Music Pricing and Channels
September 9, 2008
Selling recorded music presents some interesting decisions, many of them related to pricing and distribution channels. Well, interesting enough for me to follow a trail of recent posts. The trail led me to LA, and to an LA Times blog.
Warner Music Group raised eyebrows last month when it yanked a promising downloadable single and album from new U.K. chanteuse Estelle off iTunes in a bid to … boost sales? The move certainly helped two obscure cover bands, which quickly filled the void on iTunes with their own versions of Estelle’s “American Boy.”
The trail started at Reddit or some such site, and got to LA via Penny Distribution and Coolfer. It includes arguments that the price of a single should be more than the standard track price.
I don’t think that the music industry is going to solve its problems by making music more difficult or expensive to obtain. To return to the opening example, artificial scarcity isn’t going to help in an era of abundant (if not always legal) content and bandwidth.
Music and Models
August 22, 2008
It was a mixed week for online music. It was particularly tough for a couple of online services. Muxtape announced that it will be unavailable for a brief period while we sort out a problem with the RIAA. I suspect that Mashable Stan spoke for many with his Nooo! and his doubts that the period will be brief.
Meanwhile, Pandora may shut down in the face of the high royalty fees to which online radio is subject. Mike Arrington speculated that Pandora needs to be sacrificed before artists and labels to realize just how absurd their position is.
On the other hand, there are artists who want their music to be widely heard, and organizations eager to work with them to make that happen. Monday saw the release of Everything That Happens Will Happen Today by David Byrne and Brian Eno. They worked with Topspin, as CEO Ian explains.
Had I got a midweek roundup out on Wednesday, it would have looked rather like this post. The music industry continues to live in interesting times.
In Rainbows, On Torrents
August 8, 2008
This post takes its title from a paper (pdf available), the main question of which is: did Radiohead’s “offer of their album ‘for free’ succeed in diverting traffic away from Torrent sites, and (back) towards their own ‘venue’ of InRainbows.com?”
For ‘In Rainbows’, we are able to present global BitTorrent downloads on a daily breakdown from 10 October to 3 November 2007. In total, a staggering 2.3 million torrent downloads were made during this period - that far exceeds what outsiders have reported as the estimated download total from the bands official website, regardless of whether those downloaders paid or not.
Note that the authors have to rely on estimates of downloads from Radiohead’s site. That said, the fact there there were millions of torrent downloads in less than a month is, if not “staggering,” at least impressive.
So why did so many people use torrents to get something they could have got for the same price (free) from Radiohead’s site? The authors propose the “venue hypothesis” that: “people are more likely to act habitually (say, using The Pirate Bay) than to break their habit (say, visiting www.InRainbows.com)”.
There’s a lot of interesting discussion in the report and elsewhere (see links below) about this and other hypotheses, and about things like stimulus versus substitution effects. Did the free download stimulate payment for other Radiohead stuff (the CD itself, live shows, merch) or did it substitute for such payment?
I read about the report via At Ease and Wired. Having provided the obligatory links, I’ll add a good old-fashioned citation: Page & Garland (2008) ‘In Rainbows, On Torrents’, Economic Insight No. 10, Available: www.mcps-prsalliance.co.uk/economics
Randy Newman’s Harps and Angels
August 7, 2008
Randy Newman’s first (non-soundtrack) album in nine years came out yesterday. I’ve been enjoying Harps and Angels a lot. My favorite track so far is the one with the line: “God bless the potholes down on memory lane.” Before I forget, I’ll link to video of Randy introducing, then playing, “Potholes.”
Of the ten tracks, the one that’s received most press is probably “A Few Words in Defense of Our Country.” Here’s a video of Randy playing it. Each video is just voice and piano, although the album features fuller arrangements.
Barenaked Time
July 3, 2008
The Barenaked Ladies album Snacktime is proving to be a favorite with all the kids in the family, even those who are the parents. BNL seem to me to resemble They Might Be Giants in multiple ways, one of which is that each is a band that made a lot of music with kid appeal before the first “kid album.”
Of all the 24 tracks on the album, the one preferred by the parents is Ed’s crazy ABC. I just posted it to my Posterous blog, but let’s see if I can put it in this post as well.
The kids’ favorite track is “Allergies,” which I included in a previous post at this blog. I think that Snacktime is my second-favorite BNL album, behind only Gordon, their first album.
Rhapsody MP3 Store: Some Contrasts
June 30, 2008
Today’s story that Rhapsody is launching an MP3 store alongside its subscription service (which is still very much the focus of rhapsody.com) presents some interesting contrasts. The obvious contrast is the one between buying your music and subscribing to it. I suspect that the modes of accessing music are more complements than they are substitutes, but the question deserves its own post (and this isn’t it).
Although today’s Rhapsody news is similar to the Napster news of about 5 weeks ago, there is a key difference. Free is that key: Rhapsody are giving away a free album download to the first 100,000 to sign up. Yes that offer is available to people who already pay for Rhapsody’s subscription service: I got mine.
I first saw the news about the MP3 store and the introductory offer in a post by Mashable Kristen. There are a couple of contrasts with Kristen’s post. One is there was a timely post at Mashable, whereas there wasn’t at the Rhapsody blog.
last100 also carried a post, by Steve O’Hear, about the Rhapsody store. Steve himself focuses on some points of contrast, or differentiation, for the new store. I’ll point out a couple of contrasts between his post and Kristen’s.
The most obvious is that Kristen’s was hours earlier. Perhaps this is why it seemed hasty. I’m not just referring to typos, but to misleading things such as Rhapsody’s: (1) “newly established relationship with RealNetworks” and (2) “converting its entire catalog to DRM-free music.” (1) the relationship is far from new. (2) the first few times I looked in the new store for an artist I’ve enjoyed via subscription, I drew a blank. Some of the artists in question are: Laura Marling; Bon Iver; Fionn Regan.
While I’ve so far emphasized contrasts, there are some ways in which the song remains the same. The first comment on Kristen’s post is that the Rhapsody store is US-only. When it comes to music, it seems that the real world-wide web is BitTorrent.
John Hiatt and Joss Stone Sing the Same Tune
June 26, 2008
Each of the two musicians likes the current state of the music business, because they recognize good times for music even as they see bad time for big music business. Here’s Johhny, via Reuters and Reddit:
“An artist like myself, us old dogs who have an audience kinda feel like we’re in the catbird seat because it’s about the music again,” said Hiatt, not exactly old at 55.
That’s because the demise of the major labels allows independent record companies — such as Los Angeles-based New West, Hiatt’s home since 2003 — to fill the breach. These nimble operations sometimes have longer attention spans than their lumbering, larger brethren.
The rather younger Ms Stone goes further. Here’s what she said when asked about piracy.
I think it’s brilliant and I’ll tell you why… Music should be shared… The only part about music that I dislike is the business that is attached to it. Now, if music is free, then there is no business, there is just music. So, I like it, I think that we should share.
It’s ok, if one person buys it, it’s totally cool, burn it up, share it with your friends, I don’t care. I don’t care how you hear it as long as you hear it. As long as you come to my show, and have a great time listening to the live show it’s totally cool. I don’t mind. I’m happy that they hear it.
Both Mashable Stan and TorrentFreak Ernesto emphasize that Joss is not being naive. The latter points out that “several studies have shown that artists actually benefit from filesharing. The more music people share, the more CDs they buy and the more concerts they visit.”
Entertainment Quarter-Century: New Classic Albums
June 21, 2008
Entertainment Weekly is celebrating its 1000th issue with a bunch of lists of “new classics” from 1983 to the present. Such lists are, of course, just asking for flames, and Stereogum and its readers rise to the juicy bait of the 100 best albums list.
You can head over to EW to find more lists to chortle over, and even some to be interested by. Or you could stay here for my top 10 albums since 1983. Here’s the list, starting with that very year.
- Speaking in Tongues, Talking Heads, 1983.
- High Land Hard Rain, Aztec Camera, 1983.
- King of America, Elvis Costello, 1986 (53 on EW list).
- Acadie, Daniel Lanois, 1989.
- Workbook, Bob Mould, 1989.
- Electr-O-Pura, Yo La Tengo, 1995.
- You? me? us? Richard Thompson, 1996.
- OK Computer, Radiohead, 1997 (62 on EW list).
- One free slot because I’m bound to have forgotten something, perhaps from this 11-year gap.
- The Midnight Organ Fight, Frightened Rabbit, 2008.
Yes, I do think that the last of these really is that good, as far as I can tell about such a recent album. Here’s my favorite track from it.
There is a strong bias toward the first half of the quarter-century. And the tenth album might turn out to be something (perhaps by R.E.M.) from those dozen years. In some ways, that’s fine, because it shows that almost all the albums have stood a ten-year-plus test of time.
My Morning Music
June 16, 2008
While composing my two (web/business) posts of this morning, I was streaming a variety of music on Rhapsody.
I started off with “I Kissed a Girl” by Katy Perry. Although I didn’t enjoy it, I did find it interesting to note that the drums sound like the 1970s (Gary Glitter in particular), the cheesy synths like the 1980s, and the lesbiansperimentation lyrics like the 1990s. There is of course another song with the same title and theme, which has real 1990s lesbiansperimentation lyrics, 1980s beefcake rather than cheese, and a video that was wonderfully retro when it was made more than a decade ago.
Then I had me some Evil Urges. I can’t say that I gave in to said Urges; I don’t get My Morning Jacket. Then again, I get the impression that MMJ aren’t meant to be gotten live, rather than on record/MP3. The track I enjoyed most was “Librarian,” partly because I was in a library.
Finally, I sampled some Pablo Honey. Radiohead fans seem to regard the band’s debut album as their weakest, but there’s a lot of goodness and variety in this Honey. I heard 1970s new wave, I heard Coldplay, I of course heard “Creep” (twice, since the “so very special” radio version is tacked on to the end of the album). One of the interesting things about Radiohead is that they keep on trying on different musical outfits, and on Honey they change costumes with almost every number. Coherence, schmoherence, the kids had to start somewhere, and they tried a lot of somewheres.
Retro Music Formats
June 12, 2008
Retro music formats are everywhere, not just in CostCo. For example:
- At TechDirt, Dennis Yang highlighted the threat to CDs from vinyl: “CD sales have been declining due to the growth of digital music. Well, CDs are now being flanked by an old format: vinyl.” Astute readers will recall that I overstated that very point a few days earlier.
- In today’s Boston Globe, Christopher Muther reports that the long-ignored cassette tape is making a stylistic comeback. I have no hankering for most of the cassette-themed merch plugged in the article, but I wouldn’t mind a USB Mix Tape (64MB USB that looks like a cassette).
- The current and rather brilliant Cat and Girl comic includes a goodbye to “our rogue half-century of music as an object.”
