Everyone is talking about the upcoming Facebook film, The Social Network. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross have just released a great track from the movie.
The track we have embedded below for everyone to listen to is called In Motion. In Motion is a nice light fast electronic beat which sounds a little like it should be in a video game. It’s a different sound from what we’ve heard from Reznor and Atticus Ross so far.
Trent Reznor who has put togehter his new band with his wife Mariqueen Maandig, will release a free six track EP on June 1st. The EP will be made available via the band’s website, HowToDestroyAngels.com.
There will also be an HD version of the EP, which is available for download; the ‘hi-def’ release will include a music video for “The Space In Between,” with a price of $2.
If you pre-order now, they’ll send you one track, “The Believers,” immediately. You’ll then be automatically emailed on June 1st as soon as the full EP download is ready.
The EP is set for a CD release on July 6. Vinyl edition to follow.
I received a tip this afternoon that Trent Reznor of NIN fame is about to launch his new project, “How to Destroy Angels”. How to Destroy Angels already has its own website, but has no information and just one video.
Since they broke up they don’t need to keep all their touring gear, and are doing what any sensible musician does with old equipment; selling it on ebay! If you have a couple of thousand dollars hanging around that you wouldn’t mind spending on a banjotar then click here.
Trent Reznor and his Nine Inch Nails band mates recently performed in London, with 80’s music icon Gary Numan. Numan is best known for being a new wave pioneer with his synthesized tunes. Reznor released two videos from their on stage collaboration, which features the songs “Cars” and “Metal”
A lot of people get in touch with us to ask how many digital stores we distribute music to, and what proportion of the digital music market they represent. We also hear comments on the relatively small number of people we deal with in comparison to the huge lists of partners at some of our competitors, e.g. CDbaby,Emubands, IODA…(without mentioning the duplication in the last two).
The simple truth is that while a long list of digital music stores might look good, beyond the top 3 or 4 retailers it makes very little difference to overall sales how many your music’s in. It’s fairly common knowledge that iTunes is the biggest player in the market, but the scale of their dominance is pretty staggering. Neilsen (the ratings and market reporting firm) reports total US music sales of 1,513 million units in 2008, with 1070 million of those sales being digital downloads. That’s a billion digital music downloads across the entire US.
In 2008, across all territories, iTunes sold more than Two Billion tracks.
Apple iTunes Store Music Sales
Date
Tracks Sold (Millions)
01/08/2004
100
16/12/2004
200
02/03/2005
300
10/05/2005
400
18/07/2005
500
10/01/2006
850
23/02/2006
1,000
12/09/2006
1,500
10/01/2007
2,000
09/04/2007
2,500
31/07/2007
3,000
15/01/2008
4,000
19/06/2008
5,000
06/01/2009
6,000
Excuse the horrid old excel graph, I’m still running Office ’03…
It’s difficult to get a believable estimate for the size of the global digital music market, but given that the USA is the biggest single economy by a long way (the whole of the EU only just beats it in the CIA factbook at $14.98 trillion to $14.58 trillion), you begin to get a picture of how much of a monopoly iTunes has. Their competitors are of a different order: Amazon weighed in at 27 million digital tracks sold in the first six months of 2008, and the CEO of eMusic (David Pakman) estimated that Amazon have got about 4%-5% of the US music market, which going from Neilsen’s estimates puts them at about 48,150,000 tracks annually. Pakman also claims an approx. 10%-15% market share for eMusic, with 7 million downloads sold monthly (7*12 = 84).
By browsing eMusic’s sales milestone press releases, you can plot a rough course for their sales:
eMusic Digital Music Sales
Date
Tracks Sold (Millions)
01/09/2004
0
01/12/2004
3
01/12/2006
100
25/09/2007
160
14/04/2008
200
20/11/2008
250
I’ll spare you another ugly graph. eMusic has sold 250 million tracks since it’s relaunch in 2004, and Amazon’s only been going for about a year now, 300 million tracks let’s say, which pales beside iTunes’ 6 billion total sales.
One can argue with the estimates, but the main thrust of my argument is hopefully becoming clear. A conservative 15% market share between Amazon and eMusic, along with iTunes’ >80% doesn’t leave more than 5% for any other players in the USA: with just those three selling your music for you online, you’ve got 95% of the market covered. It’s not that the remaining 5% isn’t worth catering to, but the law of diminishing returns kicks in, and customers in the last few percentiles get harder and harder to chase down, especially given the plethora of blossoming and failing little music shops that appear and dissappear. We concentrate our efforts on the vendors that matter.
P.S.
The controversial bulk of music discovery and consumption in the electronic wilderness, outside the paid-for enclosure, is happening on torrent sites like the embattled Pirate Bay, and the more respectable Limewire and Mininova, and promoting RouteNote artists on these channels is something we’re looking into. Ubiquitous innovator Trent Reznor or NIN positively encourages people to download his music from P2P networks, in order to drive sales of his ‘premium’ paid for content.
