Music blogs are a huge part of how avid listeners discover music. Many of them check the same sites every day in hopes of finding new songs and artists. But how broad is the appeal of music blogs? Music blogs have certainly grown in readership, but have they surpassed a niche audience? If so, how? What cultural trends, heroic efforts, or music products have most helped music blogs reach a larger audience? In this interview panel on music blogs, four influential thinkers in the music and tech sector weigh in on whether they think music blogs have reached the mainstream market and what that might mean.
Recording music was a stupid idea. I sometimes daydream about what would need to happen in order for all recorded music playback devices to all stop functioning at once. And then, if people wanted to hear music, someone would have to actually play it.
By Virginie Berger (@virberg), founder and general manager of the creative and development agency DBTH.
To cut to the chase and get at the heart of the matter, the biggest apparent challenge that I can identify for direct-to-fan is that the music industry is broken and no one has yet discovered a practical model that will allow the typical independent, DIY musician to make money.
I often wonder
if the music industry expects too much of music listeners. This might seem like an odd concern, considering that an equal portion of label executives seem to
expect nothing but music piracy and concert going from today’s listener.
Hypebot's Upward Spiral Podcast is now 21 great episodes old. While we're proud to sponsor each and every one of them, Upward Spiral commentators Jason Spitz, Kyle Bylin and Hisham Dahud each have their favorites which include interviews with Ian Rogers, Jack Conte of Pomplamoose and Jason Feinberg of Epitaph Records. Here are their Best Of The Upward Spiral Podcast:
Writing Room is a new YouTube series hosted by YouTube musician Dave Days who's built a huge following online. The series pairs popular YouTubers with professional songwriter/producers and suggests some interesting dynamics as the two worlds crossover. In fact, that crossover seems to be an emerging theme right now and so this show potentially represents one aspect of the next stage of development for YouTube stars.
A McGill University study found that activity in the brain’s nucleus accumbens reflects one’s willingness to buy music after hearing it for the first time.
Guest post by Daniel Turner (@dantrnr) for sidewinder.fm, a music and tech think tank.
While the ideological tug-of-war trudges on between hardline anti-piracy crusaders and digital rights freedom fighters, music tech innovators are focused
on the future.
This dynamic was on sharp display during the “Streaming Music Business” panel at the recently held California Lawyers for the Arts Music Business
Conference. Bookending the panel was former Dead Kennedy guitarist Ray Pepperell and Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Julie Samuels. Sandwiched in
between was music tech entrepreneur and industry executive Jason Keck.
I saw a great tweet recently from a satirical Twitter account which said: “Welcome to the age where it's encouraged to pay for music before it's recorded
and take it for free once it's made.” This tweet inspired a “Eureka!” moment. The reason why charging for music before it is recorded on crowd-funding
services, such as Kickstarter and PledgeMusic, works is because it helps to create exclusivity in an industry plagued by abundance.
"We made an art of asking people to help us, to join us." says Amanda Palmer near the start of her talk at this week's TED conference. She spoke about the artist as an entrepenuer, but also about the artist as a the leader of a tribe. Don't make people pay for music, says Amanda Palmer: Let them.
Content providers are at a crossroads in the evolution of narratives online. Users are increasingly accessing content in ways that break the conventions of
how stories should be told and articles delivered. Social channels are working to help content reach more people quicker than ever before, but these same
viral mechanics mean that information often becomes disembodied and out of context. Publishers must also recognize that content is no longer static, and
that instead the story only begins when the “post” button is pressed.
There's a lot of talk about how Apple is building
a whiz-bang, streaming Internet radio app to kill Pandora. In 2013, Internet radio seems really shortsighted for Apple. It can't possibly be the only thing
they're up to in the music space.
Let's explore this further: 1) Apple has sold something like 300 million total iOS devices, 2) Apple won patents recently called
"iGroups" and one about "ad
hoc networking based on content and location," 3) Apple has punted on social to date, 4) Apple has largely failed to innovate their music products since
iTunes and the iPod, and 5) Let’s not forget, Apple doesn't like to lose.
(UPDATED) Sonicbids, one of the first major players in the d.i.y. music space, has been sold to Backstage in a deal backed by Guggenheim Partners. Backstage, which specializes in casting, auditions and entertainment industry
opportunities, will now add Sonicbids' electronic marketing tools and performance opportunities for musicians.
Robert Scoble is one of Silicon Valley’s most respected bloggers and tech evangelists, with a role as startup liaison officer at Rackspace Hosting, and a famous enthusiasm for seeking out new and interesting startups and technologies.
He took the stage today at Midem for a presentation on ‘Music in the Age of Context’, in which he outlined some of the new technology that’s exciting him, how it’s all weaving together, and what it may mean for musicians and the music industry.
At Bandzoogle, we often talk about the “Hub & Spokes” method to drive traffic to your website using your social media profiles. The root of the “Hub & Spokes” concept is really about interacting with your fans and using all the tools available in a cohesive strategy that will create more awareness about you and your music.
I love music and the music industry.I’m a geek about doing the work and love working with artists to help achieve goals and build sustainable careers.
As an artist manager and consultant, I work with or create new teams around each artist on our roster. I love working with specialists within our field who know the synch world in and out, or are focused on how modern PR is evolving, or are seizing the exciting changes within the touring industry from live-streaming concerts (Bowery Presents) to pre-selling tickets (Songkick’s Detour).
Good publicity takes a lot of time and a lot of money… At least it is supposed to. It is supposed to require skilled publicists and promoters pounding the phones and bombarding the inboxes of every blog, radio station, magazine, newspaper and talk show to cobble together enough exposure to successfully launch a new artist’s first single, elevating them above the noise, breaking them into the competitive fold of popular culture’s elite. In most cases that’s what it takes, but in Carly Rae Jepsen’s case it took one tweet.
There has been a lot of debate over streaming services and the royalty rates they pay. Critics point to royalties from services like Spotify, where it
takes 200 streams to earn the equivalent of one download, as evidence that these services don’t provide a viable income for artists.
