Browsing all posts in April, 2008.
The Elusive Business Model
It’s redundant to say the music industry is going through some major changes. The business model of selling discs for the top 2% or so of artists has ended. It will not return. So what is the new business model? The glorious thing is that nobody knows. It is a free for all out there [...]
Wally World CD’s
My term of endearment for Wal*Mart is Wally World. Actually, there is no endearment. In my old job, I sold to Wal*Mart corporate and they are not fun people to do conduct business with. But I am digressing. The point of this blog is the news that Wal*Mart is selling many top-selling cd’s for between [...]
Where did the Studio go?
I have started playing music with a friend of mine named Tyler. Tyler is a singer/songwriter and I play violin on the songs. We start playing in bars next week. Yesterday morning, Tyler wrote a song and within one hour of completing the song, he recorded it and uploaded it to youtube, myspace, and facebook. [...]
Live or Online Nation?
Last week, I had a conversation with a friend about the difference between seeing a live show in person as opposed to seeing a live show online. There is something very powerful about seeing a show in person. Maybe it’s the combination of loud music, lots of people, alcohol, and the power of shared experience. [...]
Musician Compensation
How will artists get paid in this shakeup within the music industry? Yesterday, I wrote about the Songza website where apparently Songza pays for licenses from all of the major performing rights organizations. And artists are getting paid from itunes and amazon sales, around 14% of the price. Now, the major labels are proposing a [...]
Streaming Music
I’ve been spending some time on Songza today. Songza allows you to search by song title or artist to listen to any song. Songza pays all the major performing rights organizations who then pay the songwriters and publishers the appropriate rate based upon song play. This site brings up some important points about the future [...]
Mark the Music
A quote from Shakespeare following the theme of the spirit of music. This comes from the Merchant of Venice: “The man that hath no music in himself, nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils; the motions of his spirit are dull as night and his affections [...]
Arbiters of Taste
There seems to be a bit of a downside to nearly unlimited choice. A few years ago, I had all my cd’s on a few shelves, would hear new music on the radio, and occasionally go see a live show. Now I have the option to hear a million different songs by pushing a few [...]
Social Networking Sites
I have a problem. I like rap music and I also like opera. I like other types of music, but for the sake of argument, let’s just say that I like rap and opera music. Now if I go to a social networking site (SNS) that concentrates in music, I will come across many playlists [...]
Sonific Snuffed
There was a casualty today with the online widget playing start-up Sonific. Sonific allowed the user to add a widget to play music on their Facebook profile, blog, or website. The user could then choose what songs to play from the Sonific library which included over 200k songs. Obviously, the bigger the library, the more [...]
