Ever wonder how popular a band or artist really is? Head over to http://google.com/insights/search/ and find out. Today I have three popularity wars set up (click to enlarge screenshots). First I go old school EBM (of course) and throw VNV Nation into the mix with Nitzer Ebb, Front 242 and Skinny Puppy. Surprisingly Nitzer Ebb looses big time. Next up on stage is MGMT vs Willie Nelson vs The Prodigy. The surprise to me here is that the Prodigy manages to stay on the chart at all. The final contest I go for some big bands: NIN vs Depeche Mode vs Kraftwerk. I knew DM would win but if you look carefully there were a few moments in time NIN over took them.
Of course popularity doesn’t always equal great tunes but this is a fun way to see who’s “the biggest”. Do you think any of these results are surprising?
Related post: Using Google Trends to compare sequencers.
This entry was written by , posted on July 31, 2009 at 7:32 am, filed under business, music and tagged data, Depeche Mode, Front 242, Kraftwerk, music sales, NIN, Nitzer Ebb, Skinny Puppy, The Prodigy, trends, VNV Nation, Willie Nelson. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Let me start this post by stating I really like the band Fischerspooner. Their album titled “#1” (iTunes link) was not only brilliant but it arrived on the scene at the exact right time. The lyrics were smart and the production was wicked creative. All that said it was clear to everyone I knew that this was going to be a one album band. I know they have released other material but the concensus of my friends was, “Once they live in the hyped zone a bit they won’t be able to do anything else all that worthwhile music wise.”. You know how it goes right? The followup album is always the most difficult to write. Add drugs and sex into the deal (the other ingredients to Rock n Roll) who has time to sit in the studio?
“Do you know them? They were a gay performance band from New York and they were the hottest thing of the time and a bidding war erupted around them, which was taken to ridiculous levels by an East Coast Jewish American lawyer…” – James Palumbo
What amazes me is that Ministry of Sound’s cofounder James Palumbo was so blind. Apparently they decided to plunk down 2 million to get the exclusive on Fischerspooner. My friend, UK music journalist Jonty Skrufff (skrufff.com) has a juicy interview with Palumbo well worth reading just for the laugh. Check it out: click here
Is that quote above by James a bit offensive? My favorite FS song? Their Wire cover of The 15th: iTunes
photo credit: José Goulão
This entry was written by , posted on July 22, 2009 at 4:35 am, filed under business, political and tagged Fischerspooner, Ministry of Sound, Skrufff. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
There is a new web service aimed at Band management called BandCentral. It’s an online collaboration hub where a group can manage a calendar, files, gigs, promotion, a message board, social media status updates, finances and a to do list. It’s a British service so they keep using the word “mate” and the price is in pounds: £4.99 a month (about $7 USD).
I like the fact they are launching with a business model. We are going to see web services costing money now for sure. I would like to make sure this company is going to be around a while before I put all my time, money and energy into it though. Keep in mind most bands don’t even make $7 a year!
“In a nutshell, BandCentral is an online band manager with all the tools you and your band mates need to manage your band. BandCentral gives you your very own online ‘Band HUB’, which enables you to manage everything associated with a hard working band (gigs, promotion, files and finances etc..) all in one instantly accessible place.” – bandcentral.com
BandCentral Introduction from Band Central on Vimeo.
My initial impression is this is kind of like Basecamp or Salesforce for bands. I also puked in my mouth a little because it’s all a bit too sterile for musicians you know? I mean should real rock stars be using a Customer Relationship Manager?
For more info: www.bandcentral.com
via Mashable
This entry was written by , posted on July 15, 2009 at 5:02 am, filed under business and tagged BandCentral, Basecamp, business, Salesforce. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Here’s a choice I am running into that I need help making a decision for. When you post your commercial, for sale music online do you allow the full song to stream or only allow a 30 second preview? The large online music retailers such as iTunes and Amazon only allow 30 second previews. Do they know something about buying behavior? Does allowing just a short clip tantalize a listener so he wants to hear the rest of the song and clicks buy? Could it be iTunes and Amazon believe people will “rip” or record a full song stream even if just 128k quality?
Some websites like Last.fm give you the choice. I had my music set for 30 sec play and I received the following comment:
“30 second clips? can we get anymore of a rip off thats like showing half of the picture you painted, but if you want to hear the rest youll have to buy it if people like you enough, they will buy your music stop being such a rip off” – mnmcandiez
After a little thought I switched my settings to full song play. Is that the right decision? I think everyone knows it’s easy to record any sound your computer makes. I also know my publisher Strengholt music group doesn’t approve. There are some sites such as Bandcamp who rely on people buying music in order for them to survive yet they only allow full streaming songs.
So what do you do? What are the pros and cons here?
Loading ...photo credit: mag3737
This entry was written by , posted on July 3, 2009 at 6:06 am, filed under business and tagged 30 seconds, Amazon, Bandcamp, business, iTunes, last.fm, preview, promotion. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
As musicians we all spend time checking out music tech blogs, participating in pro-audio forums and listening to tunes on various social music sites. We can all justify the time we spend on such sites as learning (and it really is!). I’ve found a new time waster: Craigsphone (iTunes link). I know the iPhone app has been around for a while. I know you could do the same searching over at Craigslist. However, I had not searched for local synths for sale on my iPhone until today. There’s something to be said for laying in the backyard on a chaise lounge chair and finger flicking through used goodies with knobs. There’s some great stuff you can find such as “3 Non-Working ADATS”.
Ever find a killer deal on Craigslist?
This entry was written by , posted on June 28, 2009 at 4:20 pm, filed under business, synthesizer and tagged Craigslist, Craigsphone, iPhone, shopping. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Here’s an interesting tip I don’t recommend actually trying: Use iTunes and Tunecore to launder money! Apparently the Times Online (UK) says that’s exactly what happened using stolen credit cards.
“The Metropolitan Police and the FBI have caught an international criminal gang said to have made tens of thousands of pounds by buying their own records from Apple iTunes and Amazon with stolen credit cards. The gang are alleged to have created several songs that they provided to an online American company (Tunecore), which uploaded them to be sold on the two internet sites. It is believed that over four months from September last year the gang used 1,500 stolen or cloned British and American credit cards to buy songs worth $750,000 (£469,000). Amazon and iTunes, which were unaware of the fraud, paid $300,000 in royalties. Six men and three women were arrested yesterday by 60 officers at addresses in London, Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Kent. A man in his forties, was arrested later… It is believed that one of the gang is a DJ and that he created the songs that were then bought…” – timesonline.co.uk
This seems like a stupid crime because of the trail it leaves. I wonder if they had to actually download all the songs they bought. I guess this is one way to get onto the charts!
photo credit: maury.mccown
This entry was written by , posted on June 12, 2009 at 10:16 am, filed under apple, business, political and tagged apple, crime, iTunes, Tunecore. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I’ve always complained to my Beatport rep that I really want to be able to customize the embedable player to fit my label’s website. I mean lime green and dark blue isn’t exacly what you would call a neutral color scheme. I still have not recieved my wish however today they released some nice looking banner generators.
Introducing the Beatport Banner Generator
Beatport has created a new tool to provide graphic assistance for the promotion of your new music. The dynamic banners created by the generator will update automatically with links to your current releases. Here’s the URL and easy instructions:
Step 1. Pick whether you’d like to promote releases by Label or by Artist
Step 2. Choose one of four color schemes
Step 3. Choose from the eleven different banner sizes and get the code to embed to your website, Myspace, Facebook, email signature, or online newsletters.
You don’t have to be a Beatport label partner to access the generator so if you want to help your favorite artist out grab a banner and promote away.
This entry was written by , posted on June 7, 2009 at 6:35 am, filed under business, promotion. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I’ve been considering the ways to create an iPhone app for my own music as The Horrorist. iLike is has a limited time offer which will take all your content from your iLike artist page, turn it into an app and get it onto the iTunes app store. They charge a one time fee of $99 and after that they split the profits with you. The one time fee is a limited offer until next week. I can’t find anywhere what happens pricewise after that. “I like” the idea and may jump on it this weekend.
We just launched our turnkey service so you can create and distribute your own iPhone app. It’s simple to customize your app and program it with content using the iLike Artist Dashboard. Learn more by watching the video overview. Get started – customize and launch your app now. – iLike.com
What do you think? Is this a deal worth going for? Am I missing a better offer from a competitor? Is this an idea who’s time as past?
Related post: The Death Cab for Cutie iPhone application
This entry was written by , posted on May 27, 2009 at 4:00 am, filed under apple, business, iPhone, promotion and tagged apple, iLike, iPhone, The Horrorist. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
SoundCloud has added volume control, a new info panel showing track stats, a download and buy panel, a share panel with support for direct sharing to your favorite social network, a handy switch to toggle comments on/off for faster navigation and threaded comments to it’s already sleek Player Widget.
To be honest I wish I didn’t love SoundCloud so much because I hate the idea of paying more than $50 a year on a web service. I also fear that if I upload 1000s of songs over the next five years and then SoundCloud goes out of business I’d feel majorly screwed. Imagine I use the above Player Widget in all my blog posts and then SoundCloud disappears. I know this is an issue with all cloud computing but I feel a bit more confident Google (and even Yahoo/Flickr) will be here in the long term or if they do cancel a service there will be good migration options. Now all that said, SoundCloud as a site is fantastic. In fact, it’s pretty much everything I want in a music storage and share online service. The guys in Berlin should really be congratulated for doing such a beautiful job.
I’m on SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/thingstocome
Related post: SoundCloud is a nice looking way to share music.
This entry was written by , posted on May 16, 2009 at 7:51 am, filed under business, music, promotion and tagged SoundCloud. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I’m a list maker. As far back as I can remember I was writing out lists on paper. What to do today. What do to next week. Things I meant to do last week but want to definitely get to this year. Things I need to do that have to do with the music business. Things I need to do that have to do with home life. You get the idea. Naturally computers make list making and reminders even more “enjoyable”. However, I’ve been torn as to which application to use.
My first stab at a computerized to do list was in a Filemaker database I created. After that got boring I just had a to do list on a TextEdit document. Then I had that list TextEdit document inside a iDisk (mobileMe) folder so it would be available on all my computers. When online web apps took over I tried Remember the Milk and Todoist. I settled on Todoist for about a year. Lately, with my new job and Bronx renovations I realized I am managing a ton more projects and need another layer of help. This weekend I tried out The Hit List and Things. I really like Things a lot and think it maybe my next choice. The iPhone app for Things also looks pretty sweet. Although I’m already syncing a bunch of stuff (mobileMe, dropbox, Spanning Sync) and I think it’s slowing my machine down (duh!). I really think web apps are the future though. Google’s new Task’s look interesting. Maybe I should make a musical GTD inbox? I could sing all my to do lists! Surely I would remember them that way.
So by now maybe you get my point? Yes I need to choose a tool and they are useful but it’s all a bit ridiculous. That said, what’s your favorite choice for remembering all the things you have to do?
If you want to know a little more about the art of “Getting Things Done” or GTD check out David Allen: click here
photo credit: eston
This entry was written by , posted on May 11, 2009 at 4:56 am, filed under business and tagged David Allen, dropbox, Filemaker, GTD, Remember the Milk, Spanning Sync, The Hit List, Things, Todoist. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
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