A federal jury on Friday ordered a Boston University graduate student who admitted illegally downloading and sharing music online to pay $675,000 to four record labels.
Joel Tenenbaum, of Providence, R.I., admitted in court that he downloaded and distributed 30 songs. The only issue for the jury to decide was how much in damages to award the record labels.
Under federal law, the recording companies were entitled to $750 to $30,000 per infringement. But the law allows as much as $150,000 per track if the jury finds the infringements were willful. The maximum jurors could have awarded in Tenenbaum's case was $4.5 million.
Jurors ordered Tenenbaum to pay $22,500 for each incident of copyright infringement, effectively finding that his actions were willful. The attorney for the 25-year-old student had asked the jury earlier Friday to "send a message" to the music industry by awarding only minimal damages.
Tenenbaum said he was thankful that the case wasn't in the millions and contrasted the significance of his fine with the maximum.
"That to me sends a message of 'We considered your side with some legitimacy,'" he said. "$4.5 million would have been, 'We don't buy it at all.'"
He added he will file for bankruptcy if the verdict stands.
Tenenbaum's lawyer, Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson, said the jury's verdict was not fair. He said he plans to appeal the decision because he was not allowed to argue a case based on fair use.
The Recording Industry Association of America issued a statement thanking the jury for recognizing the impact illegal downloading has on the music community.
"We appreciate that Mr. Tenenbaum finally acknowledged that artists and music companies deserve to be paid for their work," the statement said. "From the beginning, that's what this case has been all about. We only wish he had done so sooner rather than lie about his illegal behavior."
Tenenbaum would not say if he regretted downloading music, saying it was a loaded question.
"I don't regret drinking underage in college, even though I got busted a few times," he said.
The case is only the nation's second music downloading case against an individual to go to trial.
Last month, a federal jury in Minneapolis ruled that Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 32, must pay $1.92 million, or $80,000 on each of 24 songs, after concluding she willfully violated the copyrights on those tunes.
The jury began deliberating the case Friday afternoon.
After Tenenbaum admitted Thursday he is liable for damages for 30 songs at issue in the case, U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner ruled that the jury must consider only whether his copyright infringement was willful and how much in damages to award four recording labels that sued him over the illegal file-sharing.
In his closing statement Friday, Nesson repeatedly referred to Tenenbaum as a "kid" and asked the jury to award only a small amount to the recording companies. At one point, Nesson suggested the damages should be as little as 99 cents per song, roughly the same amount Tenenbaum would have to pay if he legally purchased the music online.
But Tim Reynolds, a lawyer for the recording labels, recounted Tenenbaum's history of file-sharing from 1999 to 2007, describing him as "a hardcore, habitual, long-term infringer who knew what he was doing was wrong." Tenenbaum admitted on the witness stand that he had downloaded and shared more than 800 songs.
Tenenbaum said he downloaded and shared hundreds of songs by Nirvana, Green Day, The Smashing Pumpkins and other artists. The recording industry focused on only 30 songs in the case.
The music industry has typically offered to settle such cases for about $5,000, though it has said that it stopped filing such lawsuits last August and is instead working with Internet service providers to fight the worst offenders. Cases already filed, however, are proceeding to trial.
Tenenbaum testified that he had lied in pretrial depositions when he said his two sisters, friends and others may have been responsible for downloading the songs to his computer.
Under questioning from his own lawyer, Tenenbaum said he now takes responsibility for the illegal swapping.
"I used the computer. I uploaded, I downloaded music ... I did it," Tenenbaum said.
Associated Press writer Jeannie Nuss contributed reporting from Boston.
Showing posts with label mp3. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mp3. Show all posts
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Thursday, April 9, 2009
French Lawmakers Reject Internet Piracy Bill
French legislators on Thursday rejected legislation to permit cutting off the Internet connections of people who illegally download music and films. But a stubborn government plans to resurrect the bill for another vote this month.
Backers of the bill -- record labels, film companies and law-and-order parliamentarians -- couldn't rally the needed support during in a near empty lower chamber ahead of the Easter holiday. Lawmakers voted 21 to 15 against it.
The measure would have created a government agency to track and punish those who pirate music and film on the Internet. Analysts said the law would have helped boost ever-shrinking profits in the entertainment industry, which has struggled with the advent of online file-sharing that lets people swap music files without paying.
The government, intent on gaining the upper hand in piracy, managed to slip the measure into an April 28 special session devoted to initiatives by President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative UMP party.
The president's office reaffirmed Sarkozy's wish to get the law passed "as quickly as possible."
He "does not plan to renounce this whatever the maneuvers" to try to stop the bill's passage, a statement said.
Music labels, film distributors and artists -- who have seen CD and DVD sales in France plummet 60 percent in the past six years -- almost universally supported the measure, hailing it as a decisive step toward eliminating online piracy and an example to other governments. Artists' groups in France have said the future of the country's music and film industries depends on cracking down on illegal downloads, and the legislation received industry support from around the world.
"It is disappointing that the law was not confirmed today," said London-based John Kennedy, Chairman and CEO of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents the recording industry worldwide and supported the bill.
Legislators and activists who opposed the legislation said it would represent a Big Brother intrusion on civil liberties -- they called it "liberticide" -- while the European Parliament last month adopted a nonbinding resolution that defines Internet access as an untouchable "fundamental freedom."
Opponents also pointed out that users downloading from public WiFi hotspots or using masked IP addresses might be impossible to trace. Others called its proposed monitoring structures unrealistic.
"It is a bad response to a false problem," said Jeremie Zimmerman, coordinator of the Quadrature du Net, a Paris-based Internet activist group that opposed the bill, calling it "completely impossible to apply."
He said the bill's rejection is proof of a widespread sense that it was a draconian approach.
Under the legislation, users would receive e-mail warnings for their first two identified offenses, a certified letter for the next, and would have their Web connection severed, for as long as one year, for any subsequent illegal downloads.
French Culture Minister Christine Albanel had said the bill did not aim to "completely eradicate" illegal downloads but rather to "contribute to a raising of consciousness" among offenders.
"There needs to be an experiment," said Pierre-Yves Gautier, an Internet law expert at the University of Paris, noting the plummeting profits of the entertainment industry. "Frankly, it's worth it."
Backers of the bill -- record labels, film companies and law-and-order parliamentarians -- couldn't rally the needed support during in a near empty lower chamber ahead of the Easter holiday. Lawmakers voted 21 to 15 against it.
The measure would have created a government agency to track and punish those who pirate music and film on the Internet. Analysts said the law would have helped boost ever-shrinking profits in the entertainment industry, which has struggled with the advent of online file-sharing that lets people swap music files without paying.
The government, intent on gaining the upper hand in piracy, managed to slip the measure into an April 28 special session devoted to initiatives by President Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative UMP party.
The president's office reaffirmed Sarkozy's wish to get the law passed "as quickly as possible."
He "does not plan to renounce this whatever the maneuvers" to try to stop the bill's passage, a statement said.
Music labels, film distributors and artists -- who have seen CD and DVD sales in France plummet 60 percent in the past six years -- almost universally supported the measure, hailing it as a decisive step toward eliminating online piracy and an example to other governments. Artists' groups in France have said the future of the country's music and film industries depends on cracking down on illegal downloads, and the legislation received industry support from around the world.
"It is disappointing that the law was not confirmed today," said London-based John Kennedy, Chairman and CEO of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents the recording industry worldwide and supported the bill.
Legislators and activists who opposed the legislation said it would represent a Big Brother intrusion on civil liberties -- they called it "liberticide" -- while the European Parliament last month adopted a nonbinding resolution that defines Internet access as an untouchable "fundamental freedom."
Opponents also pointed out that users downloading from public WiFi hotspots or using masked IP addresses might be impossible to trace. Others called its proposed monitoring structures unrealistic.
"It is a bad response to a false problem," said Jeremie Zimmerman, coordinator of the Quadrature du Net, a Paris-based Internet activist group that opposed the bill, calling it "completely impossible to apply."
He said the bill's rejection is proof of a widespread sense that it was a draconian approach.
Under the legislation, users would receive e-mail warnings for their first two identified offenses, a certified letter for the next, and would have their Web connection severed, for as long as one year, for any subsequent illegal downloads.
French Culture Minister Christine Albanel had said the bill did not aim to "completely eradicate" illegal downloads but rather to "contribute to a raising of consciousness" among offenders.
"There needs to be an experiment," said Pierre-Yves Gautier, an Internet law expert at the University of Paris, noting the plummeting profits of the entertainment industry. "Frankly, it's worth it."
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Making the Most Out of Online Resources
Written by Daylle Deanna Schwartz
Author of "Start & Run Your Own Record Label" and "I Don’t Need a Record Deal!"
© 2009 All Rights Reserved. Used By Permission
Indie artists often complain about not having the budget they’d like to market and promote their music. Nowadays, digital marketing offers a plethora of opportunities for marketing yourself and your music that doesn’t cost anything in dollars. But, it can be hard to know where to begin—and end. While much of it is good for those of you with small to no money budgets, there’s still a big expense for taking advantage of so many opportunities—TIME.
The good AND the bad news: the cost to break an independent act can be more in time than in dollars. It’s great to have free tools! But you could spend all of your waking hours going onto all the different social networking sites and other avenues of promotion and still not make a dent. With all the artists and labels vying for online attention, you must work to make your music stand out.
It’s important to brand your name online. The more people see it, the more curiosity can be generated, which leads to potential fans or clients checking you out. The more you respond to fans who write to you, the more loyal fans you’ll have. But so much of the efforts to find fans is one by one, which accounts for a lot of the time you need to put into it.
It’s not enough to just register on all the websites. While there’s unlimited space for everyone online, you can get lost in it all and not make any constructive progress. I know. I’m always getting links to sites I “should check out.” People email me both to my server and on the social networking sites. It gets overwhelming. Another day ends and I haven’t done any writing. So I must get tough with myself in order to function.
Time isn’t FREE when it costs you your sleep, your personal life and even your sanity. But you can take control of online activities to make the most of the best opportunities. Here are so DOs and DON’Ts for getting the most out of your online resources.
DON’T jump around to everything that seems interesting or the new flavor of the month.
DO force yourself to stay on track. Put aside things you want to check out for when you have some time or accept you can’t look over everything. Learn the benefits of hitting DELETE.
DON’T immediately answer emails when they come in or click when you get a link.
DO: Prioritize what most needs to be done at this point. I have a NEED TO ANSWER folder and put personal emails and those asking questions into it. Have a block of time set aside when all you do is answer emails. When time is up, leave the rest for the next block!
DON’T jump from one site to another and register with every one you can.
DO plan your direction carefully and prioritize your needs to work them properly. Social networking sites allow musicians to seek fans out and interact with them. But working one or two hard is strongly advised as opposed to doing a little bit on many. If you have too many, you don’t work anything well and you can spread yourself too thin. Decide which sites are best for you and concentrate your energy to build up relationships with fans on them.
DON’T try to do everything yourself. DO mobilize fans to help. Get volunteers to assist you in following up with online activities. Ask them to tell other musicians on the site about you, use your music as their default on their MySpace page and drive potential fans to your sites. If you have a budget, hire an online marketing specialist to direct your efforts and do some of the legwork.
DON’T register with any social networking site that you’re not prepared to follow up with.
DO answer every email and make your presence known. Respond to comments. Nowadays, when people hear an artist they like or see you perform, they’ll leave a comment on your MySpace page. It’s important to respond. Musicians who keep in touch with their fans religiously build the strongest communities and get the most support.
DON’T focus just on MySpace and Facebook.
DO diversify. While pure social networking sites are great to exploit, get your music in places where people can find it. Do as many things as you can that don’t require constant attention that give your music potential exposure. Create iMixes up in the iTunes music store. Get your music into streaming radio sites, such as Last.fm, Pandora, Launch, iLike, etc. Send it to MP3 bloggers who review your genre of music. Post videos on YouTube. And get yourself on wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. These efforts often just require doing something once and can drive people to find your music.
DON’T think that selling and promoting your music online is all you need.
DO everything you can in real life too. Touring is still important for creating a strong connection with fans. People do live a good part of their lives off the computer so follow traditional promotion routes too.
DON’T put all your energy into inviting people you don’t know to be your friend or worry about having big numbers of them.
DO be more concerned with connecting to real fans. Successful artists say they don’t worry about how many friends they have on MySpace. What’s important is that they’re real fans who care about reading bulletin posts and getting invitations to your gigs. Of course you can invite people to be your friend if you want to know them. But do that with an email to introduce yourself so they know who you are and why you’re requesting them as a friend. Just inviting for the sake of upping your numbers is a waste of time these days. I don’t have thousands of friends on MySpace but every one of them came to me. I like that better! www.myspace.com/Daylle
Before you begin, make sure you’re ready to commit the time. Even with limits, you’ll spend hours a day keeping up. Find sites that are the likeliest to reach your audience and work them with a vengeance. Take advantage of every function they offer. Join relevant communities. Interact on them as much as you can so people get to know you. Eventually some will come to your page and hear your music.
Being online can be a full time job and you might only have a limited amount of time to devote. ReverbNation www.reverbnation.com has many helpful tools that can save you a lot of time and maximize your online reach. Some people hire a promoter to do it for them. If you don’t have a budget, I highly advise that you put aside time every day to work this new model for marketing and promoting music online, with a real plan.
Author of "Start & Run Your Own Record Label" and "I Don’t Need a Record Deal!"
© 2009 All Rights Reserved. Used By Permission
Indie artists often complain about not having the budget they’d like to market and promote their music. Nowadays, digital marketing offers a plethora of opportunities for marketing yourself and your music that doesn’t cost anything in dollars. But, it can be hard to know where to begin—and end. While much of it is good for those of you with small to no money budgets, there’s still a big expense for taking advantage of so many opportunities—TIME.
The good AND the bad news: the cost to break an independent act can be more in time than in dollars. It’s great to have free tools! But you could spend all of your waking hours going onto all the different social networking sites and other avenues of promotion and still not make a dent. With all the artists and labels vying for online attention, you must work to make your music stand out.
It’s important to brand your name online. The more people see it, the more curiosity can be generated, which leads to potential fans or clients checking you out. The more you respond to fans who write to you, the more loyal fans you’ll have. But so much of the efforts to find fans is one by one, which accounts for a lot of the time you need to put into it.
It’s not enough to just register on all the websites. While there’s unlimited space for everyone online, you can get lost in it all and not make any constructive progress. I know. I’m always getting links to sites I “should check out.” People email me both to my server and on the social networking sites. It gets overwhelming. Another day ends and I haven’t done any writing. So I must get tough with myself in order to function.
Time isn’t FREE when it costs you your sleep, your personal life and even your sanity. But you can take control of online activities to make the most of the best opportunities. Here are so DOs and DON’Ts for getting the most out of your online resources.
DON’T jump around to everything that seems interesting or the new flavor of the month.
DO force yourself to stay on track. Put aside things you want to check out for when you have some time or accept you can’t look over everything. Learn the benefits of hitting DELETE.
DON’T immediately answer emails when they come in or click when you get a link.
DO: Prioritize what most needs to be done at this point. I have a NEED TO ANSWER folder and put personal emails and those asking questions into it. Have a block of time set aside when all you do is answer emails. When time is up, leave the rest for the next block!
DON’T jump from one site to another and register with every one you can.
DO plan your direction carefully and prioritize your needs to work them properly. Social networking sites allow musicians to seek fans out and interact with them. But working one or two hard is strongly advised as opposed to doing a little bit on many. If you have too many, you don’t work anything well and you can spread yourself too thin. Decide which sites are best for you and concentrate your energy to build up relationships with fans on them.
DON’T try to do everything yourself. DO mobilize fans to help. Get volunteers to assist you in following up with online activities. Ask them to tell other musicians on the site about you, use your music as their default on their MySpace page and drive potential fans to your sites. If you have a budget, hire an online marketing specialist to direct your efforts and do some of the legwork.
DON’T register with any social networking site that you’re not prepared to follow up with.
DO answer every email and make your presence known. Respond to comments. Nowadays, when people hear an artist they like or see you perform, they’ll leave a comment on your MySpace page. It’s important to respond. Musicians who keep in touch with their fans religiously build the strongest communities and get the most support.
DON’T focus just on MySpace and Facebook.
DO diversify. While pure social networking sites are great to exploit, get your music in places where people can find it. Do as many things as you can that don’t require constant attention that give your music potential exposure. Create iMixes up in the iTunes music store. Get your music into streaming radio sites, such as Last.fm, Pandora, Launch, iLike, etc. Send it to MP3 bloggers who review your genre of music. Post videos on YouTube. And get yourself on wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. These efforts often just require doing something once and can drive people to find your music.
DON’T think that selling and promoting your music online is all you need.
DO everything you can in real life too. Touring is still important for creating a strong connection with fans. People do live a good part of their lives off the computer so follow traditional promotion routes too.
DON’T put all your energy into inviting people you don’t know to be your friend or worry about having big numbers of them.
DO be more concerned with connecting to real fans. Successful artists say they don’t worry about how many friends they have on MySpace. What’s important is that they’re real fans who care about reading bulletin posts and getting invitations to your gigs. Of course you can invite people to be your friend if you want to know them. But do that with an email to introduce yourself so they know who you are and why you’re requesting them as a friend. Just inviting for the sake of upping your numbers is a waste of time these days. I don’t have thousands of friends on MySpace but every one of them came to me. I like that better! www.myspace.com/Daylle
Before you begin, make sure you’re ready to commit the time. Even with limits, you’ll spend hours a day keeping up. Find sites that are the likeliest to reach your audience and work them with a vengeance. Take advantage of every function they offer. Join relevant communities. Interact on them as much as you can so people get to know you. Eventually some will come to your page and hear your music.
Being online can be a full time job and you might only have a limited amount of time to devote. ReverbNation www.reverbnation.com has many helpful tools that can save you a lot of time and maximize your online reach. Some people hire a promoter to do it for them. If you don’t have a budget, I highly advise that you put aside time every day to work this new model for marketing and promoting music online, with a real plan.
43 Places to Promote Your Music - February 2009
This month's newsletter features the listings that were submitted to me this past month. The contacts listed are sorted into FIVE sections.
- Publications that will REVIEW your music
- Radio Stations/Shows that will PLAY your songs
- Labels, Vendors and Promotional Services that will help you to SELL your CD
- Sites where you can UPLOAD your band's MP3s or videos
- A wide range of Helpful Resources for recording artists
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Beatport Imposes New Rules That Hurt Indies
Indie artists are getting a real surprise from Beatport. They have increased their sales quota to a mandatory $500.00 quarterly in sales. This means many artists will be cut and dropped from Beatport.
The explanation is as follows:
That is about 300 to 400 songs per quarter, per artist. If I was selling that many tracks a month from just 1 site, not including making that from iTunes and so on, I would be selling it all myself from my own site. I only use these places for exposure. Not profit.
I have always felt with Beatport, it was all about the money. They never cared about the artists. They have the money to dominate the market, so they can set the rules as they please.
I do not think that Beatport should dictate who "indie artists" are by the amount of money they have or make. What they are saying is that you are not an artist that creates unless you have money.
It is no surprise to me in this world. For a long time, many talented artists have been silenced and kept down because they had no money. The Internet leveled that playing field giving indies a more affordable way to promote.
I know a quote that says, "It is a flawed society that causes art to be created within a financial means..." - the author is unknown.
So the Beatport fad will end and most probably the site will lose out. I think it is a major mistake to turn your backs on the indies.
There is always iTunes and the other 1000 digital shops to sell your stuff on...
www.504productions.com
The explanation is as follows:
The reasoning behind this new, higher benchmark is for several reasons. We wantI am an indie artist that does every thing by myself plus this is my profession and how I make my money. I am not a hobbyist. I also though am not a machine.
to keep the quality and the relevancy of content available on Beatport as high
as possible. We acknowledge and understand that labels do take some time to
build a brand, but we also feel that a higher income minimum serves to separate
the ‘hobbyist’ from the serious professional (or aspiring professional) producer
and/or label manager.
That is about 300 to 400 songs per quarter, per artist. If I was selling that many tracks a month from just 1 site, not including making that from iTunes and so on, I would be selling it all myself from my own site. I only use these places for exposure. Not profit.
I have always felt with Beatport, it was all about the money. They never cared about the artists. They have the money to dominate the market, so they can set the rules as they please.
I do not think that Beatport should dictate who "indie artists" are by the amount of money they have or make. What they are saying is that you are not an artist that creates unless you have money.
It is no surprise to me in this world. For a long time, many talented artists have been silenced and kept down because they had no money. The Internet leveled that playing field giving indies a more affordable way to promote.
I know a quote that says, "It is a flawed society that causes art to be created within a financial means..." - the author is unknown.
So the Beatport fad will end and most probably the site will lose out. I think it is a major mistake to turn your backs on the indies.
There is always iTunes and the other 1000 digital shops to sell your stuff on...
www.504productions.com
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
iTunes Success in 12 Steps
How Indie Artist "Making April" Systematically Went from 0 to 1,000 Sales a Week on iTunes in One Year
by Ariel Hyatt, Ariel Publicity
© 2009 All Rights Reserved
I recently was having lunch with my dear friend, music attorney extraordinaire Dan Friedman, who was in town to showcase a band he represents who he mentioned was selling 1,000 singles a week on iTunes.
My jaw almost hit the table. 1,000 singles a week on iTunes?
Who is this band? And how are they doing this? And he coughed up the answer (and luckily for me their phone number).
A few days later, I cold called Greg from "Making April", who it turns out are an emo/piano rock band (kind of like Ben Folds Five), and we spent an hour and a half on the phone. Greg generously spilled the beans as to how Making April got to where they are today: selling 1,000 CD singles a week on iTunes and signed to a record deal.
How They Did It…
Greg explained that they decided to make a full time business out of their band. Everyday at 9 AM, three of the four members met in what they called "The War Room," which was a room reserved in one of their homes. They took it seriously, just like a job, and every day they would set simple goals.
“In the beginning we really did not know what we were doing,” Greg recalls. “The daily goal was to make the maximum amount of friends on MySpace, which is 400 a day. Between three of us, that was 133 each.” Here’s how it went from there.
Step 1: Find sound alikes – famous bands similar to you. - They started by looking at similar bands in their genre that had large friends lists at MySpace. Dashboard Confessional, for example. They would go and they would ping each and every friend in Dashboard Confessional's friends list…
Step 2: Ping each person. And then they would go to the comments and post:
"Hey if you like Dashboard Confessional, you're probably going to like Making April. Would you please come check us out and leave a comment?" Then, people would check them out and leave comments.
Step 3: Get personal. The band would then personally respond and personally thank everyone that left a comment. And they always signed their name using a sig file, which included their IM address.
Step 4: Instant Messenger bonanza. Then they would get their new fans’ information through Instant Messenger, and they would sit all day long on Instant Messenger chatting back and forth with their new friends, and according to Greg it was crazy. They actually couldn't turn on their IM because the minute they would open it up, they’d get thousands of people trying to ping them. So they had to post their status as “Away” on their IM because their buddy list was insane.
TIP! Give your music away. The whole time, they were giving away their music for free to build their audience.
Step 5: Run contests. After several months making thousands of personal contacts, a new marketing idea struck them: Making April decided to create a contest to run for their fans. They asked fans to add them to their “Top 8” friends. This success of the contest manifested in the band getting even more MySpace traction.
Each of the 20 people in the contest got points for convincing others to add their video and/or song. According to Greg it got completely out of control.
After this successful contest, a company called Brickfish took notice and offered to help them launch a second contest. Entrants had to design a T-shirt, and in return the band would write a song for the winner.
So, out of a well planned T-shirt contest they got an additional 100,000 hits to their page in two weeks, and the winner got a shirt, a personal call from the band, and an original song written about them. “It was unbelievable.”
Step 6: Engage your audience consistently. Another of their strategies was to send out a bulletin every single day. Not a hypey bulletin pushing themselves, but a simple one that would engage their fans by asking a question like, “Should we get chunky peanut butter or smooth”
They felt that there was no reason to blog because they weren't really on the road, and they didn’t have a lot of news to report, so they just kept asking questions on their bulletins, day in and day out. And they had a call to action: They would ask everyone on the bulletins to comment back on their pages. They would get hundreds of responses from people, which then would add a track play and a front page hit to their MySpace page. Just due to the question, they would get 500 messages instantly, and 600+ comments a day.
Step 7: MTV action. After their wildly successful Brickfish contest, they got a song placed on MTV’s “Laguna Beach.” They don't really know how they ended up on that show – they think a fan probably e-mailed the track to MTV – but the episode aired three times, and all of a sudden they noticed people started to buy the download.
Step 8: Get ready to charge for tracks (after a solid fan base is built). It was only after all of this traction and attention that Making April started pushing their iTunes page. This was after a full year of solid online promotions. They took the free MP3s off of their MySpace page and they started seeing their sales pick up.
Step 9: Repeat and repeat and repeat… and repeat. They put a big wall-mounted dry erase board on the wall of the war room, and every day they each had a goal to make 150 friends and comment back personally.
Step 10: Measure your goals and write them down. Then they laid out a weekly plan to hit their goals and numbers at iTunes, which were 200 plays and 400 friends a day. They also went after the friends of another a band called Secondhand Serenade (who blew up after becoming the number one unsigned artist at MySpace).
Step 11: Be masterful at one thing. I asked Greg if they did blogging, podcasting, Twitter, or other social networking sites, and to my surprise, he said “no.” They did this all on MySpace alone. The goal for MySpace was to consistently add 200 friend requests and 400 plays to the traffic they were already generating.
Step 12: A record deal. Because of all of their solid dedicated focus, Universal Republic Records took notice and offered them a deal. The moral of the story and the end result of all this work: Making April got a deal.
Was this process easy? No. It took solid dedication, trial and error, and a hell of a lot of time invested, but Making April managed to be one of the top selling bands at iTunes in 2007 and they beat a vast majority of artists signed to major labels.
I think this is a phenomenal and an inspirational story and one that teaches us lots of lessons. From my experience, musicians tend to give up too easily and lose focus, and then become defeated and give up. Making April proves that with a plan and some dedication, you can get very far with the tools available to anyone who wants to give it a go.
Check them out here: www.myspace.com/makingapril
by Ariel Hyatt, Ariel Publicity
© 2009 All Rights Reserved
I recently was having lunch with my dear friend, music attorney extraordinaire Dan Friedman, who was in town to showcase a band he represents who he mentioned was selling 1,000 singles a week on iTunes.
My jaw almost hit the table. 1,000 singles a week on iTunes?
Who is this band? And how are they doing this? And he coughed up the answer (and luckily for me their phone number).
A few days later, I cold called Greg from "Making April", who it turns out are an emo/piano rock band (kind of like Ben Folds Five), and we spent an hour and a half on the phone. Greg generously spilled the beans as to how Making April got to where they are today: selling 1,000 CD singles a week on iTunes and signed to a record deal.
How They Did It…
Greg explained that they decided to make a full time business out of their band. Everyday at 9 AM, three of the four members met in what they called "The War Room," which was a room reserved in one of their homes. They took it seriously, just like a job, and every day they would set simple goals.
“In the beginning we really did not know what we were doing,” Greg recalls. “The daily goal was to make the maximum amount of friends on MySpace, which is 400 a day. Between three of us, that was 133 each.” Here’s how it went from there.
Step 1: Find sound alikes – famous bands similar to you. - They started by looking at similar bands in their genre that had large friends lists at MySpace. Dashboard Confessional, for example. They would go and they would ping each and every friend in Dashboard Confessional's friends list…
Step 2: Ping each person. And then they would go to the comments and post:
"Hey if you like Dashboard Confessional, you're probably going to like Making April. Would you please come check us out and leave a comment?" Then, people would check them out and leave comments.
Step 3: Get personal. The band would then personally respond and personally thank everyone that left a comment. And they always signed their name using a sig file, which included their IM address.
Step 4: Instant Messenger bonanza. Then they would get their new fans’ information through Instant Messenger, and they would sit all day long on Instant Messenger chatting back and forth with their new friends, and according to Greg it was crazy. They actually couldn't turn on their IM because the minute they would open it up, they’d get thousands of people trying to ping them. So they had to post their status as “Away” on their IM because their buddy list was insane.
TIP! Give your music away. The whole time, they were giving away their music for free to build their audience.
Step 5: Run contests. After several months making thousands of personal contacts, a new marketing idea struck them: Making April decided to create a contest to run for their fans. They asked fans to add them to their “Top 8” friends. This success of the contest manifested in the band getting even more MySpace traction.
Each of the 20 people in the contest got points for convincing others to add their video and/or song. According to Greg it got completely out of control.
After this successful contest, a company called Brickfish took notice and offered to help them launch a second contest. Entrants had to design a T-shirt, and in return the band would write a song for the winner.
So, out of a well planned T-shirt contest they got an additional 100,000 hits to their page in two weeks, and the winner got a shirt, a personal call from the band, and an original song written about them. “It was unbelievable.”
Step 6: Engage your audience consistently. Another of their strategies was to send out a bulletin every single day. Not a hypey bulletin pushing themselves, but a simple one that would engage their fans by asking a question like, “Should we get chunky peanut butter or smooth”
They felt that there was no reason to blog because they weren't really on the road, and they didn’t have a lot of news to report, so they just kept asking questions on their bulletins, day in and day out. And they had a call to action: They would ask everyone on the bulletins to comment back on their pages. They would get hundreds of responses from people, which then would add a track play and a front page hit to their MySpace page. Just due to the question, they would get 500 messages instantly, and 600+ comments a day.
Step 7: MTV action. After their wildly successful Brickfish contest, they got a song placed on MTV’s “Laguna Beach.” They don't really know how they ended up on that show – they think a fan probably e-mailed the track to MTV – but the episode aired three times, and all of a sudden they noticed people started to buy the download.
Step 8: Get ready to charge for tracks (after a solid fan base is built). It was only after all of this traction and attention that Making April started pushing their iTunes page. This was after a full year of solid online promotions. They took the free MP3s off of their MySpace page and they started seeing their sales pick up.
Step 9: Repeat and repeat and repeat… and repeat. They put a big wall-mounted dry erase board on the wall of the war room, and every day they each had a goal to make 150 friends and comment back personally.
Step 10: Measure your goals and write them down. Then they laid out a weekly plan to hit their goals and numbers at iTunes, which were 200 plays and 400 friends a day. They also went after the friends of another a band called Secondhand Serenade (who blew up after becoming the number one unsigned artist at MySpace).
Step 11: Be masterful at one thing. I asked Greg if they did blogging, podcasting, Twitter, or other social networking sites, and to my surprise, he said “no.” They did this all on MySpace alone. The goal for MySpace was to consistently add 200 friend requests and 400 plays to the traffic they were already generating.
Step 12: A record deal. Because of all of their solid dedicated focus, Universal Republic Records took notice and offered them a deal. The moral of the story and the end result of all this work: Making April got a deal.
Was this process easy? No. It took solid dedication, trial and error, and a hell of a lot of time invested, but Making April managed to be one of the top selling bands at iTunes in 2007 and they beat a vast majority of artists signed to major labels.
I think this is a phenomenal and an inspirational story and one that teaches us lots of lessons. From my experience, musicians tend to give up too easily and lose focus, and then become defeated and give up. Making April proves that with a plan and some dedication, you can get very far with the tools available to anyone who wants to give it a go.
Check them out here: www.myspace.com/makingapril
17,000 Illegal Downloads Don't Equal 17,000 Lost Sales
If a song has been downloaded from a torrent site 17,000 times, it doesn't necessarily equal 17,000 lost sales, according to US District Judge James P. Jones. The judge recently ruled against using this kind of reasoning in determining restitution in a criminal copyright case, though it doesn't necessarily affect civil cases against downloaders.
Record companies cannot collect restitution for every time a song has been illegally downloaded, a US District judge has decided. Judge James P. Jones gave his opinion on United States of America v. Dove, a criminal copyright case, ruling that each illegal download does not necessarily equate to a lost sale, and that the companies affected by P2P piracy cannot make their restitution claims based on this assumption.
Daniel Dove was originally found guilty of criminal copyright infringement for running a torrent group called "Elite Torrents" between 2004 and 2005. The jury in the case had found Dove guilty of reproduction and distribution of copyrighted works, as well as conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. At the time, Judge Jones sentenced Dove to 18 months in prison for each count, plus a special assessment of $200 and a $20,000 fine ($10,000 per count).
However, the RIAA and Lionsgate Entertainment had both submitted requests for restitution—they had argued that each individual copy of content downloaded through Elite Torrents was the equivalent of a lost sale. For example, the RIAA said that 183 albums were transferred through Dove's server 17,281 times, then multiplied that by the wholesale price of a digital album in 2005 ($7.22) to conclude that its member companies were owed almost $124,769 in restitution, or $47,000 if Dove agreed to be part of an RIAA "public service announcement" about piracy. Similarly, Lionsgate said that it owned copyrights to 28 of the 700 or so movies that Dove served up—Lionsgate argued that Dove caused the movie industry to lose some $22 million, and since Lionsgate owned copyrights to about 4 percent of the available movies, it was owed $880,000.
Jones wrote in his opinion that equating each download with a lost sale is a faulty assumption. "Those who download movies and music for free would not necessarily purchase those movies and music at the full purchase price," Jones wrote. "[A]lthough it is true that someone who copies a digital version of a sound recording has little incentive to purchase the recording through legitimate means, it does not necessarily follow that the downloader would have made a legitimate purchase if the recording had not been available for free."
It's important to note that this decision does not directly affect the thousands of civil cases that the RIAA has launched against accused copyright violators. Dove was convicted as a criminal copyright offender where restitution is a consideration, while the RIAA's civil suits can ask for monetary damages determined on an entirely different scale. For example, Jammie Thomas was found liable for $222,000 in damages in 2007 after "making available" only 24 songs (that verdict has since been overturned, however, as the "making available" theory has been riddled with holes via different rulings). "The factors that go into the calculation of restitution are different than the ones that go into the calculation of statutory damages in civil cases," the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Fred von Lohmann pointed out to Wired.
Still, the Dove ruling is reassuring in that it emphasizes once again the concept that a sheer number of downloads doesn't necessarily equal monetary losses. This is the same assertion made by software groups about piracy, such as the Business Software Alliance (BSA), and it keeps getting shot down.
Record companies cannot collect restitution for every time a song has been illegally downloaded, a US District judge has decided. Judge James P. Jones gave his opinion on United States of America v. Dove, a criminal copyright case, ruling that each illegal download does not necessarily equate to a lost sale, and that the companies affected by P2P piracy cannot make their restitution claims based on this assumption.
Daniel Dove was originally found guilty of criminal copyright infringement for running a torrent group called "Elite Torrents" between 2004 and 2005. The jury in the case had found Dove guilty of reproduction and distribution of copyrighted works, as well as conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement. At the time, Judge Jones sentenced Dove to 18 months in prison for each count, plus a special assessment of $200 and a $20,000 fine ($10,000 per count).
However, the RIAA and Lionsgate Entertainment had both submitted requests for restitution—they had argued that each individual copy of content downloaded through Elite Torrents was the equivalent of a lost sale. For example, the RIAA said that 183 albums were transferred through Dove's server 17,281 times, then multiplied that by the wholesale price of a digital album in 2005 ($7.22) to conclude that its member companies were owed almost $124,769 in restitution, or $47,000 if Dove agreed to be part of an RIAA "public service announcement" about piracy. Similarly, Lionsgate said that it owned copyrights to 28 of the 700 or so movies that Dove served up—Lionsgate argued that Dove caused the movie industry to lose some $22 million, and since Lionsgate owned copyrights to about 4 percent of the available movies, it was owed $880,000.
Jones wrote in his opinion that equating each download with a lost sale is a faulty assumption. "Those who download movies and music for free would not necessarily purchase those movies and music at the full purchase price," Jones wrote. "[A]lthough it is true that someone who copies a digital version of a sound recording has little incentive to purchase the recording through legitimate means, it does not necessarily follow that the downloader would have made a legitimate purchase if the recording had not been available for free."
It's important to note that this decision does not directly affect the thousands of civil cases that the RIAA has launched against accused copyright violators. Dove was convicted as a criminal copyright offender where restitution is a consideration, while the RIAA's civil suits can ask for monetary damages determined on an entirely different scale. For example, Jammie Thomas was found liable for $222,000 in damages in 2007 after "making available" only 24 songs (that verdict has since been overturned, however, as the "making available" theory has been riddled with holes via different rulings). "The factors that go into the calculation of restitution are different than the ones that go into the calculation of statutory damages in civil cases," the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Fred von Lohmann pointed out to Wired.
Still, the Dove ruling is reassuring in that it emphasizes once again the concept that a sheer number of downloads doesn't necessarily equal monetary losses. This is the same assertion made by software groups about piracy, such as the Business Software Alliance (BSA), and it keeps getting shot down.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Digital Boom Creates Music Sales Record
British music sales are booming as young fans increasingly buy songs online rather than illegally downloading them, the country's industry body said Wednesday.
The BPI, formerly known as the British Phonographic Industry, said big-selling releases by artists including Leona Lewis, Coldplay, the Killers and Take That also helped drive sales to record levels last year.
The industry has struggled in recent years to adapt to rapidly changing technologies, and has been hit hard by illegal downloading of music via peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing websites.
But download sales grew by 33 percent last year, while 2008 was the biggest sales year on record in terms of singles sales in all formats, with 115 million single tracks sold.
The deepening recession has hit some retailers -- notably Woolworths and high street music retailer Zavvi, formerly Virgin Megastore -- but in other ways it could even be helping the industry, said BPI boss Geoff Taylor.
"Every business and consumer in the UK is having a tough time, and these difficult trading conditions make the resilience of the UK's music market all the more notable," he said.
"During a recession, people look for purchases that are excellent value for money and bring a lot of enjoyment, and music does just this," he added.
While downloads of single tracks have soared, the market for albums has also been helped by growing online sales: some 10 million albums were sold, a 65 percent increase on 2007.
Kim Bayley, head of the Entertainment Retailers Association, said traditional high street music sales were also holding up. "Music performed better in UK stores in 2008 than anyone had expected.
"The big lesson of 2008 is that if the music is strong enough and retailers work well with suppliers to get that product in-store, music fans will respond and buy in their droves."
The upbeat British music news came a day after US technology giant Apple said that every song in its iTunes library will be available without anti-piracy software by April.
The BPI, formerly known as the British Phonographic Industry, said big-selling releases by artists including Leona Lewis, Coldplay, the Killers and Take That also helped drive sales to record levels last year.
The industry has struggled in recent years to adapt to rapidly changing technologies, and has been hit hard by illegal downloading of music via peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing websites.
But download sales grew by 33 percent last year, while 2008 was the biggest sales year on record in terms of singles sales in all formats, with 115 million single tracks sold.
The deepening recession has hit some retailers -- notably Woolworths and high street music retailer Zavvi, formerly Virgin Megastore -- but in other ways it could even be helping the industry, said BPI boss Geoff Taylor.
"Every business and consumer in the UK is having a tough time, and these difficult trading conditions make the resilience of the UK's music market all the more notable," he said.
"During a recession, people look for purchases that are excellent value for money and bring a lot of enjoyment, and music does just this," he added.
While downloads of single tracks have soared, the market for albums has also been helped by growing online sales: some 10 million albums were sold, a 65 percent increase on 2007.
Kim Bayley, head of the Entertainment Retailers Association, said traditional high street music sales were also holding up. "Music performed better in UK stores in 2008 than anyone had expected.
"The big lesson of 2008 is that if the music is strong enough and retailers work well with suppliers to get that product in-store, music fans will respond and buy in their droves."
The upbeat British music news came a day after US technology giant Apple said that every song in its iTunes library will be available without anti-piracy software by April.
Free PHP Script That Sells Your Beats and Music!
504 Productions (www.504productions.com) will help you install this script for 25 bucks.....customization is extra though! But check it out if you want to sell your tunes. They have a mini flash player plus many many many more features.......
Maian Music
Introduction:
Music is my first love, so its a surprise its taken me so long to develop something music based. I had the idea for this script in 2006 when someone mentioned adapting Maian Cart into an .mp3 system. This script enables you to preview and sell your music in .mp3 format. In the live demo you`ll find some of my own music from a few years ago. Some of you may remember it from M-Dream a while ago. Enjoy the script!
Script Features:
- Easy to use mp3 music store to sell/preview mp3 tracks
- Add unlimited albums
- Group tracks into albums
- XHTML/CSS public layout
- Premium Beat flash music player for mp3 previews
- Store mp3 files outside of web root for security
- Store album mp3 files in their own folders
- Expiry limits for downloads and download page for track protection
- Built in check to prevent linking to download page
- Option for discount if whole album is purchased
- Supports 15 currencies
- Paypal IPN test mode available via Sandbox
- Optional mod_rewrite for search engine friendly urls
- Structure albums as parent/child association. ie: Sub categories
- Optional SMTP send mail option
- RSS feed to show latest albums
- Option to include artwork download link with full album purchase
- Graphical stats to view most popular track/album purchases
- Search engines for both public and admin interface
- Simple cart system
- Option to add smaller mp3 file for previews
- Template driven for easy HTML editing
- Auto installation file
- Public interface contact option
- Option to contact buyers from admin interface
- View sales in admin area with album/track purchase details
- About and Licence pages updateable via settings
- Option to re-send download link to buyer
Requirements/Testing Environments:
PHP v4.3.0 or higher.
Paypal Business or Premier Account
CURL support enabled for Paypal IPN system
GD graphics library with Freetype support for captcha
Browser Testing: IE7, IE6, Opera 9.2.5, Firefox 3.0
Local Server Testing: Apache server (2.2.4) running PHP v5.2.5, MySQL v5.0.45-nt
Production Server Testing: Apache server running PHP v5.2.4, MySQL 4.1.22-standard
Error Reporting Level for Development: E_ALL
http://www.maianscriptworld.co.uk/free-php-scripts/maian-music/free-mp3-music-store-system/index.html
Friday, January 9, 2009
Monday, December 29, 2008
Music Industry Looks to Internet for Revival
A generation after the launch of MTV, major record labels are hoping to revive the music video business online by creating a single digital destination for their artists’ output.
Plans under discussion include: a partnership with Hulu, the online television and film joint venture between News Corp and NBC Universal; the creation of a premium service on YouTube, Google’s video sharing site; or, a standalone venture between some or all of the four largest recorded music groups.
Industry members had hailed deals struck with YouTube last year as a new way of driving profits from the popularity of professional music videos and the soundtracks to amateur efforts on such user generated content sites.
However, some are now questioning whether either side has made much money from arrangements which require YouTube to share advertising revenues and, in many cases, pay a few tenths of a cent to the music company each time a video is streamed, regardless of how much advertising is sold.
Universal Music, the industry leader, has said that it makes “tens of millions of dollars” from YouTube.
Warner Music failed last week to agree a new deal with the site, however, saying it was not being adequately compensated and demanding that the site take down its artists’ videos and amateur content using songs from its publishing arm such as “Happy Birthday To You”.
Representatives of two music companies, who would not be named, said they were in discussions with Hulu, adding that no partnership announcement was imminent but that the site appeared to be the favoured partner. “If it happens at all it will be with Hulu,” one said.
Both added, however, that any such deal to create a standalone music video service would not replace existing deals with YouTube, and that there was interest in supplying content for a potential premium service on YouTube, which has begun to offer high definition videos.
Warner may yet return to YouTube should it agree new terms.
Screen Digest, a media research group, estimated last month that Hulu and YouTube would make about $70m and $100m respectively in US advertising revenues in 2008, but that Hulu would draw level with YouTube next year because advertisers are more comfortable with its professional content.
The industry’s search for new digital income comes amid collapsing compact disc sales, which have not yet been offset by digital revenue growth. Warner, the only quoted music company, reported 39 per cent growth in digital revenues for 2008 to $639m, or 18 per cent of total sales.
EMI, owned by Terra Firma, the private equity group, said full year digital revenues rose 29 per cent to £166m, while Universal, owned by Vivendi, reported 33 per cent growth in digital revenue for the first nine months of its financial year, saying in September it believed digital initiatives could soon return the music industry to growth.
Plans under discussion include: a partnership with Hulu, the online television and film joint venture between News Corp and NBC Universal; the creation of a premium service on YouTube, Google’s video sharing site; or, a standalone venture between some or all of the four largest recorded music groups.
Industry members had hailed deals struck with YouTube last year as a new way of driving profits from the popularity of professional music videos and the soundtracks to amateur efforts on such user generated content sites.
However, some are now questioning whether either side has made much money from arrangements which require YouTube to share advertising revenues and, in many cases, pay a few tenths of a cent to the music company each time a video is streamed, regardless of how much advertising is sold.
Universal Music, the industry leader, has said that it makes “tens of millions of dollars” from YouTube.
Warner Music failed last week to agree a new deal with the site, however, saying it was not being adequately compensated and demanding that the site take down its artists’ videos and amateur content using songs from its publishing arm such as “Happy Birthday To You”.
Representatives of two music companies, who would not be named, said they were in discussions with Hulu, adding that no partnership announcement was imminent but that the site appeared to be the favoured partner. “If it happens at all it will be with Hulu,” one said.
Both added, however, that any such deal to create a standalone music video service would not replace existing deals with YouTube, and that there was interest in supplying content for a potential premium service on YouTube, which has begun to offer high definition videos.
Warner may yet return to YouTube should it agree new terms.
Screen Digest, a media research group, estimated last month that Hulu and YouTube would make about $70m and $100m respectively in US advertising revenues in 2008, but that Hulu would draw level with YouTube next year because advertisers are more comfortable with its professional content.
The industry’s search for new digital income comes amid collapsing compact disc sales, which have not yet been offset by digital revenue growth. Warner, the only quoted music company, reported 39 per cent growth in digital revenues for 2008 to $639m, or 18 per cent of total sales.
EMI, owned by Terra Firma, the private equity group, said full year digital revenues rose 29 per cent to £166m, while Universal, owned by Vivendi, reported 33 per cent growth in digital revenue for the first nine months of its financial year, saying in September it believed digital initiatives could soon return the music industry to growth.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Digital Distribution for the Indie Artist
I get many emails asking how I have my music available on many download websites such as iTunes and Beatport. I use 2 different services and will go over them for you now.
The first service is offered through CD Baby. Now at this time, you cannot upload a single track to CD Baby. I have read they are moving in that direction. For what they do offer, it is worth it and from a business perspective is a bit more sensible.
Any CD that you sell through CD Baby you can sign up for their digital distribution. The best thing about their program is they take nothing from you ever. The only thing that is required is a bar code. If you have a bar code for your CD, then you can sign up your CD for free with them. If not, a bar code is 20 bucks. Not a bad deal when you see the digital stores you will be submitted too.
- Apple iTunes
- Amazon
- BuyMusic
- GreatIndieMusic
- GroupieTunes
- iSound
- Last.fm
- Mix And Burn
- MP3tunes
- MSN Music
- MusicNet
- PayPlay
- Rhapsody
- Txttunes
- Verizon
- Zune
The only deal with CD Baby is that you must submit your CD to them to sell to be able to enroll in their digital distribution program. To me, I feel it is worth it. You get your tunes on the bigger websites that are for the consumer or fan. Sites like iTunes & Amazon alone are worth it.
From a business point of view, it is smarter to get the CD out before you start to sell your Mp3s of the CD. Milk your CD sales for what you can for at least 60 days. Then get those mp3s listed and promote it as "Now Available on iTunes!"...
The second service I use to distribute to the DJ consumer would be Symphonic Distribution. They deal with labels only. They supply a wide range of websites that cater to the DJ. Here is a list of some of the stores they distribute too.
- Beatport
- Breakbeat Alliance
- Breakbeat Online
- DJ Download
- DJ Mag.com
- DJ Mr
- Juno Download
- Mixmag
Now Symphonic Distribution does distribute to stores that CD Baby also distributes too. Stores such as Apple iTunes, Amazon, and Rhapsody. You can choose from each service what stores you want them to distribute too. Just tell Symphonic Distribution not to distribute to stores that would be a conflict. Most major stores do not appreciate your music being submitted from more than one source.
Now if you are an independent artist, you will not be able to use Symphonic Distribution. They only cater to labels. The only way to get your tunes on Beatport is to find a label that would submit your music to Beatport. Beatport has strict rules and is one of the hardest stores to get your music on. It is also one of the ones with the strictest rules.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
43 Million Reasons to Use MySpace.com
by Andre Calilhanna, Discmakers
The indie music universe is constantly waning and expanding: new bands emerge, old ones dissolve, conferences come and go, new web sites pop up as older ones fall out of fashion. As with any other industry or business model, these indie music offerings fail and succeed with their ability to create and meet market demand for their service.
Enter MySpace.com. Incorporating successful elements of MP3.com and IUMA, and eclipsing PureVolume and Friendster as the place to be online, MySpace is the epitome of what an online community can be. In it’s short life it has adapted and evolved to meet the evolving needs of its user base, and it has expanded to a network of over 43 million users in the process. Thanks, in large part, to the bands.
Billionaire Boys Club, from Jersey City, NJ, boast the distinction of being the first band ever to grace the front page of MySpace. Through good timing and good tunes, BBC caught the attention of MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson and ushered in a new wrinkle in the MySpace universe. The band is still listed as one of Anderson’s MySpace favorites.
Fireflight, from Orlando, FL, recently signed to Flicker Records, and attribute a lot of their growing fan base to their efforts and presence on MySpace. Through their page on MySpace, the band sees continuous growth and interest, which should only increase as they release their album in July and start playing a full regimen of shows.
We sat down with these two indie music veterans and gleaned some insights into the finer points of MySpace marketing. Here’s our list of five phenomenal reasons to use MySpace!
One of the tenets of good marketing is to target your market. You wouldn’t pitch your Crunk Speed-Metal band with an ad in Today’s Grandparent magazine. The idea is to figure out who your market is, find out where they are, develop your message, then figure out how to get that message in front of the people who might want to buy what you’re selling.
MySpace delivers this in spades. Pockets and niches of users, called “friends,” gather around each other and share info on bands they like. For instance, let’s say you like My Chemical Romance. You can go check out their site, listen to their music, and read their blog. Then, if you want to find bands with a similar sound, you can check out the band’s friends, which include a host of other bands. Presumably, these are bands that have something in common with My Chemical Romance, so you go and check them out.
There are also fans listed as friends, and they typically have a bunch of bands on their pages. So someone into My Chemical Romance will have a number of other bands posted. You might be interested in checking some of them out. It’s viral marketing in its purest form, and the friend network is what really sets MySpace apart from other band sites.
It’s also why Isac Walter, who does marketing and programming for MySpace, says major labels are clamoring to get their bands on the site. “With 43 million users, it’s almost better than going to TV, what with the way people watch TV nowadays. People come to this site to discover new music, and what better way to expose an artist than to leak a band to this audience?”
As a band, this works the other way, too. Once you start developing a fan base, you can communicate to them when you have a show or a news event to broadcast. MySpace provides a service where you can target the friends you contact by region.
Billionaire Boys Club, from Jersey City, NJ
“They added this feature,” says Leigh Nelson of BBC, “where you can set up an event, and you can say I want to invite all my friends in a radius of x number of miles from this zip code. So we’ll do a show in New York and set up an invitation and invite all of our friends within 50 or 100 miles of the city. So we’re directly targeting that audience, where with email you end up sending show announcements to people in Germany. These are things that get added one little bit at a time. Tom really seems to get how people are using MySpace and what they want to do with it, and they’re always adding functionality based on that.”
Communication Runs Both Ways
The internet has completely changed the way we communicate, particularly in terms of marketing. Take something as simple as a band mailing list, for instance. In the early 90’s, that meant printing post cards, labeling them, putting stamps on them, and lugging it all to the post office weeks before the gig. It sounds like the Dark Ages, doesn’t it? It cost a bunch of money, and fans could only communicate by seeing you at a show or writing a letter. Email changed all that. Now it’s free to email your announcement, fans can immediately reply, and you don’t need to plan your promotion months in advance.
MySpace has taken that even further. MySpace not only allows you to communicate with your fans quickly and cost effectively, but it allows them to communicate with you and each other.
Fans can tell you what they think of everything on your page – a picture, a song, a blog entry – and their response is posted immediately. They can then spread your news to their friends with a couple of keystrokes. It’s an amazing development, and there are many ways to take advantage of it to create drama and stir up a buzz.
Fireflight, from Orlando, FL
“We started leaking the news about our signing to Flicker on MySpace because we knew people were going to be reading our blog,” says Justin Cox of Fireflight, “but we got way more response than we thought we would. That generated more interest in our page than anything had in a long time. You could see us singing a contract but you didn’t know with who, and that blog is the most visited we have. We put it on our regular site, too, but we don’t have it set up where people can comment, so it’s cool to know that so many people were keeping track and were genuinely interested.”
There are examples of bands booking shows to meet the demand of their MySpace fans, tells Walter. “There’s this band Cut Copy from Australia who did the Franz Ferdinand tour, and when they played Los Angeles they had enough people on MySpace saying, ‘Oh I wish you were playing your own show!’ So they booked a show at a smaller club called The Echo and gave discounts to their MySpace friends and sold the place out. Bands like that who keep in contact and get a little more personal with their audience can really have success.”
And Nelson explains that opportunities are coming to them by way of MySpace. “We used to get a decent amount of fan email, but now all those comments are pretty much coming exclusively from MySpace. Also coming in are show offers, booking people who are interested, soundtracks who are interested in songs… a lot of that comes via MySpace. It makes us more likely to follow up, too, because we can get a better idea of who these people are by looking at their page.”
Motivated fans who find you and help promote you
Indie bands need help. It’s a lot of work to do promotion, book gigs, sell merch, rehearse, write, and do the hundreds of little details involved with a band. Street teams and helpful fans have been the solution to much of that, though not always easy to assemble and coordinate. MySpace, with its younger demographic and infectious network qualities, makes it easier to find folks ready to jump on and paint your bandwagon. Sometimes, the band doesn’t even know it happening.
“We have this banner on our MySpace page,” explains Cox. “I was surprised to find that people who were our friends were taking it and posting it on other people’s MySpace pages, trying to drive traffic to us. So let’s say there was no MySpace and you had a web site, and you had that same banner. It’s cool, but what are people going to do with it? Now that we’ve got MySpace, they take those banners and post them as comments on other people’s pages and blogs, and people read the blogs and then automatically they’re going to your site for no other reason than that it’s there.”
Finding where your MySpace fans are coming from can lead to unexpected market research, like expanding your gig radius based on fan input. “I can search for BBC across the whole site and see how many people have added us and said we’re one of their favorite bands,” says Nelson. “It’s really cool to see fans crop up in markets we’ve never even been to. All of a sudden we see there are a lot of friends in upstate New York, we get in touch with them and find out where we should play and then go do some shows. In the past there was no way to find that kind of information.”
Crossover Marketing
At its best, one marketing endeavor feeds another, and spills into your other efforts. As Walter says, “The bands who promote their MySpace pages become the biggest bands on MySpace, hands down.” By linking from your regular web site, adding your MySpace URL to all your stickers, t-shirts, etc., you drive people to your site, and more likely broadcast to all those MySpace users that you’re on there, too.
It also works in reverse. MySpace traffic drives traffic to your regular web site, and people to your shows. “Traffic on our site has increased drastically as well,” says Cox, “and I’m sure that has something to do with MySpace because it’s been a steady ramp since we’ve been on there.
“I can also remember instances specifically where people have come up to me at a show and say they heard us on MySpace and decided to come check us out, which to me is the best. It’s just a big network and a big word of mouth kind of thing and you can’t get that kind of exposure unless you’re playing shows every night. It’s just been this awesome marketing tool.”
Free Marketing is the Best Marketing Ever!
Sounds obvious, and it is! But it can’t be understated or undervalued. Many of the band web sites out there offer great services, and there’s no reason not to be on every site you can get to. MySpace has the unique distinction, though, of offering just about everything you could imagine wanting all under one roof: a potential fan base, an opportunity to broadcast your music, a place to hang your photos, a web presence with a decent amount of customization… the list goes on. Not to mention the features and functions that allow you to be a smart marketer.
“The thing that sets MySpace apart from sites that are just for bands,” touts Nelson, “is people sign onto MySpace every day, just to check their messages, read, and communicate. I use it every day, to check in and see what’s going on, look for any bulletins from bands, figure out what’s going on tonight in the city. So just by putting your journal or show dates or advertisements and songs up there, you’re simply going to get a lot more exposure than people just randomly checking your web site. People spend more time on it than anywhere else. I guess credit to Tom there, for setting it up in such a way that makes it so addictive!”
The indie music universe is constantly waning and expanding: new bands emerge, old ones dissolve, conferences come and go, new web sites pop up as older ones fall out of fashion. As with any other industry or business model, these indie music offerings fail and succeed with their ability to create and meet market demand for their service.
Enter MySpace.com. Incorporating successful elements of MP3.com and IUMA, and eclipsing PureVolume and Friendster as the place to be online, MySpace is the epitome of what an online community can be. In it’s short life it has adapted and evolved to meet the evolving needs of its user base, and it has expanded to a network of over 43 million users in the process. Thanks, in large part, to the bands.
Billionaire Boys Club, from Jersey City, NJ, boast the distinction of being the first band ever to grace the front page of MySpace. Through good timing and good tunes, BBC caught the attention of MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson and ushered in a new wrinkle in the MySpace universe. The band is still listed as one of Anderson’s MySpace favorites.
Fireflight, from Orlando, FL, recently signed to Flicker Records, and attribute a lot of their growing fan base to their efforts and presence on MySpace. Through their page on MySpace, the band sees continuous growth and interest, which should only increase as they release their album in July and start playing a full regimen of shows.
We sat down with these two indie music veterans and gleaned some insights into the finer points of MySpace marketing. Here’s our list of five phenomenal reasons to use MySpace!
- Super-targeted viral marketing.
- Communication runs both ways.
- Motivated fans.
- Crossover marketing opportunities.
- Free marketing is the best marketing ever!
One of the tenets of good marketing is to target your market. You wouldn’t pitch your Crunk Speed-Metal band with an ad in Today’s Grandparent magazine. The idea is to figure out who your market is, find out where they are, develop your message, then figure out how to get that message in front of the people who might want to buy what you’re selling.
MySpace delivers this in spades. Pockets and niches of users, called “friends,” gather around each other and share info on bands they like. For instance, let’s say you like My Chemical Romance. You can go check out their site, listen to their music, and read their blog. Then, if you want to find bands with a similar sound, you can check out the band’s friends, which include a host of other bands. Presumably, these are bands that have something in common with My Chemical Romance, so you go and check them out.
There are also fans listed as friends, and they typically have a bunch of bands on their pages. So someone into My Chemical Romance will have a number of other bands posted. You might be interested in checking some of them out. It’s viral marketing in its purest form, and the friend network is what really sets MySpace apart from other band sites.
It’s also why Isac Walter, who does marketing and programming for MySpace, says major labels are clamoring to get their bands on the site. “With 43 million users, it’s almost better than going to TV, what with the way people watch TV nowadays. People come to this site to discover new music, and what better way to expose an artist than to leak a band to this audience?”
As a band, this works the other way, too. Once you start developing a fan base, you can communicate to them when you have a show or a news event to broadcast. MySpace provides a service where you can target the friends you contact by region.
Billionaire Boys Club, from Jersey City, NJ
“They added this feature,” says Leigh Nelson of BBC, “where you can set up an event, and you can say I want to invite all my friends in a radius of x number of miles from this zip code. So we’ll do a show in New York and set up an invitation and invite all of our friends within 50 or 100 miles of the city. So we’re directly targeting that audience, where with email you end up sending show announcements to people in Germany. These are things that get added one little bit at a time. Tom really seems to get how people are using MySpace and what they want to do with it, and they’re always adding functionality based on that.”
Communication Runs Both Ways
The internet has completely changed the way we communicate, particularly in terms of marketing. Take something as simple as a band mailing list, for instance. In the early 90’s, that meant printing post cards, labeling them, putting stamps on them, and lugging it all to the post office weeks before the gig. It sounds like the Dark Ages, doesn’t it? It cost a bunch of money, and fans could only communicate by seeing you at a show or writing a letter. Email changed all that. Now it’s free to email your announcement, fans can immediately reply, and you don’t need to plan your promotion months in advance.
MySpace has taken that even further. MySpace not only allows you to communicate with your fans quickly and cost effectively, but it allows them to communicate with you and each other.
Fans can tell you what they think of everything on your page – a picture, a song, a blog entry – and their response is posted immediately. They can then spread your news to their friends with a couple of keystrokes. It’s an amazing development, and there are many ways to take advantage of it to create drama and stir up a buzz.
Fireflight, from Orlando, FL
“We started leaking the news about our signing to Flicker on MySpace because we knew people were going to be reading our blog,” says Justin Cox of Fireflight, “but we got way more response than we thought we would. That generated more interest in our page than anything had in a long time. You could see us singing a contract but you didn’t know with who, and that blog is the most visited we have. We put it on our regular site, too, but we don’t have it set up where people can comment, so it’s cool to know that so many people were keeping track and were genuinely interested.”
There are examples of bands booking shows to meet the demand of their MySpace fans, tells Walter. “There’s this band Cut Copy from Australia who did the Franz Ferdinand tour, and when they played Los Angeles they had enough people on MySpace saying, ‘Oh I wish you were playing your own show!’ So they booked a show at a smaller club called The Echo and gave discounts to their MySpace friends and sold the place out. Bands like that who keep in contact and get a little more personal with their audience can really have success.”
And Nelson explains that opportunities are coming to them by way of MySpace. “We used to get a decent amount of fan email, but now all those comments are pretty much coming exclusively from MySpace. Also coming in are show offers, booking people who are interested, soundtracks who are interested in songs… a lot of that comes via MySpace. It makes us more likely to follow up, too, because we can get a better idea of who these people are by looking at their page.”
Motivated fans who find you and help promote you
Indie bands need help. It’s a lot of work to do promotion, book gigs, sell merch, rehearse, write, and do the hundreds of little details involved with a band. Street teams and helpful fans have been the solution to much of that, though not always easy to assemble and coordinate. MySpace, with its younger demographic and infectious network qualities, makes it easier to find folks ready to jump on and paint your bandwagon. Sometimes, the band doesn’t even know it happening.
“We have this banner on our MySpace page,” explains Cox. “I was surprised to find that people who were our friends were taking it and posting it on other people’s MySpace pages, trying to drive traffic to us. So let’s say there was no MySpace and you had a web site, and you had that same banner. It’s cool, but what are people going to do with it? Now that we’ve got MySpace, they take those banners and post them as comments on other people’s pages and blogs, and people read the blogs and then automatically they’re going to your site for no other reason than that it’s there.”
Finding where your MySpace fans are coming from can lead to unexpected market research, like expanding your gig radius based on fan input. “I can search for BBC across the whole site and see how many people have added us and said we’re one of their favorite bands,” says Nelson. “It’s really cool to see fans crop up in markets we’ve never even been to. All of a sudden we see there are a lot of friends in upstate New York, we get in touch with them and find out where we should play and then go do some shows. In the past there was no way to find that kind of information.”
Crossover Marketing
At its best, one marketing endeavor feeds another, and spills into your other efforts. As Walter says, “The bands who promote their MySpace pages become the biggest bands on MySpace, hands down.” By linking from your regular web site, adding your MySpace URL to all your stickers, t-shirts, etc., you drive people to your site, and more likely broadcast to all those MySpace users that you’re on there, too.
It also works in reverse. MySpace traffic drives traffic to your regular web site, and people to your shows. “Traffic on our site has increased drastically as well,” says Cox, “and I’m sure that has something to do with MySpace because it’s been a steady ramp since we’ve been on there.
“I can also remember instances specifically where people have come up to me at a show and say they heard us on MySpace and decided to come check us out, which to me is the best. It’s just a big network and a big word of mouth kind of thing and you can’t get that kind of exposure unless you’re playing shows every night. It’s just been this awesome marketing tool.”
Free Marketing is the Best Marketing Ever!
Sounds obvious, and it is! But it can’t be understated or undervalued. Many of the band web sites out there offer great services, and there’s no reason not to be on every site you can get to. MySpace has the unique distinction, though, of offering just about everything you could imagine wanting all under one roof: a potential fan base, an opportunity to broadcast your music, a place to hang your photos, a web presence with a decent amount of customization… the list goes on. Not to mention the features and functions that allow you to be a smart marketer.
“The thing that sets MySpace apart from sites that are just for bands,” touts Nelson, “is people sign onto MySpace every day, just to check their messages, read, and communicate. I use it every day, to check in and see what’s going on, look for any bulletins from bands, figure out what’s going on tonight in the city. So just by putting your journal or show dates or advertisements and songs up there, you’re simply going to get a lot more exposure than people just randomly checking your web site. People spend more time on it than anywhere else. I guess credit to Tom there, for setting it up in such a way that makes it so addictive!”
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
iTunes Hits Two Billion Sold Milestone
Apple today announced that more than two billion songs, 50 million television episodes and over 1.3 million feature-length films have been purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Store.
“iTunes has crossed another major milestone by selling over two billion songs—with over a billion of them sold in the last year alone—making it by far the world’s most popular music store,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “And by selling 50 million TV shows and over 1.3 million movies to date, iTunes is already the largest online video store in the world as well.”
The iTunes Store features the world’s largest catalog, with over four million songs, 250 feature films, 350 television shows and over 100,000 podcasts.
“iTunes has crossed another major milestone by selling over two billion songs—with over a billion of them sold in the last year alone—making it by far the world’s most popular music store,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “And by selling 50 million TV shows and over 1.3 million movies to date, iTunes is already the largest online video store in the world as well.”
The iTunes Store features the world’s largest catalog, with over four million songs, 250 feature films, 350 television shows and over 100,000 podcasts.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)