From the luxurious position of having a major label deal with his main band, Blink 182, singer and guitarist Tom DeLonge can afford to experiment with his other project, Angels And Airwaves. The band are releasing their third album, imaginitively entitled “Love”, without the support of a label. The first two A&A albums were put out through Geffen, and sold in the hundreds of thousands, but “Love” will be offered as a free download, with premium versions comprising extra tracks and bonus material available to buy. The band will also be touring and selling $6.95 a month ‘memberships’ on their website. The hope is that these and other efforts will compensate for the recording and promotion costs of the album. DeLonge told Billboard in an interview that they’re hoping to get 20 million downloads of the album, and that:
“If only 5% of that 20 million came back and interacted with the Modlife platform that powers our Web site, the revenue would far exceed anything we’d make from a major label, in any way, shape or form,”
In this blogger’s opinion a 5% response rate is very optimistic, but it’s great to see bands pioneering different propositions in the modern digital-heavy marketplace. Presumably the album won’t be available on iTunes, or any of the other music stores RouteNote distributes to, which will mean that a lot of music users will not be able to access it through their normal channels, a closing of avenues which may cost a lot to replace in terms of product awareness.
An interesting opinion piece from The Huffington Post on the future of the music industry, confirming our long held belief that the head-in-the sand, resistive approach from the big record labels when it comes to making their music more available online is untenable.
It’s unreasonable and naive to expect record labels to go down without a fight, but it’s no longer a matter of if — it’s a matter of when — they’ll embrace these changes. The smart ones will adapt their model toward online music — just as the New York Times and Washington Post have adapted to online news. It won’t be easy for them, but it’ll be great for musicians and music fans.
I applaud anyone who encourages the big players to be more open and forward thinking about facilitating legal channels of online music consumption like Spotify, Last.FM and MOG, and I urge you, gentle reader to get your music up online with these stores; not only are they great for attracting new fans, but they’re increasingly popular with advertisers, which means more revenue for you.
The debate on music piracy is a bit like that on global warming; vocal and vehement, and extremely polarised (pardon the pun). Evidence can be produced to support the most extremeopinions, and is wrangled over until those in the middle don’t know what is believable. Consensus seems to be that even though music pirates are active music fans, and likely to be buying music as well as ’stealing’ it online , piracy is damaging to sales of actual music tracks, although this may be slightly offset by increased gig attendance and other types of premium content purchase – box sets, t-shirts etc.
It also seems to be accepted that legal methods of ad supported, free-to-the-consumer streaming is the best way of combating the rise of piracy – the great user experience that Spotify has been able to offer has seen it expand faster than it can deal with; attracting users to use a great free streaming service isn’t hard, but finding a way of profiting from all those users is, balancing ad revenue against streaming and licensing costs, and Spotify’s launch in the States has had to be delayed while they evolve their model, and figure out how to move people onto their £10 a month premium service.
While they figure this out, MOG is stepping up to the plate in the States with their £5 a month subscription only model, that allows playlisting and file searching in a pretty similar way to Spotify’s interface [see the video at the bottom of this post]. A poll conducted by Demos (a company that sends people out with clipboards) suggests that revenue (income and adoption) would be maximised at the £5 price point:
But this doesn’t account for the costs inherent in delivering the amount of music that people tend to consume through such streaming services; leaving the computer streaming music all day, an individual could incur a lot of charges for their service provider.
So which footpath of digital development is going to turn out to be the music superhighway of the future? In my humble opinion, it’s going to come down to user experience: if we discount piracy as a viable future for the industry (no revenue means no artists) then we’re left with paying per track, either for streams or downloads, or for a month on month subscription service. These will remain as competing options, probably with iTunes still in pole position of the download market, given it’s current market dominance, and the relentless success of the iPod and it’s cousin the iPhone, and for the rest it’ll come down to whoever provides the slinkiest, most versatile service for whatever the music industry decides is the rock bottom price per stream, plus the minimum streaming cost. I for one hope that the big 4 accept thatad-supported music streaming is the best and only real way of putting an end to piracy, that they come to terms with the smaller license fee and infrastructure that will be demanded by this model. Of the options currently available, I think that Spotify has the most user friendly platform, I’m proud that we’re working with them, and I suggest that you upload your music to their service, via RouteNote’s digital music distribution platform right…. Now.
Finchy posted about the NPD report on market share of various digital music stores, over the next couple of weeks we’ll have a focus on each of the main players in the digital music scene, as well as some of the up-and-comers, and round off with a summary. If you’d like a particular retailer to be given the treatment, please drop us a line at mail@routenote.com.
Just a quick line to promote someone else’s good work here; San Francisco based blog, Stranger Dance have put together a collection of covers by Bon Iver, a really scruffy-soulful independent artist who I’ve seen live and loved. Do yourself a favour and check him out… You could even show the love and buy some of his music on iTunes.
Lily Allen has proven herself once again to be adept at both putting herself in the limelight and her foot in her mouth. Entering the debate on illegal music file sharing over the internet facilitated by such notorious offenders as the Pirate Bay, she cast her influence solidly against the pirates, going so far as to launch a blog condemning the practice of file sharing (called It’s Not Alright – a little self reference to her first album). The debate proved a little hot for her, and after being the recipient of some rather vitriolic and personal abuse, she’s removed the blog, and retired seeming rather hurt.
The heated discussion continues without her – politicians, ISP’s, heavyweight industry bodies, and artist coalition groups are pitching in, as well as individuals like Allen. Opinions range between extremes; some think that sharing files helps boost artists profiles, others that it is choking the life out of the industry by draining revenue that should go to fund the success of major artists and the development of up-and-coming new acts. What is unarguably true is that people are not going to stop sharing music across the internet. If a great new band starts up next door to me I want to tell people about them, the same if I stumble across them on the web, and the most convenient way to let my friends know about them is by sharing their content online. Where there is an easy, legal way to do so, any sane person would use it – that’s one of the reasons why Myspace was so successful, there was (and still is, although their star seems to be waning) so much great music up online for people to discuss – but where there isn’t an easy way to do it, like when people refuse to allow their music to be available for free, then people will look for other, less forthright, but still convenient ways to do the same thing.
What then, is the right way forward? Filesharers (many of whom are avid music fans, gig attendees and t-shirt purchasers) won’t stop wanting to hear and distribute good and new music online. For obvious business reasons, ISP’s are extremely reluctant to bear the costs involved in filesharing, or to pass it on to their customers. Artists are undoubtedly losing revenue, since if it’s quicker and easier to steal an album than to buy it, and the likelihood of any repurcussions is tiny, then album sales will fall. Someone needs to come up with a way that music fans can share music onliine, that is legal, and that profits artists. Who could that white knight be?
1. Coldplay – Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends
2. Jack Johnson – Sleep Through The Static
3. Juno (Music from the Motion Picture)
4. Lil Wayne – Tha Carter III
5. Sara Bareilles – Little Voice
6. Once (Music from the Motion Picture)
7. Jason Mraz – We Sing. We Dance. We Steal Things
8. OneRepublic – Dreaming Out Loud
9. Across the Universe (Music from the Motion Picture)
10. Leona Lewis – Spirit
Best Selling Songs of 2008:
1. “Bleeding Love” Leona Lewis
2. “Viva La Vida” Coldplay
3. “Low” Flo.Rida f/T-Pain
4. “I Kissed a Girl” Katy Perry
5. “Disturbia” Rihanna
6. “Lollipop” Lil Wayne & Static Major
7. “No Air” Jordin Sparks & Chris Brown
8. “Pocketful of Sunshine” Natasha Bedingfield
9. “Love Song” Sara Bareilles
10. “Don’t Stop the Music” Rihanna
From the luxurious position of having a major label deal with his main band, Blink 182, singer and guitarist Tom DeLonge can afford to experiment with his other project, Angels And Airwaves. The band are releasing their third album, imaginitively entitled “Love”, without the support of a label. The first two A&A albums were put out through Geffen, and sold in the hundreds of thousands, but “Love” will be offered as a free download, with premium versions comprising extra tracks and bonus material available to buy. The band will also be touring and selling $6.95 a month ‘memberships’ on their website. The hope is that these and other efforts will compensate for the recording and promotion costs of the album. DeLonge told Billboard in an interview that they’re hoping to get 20 million downloads of the album, and that:
The debate on music piracy is a bit like that on global warming; vocal and vehement, and extremely polarised (pardon the pun). 
Lily Allen has proven herself once again to be adept at both putting herself in the limelight and her foot in her mouth. Entering the debate on illegal music file sharing over the internet facilitated by such notorious offenders as the 
Loading ...
