algorithms can’t.

At launch, the app takes all this information and presents a personalized “Just for You” list of albums and playlists. The Influencers’ picks are especially fun. My love for Depeche Mode (especially Violator) was picked up by the service without my direct input. The list is filled with David Bowie, T-Rex, Joy Division, The Ronettes, The Beach Boys, and others. While listening, the connection is suddenly apparent.

All this personalization and curation is the result of input from music producer Jimmy Iovine, a longtime proponent of subscription services, and Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, who is the company’s chief creative officer. Reznor was key in fine-tuning the curation and personalization aspects, but both he and Iovine wanted an experience that resonates with listeners and artists. That includes fixing how the artists’ pages are presented.

When you discover a new band, it can be difficult to determine which of their albums you might enjoy. The app solves this by presenting the essential albums for any given artist. Search the Beach Boys, and you’re shown Pet Sounds and The Smile Sessions, not that horrible Still Cruisin’ album from the late-’80s. Plus, actual album release dates are used instead of the date they were added to the streaming service. This is great when you want to hear 1970s Bowie instead of 1980s Bowie. Yes, there is a difference.

Beats Music won’t have a free tier. It’ll cost $10 a month, with a special for AT&T customers of $15 a month that includes five family members and 10 devices. This is an anomaly in a field where almost every service offers a free way in for listeners. But then, Iovine and Dre were instrumental in convincing people we didn’t need the lousy earbuds that ship with smartphones and music players.

“We know people will pay for something where there is value,” said Rogers. “Enough people pay for headphones, it’s an exciting business. We think we can do the same thing here.”"

Stevie Tombstone Releases Kevlar Heart

Recorded in the late 90’s, this version of Kevlar Heart was lost during Stevie’s travels. It features appearances by some of Americana’s founding fathers: Jeff Johnson of Jason and the Scorchers and Ken Coomer from Uncle Tupelo and Wilco fame. The trio produced this cut in a series of pre-production sessions in Nashville, TN.

For these particular sessions Stevie took a backseat on the guitar work as he wanted a new sound. Charlie Starr from Blackberry Smoke put the icing on the cake with some tasty guitar tracks along with backing vocals by NYC songstress Liz Tormez. This is a much darker, moodier and folkier version than the remake released on 730 a.m in 2004. It's by far the best take on a man with an unbreakable heart refusing to bow to defeat in love.

Will Twitter #Music Be The New Source Of Discovery?

In the coming weeks the new twitter #music is going to ignite quite a few things. Will it reinvigorate a music industry that is constantly morphing, not hardly. What it will do though is allow for a constant searching of new music and testing the waters on bands that are fresh to the ears. That indeed is a great option. 

A colleague once said over lunch one day, that there aren't any new great bands. It is exactly the inverse. There is so much great music and everyone now has an equal voice when it comes to leveraging social media. The difficulty is that it is just a bit harder to find the music you want to enjoy with the amount of viable options. Twitter will now be a great source for promoting your music so get ta steppin'. The world is waiting for the next great band to be heard.

Read the post on Wired.com

Our selection of music that was suggested via twitter #music

"At first glance, Twitter’s entry into the music business today may be a bit of a head-scratcher. The service had barely launched before people were questioning why Twitter would even want its own music app. But really, it’s simple: Twitter Music is all about getting you to spend more quality time with Twitter. It’s about everybody’s favorite buzzword: engagement.
The app itself works by showing you what’s popular on Twitter, what new artists are emerging, the things people you follow are listening to, and suggestions based on your activity. It also lets you play tracks themselves right in the app–full tracks if you have a Rdio or Spotify account, or 30 second iTunes previews if you don’t. The bottom line of all this is that it’s a place for you to go and find new artists and then (and here’s the part that matters for Twitter) follow and promote them.

Much of the logic behind Twitter Music is based on what the company has learned about the things people already do there, according to an industry source familiar with the launch. People love to follow celebrities on Twitter, and especially musicians. The company notes explicitly in its blog post announcing Twitter Music, “Many of the most-followed accounts on Twitter are musicians, and half of all users follow at least one musician.” (In fact, almost all of the top ten most-followed users are musicians.) Another behavior the company has picked up on is that people often talk to each other about music. They tweet about songs they like, they link to artists, they retweet the things their favorite pop stars say. Twitter wanted to do something to enhance that experience. It thinks Twitter Music will do that–for users, artists, and ultimately the company itself.

It’s a smart play to get more musicians to become more active on Twitter. Let’s say you are Lady Gaga. When your new single drops, you can now use Twitter Music to send it out to every one of your 36 million followers–and they can play it without even leaving Twitter, thanks to Twitter Cards. Her followers can retweet that, effectively amplifying your 36 million strong following by an order of magnitude. Because website can embed tweets, complete with media, news organization and bloggers can take the original Tweet and drop it in a story so people can play the track all across the Web. And if enough people Tweet it, that song hits the Popular tracks page. Which means even more people hear it. It’s an upward spiral You can also imagine what happens to the obscure artist if a Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber tweets one of their new tracks. It’s got amazing viral possibilities that are great for artists, which means they’re more likely to be active on Twitter. And as it turns out, musicians are one of Twitter’s more vital assets.

You can see some evidence of that in the new account sign up process. For years, one of the company’s biggest problems was the “now what” dilemma people faced after creating an account. It meant people signed up, and then abandoned. To keep you coming back it has to get you connected with people you find interesting. It turns out we tend to find musicians pretty interesting. So one way Twitter found to lick that “now what” problem is to hook you up with a friendly neighborhood rock star when you create an account. Today when someone signs up for Twitter, after filling out a profile, it prompts them to follow five suggested users, and those suggestions tend to overwhelmingly be musicians. When Wired created a new account to test the user suggestions, we were hit again and again with suggestions for Usher, Pink, Demy Lovato, Justin Timberlake, Justin Bieber, and Victoria Justice. (I had to look that last one up.)

You also can bet that it’s going to take what it learns from Twitter Music to improve existing users’ who to follow suggestions. Feed it just a little preference data, and Twitter’s going to be able to extrapolate from that and make other relevant suggestions based on the things everyone else is feeding it.

And finally, there’s potential for this to just plain work as a way to help you find new music. It’s already abundantly clear how important social is to music discovery. The social aspects of Rdio and Spotify are some of their strongest features. Facebook has become, by way of those two services, something akin to a pop chart of your friends favorite songs. Likewise, Ping’s poor social implementation explains why it never went anywhere.

Yet if you look at your friends’ streams on Rdio or Spotify or Facebook, what you see is more or less a firehose of tracks. You get the bad with the good, the stuff they’re just listening to in the background, the stuff they play for their kids to keep them happy in the back of the van, the stuff they may listen to once and decide they don’t like. Because Twitter Music looks at the things people are actively Tweeting about, it’s a pretty safe assumption that this is music they are actively excited about. Which in turn gets other people to go check it out and, just maybe, follow a new artist.

Music discovery lets Twitter be in the music industry without competing with the music industry. It lets it continue to be a media company that doesn’t actually make media. It’s becoming increasingly obvious with everything Twitter does that it wants to be the place where you interact with media. It already is our second screen. It’s where you talk about the shows you watch with hashtags. You hear tracks from your favorite artists. You see preview clips of TV shows, and even the lead paragraph of stories you may want to read. Twitter is the second screen wonderland where media goes to explode–or at least that’s the idea. And Twitter Music is another cog in that machine. Sure, it’s insane, but it’s insane in the best possible way.

All of which makes Twitter Music smart on a number of levels. It encourages musicians to get on board. It has tools to drive people to be more active and engaged. It gives it yet more power as the go-to second screen provider. It has potential to be a killer a new music discovery tool. And, honestly, it’s also just pretty fun."