Archive | Digital Media
LifeHacker.com recently posted an insightful review of music streaming sites. Streamers such as Grooveshark, Last.FM, RDIO, MOG, Spotify, Rhapsody, Pandora, Slacker, and Napster (in case you couldn’t read the image) were put through the test to see how they compare to one another and which they feel conquers them all. They even provide a nifty graph for those who like visuals with their stats.
I myself am not the best person to weigh in on which is the best music streaming site (I have a thing called an iPod. Heard of it?). So I’m inclined to take their word on Spotify and MOG being the best pick. Spotify isn’t available in the States yet (though they seem to be impressed from their test run), but we did get to do a trial run of MOG a few months ago. It may lack in a few areas, but all in all we were impressed. But don’t take our word on it. Take a look at LifeHacker’s full article and try out the sites yourself.
Have you tried any of these streaming sites? Ok, so you most likely have used Pandora at least once, but what about the others? What do you think?
The information superhighway is riddled with the corpses of devices that have tried – and failed – to take on Apple (Zune, we hardly knew ye!). But if there’s anyone that might have a shot at competing with Apple, it could be Google. Their Android operating system is quickly becoming a viable alternative to the iPhone, their Chrome Web browser has surpassed Apple’s Safari in usage, and now it looks like Google will be launching its own competing music store before the end of the year. Right now the iTunes Music Store has a 28% share of the download business, while Amazon and Wal Mart have 12% each.
The New York Post is reporting that Google’s VP of Engineering Andy Rubin has been in talks with the music industry’s publishing firm, the Harry Fox Agency, which represents over 27,000 music publishers. While reps for both parties did not comment, if this report is true then talks have gone past negotiating with record labels (or at least they are moving along smoothly) and have moved to discussing pricing and establishment. Google’s launch could prove to be a major threat to Apple, as the Post points out that many in the music industry feel that iTunes has gained too much power and leverage in the digital music download business since its launch.
Music subscription sites have never really taken the industry by storm. Though it seems like a cool idea to have access to an endless amount of music for a fee, iTunes and illegal downloading simply make sites like Rhapsody useless. So it’s no surprise that earnings for subscription sites are steadily decreasing, a nice start but not much else.
Billboard is reporting that Rhapsody finished the first quarter of 2010 with 650,000 subscribers. It’s a 3.7% decrease from the fourth quarter in 2009, and an 18.8% decrease from 2009’s first quarter. The article also mentions how competitor Spotify has 300,000 paying subscribers and 7 million free users.
You can read Billboard’s full report here. The piece pretty much says it best: “so much potential but so few paying customers.”
Our buds at Metal Sucks and Metal Injection have posted a really cool graph created by Mashable that compares how much a solo artist looks to make through various outlets, both with and without a label. While it is a very informative graph, it basically highlights a well known point: musicians are a bit screwed now-a-days. Take a look after the hit to see the entire graph (click to enlarge).
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High On Fire is streaming their new album Snakes For The Divine in its entirety on their MySpace page.
That’s about all the info we’ve got, and we’d normally run info like this as a news story, but the album cover is so good, we needed to show it. The album itself is awesome too. It comes out on Tuesday, so go buy it.
In a major development to a story that first broke back in November, RealNetworks and MTV Newtworks announced late yesterday that they are spinning off their Rhapsody America music streaming joint venture into a new, independently-operated company.
From Hypebot:
The restructuring is expected to be completed by the end of the first quarter.
According to documents filed with the SEC, Real, MTVN and one or more minority stockholders will hold shares of less than 50% of the new company. The reamaining stock will presumably be available to make or attract outside investments. Real will contribute $18 million in cash to launch the new venture, and take back control of its international radio business. MTVN will contribute $33 million in advertising, but its previous commitment of $111 million in ads will be canceled.
Will independence set up Rhapsody to be a more efficient, focused company that’s more attractive to investors, or finally cast the troubled service into the sunset?
The old saying for in favor of having lots of merch designs is “you can’t download a t-shirt.” Well, you still can’t, but coming soon to a store near you is the ‘Music Tee,’ in which you buy a T-shirt that comes with a hangtag with a link redeemable for downloads. According to Digital Music News, Warner Bros. and Interscope have signed on to license the Music Tee idea, which was created via a joint venture with PR firm Girlie Action and the LA-based label Invisible DJ. What’s more is that the shirts will be counted by Nielsen SoundScan, so they’ll count towards sales.
While many of the shirts available so far are for indie and alternative bands (Third Eye Blind, Mutemath), Girlie Action and Invisible DJ have unveiled a ‘vintage collection’ of shirts, with three relatively niche bands: Bad Religion, Bad Brains, and Exciter. Exciter? Whoa. We didn’t even know Heavy Metal Maniac was still in print! The shirts generally have album artwork on the front and a track listing on the back. The Music Tee is a little steep at $45, but the right combination of album and artwork could make it a worthy purchase. And hey, it might even turn some fashionistas on to music they haven’t heard before. I mean, how many times have you seen someone like Lindsay Lohan ironically wearing a Motorhead shirt? And how many Motorhead songs do you think she knows? Exactly. You can pre-order the three coolest shirts here.
We’re not CNN or anything, but you’d have to be completely oblivious or willfully ignorant to have not heard about the devastating earthquake in Haiti last Tuesday. Well over 100,000 are reported to have perished in Haiti’s capital Port au Prince alone, and rescue and recovery efforts are still underway.
While some may have donated to relief efforts already, Sargent House and Rodriguez-Lopez Productions are giving incentive to those who haven’t yet by offering up their recent digital sampler for download with all proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders. The 18-track sampler has music by The Mars Volta’s Omar Rodriguez Lopez and Sargent House artists including Red Fang, These Arms are Snakes, and Red Sparowes, among many others. It’s available in all digital formats as an instant download for whatever anyone wants to donate. While we’ve all got our own financial problems, an unprecedented amount of help and relief for this catastrophe is required, and you can get new music and help at the same time. Don’t be a d-bag – pick this up.
Digital music sales growth is slowing and could soon plateau, according to a Billboard analysis of 2009 SoundScan data. In terms of percentage and unit change, digital sales still increased last year, but to a significantly less degree than the previous two years.
To be sure, the changes are positive, not negative. But growth is disappearing. From 2006 to 2008, annual sales of digital tracks rose between 225 million and 229 million units. In 2009, unit growth fell to 90 million. A similar but less drastic trend is seen in sales of digital albums.
With ringtone sales falling and ad-supported revenues far below expectations, growth in download sales had been the one bright spot for the record industry. Now, growth has slowed to a crawl and, barring an immensely successful new product or service, could plateau by 2011.
This data could be alarming, as many hoped digital sales would continue to grow for years to the level of high disc sales seen in the pre-Napster era, essentially replacing the outdated media.
As Billboard hints, the strong growth in 2006-2008 can be tied to the critical mass of digital media player adoption. Those where the years where the majority of consumers were first-time iPod owners, and therefore first-time digital music consumers. More recent iPod/iPhone sales are likely replacing consumers’ older units rather than going to iPod virgins. With less consumers purchasing digital music for the first time, we may be getting a look at the complete market for the next few years.
Too Much Joy weren’t metal, but anyone in a band looking for a major label deal needs to read this now. The band, who broke up in 1999, put out three records through Warner Bros., and never really caught on, but that’s beside the point. In an amazing and sobering blog post, the band’s Timothy Quirk writes about receiving a digital royalty statement for the three Warner albums, which, while out of print physically, had been available digitally for five years.
While the band had been collecting thousands of dollars in digital royalties from their four independent albums, the statements from the three WB albums kept being showing $0 in digital sales against the band’s ridiculous unrecouped balance of $395,277. It took Quirk 13 months to finally get their digital royalties added, with a grand result of $62.47. Here’s why it’s really ridiculous, though. Quirk works at Rhapsody, so he knows a thing or two about what his band should be making digitally. And it was only through his job that he was given the favor of getting anything to show up on the statement at all. He’d appeared on a panel with someone in business affairs from Warner Bros., and mentioned that he’d been trying to get their iTunes sales reported.
What the fuck?
I mean, we all know that major labels are supposed to be venal masters of hiding money from artists, but they’re also supposed to be good at it, right? This figure wasn’t insulting because it was so small, it was insulting because it was so stupid.
Granted, a band that never made the label money is much lower on the priority scale than a current multi-platinum band that demands proper accounting. But reading Quirk’s blog post details how sloppy and lazy WB is, and while he was able to get his (badly accounted for and ridiculously low) royalty statement because of his persistence and someone he randomly met, what does that mean for the countless other bands without connections that aren’t the Red Hot Chili Peppers or Linkin Park?
LifeHacker.com recently posted an insightful review of music streaming sites. Streamers such as Grooveshark, Last.FM, RDIO, MOG, Spotify, Rhapsody, Pandora, Slacker, and Napster (in case you couldn’t read the image) were put through the test to see how they compare to one another and which they feel conquers them all. They even provide a nifty graph for those who like visuals with their stats.
Posted by Zach Shaw on Wed, Aug 11, 2010 at 3:41 pm
Digital Media