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Posts Tagged ‘Music Industry’

While Facebook & Twitter Sit on Sidelines, MySpace Jumps Into Bulk User Data Sales

MySpace has taken a bold step and put a large quantity of bulk user data up for sale on startup data marketplace InfoChimps. Data offered includes user playlists, mood updates, mobile updates, photos, vents, reviews, blog posts, names and zipcodes. Friend lists are not included. Remember, Facebook and Twitter may be the name of the game these days in tech circles, but MySpace still sees 1 billion user status updates posted every month. Those updates will now be available for bulk analysis.

This user data is intended for crunching by everyone from academic researchers to music industry information scientists. Will people buy the data and make interesting use of it? Will MySpace users be ok with that? Is this something Facebook and Twitter ought to do? The MySpace announcement raises a number of interesting questions.

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The 22 sets of data being made available are cheap. Prices range from $10 for raw dumps from the MySpace API to $300 for everything broken out by latitude and longitude. Subsequently derived data sets can be put on sale by InfoChimps users as well, with a revenue split.

Analysis coming from the data could include things like music trends per zipcode, popular URLs being shared, etc.

MySpace is generally thought of as a social network on the decline, but if it is able to position itself as the place to do music still then its hundreds of millions of users could remain engaged. Will data scientists want this data, though? Time will tell, but MySpace has long done cooler things with data than competitors Facebook and Twitter and people haven’t gotten terribly excited about it yet.

Related: See today’s coverage of the cancelation of the Netflix Challenge due to privacy concerns.

Bulk user data has tremendous analytical potential and both Facebook and Twitter have thrown the breaks on 3rd parties offering up their user data more than once. We covered InfoChimps’ offering of bulk Twitter data in depth this Fall, but the marketplace quietly removed that data after Twitter asked them to “wait” for a second time.

In February we profiled Pete Warden (The Man Who Looked Into Facebook’s Soul), a developer who planned on putting a huge pile of Facebook user data online for academic analysis. As we wrote in that article:

If what people call Web 2.0 was all about creating new technologies that made it easy for everyday people to publish their thoughts, social connections and activities, then the next stage of innovation online may be services like recommendations, self and group awareness, and other features made possible by software developers building on top of the huge mass of data that Web 2.0 made public.

Days later Facebook contacted Warden days later and asked him to hold off on release of that data as well. Last week Warden posted open source code for harvesting the same type of bulk user data from Google Profiles, so the game’s not up yet, not by a long shot.

Why is this kind of big data interesting? This rational may be less applicable in the case of MySpace given its focus on music, or it may be more applicable given the allegedly poorer user demographics on the site compared to Facebook, but here’s how I explained my interest in big social network data analysis in general, as part of a discussion about an excellent special report on big data in the Economist this month.

I think in big data there lies a lot of hidden patterns that represent both opportunities for action and for reflection. At RWW we’re working on trying to find ways to mine data to find news first (we’ve got some interesting methods employed already) and personally, I think the world is an awfully unfair mess and I’m hoping that data analysis will help illuminate some of the hows and the whys. Like the way that real-estate redlining was exposed back in the day by cross referencing census data around racial demographics and housing loan data. That illuminated systematic discrimination against black families in applying for home loans in certain parts of town. So too I think we’ll find a lot of undeniable proof of injustices and clues for how we might deal with them in big data today.

What will we see come out of MySpace’s bulk data? What could we see come from Facebook and Twitter data if only they would let people get their hands on it? Time will tell.

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What a Rock Band Can Teach Businesses About Social Networks

Chester French is a rock band that has built an application on the Force.com platform. That’s compelling for the simple fact that when a rock and roll band develops its own application, you know that the market is seeing a far wider adoption than it has ever before.

Even more, it’s an important reminder of the advantage of building your own applications over complete reliance on a social network that does not give you access to the customer information that you have developed on the platform.

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Known for its dose of “pop pastiche,” whimsical lyrics and high energy, Chester French has shown enough popularity to get a record deal with Interscope and perform on the same bill as Weezer.

The band built a VIP application for its fans using Force.com. VIP members receive perks for being on the VIP list. The more they promote the band, the more points they get. Prizes include music and t-shirts.

Here’s their story as told by singer D.A. Wallach. It’s an interesting tale about the music industry and how one band built its own application to form direct relationships with its fans instead of being highly dependent on a social network site.

It’s a problem that doesn’t just plague rock bands. A hosted platform can be a bit of a trap. Often, you do not own the data. Application platforms may not be as open as we’d like but you own the information and it can be exported .You can’t say that much about Facebook, which is lacking as a business platform simply because you can’t export your own contact information. I asked Marc Benioff about this last week in context to how Salesforce.com is integrating with Facebook. He said it is the individual’s decision about how they want to move their information around.

But what is the point of a Facebook application environment if the contact information you develop is locked up?

That’s going to be a big question for social networks as more businesses move to platforms like Facebook. Contact information is scattered for most people. An application may be the best answer for companies when developing relationships for commercial efforts. Social networks are becoming important for business but their value is compromised when they suck in your customer contact information but don’t let it out.

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Licensing pact a big step towards fixing EU music stores

Major members of the online music industry, including iTunes and Amazon, have signed an agreement with the European Commission to work towards more even and widespread music distribution across all of Europe. As part of the agreement, the music industry intends to do away with the limitations of the current licensing system so that music fans can have greater choice and clear usage rights, no matter where they are in Europe.

The agreement came after the fourth Roundtable on the Online Distribution of Music held Monday by Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes. Participants included Amazon, BEUC, EMI, iTunes, Nokia, PRS for Music, SACEM, STIM, and Universal. It was the first time the music industry has managed to agree on a common roadmap in Europe, which has been frustratingly segmented for years thanks to outdated licensing and rights practices in the EU.

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Spotify Co-Founder: Notion of Overnight Success "Misleading and Harmful"

In a surprisingly candid post on Spotify’s blog, company co-founder Daniel Ek recently shared his thoughts about where the popular streaming music company stands today and where he hopes it can go in the future. The main point of his post was to clarify that Spotify, despite being a media darling these days, is nowhere near becoming a sustainable company with a stable revenue model. However, that’s their end goal, Ek says, and they’re in it “for the long haul” with no intention of simply “flipping” the company after the hype reaches its crescendo. But in the meantime, the company struggles with the exorbitant per-play fees enforced by the music industry while not finding success with an ad-supported model.

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Don’t Count on Overnight Success

According to Ek, the notion of overnight success is “very misleading and actually rather harmful to any hope for long term and sustainable growth in this industry.” Despite this fact, he calls out the music industry for doing just that and expecting to see business models proven “within months of inception.”  That’s just not how it works, he says, reminding us how iTunes was not initially the powerhouse it is today. In its first year, the company missed its revenue targets by 30% and most label executives doubted its staying power at the time.

While Ek realizes that comparing iTunes to Spotify is wrong given the very different business models for each company, it does prove the overall point: success in this industry takes time.

Spotify, which is currently hugely popular in Europe, has yet to launch in the U.S. due to contract negotiations over licensing agreements. However, as popular as the service is, it still has a long way to go both in terms of product and monetization. Ek acknowledges that one thing which needs to be addressed is how difficult it is for Spotify users to actually buy the music they’re listening to. Yet despite the fact that nearly 80% of the company’s users are unaware that they can purchase the tunes they’re hearing, Spotify is still one of the biggest affiliates to music downloads.

In addition, another challenge facing the company is how to earn a profit considering the large costs of licensing the music it plays… especially when reliant on an ad-supported model. (Spotify offers multiple service levels, one being ad-supported. It also offers subscriptions.) Earlier this year, another streaming service, Last.fm, had to do away with their ad-supported model for the same reason.

The Music Industry Needs to Change

If it was up to Spotify, the music industry would be embracing the future instead of constantly fighting against it. Ek says that in order for the industry to find success, they need to realize that the new business model is “a mix between ad-supported music, downloads, subscriptions, merchandising and ticketing where the user comes first and where the key to monetization comes from portability and packaging access rights.” If willing to adapt, the music industry could then have the potential to become a $40-50 billion industry and one that could grow stronger than it ever was.

Until that time, it looks like Spotify has a long ahead of them, but it’s good to know that they’re up for the challenge. “We aren’t interested in just trying to hype the company and then flipping it,” Ek says. “We are in this for the long haul.”

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Music biz still in need of "radical overhaul" to thrive

The music industry needs a “radical overhaul” to its products if it wants to revive sales, and that overhaul revolves around actually catering to consumer needs. That’s the argument in a new report from market research firm Forrester, which says that the music business needs to give up being obsessed with itself in favor of letting users create their own music experiences with ease. This goes far beyond offering mere albums for purchase—Forrester suggests users be allowed to completely customize and share their music in an extremely open, platform-agnostic manner.

First and foremost, the firm says consumers have the “right” to a unique music experience. This means that they should be able to completely customize what they’re looking at and listening to by having lyrics, on-demand live footage, photos, live chat with other fans, expandable music/video players, and more right at their fingertips. Imagine the recently introduced iTunes LP, but with much more content to choose from and fully customizable.

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Forget the iTunes LP, Apps are the New Album

The “iTunes LP” is just one of the many new iTunes features revealed yesterday during Apple’s announcement at their “It’s Only Rock and Roll”-themed event. But the iTunes LP, unlike the other new features which get to exist as simple and fun enhancements in iTunes 9, has a heavy burden on its shoulders. It’s supposed to revitalize the music industry by encouraging consumers to once again purchase entire albums as opposed to single tracks. With this new digital album format, the idea is to replicate the experience of buying an album, complete with lyrics, liner notes, album art, photos, and more, giving music buyers extra content to peruse while enjoying their new music. The only problem is that this so-called “interactive” format isn’t all that interactive. And what’s more, innovative artists are already discovering how monetize their music while engaging fans in new ways that have nothing to do with a re-imagined LP. Instead, the “interactive format” of the future isn’t the album, it’s the app.

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The Uninspired iTunes LP

Not so many years ago, consumers had little choice when it came to buying new music. If you fell in love with a favorite song from an artist or band, you bought the CD. Singles had already been phased out for the most part, so the choice was either to buy the CD or nothing at all. For this reason, artists were able to make oodles of cash even when they were only a one or two-hit wonder. Yet somehow, the music industry is convinced that people actually bought CDs for all the nifty content contained in the included booklets. With the iTunes LP, they’re reinventing that booklet for the digital age and packing it full of media like lyrics, liner notes, album art, photos, and even videos – that last one being something that you certainly couldn’t cram into the CD case in days past. With this digitally enhanced LP, labels hope consumers will once again buy complete albums, not just individual songs.

Unfortunately, this “interactive” album of the future, meant to rev up album sales, is a sad, uninspired effort which tries to cram the old business model of the past down the throat of today’s new digital platform. While the extras are nice to have, the iTunes LP doesn’t offer anything more than what fan sites do, as we noted yesterday in our critical analysis of Apple’s new offerings. And unlike fan sites, which evolve and change over time, the LP is a static offering that doesn’t take advantage of the platform it lives on – an internet-connected digital music player.

Forget the Album, Buy an App

Meanwhile, as record labels scramble to save themselves with this new format (and possibly even one of their own dubbed “CMX”), some artists are starting to figure out the formula for success in this new era of single-track purchases and app-laden phones…and it’s not an album. A handful of forward-thinkers have come up with a way to offer true interactive content to fans, which in turn, encourages fans to purchase more of the artist’s music. The answer? The iPhone app.

Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, these music-themed apps are innovative new ways for fans to interact with content produced by their favorite artists. For example, Nine Inch Nails released a multimedia application earlier this year where fans can access a mobile version of the fan site nin.com, interact with other fans through location-based chat and photo sharing, stream tracks and exclusive playlists, download wallpapers, and much more. Although the app is free in the iTunes app store, the side effect of having more engaged fans means having more people interested in buying the band’s music. NIN, headed by front man Trent Reznor, is no stranger to this sort of out-of-the-box thinking. He has experimented with a number of ways to make rockstar-worthy income in this digital age, including last year’s introduction of a creative multi-level pricing scheme for albums where consumers could download tracks that ranged anywhere from completely free all the way up to a $300 premium package. Within three days, that experiment grossed $750,000 in sales. Not a bad way to sell an album.

But Reznor isn’t the only artist with an app these days. American DJ and singer-songwriter Moby has also just released an official app created by social music service iLike which offers similar functionality. Besides providing access to exclusive content, fans can interact with each other through Facebook and iLike and they can post photos directly from the app to the Moby fan community. However, unlike NIN’s offering, this app isn’t free. It currently sells for $1.99. Whether or not this particular money-making gambit will work, though, is still to be determined. The app is only a couple of days old at this point so it’s unknown whether fans will pay.

While apps like those described above essentially provide mobilized fan communities, hip hop artist Soulja Boy went a different route earlier this summer. Using a new app platform called Romplr, his $2.99 application, “Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em,” lets fans remix the artist’s tracks and share them with friends via email, Facebook, or via www.romplr.com. In many ways, this app represents the best use of today’s digital platform by allowing for true interactivity with the music. In fact, the press release about the launch even claimed “the next wave of fan and band interaction is going to be through the iPhone.” Perhaps it will be the future of music sales, too.

The trend of artists with apps shows no signs of slowing down. Just today, popular R&B artist User launched his own app, too, “User’s Top 100.” This app, basically a streaming radio station of Usher’s favorite tunes, will appeal to fans who want to know what music has inspired the five-time Grammy award winning star. It, like Soulja Boy’s app, is not free either. The price is $2.99. Again, it’s too soon to tell how well it will sell.

Only the Beginning

Although this is only a handful of examples of the new ways artists are using the mobile platform to interact with fans, all of these methods are arguably more inspired than the iTunes LP digital album. Instead of thinking that the old way of doing things can simply be tweaked for the new economy, these artists are developing compelling interactions which will either be direct sources of income as paid applications or will indirectly encourage sales through a more engaged fan base. While it’s too soon to tell how much extra income these apps will add to the bottom line, if we had to bet on anything that could potentially “save” the music industry, we wouldn’t put our money on the LP. It looks like the future is apps, not albums.

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Songbeat Gets A Second Life As Excellent Music App With Uncertain Future

I liked Songbeat the minute I started using it. First released as a desktop app for Seeqpod back in January 2008, the upgraded version that was introduced nearly 12 months after that not only made searching for music extremely simple but also offered an excellent way to download tracks to your computer.

And like Seeqpod, it was also an easy way to obtain copyrighted material from the many places on the Web where that kind of stuff can be found.

Up, down, and up again

Evidently, the music industry took notice and sought to shut the service down in court. Warner Music was the first to file a lawsuit against the startup behind Songbeat and ultimately forced the fledgling company to take the service offline, but not without them promising to return with something bigger and bolder in the future.

Yesterday, the guys behind Songbeat came out with a revived version of the desktop client, which has been renamed Songbeat 360. Music lovers are going to love it.

The music industry, however, is not.

The app

Songbeat 360 is an Adobe AIR powered desktop music player with a powerful music search engine – unambiguously baptized Songbeat Search – at its core. Search for artists or songs and the app returns a list of 50 search results, along with links to the originating source. Double-click tracks and you can instantly play them from the integrated player, or right-click to download tunes to your computer. Drag music tracks to the left-hand column and create custom playlists straight from the app. Slick, fast and easy.

Wanna learn more about an artist? Simply hit the ‘Discover’ button and you’ll get all sorts of information from across the web delivered right to the desktop client interface, including similar artists so you can find more music you like by browsing their profiles and albums. Interested in knowing when the artist in question (or another) is playing at or nearby your location? Click the ‘Live’ button and you’ll get a list of gigs based on your location, which you can easily modify. Wanna let your friends know what you’re listening to? The integrated Twitter button will make that easy for you too.

The cost

Songbeat has set up an unusual way of monetizing the service. When you launch the application for the first time, you’ll see 50 credits at the right top of the client. Every time you do a search for an artist or song, a credit comes off your inventory. Scroll to the bottom of the list and you’ll get 50 more results, once again taking a credit off your account. If you run out of credits, which takes away the ability to search music using Songbeat Search, you can purchase additional credits at any time through Paypal, with a rate of €10 or roughly $15 for 1,000 credits.

Here’s the funny thing: actually streaming music or downloading music doesn’t cost you any credits at all. Nothing. Zip.

And that’s of course what will make users love it, and labels (and many music artists) hate it.

The problem

The announcement of the all new Songbeat starts like this:

“Why should I pay for music when it’s available for free everywhere anyway? This is the question everyone is asking themselves today.” says Claudio Fritz-Vietta, CEO of Songbeat Distribution Ltd.

Nothing short of provocative, and when I inquired about the specifics of deals that are in place with record labels or artists to make sure the latter get adequate compensation for their work, Fritz-Vietta made it clear that he is trying every trick in the book to prevent having to pay up for that. Which means that, unlike Spotify (which Songbeat loves to compare themselves with), there are zero arrangements with the music industry in place yet, and I doubt there ever will be.

Like Seeqpod before them, Songbeat hides behind the Digital Millennium Copyright Act by stating they are only search providers offering users access to music that is already available on the Web, and that the company never actually hosts any digital files on its own servers. Seeqpod tried to play that game, got sued all over the place anyway, ultimately filed for bankruptcy only to be (presumably) picked up by Microsoft for its core technology and team some time after.

Songbeat also says it actually wants to help artists and their labels market their music, concerts etc. better by – get this – offering them free ad space inside the client interface. The idea is that they’d advertise better quality tracks, concert tickets, etc. using ad units that are displayed whenever someone ends up on the artist’s profile.

Somehow, I don’t think that’ll stick.

This is part of their pitch:

“There are no deals with any labels in place yet, but we are open for talks and are willing to work with them and with each individual artist. We are not doing this to steal from anyone. Whatever we earn with this we are willing to share in a fair way. We want to offer a new and alternative revenue stream. Artists and labels will have to use as many revenue streams as possible to keep their businesses going – we will be one of them.

It’s about controlling what’s out there at the moment – and right now – as we can see the labels & artists have no way to control it. We want to help them control any content that’s out there may it be claimed legal or illegal.

Regarding the legal situation Songbeat 360 and Songbeat Search fully comply with the DMCA and all major copyright laws internationally. Songbeat has learned a lot in the past after being sued by Warner Music in Germany. There is a take-down notice and each source from each individual track found is shown. It would actually be a perfect tool for labels to find all copyright infringements that are online and get them taken down.”

In a perfect world, maybe. A serious shame we’re not living in one.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

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A Kafkaesque announcement of an Apple keynote the week of September 7th

Filed under: Rumors, Other Events, Apple

Kafkaesque is defined as “characteristic or reminiscent of the oppressive or nightmarish qualities of Franz Kafka’s fictional world.” That’s the way Wall Street Journal All Things Digital blogger Peter Kafka (no relation as far as I know) must be feeling.

Music industry sources are telling him that Apple is planning one of their classic September keynotes, but they’re not giving him a date other than “the week of September 7th”, and have no idea what exactly Apple is planning on revealing. That sounds nightmarish to me…

So, he fired up the Apple rumor machine this morning and wrote a post about the upcoming event. Kafka feels that the event will probably be used to announce something about music (duh!), most likely “Cocktail“, which is Apple’s rumored album format that adds cover art, liner notes, and other interactive goodies.

Kafka also notes that unless Apple announces the legendary iTablet at the event, Apple faithful are likely to be very disappointed (My personal feeling? Turn on the tears, folks).

The September event is often used to announce new iPods, and there have been rumors of a camera-enabled iPod nano, so we might hear more about that.

Whatever happens, it would be nice to see Steve Jobs on the stage again, especially if the mythical iPad is finally announced. Any reader comments on this announcement of an Apple event with no set date or concrete topic will be greatly appreciated.

TUAWA Kafkaesque announcement of an Apple keynote the week of September 7th originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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