Music biographies mesmerized me when I was a kid. Whether it was Glenn Miller or Elvis Presley, it was always the same fascinating formula: talent and tenacity leading to the precipice of success, with the artist always searching for that one elusive element to define his signature sound, to breakthrough. With Miller it was the addition of trombones. The proceedings always put me on the edge of my seat and the breakthroughs set me reeling. I guess it was in my blood.

It persists. Last night I watched two great documentary-style bios on TV, one on Johnny Cash, another on Willie Nelson. Willie, as many of his fans may not realize, was actually a Nashville songwriter, penning such classics as “Crazy,” which Patsy Cline etched into the music lexicon. Despite his pre-eminent status as a writer, Willie couldn’t get arrested as an artist in Music City. His quirky phrasing was way too off beat for the 60’s sound, which was infused with sweet strings and pop arrangements.

At the age of 40, Willie returned home to Texas. Such a move would have meant a life sentence selling insurance had history not intervened. As fate would have it, Woodstock Nation had opened the doors to multiple music movements by the early 70s, and Willie realized that Austin clubs were ready for a new kind of country artist. He enlisted his buddy Waylon Jennings, among others, and set about launching a novel sound to a new audience. His ultimate success turned country music, and the music establishment at large, on its head. Ultimately, he was responsible for redefining music, establishing its “outlaw” class, creating the Austin revolution and worldwide social activism that persists to this day.

Despite his huge outsider success, Nashville rejected this giant yet again. By the 1980s, you couldn’t find a Willie song on mainstream country radio, and forget about a major label deal.

Okay, let’s get right down to the hard part. Cash was just another music god to be tumbled unceremoniously from Olympus. By the 80s, he, too, was cast out like so much trash. His popularity was dwindling, and he was struggling to find an audience and make a living.

So these outlaw outcasts banded together, literally, forming the country supergroup The Highwaymen, along with Waylon and Kris Kristofferson. Talk about a Mount Rushmore of talent. They had taken fate into their own hands and, once again, set out to redefine the music scene, outside the establishment, all on their own.

A Bronx boy, I was still getting my country legs under me, when I hit Nashville in the late 80s. At the time, I couldn’t understand why the likes of Willie and Johnny weren’t getting mainstream air play, why I could eat lunch with Emmylou Harris but couldn’t hear her songs on country radio, why Nanci Griffith was considered a darling in all the clubs, to all the execs, but couldn’t get the chart toppers and eventually carped about it in interviews.

I was just getting introduced to the hard truth of the music industry: bitterness. Griffith was bitter, my friend Artie Traum (from back home in Woodstock) — one of the sweetest guys to ever grace the business — was expressing a degree of bitterness, too, in interviews of the day. I was just learning.

The songwriting trade in Nashville was rough. By year two, I was saying you had to learn to live on a diet of stones. Rejection was the blue-plate special everyday. It took me two years to get my first major song contract and more to get my first staff writing job and my first cut. Everyone who stuck with it had war stories: the song on hold that never happened, the artist cut that got dropped by the label or never got released as a single or didn’t make it above 20 on the charts. But, despite eventual successes and even industry support, I left after a decade to pursue to a career as an artist, packing scars and wisdom, love and hate.

But back to Johnny Cash. One of the greatest artists to “walk the line,” he faced the pure pain of artistry more deeply, more movingly than anyone before him. Late in his career, with the help of producer Rick Rubin, Johnny faced his inner darkness, his demons, his truth, his soul. With such albums as “American Recordings” and “Unchained,” he found a vast and vital new audience, just years before his death. His new material was so raw that family members had a tough time listening. They told him it sounded like he was saying goodbye. He told them he was.

Pure Johnny Cash

In the Cash bio, artists such as Sheryl Crow, John Mellencamp and Vince Gill expressed the true painful tumble that all artists must face. Mellencamp himself recently penned a telling if rambling article on the biz in HuffPost, a blog post that established a wellspring of conversation in the social media sector.

So, this little Bronx boy, who reeled from the Glenn Miller story and cut and broke his teeth on Music Row, finally came to understand bitterness and the role it plays in any music career. No one is exempt. It may be (excuse me) a bitter pill to swallow, but I recommend downing it to develop a good artist-immune system. Another words, one has to learn to deal with it, to embrace it, pain and all, and find a way to move on, carry it on your back, in your suitcase, in your heart, on your skin — the rose tattoo of the music artist.

We have moved our blog to our own site. We’re still using Word Press but we’ve decided to take it in-house.

Continue to follow us at www.musicballoon.com/blog.

Thanks,

Alex and Steve

www.musicballoon.com

Take a look at the recent Telegraph article on the British Government’s Digital Economy Bill. It aims to address long debated issues within the digital industries and of particular note is the new ‘watchdog’ role ISP’s will have to take on.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Seems to be a fairly typical approach by the British Government; the more oversight the better.  I think Ms. Beaumont makes a valid point about the Bill protecting older business models whilst not helping new ventures.  Only time will tell if the regulation has any drastic consequences. The debate continues.

I’ve been remiss in keeping up my blog – too much happening at Dilettante which has all been tremendously exciting. Needless to say, I’ve got a lot to update in these pages – before I do, take a look at the Daily Telegraph Review of the concert at Wilton’s Music Hall in London.

It was incredibly exciting to produce the project with the London Sinfonietta and two of the composer finalists – Chiayu and David T. Little (the winner) were able to  join us for the performance.

You can visit the web’s first Digital Composer-in-Residence space here.  Congrats to David and thanks to all who helped make this project a success.

Radio has always been a great promotional tool for music acts. That’s why I found it very strange that Toronto’s Kiss FM’s “official KiSS 92.5 Roz and Mocha ‘T-Dot State of Mind’ Music Video” would prominently feature a girl holding up a “hand-written” sign that reads “I Never Pay For Music”. Not only that, but it looks like she’s posing right in front of the HMV music store on Queen Street West:



From what I can tell, the message of the video appears to be that the quintessential depiction of Toronto life includes visiting the CN Tower, going to Wonderland, watching a Maple Leaf game and downloading music without paying for it while rubbing it in the face of retailers. Maybe they can do a sequel in front of Sam the Record Man. Oh wait…

This seems like a rather bold statement coming from the Rogers Broadcasting Limited-owned radio station. Where do radio stations like Kiss FM expect to get music from if everyone follows their lead and never pay for music?

If you must, click here to see the full video. Edit: Looks like the video was removed.

Forrester is currently running an executive survey assessing the ‘state of the nation’ of digital music.  We are surveying right across the value chain, from labels, through artists to digital services and companies such as telcos and brands that are working with music. We’re looking at what’s working and what’s not, competing against free and changing business models. If you are involved in some part of the digital music value chain then we’d love to hear your opinions.

All results will treated as strictly confidential and results will only ever be presented a aggregate level.

You can take the survey here: https://deploy.ztelligence.com/start/index.jsp?PIN=15VMGXK5XCSPX

I am in the process of releasing 2 new songs online. One song called, “Diva” is already out on some digital music sites, like Rhapsody. I used the online service, Tunecore.com. I have to say that my first experience with them has been great! Last Saturday night I spent $9.99 and now my single is already popping up on download sites around the world. Hell, I was streaming it on Rhapsody on Wednesday…so it only took a few days for the song to start getting out there. It was a pretty easy process. I had to upload my mp3 and artwork and they pretty much do the rest. So be on the lookout for Chad Sharp:”Diva” on a digital site near you!

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…

Woah, remember Spotify? One of the great hopes of the record industry?

Streaming audio all the time, all the music you can take, easy to use, etc, etc,. The big plus was that artists were going to start making some money off of streaming music.

Well a report recently claims that even after Lady Gaga got a million plays on Spotify she only made $167. Really?! We’d advise Ms.Gaga to have a sweet kegger, charge $5 at the door and double her money! Boom! Your welcome Lady Gaga.

So to make AAAAAANY money in the Spotify world you need to be the biggest pop act in the world? That’s encouraging. So I guess this means we should get in the van right? Lady Gaga still is. She was supposed to tour with Kanye West, when that fell through she still soldiered on. She’s my typeagirl.

If the biggest Spotify artist in the world is still touring, you should too. TOUR+YOUTUBE!

Music sales have been changed by the Internet. That’s perhaps the most obvious statement I’ve ever written on Audio4cast. Nonetheless, it’s interesting to look at how the Internet has impacted music sales, and a post on Nielsen’s blog recently did just that, discussing a recent article in Billboard magazine.

Individual tracks accounted for 57% of all digital music sold in 2008. More intriguing is the fact that the top 200 tracks accounted for 14.5% of sales in 2004 and rose to 15.8% in 2005, 17.1% in 2006 and 2007 and 17.2% in 2008. Through October 25, 2009, the top 200 tracks’ share stood at 18.7%.

Not exactly what you were thinking, right? We all think of the Internet as fostering diverse listening and independent artists. So why are sales concentrating more on the most popular songs, not less?

It turns out that popular tracks may be benefitting from a “herd effect due to the viral nature of the Internet. The awareness generated by that small number of songs could drown out less popular songs.” In other words, top 40 playlists are still driving music sales. In any week, one of out four songs sold belongs to that top 200.

On the other hand, Album sales are trending in the other direction. “The top 200 digital albums have accounted for a smaller share of total digital album sales since 2004.” “The top 200 digital albums have shown an opposite trend in market share, steadily dropping to 21.9% in 2008 from 28.7% in 2004.”

Listeners that purchase albums online are listening to fewer hit albums and more eclectic album offerings, while those that purchase single tracks are concentrating on the top 200 songs more and more. The numbers show that it’s not exactly the expansive and expanding marketplace many have imagined. While the Internet has become the place to find and listen to music by independent and unknown artists, the diverse offerings have yet to impact digital song sales, which remain concentrated on the hits.

CD sales in the US saw a decrease in 14% in the year 2008. The drop was largely due to “Internet piracy and competition from other forms of entertainment, namely video game” (Music News Net, 2009)

Despite the decrease in CD sales, digital music sales reaped a 32% increase (65.8 millions units) in 2008.

Welcome to the world of music.

What was once only for Aristocrats and church-goes has become something that is so common in our everyday life. Switch on the television, you hear a band’s music video playing on MTV. Step into the shopping mall, it will be hard to find a store that does not play music in it. Take a look at an average teenager’s bag, you would very likely be able to find an iPod or MP3 inside.

The music industry has come a long way. From vinyl to cassette tapes to compact discs (CDs), the digital form seems to be the way to go.

Just check out the number of music streaming sites out there! (and I don’t think that’s all of them!)
However, even as more people purchase digital albums/singles on online music stores like the iTunes store, I believe that there are still people out there who still prefer purchasing the physical album.

“Sigh, if albums cease to exist. Then what about album photos and signatures. Digital media revolution is unpredictable.” -@kellinachin

“maybe its just me, but i’d prefer to have a physical album.. its like a little collection i suppose? =/ #nct” -@leejii
(@kellinachin & @leejii are avid K-pop fans. )

I suppose consumers who like a particular music personality would prefer having a physical album because it contains lyrics and photos of the singer/band. It also serves as a medium where artistes sign on during fan meetings. They are able to collect these albums and I suppose each new album comes as a surprise to these with fans when it’s packaged differently/ the album includes hidden tracks.

Personally, I do not particularly like any music personality. I like singers or bands, because I like their songs. I admire them because they make, in my opinion, good music. (Some of my favourites are Rachael Yamagata and Kings of Convenience!) Hence it doesn’t really affect me much whether I purchase a physical or digital album. To me, I just want to get my music easily at an affordable cost. With the popularity and convenience of MP3s, I transfer songs from the CDs into my iPod and CDs that I’ve bought in the past have become white elephants at home; they are left on my shelf and collect dust.

This brings to my next point- Piracy.

A funny comic about the Internet & Piracy

I’m sure nobody who is tech-savvy can ever deny that they’ve been a pirate before.

No, I don’t mean that pirate!
Let’s face it. Piracy will never be gone. Even with affordable music up for purchase, many would still prefer to get free things. In fact, there has been debate on whether the easy access of digital music leads to more piracy. But I beg to differ.

There was an increasing trend of US teens purchasing music online, from 20% in 2004 to 36% in 2006. Peer-to-peer network (where people share music illegally) dropped 8%.

For me, I wouldn’t mind buying music online if its available to me easily at an affordable price (Oh, iTunes, why aren’t you available in Singapore? I want to be able to get music singles instead of buying one whole album!☹ ) Most artistes create music not only for passion, but for a livelihood. I seriously wouldn’t mind paying for good music, to honour the effort & talent of these artistes. Piracy is as bad as shoplifting, it IS stealing! (even though it’s done on cyberspace) Moreover, paying for music means I won’t need to risk for the fear of getting caught. I don’t have to feel guilty. If digital music is easily available, I believe that there will be people like me with the same mindset; switching from sharing music illegally to purchasing digital music.

Artistes must know how to ride on this digital music wave for their benefit. One example would be Radiohead. In 2007, the band their 7th album, In Rainbows as a digital download. Anyone could order the album and pay any amount that they wanted to.

Guess what happened?

“Upon its retail release, In Rainbows entered the UK Album Chart and the U.S. Billboard 200 at number one; by October 2008, it had sold more than three million copies worldwide in both digital and physical formats. The album earned widespread critical acclaim, and was ranked as one of the best albums of 2007 by several publications. In 2009, the record won two Grammy Awards for Best Alternative Music Album and Best Special Limited Edition Package.”
(extracted from Wikipedia: In Rainbows)

I really admire this approach that the band was willing to take. At the risk of profits, I feel that Radiohead really gave fans the credibility and trust that they’re not out there just to earn fan’s money, but to really produce music that consumers love.

What would the future of music be like? Will CDs die in a couple of years’ time? Will Piracy be more rampant, or would it be less common? I do not know, but one thing I know is that: the demand for music will always be there. No matter what- CDs, digital music or illegal downloads, music will not, and will never die.

Metro Audio  is happy to bring you the Roland V-mix. This is a featured article and video demonstration on our website.

In the NRP book we wrote that although MySpace is getting pushed around by facebook it still holds weight for artists. I was concerned that I’d have to revise that during the summer as MySpace looked like it was going down for the count. But then Tom went and grabbed a second wind. So here’s what you need to know:

1. Recently MySpace pulled a social network coup when they integrated Twitter into their world.  Although it was a small change overall, it showed that MySpace still wants it.
2. An even bigger addition is the new analytics provided to artists. Like facebook fan pages you’re provided with a closer look at ways people are finding your music and where they’re coming from. But this is wayyyy better than the facebook stuff. The MySpace back end is big, colorful, and very user friendly. You can see what songs were played when over the course of days, weeks and months and break your visitors down to country, state/province, and city, and MySpace integrates iLike.
3. MySpace bought Imeem. Hypebot reported that MySpace bought Imeem which will mean…. something? Sure. I always thought of Imeem was kinda like MySpace anyway, but Imeem does have a coolness/niche factor that MySpace is too blunt to capture.

So looks like MySpace isn’t down for the count. Word on the street is that they’re going to be an entertainment social network. Giving artists a reason to stay on MySpace BESIDES the large audience will go a long way to getting artists (entertainers) engaged and supplying MySpace with good content.

Business Week: “MySpace, however, isn’t seen as a premium provider of anything—and MySpace Music is viewed as a place where clutter and advertising are tolerated in order to get something for free.”

"A Place for Freedom?"

MySpace seems to be a necessary evil today’s industry. Almost every artist has a page, simply because of the great vastness of its network. Personally, I can’t stand it, I have a page for my artist, but I CAN’T stand it. The interface is terrible, the website itself is horrendously slow, the page designs are generic and boring, and there is way too much clutter on every page. There are very few clean MySpace pages. So, why would artists (most of which don’t have enough money to do so, hence why they use MS) want to start paying for this service? MySpace is shooting themselves in the foot by even considering a premium model. They are used by many as a taste tester for potential fans and music heads all over the world. It can be a top shelf bar and a hole in the wall at the same time.

With that said and MySpace’s original stance on allowing thousands of artist’s music to be heard FOR FREE, why would they want to hurt those artists or even provide a detriment to building their career? There is a whole group of people/fans who see a band coming to town, that they have never heard of, to  club they frequent. If their interest is peaked,  that person will, in most cases, head to MySpace for a quick stream and decide to whether or not to go to the show. What would happen if that artist did not have enough money to pay for a premium service for their music to be heard? Potentially, that person will not check them out and spend their time and money elsewhere. Who ends up with the short end of the stick now? The artist or the fan?

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.

My inaugural post, a lengthy history (personal and generally) of MP3 players, was meant to lay the foundation for this post.  This shorter post.

You’re welcome.

MP3 player.  Doesn’t just roll off the tongue, does it?  And isn’t it funny how the word “iPod” has become synonymous with MP3 playing devices?  The same way a band-aid is both a bandage and a brand name.  The power of success, eh?  But what exactly does MP3 mean in the first place and is it important?  Well, let’s take a look!

MP3 is actually a shortened version of something else, which also doesn’t roll off the tongue:  MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3.  And we can make this even longer by turning MPEG into Moving Pictures Experts Group.  You can begin to see why “MP3″ took off.

MP3 is a codec, which is a piece of software that compresses and then decompresses (the “co” and “dec” of codec) data.  In this particular instance we are discussing the compression and decompression of data related to a file of music; a song.  MP3 is just one of many codecs that exist in the consumer electronics field as related to digital audio.  Some are open source and some are proprietary.  Some are lossless and some are lossy.  Isn’t this fun?  Even more weird terms to wrap our heads around, but I imagine if you are here, at this blog, you probably already know something about these terms and as such I won’t bother to explain what you already know (and if you don’t know you will find wikipedia and google to be your best friend).

What I really want to get to in this blog is what I call codec snobbery.  The notion that one codec is superior to another and that to use any other codec is simply a waste of time and shows you to be a fool who doesn’t understand anything about digitizing music.

Much is written about the various codecs in the market place and why one is better…no….superior to the others.  There are those who swear by open source codecs like Ogg Vorbis and FLAC.  Why be roped into someone’s proprietary mess when you can be open source?  Well, because the vast majority of MP3 players don’t support either Ogg Vorbis or FLAC…and neither do the mainstream digital audio software players (think iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc.)

Are there advantages to going open source?  Sure.  It’s free.  But last time I checked I’m not paying anything to download and install Windows Media Player or iTunes.  There is no cost to me to do such, so I’m not really certain I understand how these free and open source codecs are of some great advantage.  I mean, if they sounded notably better than the more well-known codecs (AAC as used by iTunes, WMA as used by Windows Media Player) then one might be able to make a better argument, but they don’t really sound any better than any other codec in the great scheme of things.

Of course, there are those who swear by AAC, WMA and MP3, which is fine as well.  But I think these folks are mostly steered into their given codec not by some allegiance to the codec itself, but by the player they purchase.  The iPod.  The Walkman.  The Creative Labs.  The Archos.  They encode their CDs in whatever codec their player will play and their software will recognize.  It really is that simple.  As a matter-of-fact, I think it would not be unreasonable to assume that better than 80% of all MP3 player owners wouldn’t even know what is a codec, much less at what bit rate they are encoding their music on their computer.

Yet there are experts and writers out there who want to convince us that FLAC is the only way to go or that WMA VBR (Variable Bit Rate) at a bit rate setting greater than 256 is the bees knees.  But short of using complicated and precise measuring devices to actually “listen” to music encoded by these various codecs at various bit rates and alternating between Constant Bit Rate (CBR) and VBR there is no way to know which sounds best.  And even then I would swear that blind listening tests using tens of thousands of listeners would be the only way to fully understand and appreciate which codec at what bit rate is the best.  And I think it’s pretty obvious this isn’t going to happen.

So what does one do?

For many folks they do nothing.  They go out and purchase the MP3 player they want.  They go home and use the software they like best that will work with their given purchase.  They probably don’t know how to change the bit rate and have never heard of VBR or CBR.  And they probably couldn’t care less.  It makes the whole issue of which is the best codec a horribly moot point.

I mean..think about it.  The iPod, while clearly the run away success of MP3 players, isn’t the best sounding MP3 player on the market.  Never has been.  Will probably never be either.  But that hasn’t hurt its sales in the slightest, has it?  Its success was built upon either criteria.  In other words it sounds good enough.

The average consumer (and by “average” I mean something like 99%) doesn’t care or probably even know about codecs.  They buy the MP3 playing device they want and they want it because it looks cool.  Or is popular and will impart popularity upon them.  Or something.  But it is something other than codec support.

So when the experts tell us we need to be concerned about such matters because it might make an infinitesimal difference in the quality of the sound of the music, I think they should sod off.  Unless the sound quality is noticeably better and can be had without any extra work on my part (having to find special software being the big one), then I don’t want to hear about it.  I’ll stick to WMA or AAC and be happy that I can quickly and easily create music for on the go.

A lot of buzz is circulating about the physical music market being dead.  Such statements concern me.  I am not concerned about the declining physical retail sale of music, but I do find concern with the praise shown, as if the death of the physical is some sort of goal or accomplishment.  It is a well-known notion that the digital world is creating a new mass market for music, but what does that have to do with the presence or absence of the physical?

According to the RIAA 2008 Year-End Shipment Statistics, physical retail sales made up roughly 2/3 of  all music sales, a 9% decrease from 2007.  Digital music sales increased to 32% of total market value, bringing in $2.7 billion in total shipments.  Likewise, and contrary to the “death of the physical” exclamations, vinyl sales increased to $57 million, more than doubling its 2007 figures.

Although the rise in vinyl sales throw a  curve ball to “death of the physical” enthusiasts, the rising digital consumption statistics has become misrepresented.  These enthusiast seem to profess how music companies should focus on the digital instead of wasting time, energy and money on physical music retail sales.  Such notion raises much concern.   It is discerning to me that anyone would propose to render such a major outlet obsolete while the music industry, as a whole, suffers from a decline in total music sales.

Digital music sales are increasing in its percentage of the whole music sales pie – a pie that is shrinking by the moment.  The overall album sales pie, made up of both the physical and the digital, has decreased 14%, between 2007 and 2008.  This trend will only continue as listeners find other, free sources to obtain music.

The physical market not only provides income, but the physical market provides a unique and personal connection between artists and avid music connoisseurs.  Die-hard music fans collect vinyl and CDs, not to mention other music swag that record labels sell.  Die-hard fans are the people who are willing to spend more in the long run on merchandise, new products and concert tickets, distinctly separating themselves from the great number of people looking to get free digital music without any intent to support artists.

The death of the physical mindset abuses avid, die-hard music fans, possibly making them disinterested in supporting the very artists they now cherish.  This breaks the fan-artist bond, a bond needed in order for the music industry to profit.  Not only will this mindset upset the functionality of the existing music business model, but this negative mindset strives towards a dysfunctional mass market strategy.  The music industry is already facing challenges, why create a surefire method for failure?

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…

I met my old mate Pete yesterday. When we meet up, the conversation inevitably heads towards geeking out about collecting music – Pete ran a rare record stall on Greenwich market in the late 80’s and I worked for him on Sundays. Most of what I know about collecting music was gained from Pete. I used to collect various bands, but mainly Level 42 (I moved onto 60’s and indie pretty quickly) when I was 16 and in those days before Ebay, it was amazingly hard to find certain records. but it was FUN. The buzz of finding something that was rare, in good nick and affordable (or, if you were really lucky, massively under-priced) gave such a buzz. I know it is geeky, but I don’t care.

Anyhow, Pete makes me look like an amateur and is still uncovering bizarre pressings and rarities by his favourite band, Blondie. But what will kids in 10, 20 years from now going to have to track down? By definition, everything is available and will remain available via download. No hearing that there is a limited edition, promo-only 12 with only 100 copies pressed and then trying to frantically track it down. OK, having everything available is obviously great and now days people are exposed to such a wide range of music, but I can’t help thinking that something has been lost. And I still think that having your records/CDs physically around you is an incredibly powerful thing – the picture covers, physically putting the music “on”.

The thing is, the record industry needs to create long-term loyalty to bands – in the old days, fans could buy picture discs, double packs, remix 12″s, loads of different stuff. Everything was branded – all part of developing that loyalty. Will downloading zeros and ones promote the same sort of loyalty to a band? Or will bands/musicians become as disposable as everything else in the modern world?

Thems fightin’ words.

I recently read a blog post by an author (who shall remain anonymous) but here is the link.

Upstart Blogger

To me, this makes no sense, this post sounds remotely close to a “Lefsetzian”  rant. How can you force an industry to change? The independent labels are the underbelly of an industry that is in a rapid state of change. To even use Lilly Allen  as a comparison in an argument like that is asinine. Of course she only cares about money, she is in that realm of artists!! The real meat of this is, how can we monetize digital music while keeping the fans happy? Of course die hard fans will buy premium content but it simply cannot be free.

It does not make the industry angry that they cannot control the internet, it makes the industry angry that they fell off the band wagon years ago with the world wide web and have been rushing to catch up ever since. Most of them have understood that the internet is here to stay, any industry knows that, not just the music business.

What is “bad” music? Who can really make that judgment or statement? It’s the niche’s of this so-called “bad music” that have been filling the void and allowing independent labels to start generating revenue. (Billboard article describing how these shares are defined) I’ve watched the market shares for all the majors slowly fall over the past few years in Billboard. Some have elevated music tastes, some don’t, some simply want a great groove they can party and dance to. Some want to listen to Miles Davis Live at the Fillmore, some pretty out there shit. TO EACH HIS OWN.

Also, what kind of question is this “Why would any artist, if they were confident in their own ability to attract an audience, not want their music to be heard by as many people as possible?” Of course they do, that is why they play music in the first place.

Music should be free in some circumstances, but if you package it correctly and make it appealing to the new fans and die hard ones, the money will come. You have to look at an artist as an investment today not as a quick buck.