hypebot

Drake Redefines D.I.Y. Success With 300K iTunes Downloads In Just Two Weeks

This just in from digital distributor TuneCore:

According to the iTunes Store's trending data, Hip hop artist Drake has logged the two highest selling weeks ever for a DIY artist, totaling almost 300,000 song downloads in only two weeks fueled by the single "Best I Ever Had".

Lime Wire Adds CD Baby's 240K Indie Artists

  

Lime Wire is adding CD Baby's catalog of 240,000 independent artists to its digital the LimeWire Store. The CD Baby catalog includes topsellers from Regina Spektor, Gary Jules, Joe Purdy, Ingrid Michaelson, Melissa Ferrick, Charlotte Martin, Colin Hay and Stan Ridgway, and this deal brings the total number of licensed tracks on Lime Wire to 3.5 million.  

Pandora Forces $29.95 Payments From Indie Bands

(UPDATED) Until recently, Pandora accepted music from indie artists at no cost in almost any form including home burned CD-R's. But now, in part because of a deal to display album cover art via Amazon's servers,  submissions must be available as a physical CD for sale on Amazon and include cover art and a UPC code to even be considered for airplay.

Compliance with the new rules will cost artists in several ways. According to its FAQ page, to get play on Pandora you now need:

• a CD of your music
• a unique UPC code for that CD
• your CD to be available through Amazon (must be a physical CD, not just MP3s for download)
• the legal rights to your music
• MP3 files for two of the songs from your CD
• free Pandora account, based on a valid email address, which can be associated with your music

In addition to art and packaging costs, Pandora explains that to comply with the new "available through Amazon" rule, indie artists should join the Amazon Advantage Program. Membership costs $29.95 each year plus Amazon takes 55% of the list price of every CD sold.

Established artists and labels already comply with Pandora's new rules. But for an indie artist trying to win new fans with a little help from Pandora and to keep his hard earned cash by selling direct, the new threshold may shut off an important avenue for exposure.

More:

• Pandora 's Founder Tim Westergren Responds
• POLL: What Do You Think Of The New Pandora Requirements For Indie Bands?
• Read one Hypebot reader's open letter to Pandora in the Comments section below.

VOTE: What Do You Think Of The New Pandora Requirements For Indie Bands?

Online Surveys & Market Research

More: Pandora Forces $29.95 Payments From Indie Bands

Video Interview: Amanda Palmer On Making $19K In 10 Hours On Twitter

Amanda Palmer: Friday Night Freaks.

Just in case you missed the story of Amanda Palmer earning $19K in 10 hours via Twitter, here she explains how it all came together. You can also read more here.

Success Begins In The Niche

niche

a specialized market;  a place, employment, status, or activity for which a person or thing is best fitted;   a habitat supplying the factors necessary for the existence of an organism or species

In the new music industry, success begins in the niche.  Start where you are wanted. Use that base to build a bigger and broader audience. Then repeat the process.

Whether its Irish partiers, thoughtful thirty-somethings, redneck blues loving punks or you're church in South Florida, begin you're efforts wherever and with whomever you're most likely to find a receptive audience. If they like what they see and hear, they'll tell their friends. Their friends have friends and some of them are bloggers or DJ's; or at least they have other friends.

It can take longer to become successful this way and your definition of  success may need to be  adjusted. But the good news is that success built from the niches lasts a longer than the mass media, big hype, big hit success that barely exists any more.

Your niche is the foundation upon which your house is built; and if you're any good at maintenance, you can live there happily for a long time.

ReverbNation And Bandzoogle Partner For D.I.Y. Artist Web Site Builder

D.I.Y. music marketing platform ReverbNation is partnering with website software provider Bandzoogle to launch Site Builder. The new offering enables easy yet robust self-created web sites that automatically integrate content loaded onto ReverbNation.

Songs, videos, shows, ticket inks and more entered on ReverbNation.com are instantly updated on the artist's site, with the Fan Reach email service, on widgets and across ReverbNation's other viral and social marketing tools. Artists will able to use their own url whenSite Builder, which is currently in private beta, goes public sometime in July at a cost of about $20 per month.

Let's Prove That Artists Don't Need Major Labels To "Make It"

Help Build A Database Of Music 2.0 Success Stories

During every interview, convention panel, startup negotiation or conversation with an industry peer, there is inevitably a moment when someone says something like, "All this talk about social networking, new media and digital marketing is exciting, but does it work?  And if it does, where are all the successful artists that have made it because of music 2.0?" 

They're not interested in stories of Trent Reznor, Radiohead and Jill Sobule who have maintained and even grown careers using all the 2.0 techniques after leaving a record label who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to break them.These skeptics want to know about artists that have "made it" without ever having the help of a major or even larger indie label.

I usually point out that in an era when only 950 new releases sold more than 25K copies in the U.S. last year, we need to redefine success. Touring, merchandise and direct to fan sales all are part of modern artist income streams. But even after that re-calibration of expectations, the doubters understandably want examples.

 They Want Proof? Let's Give 'Em Proof

To answer the skeptics, I'm starting a list of artists that are growing and sustaining real careers in what I like to call the new musical middle class (or above) without label largess.  I've included links to articles on Hypebot about each act or to their web site.  This very short list is just to get things started. Will you help me add to it?

• Jonathan Coulton
• Cory Smith

Your Online Music Marketing Report Card

This guest post is from Nick Crocker who runs Native, a digital agency based in Australia.  You can read his blog or follow him on Twitter.

Not every artist needs an A+ online.  But everyone needs at least a C-.

The challenge for independent artists, label managers, artist managers and anyone working with artists in online marketing is deciding where to apportion effort.

Am I doing enough online? Should I tweet? 

Should I blog on MySpace?

Do I need my own website or is a MySpace enough?

Do I need a Facebook page?

For digital music and music marketing in general to move forward, I think it’s important that some basic standards are established around an artist’s online presence.  If these standards are established, music marketers can spend more time innovating and less time worrying about whether the Bebo page has enough of a photo gallery.

If we agree on a minimum standard, then we can define what is exceptional and extraneous.

Digital agency Native has developed an online artist report card to help structure decision-making and reduce the grey area around representing music online.It moves from the basic to the advanced and is intended for all levels of artists.

A threshold: This is the minimum requirement to pass. You need to answer ‘yes’ to questions 1-5.

Track Your Daily D.I.Y. Activity

Update your web site. Spend 20 minutes each answering fan emails on MySpace and Bebo.  Post your new track to iLike and your Reverb Nation widget. Then there's that live video for YouTube... Its a lot to remember, and which actions are actually acheiving results?

Christopher Lars Carlson has created a simple chart (download a free copy after the jump) to help hold yourself accountable for all the "business" things you should be doing to build a self-sustaining career. "Every artist is different,"  says Chris Carlson. "Some may see more results from reaching out to bloggers, while others will benefit from hyperactivity on MySpace."

A Look Inside Topspin's Premium Offerings

Deluxe and limited editions are one of the new tools in the artist monetization Toolkit that seems to be working. Think of it as music's version of retail up-selling ("Do you want fries with that 99 cent burger?")  Nine Inch Nails was one of the first to use it effectively offering versions of a new release from for free to $5, $15, $75 and even $300.  Whatever your level of income of interest; there was a product for you.

Topspin is helping to refine the concept of premium music offers with a series of deluxe and limited edition packages, and Topspin's lead guru Ian Rogers has been recording the unboxing of several of them.  These clips aren't going to win awards at Sundance, but they provide some insights into this effective marketing and monetization strategy.

And if you're thinking that your band is not "big enough" to start charging fans a premium, then maybe your not thinking enough out of the box about what you'd put into your deluxe box to make it worth buying.

Metric's Fantasies Deluxe Edition

Reader Poll: What Email Program Do You Use To Connect With Fans?

UPDATE: Please participate in an updated poll here.

What program do you use to collect email addressees and stay connected with your fans?  They come in all shapes and sizes and cost anything from free to hundreds of dollars a month.  Which one works best for you?

The Rules:

1. Let us know the name of the email program that you use in the Comments Section. Sharing why you like it and a url is great, but not required.
2. We'll count up the top programs and put together a formal poll later this week for you to vote on. We reserve the right to add a company or two to the poll if some of the most popular programs are not included.
3. We'll share the results in a special post with links to and reviews of the top programs.

What program do you use to collect email addressees and stay connected with your fans?

Band Rewards Fans For Burning Their CD And Giving It Away

It's no secret that there is promotional power in giving away music, but just slapping a FREE banner on a web site doesn't cut it anymore.  Free is everywhere.  But what if the free music was on a CD given fan to fan with no strings attached?  That could get pretty expensive...unless the fans do it for you. 

Free fan created CD's os exactly what indie band Chester French is encouraging fans to do with a video series about an an uber-fan who "burned tons of copies and gave them out to everyone he knows (and a bunch of people he doesn’t!)". Through the videos, "Bryce wants to teach you guys how to be the Ultimate Chester French Supporter, just like him." Then the bands asks, "So, how did you guys promote the mixtape?" Brilliant.

But the band doesn't just embrace "free" with fan burned CD's.

Audiolife Adds Warehousing To On-Demand Indie Artist Services

Keeping costs down as you're growing a business is crucial whether your a tech start up or a rock band; and in recent months, Audiolife has been building an infrastructure to help D.I.Y. and indie artists do just that. The company offers a platform that allows artists to create CDs, t-shirts and other merchandise on-demand with no up front costs for sale alongside downloads in a virtual storefront. (Watch a video after the jump.)

Now Audiolife has added fulfillment and warehousing to its menu of services. They can ship as little or as many of their existing products including CDs, merchandise, and posters to the company's warehouse to be stored for a small monthly fee. Audiolife will then ship their items with no extra re-stocking charges.

"We wanted to make sure that we could accommodate any artist at any level of their career, and to do so, we needed to provide warehousing and tour support," Brandon Hance, co-founder and CEO of Audiolife told Hypebot.

SayNow Connects Artists To Fans Via Voice Mail & Text Messages

Our Call Katy Perry Now post last week led us to service provider SayNow. This free service connects bands with fans via voice mail and text messages.  Rapper Soulja Boy regularly connects with 2 million opt-in fans via SayNow.

Fans get voice or text messages broadcast from participating artists and can call in to hear a message recorded by the act, leave their own...

The New Art Of Collaboration

Files flying across the net to be mixed in a studio on the other side of world. Mashups. Fan re-mixes. Collaboration in all its forms is almost as much part of music 2.0 as the internet that powers it.  Here via the net detectives at the Listenerd are two wonderful examples of the new art of collaboration - the first between many musicians and second with the user.

• Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls. The videos can be played simultaneously -- the soundtracks will work together, and the mix can be adjusted with the individual volume sliders
• Be patient for this site to load and be sure to move your mouse.

TuneCore Adds Amazon To D.I.Y. Toolbox

TuneCore has announced a new service that adds physical distribution via Amazon's CreateSpace to it's Amazon digital offering; expands marketing exclusives to TuneCore Artists and creates a TuneCore branded section of Amazon.com. 

Amazon's CreateSpace is an on demand pressing and printing service open to all musicians, authors and artists. When a CD is ordered at Amazon.com, CreateSpace manufactures the CD complete with a CD booklet, tray card and jewel box.  Unlike Amazon Marketplace and most other options open to indie musicians, titles are shipped just like any other Amazon order and eligible for expedited shipping options. 
 
TuneCore is smartly bundling services...

CD Baby To Add Single Song Downloads

One complaint about CD Baby's popular indie digital download distribution service has been the inability to sell single song downloads.  That's about to change alongside a major site redesign schedule for summer launch. From the blog:

"One of the main improvements we're absolutely thrilled about is the addition of single song downloads on cdbaby.com. Just like with full album pricing, you'll be able to charge whatever you want for individual song downloads (and each track can be priced differently!)

Oh, and if you'd like to offer some tracks for free as a promotional tool, go for it!"

Note: The free and variable pricing options are for downloads sold directly from CD Baby. The site charges 9% for download distribution services.

ReverbNation To Indie Artists: We'll Pay You To Give Away Your Music

New Sponsored Songs Program Also Offers Brands A Unique Opportunity To Connect With Elusive Indie Music Fans

ReverbNation today announced that about 1000 of its almost 400,000 artist members will be eligible to participate in a new revenue generating Sponsored Songs program.  The initiative makes it possible to tap into the kind of major brand relationships that have typically been elusive for unsigned and indie talent.

“Traditionally the music business has been synonymous with the record business where the lion’s share of revenue came from selling music. With reduced emphasis on music sales, the music business must develop new revenue streams that leverage the artist as a brand,” Michael Doernberg, CEO of ReverbNation said in a statement. ReverbNation will pay participating musicians $.50 per free download with each track incorporating a small section of branded messaging within the digital cover art displayed every time the song is played.

The downloads, which the company confirmed to Hypebot will be in the MP3 and M4A formats, will be offered to fans on a set of branded landing pages. When a fan initiates a download, patent pending technology...

iLike Adds Custom iPhone Apps Plus Twitter, Ticketmaster, YouTube & MySpace Integration

iLike today launched an impressive suite of digital music marketing  tools including integration with Twitter, YouTube, MySpace and Ticketmaster, as well as, a system to easily create and distribute custom artist iPhone apps. The company has also added a Premium Artists Stats service offering reports on fan interactions across their syndication network.

Some of these digital tools can be found elsewhere, but iLike is offering them in a free, integrated and easy to use package which when combined with its existing iGoogle, Facebook, hi5, Bebo and Orkut apps, creates a must-use toolbox for any indie musician or label. New features include:

• iPhone Apps: Quickly create and distribute their own iPhone app with concert dates, photos, blogs, bulletins, and videos. The self-service system allows artists to customize the look of their app and submit it to the iTunes App Store. (Watch a demo)
• Twitter:  Link and artist's iLike and Twitter accounts adding “tweets” to the iLike music feed and profile as well as their Facebook page; and when a new song, video, or concert listing is posted, iLike will notify fans via Twitter.
• YouTube: Sync an artist's YouTube channel and iLike account. Every video posted to iLike can automatically be posted to a YouTube channel, and vice versa.
• MySpace: Enhance the concert listings on MySpace pages via a widget that adds buy inks and allows fans to “RSVP” and see who else is going. Artists can also configure the iLike Artist Dashboard so that any blog, bulletin, or video posted on iLike is also added to MySpace.

Music Creation Software Popularity Index

The ten most popular music creation software products on the Internet, based on recent search engine activity, are:

PRODUCT (INDEX)
1. DigiDesign Pro Tools (11.4)
2. FL Studio (10.1)
3. Steinberg Cubase (7.3)
4. Cakewalk Sonar (6.0)
5. Apple Logic (3.5)
6. Adobe Audition (3.5)
7. Apple GarageBand (3.1)
8. Sony Sound Forge (2.3)
9. Ableton Live (2.0)
10. MOTU Digital Performer (1.9)

This index is based on quarterly Internet search activity on Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN.

Which software do you use and why?

LoudFeed Hopes To Empower The D.I.Y. Artist

Now in beta, Loudfeed joins the growing list of artist services sites offering drag and drop websites and widget creation with built-in shopping carts. The company also offers custom development including branded widgets like the ones for myreggae.com created by their team in Sri Lanka. 

MUSIC BIZ CAMPS & DIGITAL COACHES

There's not a lot revoltionary going on Loudfeed yet, though with the free one month trial and 0% commissions, you may want to give the service a try. But Loudfeed is going a step father than many of its its competitors by organizing a series of  live "unconferences" they're calling MusicBizCamps with the first in Detroit May 21-22. to share their tools and techniques. They want to partner with others to bring their MusicBizCamps elsewhere, as well as, to build a network of digital music coaches to teach artists, labels and distributors digital music marketing.

7 SEO Tips For Musicians & Labels

Using Search Engine Optimization To Get Your Music Discovered

Most musicians want their band to be discovered. Not by a Universal Music talent scout maybe - that would be so 2005.  Nowadays musicians need to be discovered by their fans and using a search engine like Google is the top way that people find out more about anything they're interested in, including music.

But when a fan "googles" Ten Ton Rock Machine do they find a great band or the latest in granite splitting technology?  And when the fan finally finds the band, will their MySpace page and an article from the Peoria Rocks blog be at the top of the rankings? Or will they find the band's official web site where they control the message and can capture email addresses?

In an age of too many choices and 10 second attention spans, this stuff matters. Courtesy of Jason Feinberg of PBS' MediaShift blog, here are 7 Search Engine Optimization Tips For Musicians:

1. Don't Build Your Site Using Only Flash - Unless properly planned in the design stages, Flash cannot be indexed by search engines.

2. Don't Build Your Site Only With Images - Again much harder for the search engines to find.

TechDirt's Mike Masnick On Records, Reznor And Giving Fans A Reason To Buy

TechDirt's Mike Masnick recently keynoted the Digital Music Leadership Summit sponsored ironically by the RIAA.  He about new models of the music industry and who Nine Inch Nails gets it right by giving fans a reason to buy his music instead of grabbing on a file sharing network.

Leadership Music Digital Summit 2009 - Mike Masnick keynote address, 3/25/09 from Leadership Music Digital Summit on Vimeo.

For those of who saw his Deznor presentation from MidemNet which was posted on Hypebot, Masnick says, "This is actually an extended and improved version of that, so part of it will already be quite familiar to you. However, the final 10 minutes of the presentation gives me an opportunity to respond to the biggest question that came after the original presentation: how does this work for less well known musicians. So, I went through five different musicians, who all come from different backgrounds and experiences, representing different "success levels" in the industry, to show that this basic concept of connecting with fans, giving them a reason to buy (and not freaking out about piracy) works quite well."

Indie Musician Josh Freese On DIY, Variable Pricing, Promo & More

Drummer Josh Freese is a permanent member of A Perfect Circle, The Vandals, and Devo, and was the drummer for Nine Inch Nails from late 2005 until late 2008. Now he's self-releasing a new solo album and getting some attention with some unusual variable pricing and promotion.

Part 2 of the Indie 101.3 interview with Joe Escala after the jump

People's Music Store Adds 300K Universal Tracks To Fan Retail Offering

Universal has become the first major label to embrace fan powered download retailer People’s Music Store. Using the UK based site, fans in set up online stores, choose music, write reviews, and market via their blogs and social pages. But People's is not another multi-level marketing scheme. Fans-turned -storekeepers earn 10% of each sale in points which can be used to buy music.

I met two of the People's Music Store team at the meetup that Hypebot co-sponsored with Tospin at Midem earlier this year. and was struck then by the potential of this simple concept.  Bloggers get rewarded because people bought what they wrote about, and bands can place their music next to the  artists that influence them. Labels Rough Trade, Lex and Ninja Tunes, and acts including Nightmares on Wax and Various Production have already set up shops. It is possible to do something like this with an Amazon affiliate account, but People's is only about music and adds review and other personalization tools.

People's supports commerce in multiple countries includinig the UK and US. But the problem I saw with the site back in January was lack of selection, and the Universal deal goes a long way towards solving that...

iPhone App Adds Mobile Credit Card Processing to DIY Toolkit

COLUMN: You Can Always Go Back To School by Virgil Dickerson of Suburban Home Records and The Vinyl Collective.

When you are on tour, invariably the situation comes up where a would be customer wants to purchase a shirt and a CD (who am I kidding, an LP), they don't have cash, and the ATM machine is either no where to be found or not working. This usually results in the concert-goer going home empty handed, but it doesn't have to.

I know that CD baby has offered bands a device that can make carbon copies of credit cards, but this doesn't help you if the card has no funds.You end up giving that person a free record or shirt when you go to run the card and it comes back declined. I have brought my laptop to events we had set up with the hope that the venue has wifi and I can log into my Merchant Account and use their virtual terminal to run credit cards, but that doesn't always work the best.

Innerfence now offers bands and well, pretty much anyone, the ability to run credit cards with your IPhone. And that isn't even the best part of the deal, for a limited time...

PayPal MicroPayments May Help Make Direct To Fan Sales Dream A Reality

The artist to fan relationship is the mantra of music 2.0 and direct to fan sales are touted as the most effective monetization strategy. But two roadblocks have kept this dream from becoming a reality for most indie musicians: consumer trust and transaction costs. Now PayPal's MicroPayments system offers a solution to both problems.

Selling tracks direct to fans makes sense. Providers like Nimbit make it easy and some like Bandcamp turn tracks into viral promo tools. Certainly fans want to support artists rather than fill the coffers of "the man". Unfortunately, it turns out that a dirty little secret of the online music business is that even bigger players like Rhapsody have a hard time getting consumers to enter their credit card info. It's one of the reasons that Amazon MP3 is so successful. Millions trust Amazon and already have their card on file. Apply the trust test to leaving your credit card info on the site of that death metal band that just came through  town and you start to see the problem.

The other roadblock facing artists has been the high price of small transactions.

SoundCloud Atracts $3.3M Funding

SoundCloud, a net based audio platform that enables musicians to send, receive and distribute music, has received €2.5 million ($3.3M USD) from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures in its first institutional round of equity financing.

SoundCloud provides a platform to privately exchange music enabling easy studio quality collaboration without any specialist technical expertise.  The company was founded in 2007 and since its launch in October 2008 has attracted more than 100,000 registered users.

MySpace & CD Baby Deliver DIY Upgrades

Two small but significant upgrades should make every indie musician smile.

MySpace has quietly upped the limit on songs that artists can upload from 6 to 10.  More artists tools are promised soon, but no word yet on compensating unaffiliated artists for song streams.

CD Baby distributed artists will be able to choose to sell at any of iTunes new variable price points - $.69, $.99 and $1.29 - starting some time this summer.  The company will laso begin offering download cards. Let's hope the d.i.y. community handles the opportunity more creatively than the major labels did and delivers some extra value alongside any higher prices.

via Digital Audio Insider