The Master Plan

Jul 17

artistspaid:

Apricado: Selling Your Music Has Never Been This Easy
From Techcrunch:

Apricado makes the music submission process ridiculous easy (perhaps to a fault): After uploading a song, the site will automatically detect the artist name and generate a music store (for example, a song by Mika would generate www.apricado.com/Mika). Each song sold will be distributed without DRM, and the site will only take a 20% cut of the revenues (industry standards are usually 30% or more). Visitors who navigate to this site will be presented with a list of available songs. After entering their credit card information on the same page, the selected songs as downloaded as a single .zip file. Artists can also get embed codes for their stores, so they can offer a mini-marketplace on their blogs or MySpace (a Facebook app is on the way).

artistspaid:

Apricado: Selling Your Music Has Never Been This Easy

From Techcrunch:

Apricado makes the music submission process ridiculous easy (perhaps to a fault): After uploading a song, the site will automatically detect the artist name and generate a music store (for example, a song by Mika would generate www.apricado.com/Mika). Each song sold will be distributed without DRM, and the site will only take a 20% cut of the revenues (industry standards are usually 30% or more). Visitors who navigate to this site will be presented with a list of available songs. After entering their credit card information on the same page, the selected songs as downloaded as a single .zip file. Artists can also get embed codes for their stores, so they can offer a mini-marketplace on their blogs or MySpace (a Facebook app is on the way).

Jul 14

“My most striking realization since getting my iPhone (love it, thanks for asking) is that radio is doomed. Pandora is a wonder, creating my own radio station, live and on the fly without need for a broadcast tower. CBS is streaming all its stations over the cell network but when I told my wife this she kept asking, “Why would I want to listen to a CBS station?” That’s not the point, I huffed; we don’t need broadcast towers. OK, she said, but I still don’t want to listen to CBS stations. So count that as two strikes against radio. Digital radio? Heh. Satellite radio? I’m paying for it and I want Howard on my iPhone.” BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » Tear down the broadcast towers

Trent Reznor Continues To Show Different Ways To Connect With Fans

“One of the great things about Tumblr music, and something I’ve mentioned in the past, is you can only post one mp3 per day to Tumblr. The one a day thing is really a big time quality filter and is one of the main reasons I like to listen on Tumblr so much.” A VC: Reblogging Music

Jul 12

“3. When trying to strengthen your presence in digital channels, focus on marketing your most popular products.” Should You Invest in the Long Tail?

“When I differentiate between artists on smaller, independent labels and those on major labels, I find that the former gain some market share at the tail end of the curve as a result of the shift to digital markets. However, that advantage quickly disappears as we move up the curve: A more significant trend is that independent artists have actually lost share among the more popular titles to superstar artists on the major labels. (These results hold when I control for the number and type of titles that artists brought to market.) Thus digital channels may be further strengthening the position of a select group of winners.” Should You Invest in the Long Tail?

“In music, of the 2.4 million digital tracks sold in 2007 in the US (most of them through iTunes) 24% sold only one copy and 91% sold fewer than 100 copies.” The Long Tail: Excellent HBR piece challenging the Long Tail

Why Ad-Supported Music Won't Work: Blame The Labels

“

The Cure is rolling with it, and going Long Tail for good measure. In May, the band began digitally releasing two singles — an A-side and B-side, respectively — every 13th of the month from its as-yet-untitled forthcoming full-length, which means you can expect another one to drop on Sunday. (The last two were “The Only One” and “Freakshow.”)

The new effort was reportedly meant to be a double album, but Smith pulled the plug on that, even though 33 songs were written and two of them, “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” and “A Boy I Never Knew,” have been around for years. Songs that don’t make the new disc will probably be collated for a later one, even though The Cure has allegedly been playing more of them live in advance of the album than ever before in band history.

” The Cure: Pop Culture’s Bottomless Resource | Listening Post from Wired.com

“Over 1.4 million unique users have downloaded the free Nine Inch Nails album The Slip, according to the band, since they posted it in the MP3 format on May 5.” Nine Inch Nails Tracks Downloads of ‘The Slip’ via Google Earth | Listening Post from Wired.com