Music Industry News

The Case for a Separate Society of Indies...

Source: Digital Music News
March 22, 2011

We've questioned whether it makes sense to treat indies as a distinct category of the music industry anymore.The majors are collapsing, artists and labels can communicate directly with their fans, and fans themselves have unprecedented access to whatever music they want— major, indie, unsigned, whatever. On top of that, it's increasingly unclear how to define an indie anymore, and many artists are hybrids. But is that argument thinking too far ahead? According to one indie label owner, indies need the ...

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Anatomy of a Successful Direct to Fan Campaign

Source: We All Make Music
March 22, 2011

Over the weekend at SXSW, Topspin awarded a $5,000 grant to Alessandro Cortini, a.k.a. SONOIO, to fund a marketing campaign for SONOIO's albums. SONOIO was one of many artists that formally applied for the grant, filling out an application detailing precisely what he intended to do with his money. Let's have a look at what goes into a winning application, shall we? On its face, the SONOIO plan doesn't seem especially flashy. He has a second album, Red, that he ...

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Managing Relationships with Fans when Your Fan Base Gets Too Big

Source: HypeBot
March 22, 2011

Jon Ostrow has written a fantastic post on Music Think Tank that details how an artist can stay connected to their fans when their audience outgrows them.  Before you start to feel overwhelmed, Ostrow offers actionable insights into how an artists can keep their fans close before they feel like pushing them away. This may not be problem everyone has, but it's a problem that everyone hopes they'll have. The time you have to connect with fans is outweighed by the ...

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Apple Pushing to Launch Music Locker in April

Source: HypeBot
March 22, 2011

Apple is reportedly pressuring the major labels to have all of the music licenses in place for the re-launch of their MobileMe service in April. This would allow users to store their music online and access it from any mobile device. Last month, Apple confirmed that their new $1 billion data center in Maiden, NC, is expected to open this spring. Since it will be used to support iTunes and MobileMe, the prior reports that said we could expect music ...

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Is the Shared Music Experience a Niche?

Source: HypeBot
March 22, 2011

Many apps I've come across lately focus on the shared music experience. SoundTracking lets users share music moments. Songza lets users share a radio station. Mixapp lets users create a listening room. And Roqbot lets users gain control of a public playlist. All of these are great ideas. But I'm left asking myself, is the shared music experience a niche? There is a place for these apps. People will use them. The question is how many people will use them. There is ...

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Memo to Bands and Promoters: Use Discount Tickets to Announce a Show, Not to Save One

Source: HypeBot
March 22, 2011

This simple and powerful idea somes from Scott Perry of The New Music Tip Sheet: “Don't use sites like Goldstar and Groupon to discount tickets at the last minute, use those services to announce a tour and give fans the discount up front. Offer the cheap seats at 2-for-1 pricing via a partnered presale, and then...  sell the rest of the tickets at full price. You miss the Groupon sale, you miss the discount, no more of this waiting for ...

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My Top Takeaways from #SXSW 2011

Source: HypeBot
March 22, 2011

The din of musicians and companies vying for attention at SXSW 2011 reminded me standing in NYC's Time Square enveloped in a mashup of humanity, honking taxis and blinking Jumbotrons.  But several important and sometimes surprising messages did rise above the noise:

The Disruption Has Just Started - The music industry is starting to move beyond the disruption of the digital age, but other industries from mobile to banking are still in the middle of it.  What happens next with ...

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CEA to Music Industry: Stop Complaining, Start Innovating...

Source: Digital Music News
March 19, 2011

The following is a response from the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) to an earlier article on Digital Music News, “Technology Is Cooler Than Content, And It's Costing Us Billions...“ It comes from Senior Vice President, Government and Regulatory Affairs Michael Petricone. This is in response to your article of March 7, in which you suggest that the tech industry benefits disproportionately from the digital revolution because “technology is cooler than content." Digital technology is merely a tool. It does not ...

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