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.
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.
There are now many ways to get your music on to the iTunes and Amazon MP3 shops. If you’re signed to a label they do the dirty work for you. As an independent artist you can sign your catalog to one of many aggregator services such The Orchard for example. They take a cut and put your tunes in many places for sale including ring-tone sites. Tunecore has been a popular DIY option and it’s the one I have been using for my own albums here in the USA (I have a separate record deal in Europe with Out of Line Music, outofline.de). Because I sell a decent amount on iTunes I easily make back the upfront fees Tunecore charges to get my tunes online.
However, I have a older few releases on my record label that I’m not sure would generate much income. So up until now I haven’t posted them using services that had upfront or maintenance fee’s attached to them in fear I wouldn’t make the cash back. I do sell the old releases on my own website using the Easybe store and I also have them online with my Beatport and Junodownload deals. I’ve been on the look out for a fair service to get the rest of the old catalog onto iTunes. I was pleased to recently discover Routenote. Routenote’s service is dead simple to understand. You upload your music to them and they take 10% of any music you sell after you sell it. They offer online stats and payments come via PayPal. Routenote is non-exclusive.
So is Routenote the best route for you to take? It’s not always a clear cut answer. For some further insight look at this chart and article on the Routenote blog: Digital Music Distributors Compared
This entry was written by , posted on March 5, 2009 at 7:17 am, filed under business and tagged Amazon, business, distribution, iTunes, Routenote, Tunecore. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
There’s a new feature in iTunes called “Pass” and it’s being launched with one of my favorite bands Depeche Mode. Basically, you pay some cash in advance and are delivered new songs, remixes and videos in run up to the new album release which at release time you get the album too. I have to be honest that if I saw this concept and I didn’t like the band I would have immediately thought it was a lame idea. However, because it’s Depeche Mode and their first single “Wrong” is great my finger is hovering over the Buy Pass button. It seems someone at iTunes knows what they are doing.
A funny side note to this story is the Engadget coverage of Pass (link). They don’t like Pass and the author Joseph L. Flatley certainly doesn’t like Depeche Mode:
“Of course, what we’d really like to see is this sort of a deal for a band that didn’t peak twenty years ago. In the meantime, we’ll be catching up with Depeche Mode the way nature intended — during the weekly spin of Personal Jesus at 80’s Night.” – Joseph L. Flatley, Engadget
I’m happy to report that in the post’s comments section DM fans tell Mr. Flatley that he’s clueless. I agree.
Depeche Mode, Sounds of the Universe: iTunes Pass
This entry was written by , posted on February 24, 2009 at 12:14 pm, filed under apple and tagged apple, Depeche Mode, iTunes. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
There’s only one thing I want more than having my music collection “in the cloud” and that’s for Apple to allow us to Tag songs in iTunes. Why are we stuck choosing just one Genre? If I have a DJ Set I want to tag it “DJ Set” “techno” “gym” “Dave Clarke“. As of now all I can do is pick Genre -> Electronic Music.
This post is actually a question to all of you guys… am I missing something? Is there a way you are labeling your iTunes stuff that would help me? I do realize that if I have all the meta data filled out that I can find what I am looking for but my library is so large I forget things are there entirely. So if I don’t know I’m looking for Dave Clarke but I want a nice mix to play at the gym with Tags at least it would pop up.
Any ideas?
This entry was written by , posted on November 20, 2008 at 3:58 am, filed under apple and tagged Dave Clarke, genre, iTunes, Tags. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I have a zillion songs on my studio’s Apple Mac Pro. When I am at home or on the road I can’t listen to those songs. In the past there were services such as My.MP3.com that would let you put all your music in the cloud. However, they never went through the hoola hoops to get past the RIAA and were shut down. Today as I woke up every tech site I read was talking about Lala. Lala, with the blessing from the RIAA lets users have their entire music catalog in cloud. They are also a social network, music store, an iPhone app (yes you can listen to your catalog anywhere), and lastly a free music streaming service ala Last.fm.
“What’s impressive about Lala isn’t just the number of things it does, but how well it does them. I’ve been using it for a while, and it works exceptionally well. The browser-based interface for listening to your music mimics iTunes, and it’s easy to forget it’s Web-based: music starts with little or no delay, and keeps playing even if you browse around Lala or bop over to another browser tab or window.” – technologizer.com
The music you have currently sitting on your hard drive becomes available on Lala and in the cloud two ways. First, if Lala can recognize a song and Lala has it in it’s catalog it will “unlock it” for you without you having to upload your exact file. If on the other hand you have some obscure releases Lala doesn’t know about you will have to go through the upload process.
There is no advertising on the site and they offer two ways to purchase music. You can buy songs for about .79 beating even Amazon MP3 or you can pay .10 and get the permanent streaming right to the song. One thing I have to mention is so far Lala is US only.
So it looks good to me, my only worry is if I spend all my time getting my music on the service and they go out of business my time would be wasted. I also have to consider If Apple rolls their own type of iTunes in the cloud I would want to be with them for the easy integration.
Here’s a few articles that explain out the new Lala:
TechCrunch: Lala May Have Just Built The Next Revolution In Digital Music
Mashable: Lala’s New Business Model May Be Good, But I Don’t Like It
Cnet: New Lala.com may be (too) ahead of its time
Technologizer: Lala’s Spectacular New Music Service
Go take a look and tell me what you think: www.lala.com
This entry was written by , posted on October 21, 2008 at 4:45 am, filed under business, music and tagged iTunes, Lala. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
The all things strange and weird Boing Boing blog had an interesting article yesterday talking about Audiophile recordings. SACD, DVD-A, and 5:1 surround re-releases could all be going the way of the Dodo bird. Heck even CDs are on their way out. Are we going to be left with only one option? The craptastic MP3?
I’ve personally never heard an SACD (Super Audio Compact Disc) or DVD-A but I do know my old vinyl collection sounds superior to my MP3s. Surely we can’t let all our high quality options disappear. I always assumed that when broadband adoption and hard drive space became readily available we would see online music retailers offer lossless formats. So far that hasn’t happened.
“Super Audio CD (SACD) is a read-only optical audio disc format that can provide higher fidelity digital audio reproduction than the Red Book audio CD. Introduced in 1999, it was developed by Sony and Philips Electronics, the same companies that created the Compact Disc. SACD is in a format war with DVD-Audio, but neither format has managed to replace regular audio CDs.” – Wikipedia.org
Richard Metzger over at Boing Boing thinks we should run out and start collecting SACD and DVD-A’s. Personally I don’t think we should encourage more plastic production. We should demand higher quality digital downloads. There are only a few options available today. MusicGiants.com offers “High Definition Music Collections”.
“MusicGiants, the leader in high definition entertainment, aims to deliver the highest quality entertainment experience possible. Still the only digital music service licensed in HD from all of the major music labels…” – MusicGiants.com
We really need iTunes and Amazon to get on board otherwise large portions of the human’s music canon will end up only available in MP3 format. What other online shops sell high quality music downloads?
Check out the Boing Boing article: Audiophile Releases… Get ‘Em While You Can
This entry was written by , posted on October 8, 2008 at 12:40 am, filed under music and tagged Amazon MP3, Audiophile, Boing Boing, compact disc, DVD-A, iTunes, MusicGiants, Richard Metzger, SACD. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Did you know that by default iTunes is mucking up the sound of your recordings? I’m not sure with what version this started with but iTunes when first installed has its Sound Enhancer turned on. This is fine for easy listening but if you don’t know it exists it can wreak havoc on you mind when you play your own recordings.
I first noticed this when I was mastering my last album. I was listening carefully to a song called The World Will Know Us which had some alternating panned tom fills. In my DAW the toms where perfectly tickling each ear as they bounced from left to right. Later I put all my mastered songs into iTunes and was playing with the order of the songs to see how the album should be best arranged. When The World Will Know Us came on something was very wrong because the panning was strange. The toms seemed pushed to the center right ear only. I rerendered and remastering the song and again the same thing. It was pure luck I discovered that the iTunes Sound Enhancer was on and it was the culprit causing the phenomena. One good fact is iTunes remembers your settings each time you upgrade to a newer version.
“Sound enhancer is absolutely the STUPIDEST thing… App-hole also have it set to ON by default.. I have to send the following disclaimer to all my clients who listen to mixes on iTunes “Please be aware that iTunes had a setting in the preferences, under the “Audio” tab which engages something they like to call “Sound Enhancer”. This setting will increase the L-R component of the stereo signal and supress the L+R component. What does that mean? It means that anything which is only on the left, only on the right or has significantly different information in the left and right channel will be made louder (cymbals, percussion, BGVs, guitars, ambiences) and anything which is identical in the left and right channels (therefore “mono”, Kick Snare, Bass, lead vocal, etc…) will be much quieter. Please be sure that the “sound Enhancer” is OFF before you call to complain that you cannot hear the lead vocal in the chorus, etc…” Apple are ****ing idiots about pro audio…” zmix, Gearslutz.com
Have you noticed this yourself?
This entry was written by , posted on September 19, 2008 at 8:38 am, filed under apple and tagged iTunes, Sound Enhancer, The World Will Know Us. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I’m curious if you keep and maintain public profiles for your music on social networks other than MySpace. Last.fm? Imeem? Bebo, Fairlitzer? What about Pandora or The Hype Machine? Do you upload your full songs so services can stream them without compensation? Is it worth the promotion to you?
I bring it up because yesterday I got pretty frustrated using the new Last.fm. Once accepted as a label you get access to a part of the site called the Music Manager. You can upload and manage your tracks there. After I uploaded a new release I added in the album cover. The album art showed up in the Music Manager. However, it never show up in the general public area on Last.fm. I tried about 10 times, re-uploading the same album cover. Eventually I hit the help forums. Sure enough this is a known problem. How could image uploading be broken for more than two weeks? How could they not disable the uploader or put a note on the page so I didn’t waste forty minutes on this crap?
Another other thing I really don’t like about Last.fm is that you don’t have any comment control on your own artist pages. People can log on and rail you and it’s there forever. They could at least implement a comment voting system so nasty comments get greyed out using Ajax or something.
What finally ended my session yesterday on Last.fm was the events section. I wanted to add in a few upcoming live shows I have. I head to: last.fm/music/The+Horrorist/+events because that’s where the shows for The Horrorist are listed. I search for a button that says “Add Event”. Nothing! Nada! After twenty minutes of searching I find the only place to add a new event is if I go to last.fm/events. How frustrating.
Maintaining a your image and uploading fresh content on every site is impossible. Which sites deserve attention? I will always keep my own website on my own server but clearly the hearts, minds and ears are in lots of places. Do you simply cover the sites which have the most users? No matter how lame they are?
If you go to Alexa.com you can enter in the a few sites and see a comparison of how many users each site has over a time period (thanks Vergel for the tip). You maybe surprised that for example Imeem has so many users. MySpace still trumps them all by far though.
As more sites start to pay royalties for streaming and incorparate there own download stores the lines between iTunes, Beatport, Amazon and the social network sites will become blurred.
Is your head starting to hurt too?
This entry was written by , posted on July 24, 2008 at 1:38 am, filed under business, promotion and tagged Amazon, Beatport, fairlitzer, hype machine, imeem, iTunes, last.fm, MySpace, pandora, social network. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
A guy named Andrew from the band Creaky Boards is making a claim that Coldplay ripped off his song. The song was then used in an iTunes commercial. This video has subtitles that explains the controversy.
So what do you think?
This entry was written by , posted on June 18, 2008 at 12:05 pm, filed under Uncategorized, music, political and tagged Coldplay, commerical, Creaky Boards, iTunes. 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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