Posts filed under 'Digital Music'
The Truth About Pandora and New Music Discovery
According to some recent research by Bridge Ratings, listeners expect Internet radio stations to be more adventurous and provide them with more opportunities to discover new music. Independent band Barefoot Truth would attest to that. The band has been around loosely since 2003, but recently submitted a cd to Pandora. That’s when it started to get exciting.
According to a recent article in USA Today, the band’s songs started showing up on stations created for fans of Bob Dylan, Jack Johnson and Dave Matthews. “All of a sudden, people we had never met before were buying our music online and asking us to play in their cities,” band guitarist Jay Driscoll says. “Then we started seeing strangers singing the words to the songs at our shows.”
Now their songs have seen over 4.5 million spins on Pandora - according to Sonicbids, an online booking platform for indie bands. That’s a lot – according to music trade publication mi2n, “the 4.5 million figure is notable for a band at this level (by comparison, ‘Where Are You Going’ by Dave Matthews Band has notched 10 million spins,) and Barefoot Truth happily credits ‘The Pandora Effect’ for its crucial role in generating their growing army of listeners.”
Not bad for a band from Mystic, Connecticut (also world headquarters to Audio4cast). It’s a great story about the way Internet radio can open up opportunities for bands to get heard and listeners to hear new bands. It doesn’t hurt that BFT’s music is infectious and Pandora’s audience is growing exponentially. May they thrive…
3 comments February 22, 2010
Study: Digital Song Sales Would Go Up If Prices Went Down
Last year iTunes changed its pricing strategy for songs and began charging more for more popular tunes. The result? Music sales have slowed dramatically. According to several sources, digital song sales grew only 8% last quarter, versus 20% a year earlier for Warner Music Group, with the industry’s fourth quarter growth rate at only 5% over the previous year.
I guess consumers didn’t like seeing the prices increase 30% from .99 to $1.29…
There’s a new study that even suggests that if record companies lowered prices, not only would it spur song sales, but it would also help to combat illegal downloading. The optimal song price, says Wharton business school marketing professor Raghuram Iyengar, is between 60 and 70 cents per song. That’s based on research with over 600 digital music consumers, and laws of supply and demand. See, the forces at play here would indicate that music prices should be lower, not higher: there’s increased competition, free alternatives, and declining distribution costs. But instead, prices have held steady and recently jumped substantially.
Unfortunately, as an article in Wired points out, the music industry wants to believe that by marketing their wares at higher prices, they are encouraging consumers to perceive greater value in them, rather than subscribing to the theory of supply and demand…
Add comment February 16, 2010
MySpace Music, Targetspot Selling Audio Ads
MySpace Music will run instream audio ads sold by national Internet radio sales company Targetspot. According to reports, the audio ads began running last week for advertisers like Turbo Tax and Office Depot. The ads are inserted after a listener hears one song, and can be followed by a complete album or up to 100 songs on a playlist without another interruption.
Targetspot has announced that this is an exclusive deal that adds MySpace Music’s audience to a network that includes AOL, CBS, Yahoo!, Slacker and Live 365.
Since MySpace Music’s launch in September 2008, unique visitors to the music.myspace.com subdomain have increased 190 percent — growing from 4.2 million unique visitors to 12.1 million in June 2009. Year-over-year traffic to the URL has increased 1,017 percent. Since June, MySpace acquired social music site iLike, and later added imeem to its platform as well. MySpace Music was an announced key partner in Google Music’s music discovery platform.
This is great news for CBS backed Targetspot, and for the Internet radio industry. Last fall Pandora announced that they were beginning to air instream audio ads. It’s important for the development of a successful business model for Internet radio that key platforms like Pandora and MySpace Music contribute to creating that business model by running audio ads and creating more and better opportunities for advertisers on their platforms.
Add comment February 9, 2010
There’s A Lot To Like About MOG
Like a phoenix rising out of the ashes of recent news of music services like Imeem (sold for pennies), Spiralfrog (shutdown) and Spotify (US launch delayed), this week MOG, a music blogging platform, launched All Access, a new, ambitious on-demand service that is, well, pretty cool.
MOG All Access is right upfront about their business model - it costs 5 bucks a month – and they’re very direct about how great the service is too. The homepage says the music service is “Better than Rhapsody, Pandora and iTunes Combined.” Others agree – out of the box it’s getting some great reviews.
MOG All Access says it offers just about every album and song you can imagine – and indeed, I plugged in a bunch of stuff and they had most of it. Curiously, they don’t have Belle & Sebastian or Pousette Dart, a couple of offbeat names I plug in when I’m testing the depth of a service. (Spotify had both, Pandora and Google Music only had Belle & Sebastian). MOG did have Armin Van Buuren, I’m From Barcelona, Donna the Buffalo and other sort of obscure musicians.
The other thing that they have are deals with all four big record labels, as well as many others. In fact, their recent press release included enthusiastic quotes from the big four.
MOG All Access is the only online service that will let you plug in the name of an artist, like James Brown, the example on the video on their site, and then listen to all James Brown music. Other online services won’t give you more than 3 songs by an artist, thanks to performance copyright issues, but obviously, MOG obtained permission in their licensing deals to offer this.
While you’re listening to James Brown you can view all his songs and lyrics, save songs to your locker, build playlists and share them with friends, buy music, or just listen to his complete collection, James Brown Radio. While you’re listening to that, you can decide you want to discover or hear some similar sounding stuff and turn on the music discovery tool.
MOG All Access Founder David Hyman says that although they are offering an easy way for listeners to purchase music, they’re really betting that “consumption in the cloud is the future.” So you store your music in your locker, and listen on whatever connected device is handy – mobile, pc, whatever.
MOG’s got a great platform and it appears that the record companies have given the service not only their blessing but also a unique offering to listeners by enabling them to offer unlimited on-demand access to any music they want. At five bucks a month, they’ll have to get a lot of subscribers to make it work. As I have said about new services before: May they thrive…
Add comment December 3, 2009
Study: Brands Should Use Music To Connect With Consumers Online
A report that examined the role that music plays in social media says that the same digital technology that changed the music industry will have a similar impact on advertising. Heartbeats International, a Swedish marketing agency, strongly recommends that brands replace traditional advertising mindsets that focused on the 4 P’s (price, product, placement and promotion) with the 4 E’s (emotion, experience, engagement and exclusivity).
Music is digital and mobile now, and that means more people have access to more music than ever before. The study found that most people now listen to music on an average of five platforms, including pc’s and mobile devices. The number of hours per day that they are listening is growing, and 2 out of 5 people have music as part of their social network profile.
The study recommends three ways that brands can integrate music into their digital marketing strategy. The “Association” strategy creates a connection between an artist and an audience, as Bacardi did by signing a “record deal” with British electronic band Groove Armada.
The “Involvement” strategy gets fans involved with music – as Intel did with its remix competition, which resulted in 19,000 people becoming fans of Intel on their MySpace page. The “Exploration” strategy calls for brands to sponsor music discovery platforms such as Duracell sponsored Ramp Music.
There’s a lot of sense in this study and the recommendations. Social media, music and advertising are made for each other. Internet radio stations should focus on creating offerings that merge the needs of consumers and advertisers around music.
Add comment December 1, 2009
Imeem Sells To MySpace For A Song
News Corp owned MySpace will purchase independent online music service Imeem, in a deal which is reported to be $1million in cash. Imeem has been in financial trouble for a while, and has run through an estimated $30million in investor dollars.
Among the investors, all four major record labels, although earlier this year Warner Music wrote off its investment in the service. In 2007, Imeem became the first ad supported on-demand online music service to negotiate deals with all four major labels. Those deals included equity which made partners of the four major labels. MySpace also has partnership deals in place with the four major labels.
A few months ago MySpace acquired online music service iLike, with 50 million registered listeners, for a reported $20million. Comscore estimated that Imeem had 16 million unique visitors in September. It’s impossible to compare these two numbers except to say that it doesn’t sound like Imeem is a lot smaller than iLike to me.
MySpace now owns two of the five online music services that announced partnerships with Google’s new music platform. The way that works is that Google drives traffic to partner sites who play the music and pay the royalties.
Recently Spotify delayed their US launch due to problems negotiating a license for ad supported on demand streaming with the record companies. Plug that info into the fact that Imeem was about to get acquired by MySpace for so little, and it’s easy to understand why Spotify is meeting with some opposition. Seems like the record companies want to limit their exposure on the ad supported revenue model…
2 comments November 24, 2009
Spotify Launch Hits a Snag
Spotify, the European on-demand music streaming service that has taken Europe by storm, will apparently delay a US launch. For several weeks now there have been reports that the major labels were putting pressure on Spotify to abandon a free, ad-supported streaming model. The New York Times recently reported that major labels, already involved as backers with free ad-supported services like MySpace and Imeem, aren’t eager to license their catalogs to Spotify on that basis.
And they have a lot to say on the matter. “On-demand services have to negotiate private deals with the labels – there is no compulsory license, and the deals are not public.” according to David Oxenford a legal expert in streaming audio licensing.
But how much is the new Google music platform impacting this? Google Music is now driving listeners to Imeem and MySpace/iLike – the two services that are licensed by the record labels to stream on-demand. With that deal in place to support the two services that the record labels are already invested in, would they want to see Spotify come in and disrupt the market for on-demand services? Given some time, and the preference they’re getting from Google Music, Imeem and iLike (owned by MySpace) should be able to build their brands as destination sites for on-demand music.
Instead, the record companies would like to see Spotify offer their service on a premium basis, to those that subscribe. “We like Spotify as our partner in Europe, but we would like them to move more toward a paid subscription environment,” said Thomas Hesse, president of global digital business at Sony Music, as reported by the New York Times. Word is, Spotify is not happy about coming to the US with a paid-only model, hence they have delayed their launch.
Add comment November 16, 2009
HD Radio on iPhone – There’s an App For That
Big news for HD Radio this week is that it’s available on iPhone. While the HD Radio app for iPhone is free, listening requires the purchase a Gigaware HD Radio receiver accessory, which costs $80 and is only available at Radio Shack.
In this interview with wsj.com, iBiquity chief executive Bob Struble mentions that first HD Radio went portable with Microsoft’s Zune, and now extends its mobile offerings to Apple’s incredibly popular iPhone. In addition to being able to listen to your favorite stations digitally, the app enables you to tag songs that you hear and like for future purchase.
HD is simply a brand name for the digital upgrade to AM and FM, says Struble. AM/FM is the last analog medium in the US, and HD is the digital version of those offerings.
The question is, will listeners adopt the new HD technology and move to HD devices and listening, or will they shift directly to an alternative like Internet radio? Streaming Pandora, for example, is free for everyone on iPhone. The reason to purchase the HD Radio iPhone accessory, according to Struble, is that it will allow listening to HD Radio stations on your iPhone even when you don’t have a wifi connection. (but your purchase of the iPhone required you to pay for a monthly data plan that gives you unlimited broadband…)
He hopes they will convince Apple to build HD Radio receivers directly into iPhones and iPod Touch devices, which would eliminate the need for additional hardware. It sounds far fetched to me, but a while back I was betting against FM on iPhones…
1 comment November 11, 2009
British Radio Groups See Digital Future
In the category of what-a-great-idea comes this: in England, the BBC (non-commercial radio) and commercial radio will join forces to set up the Radio Council, to focus specifically on radio’s digital future. Representatives will include the BBC as well as England’s three largest radio groups – Global Radio, GMG Radio, and Bauer Media, along with RadioCentre, a trade group that will represent all other commercial radio entities.
Reportedly, the new group will work to establish are a shared online live radio player, portal and a range of exclusive content to help boost struggling digital audio broadcasting (DAB) stations. The group will focus on digital radio in the forms of DAB and online, and will focus on devices, platforms and marketing to bring radio closer to a digital switchover.
There are lots of reasons behind this move that basically boil down to a growing concern that if radio does not move more quickly to digital platforms it will be left behind in the digital age. Andrew Harrison, the RadioCentre chief executive, said “This exciting new initiative kick-starts our collective approach to ensuring radio is at the heart of Digital Britain.”
A unified group focused on supporting digital development for radio. With the support of traditional broadcast groups and trade associations, it sure sounds like they mean business…
Add comment October 28, 2009
Consumer Media Study Highlights Impact of Digital Media on Radio
A newly released study done by Targetcast, a communications firm, has some good and bad news for broadcast radio. The good: Adults 18 to 64 were found to still consider radio to be an important touchpoint for new music discovery. The not-so-good: 18 to 24 year olds were likely to indicate that radio is not so relevant to them.
Released study findings show that consumers indicate that several traditional media including newspapers, magazines and, to a lesser degree, radio, will need to change the most in the coming years. Newspapers led the pack of media needing to change, with nearly 60% of consumers surveyed identifying this medium as the one that will need to change the most – compared to 30% for magazines and 20% for radio.
Another notable discovery from the research: Men are more likely than women to replace radio with digital alternatives such as mp3 players or Internet stations, while women are more likely to stick with their favorite radio stations.
The bottom line should be taken as a shot across the bow by broadcast radio: “41% of those surveyed indicate that radio is still relevant in today’s media environment. According to respondents, radio provides a great venue to discover new music that cannot be experienced elsewhere. Maybe somewhat surprising, respondents overall prefer to listen to music through the radio station vs. Internet stations or on their mp3 player. ” However, within that overall conclusion there are several key demographics that are indicating a willingness to transfer their affinity to digital music sources including personal devices such as Internet radio, ipods, iphones and other multi-media devices.
Add comment October 26, 2009
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