hello teman semua
ayo kita sambut, hari baru telah tiba
apa yang kurasakan, ku ingin engkau tahu
dan berbagi bersama

buka kita buka hari yang baru
sebagai semangat langkah ke depan
jadi pribadi baru
buka kita buka jalan yang baru
tebarkan senyum wajah gembira
damai suasana baru
bukalah bukalah semangat baru
bukalah bukalah semangat baru
bukalah bukalah semangat baru

coba diam walau hanya tuk sejenak,
dengarkan kata dari s’gala yang ku ucap,
ku jelang pagi ini nikmati damai di hati,
dalam waktu penuh arti karena aku dicintai,
ku ingat kemarin suasana tak bersemangat,
namun kini ku jalani dan semua rasanya tepat,
bersama kita coba wujudkan harapan,
membuka jalan dalam ‘gapai setiap tujuan.

mentari bersinar selalu
ini yang ku minta penuh semangat tertawa
bersamamu teman semua
karena ini saatnya kita nyanyi bersama

buka kita buka hari yang baru
sebagai semangat langkah ke depan
jadi pribadi baru
buka kita buka jalan yang baru
tebarkan senyum wajah gembira
damai suasana baru

dengarkan hatimu, pastikan pilihanmu
esok mentari kan datang, bawa sejuta harapan
kita jumpa di sana, berbagi bersama
dan kita tahu, pelangi yang satukan kita

It seems as though the first era of digital music may have come to an end. Napster died, P2P lived in some black market twilight zone, streaming services on ad-supported revenue were suffocated by unsustainably high licensing fees, and subscription services sputtered along, never quite capturing the imaginations of music fans. 2009 ended in a flurry of acquisitions (LaLa, iLike), launches (Vevo) and shutdowns (iMeem), which dramatically rearranged the digital music landscape. When the dust finally settles, expect digital music to begin anew.

With that in mind, here are my five predictions for music in 2010.

1. Labels Will Get Smart

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It’s been coming for more than a decade, but major labels are starting to grasp the digital opportunity. They’re licensing music on more sustainable terms, diversifying their business model, investing in new technology and, most critically, understanding more than ever what it means to be truly consumer-led.

As market leaders, major labels have the resources and the networks to profit most from the changes currently taking place. The move from physical to digital hasn’t been as fast as many people might have wished, but that’s because digital still doesn’t pay like physical does.

CDs, when they sell well, still mean big money. Digital isn’t like that. But that’s changing, and as major labels have shrunk, their capacity for change has increased. Expect 2010 to be the year that the bad press on the major labels starts becoming more favorable.

The promises of the digital age — deeper understanding of the music consumer, integrated ticketing and merchandise, direct-to-consumer sales, and fans as marketing teams — are all about to become a reality, and major labels will lead the charge.

2. Physical CD Sales Will Continue to Decline

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To ensure at least one of my predictions comes true, I’m going to forecast that globally, sales of physical CDs will decline in 2010. That’s one thing you can definitely count on.

3. Release Strategies Will Evolve

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The traditional model of building buzz through radio singles followed by a carefully timed album launch will still be the norm for commercial pop music. But at the edges, we’re going to start seeing a new model for releasing music that’s more attuned to the diverse community of music consumers.

The new model, pioneered by Topspin Media, will be the multi-tiered, staggered release. Artists will offer free, full streams and selected downloads early to the curious and the devoted, building their fanbase as they grow. Traditional release schedules will follow, in tandem with more innovative products, at more diverse prices, to more accurately segmented groups of fans.

Rather than just a plastic CD, we’ll start seeing multiple tiers of music product: free streams and low quality mp3s, simple digital and physical packages, enhanced audio and packaging on digital and physical releases, and then levels of premium products including vinyl, merchandise, and increased access to the artist.

We still think of music in its physical form as a CD on the shelf. Increasingly, we’re going to understand it as a suite of music products — T-Shirts, mugs, books, framed art, signed lyric sheets, USBs, and once-in-a-lifetime music experiences.

4. Music Will Live Legitimately in the Cloud

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It’s been talked about for a number of years, but 2010 could be the year we start thinking of music less as a finite product and more as an infinite, on-demand reservoir to be accessed at any time for a fee.

This process will roll out in tandem with the evolution of music “products.” Even if music is universally accessible, it’s still key to people’s identity. We still need something to put on a coffee table, something to pass to friends, something to put under the Christmas tree and something to signal to the world that “this music is part of me and I want you to know it.”

iTunes, as ever, is in the driver’s seat to make the most of this change. Its acquisition of LaLa could see them own the streaming market as it currently owns digital music.

Spotify’s buzz seems to have cooled, but it’s still the best-placed streaming service to take advantage of the cloud’s potential.

Grooveshark’s growth, if it continues, is going to make it a serious player in the streaming game.

MySpace, with iMeem and iLike in its back pocket may also consolidate its place in the land of the streaming.

Startups such as MyOwn.FM and The Cloud Player will challenge established players.

And finally, Google –- who owns the bridge over the moat, digitally speaking –- could pull the rug from everyone and facilitate properly integrated music streaming into its search platform.

Whoever emerges at the front of this pack will be in new territory, providing access to the world’s music, anytime, anywhere on any device.

5. Ethnic Music Content will Grow

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The new music models will start trickling down to international markets such as Russian music, Greek Music, and Spanish radio stations. These niche markets are huge and are similar to the long-tail results in search engines.

6. Who Knows?

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There’s some as-yet untested consumer models building momentum.

Guvera is promising the world, not just to the music industry, but to advertisers as well. Whether consumers buy into its advertisement for content exchange remains to be seen.

Rdio, with serious pedigree and some big money backing it, hasn’t poked its head up completely yet, but you can be assured that whatever it offers isn’t going to be lightweight.

Lost in all the buzz is the fact that some legacy digital music companies — Last.FM, Pandora and MySpace to name a few — still have the established brands, the existing customer base, and the revenue streams that preserve their lives beyond the froth of the tech/music blogosphere.

And of course, there’s Facebook. The biggest country in the world (or soon to be), Facebook and music have always been awkward bedfellows. If Zuckerberg and Co. can figure a way to integrate music with the Facebook platform, the existing user base would guarantee a big chunk of the market overnight.

It all adds up to create a big void of uncertainty, one that will be filled in the way the web knows best — by its end-users. What those end-users decide they love will ultimately determine the winners and losers in the digital music economy. As a passionate music fan, I can’t wait for the competition to heat up. For those on the digital frontier, music really is better than it’s ever been.

http://www.lala.com

This website is awesome! They have a large library of music and you can listen to each song once for free. This is great if you want to preview an album before buying. Upon signing up, you get 50 free song credits. This means you get to pick 50 songs that you can listen to as many times as you want and you can get more by introducing people to the site.

The down side: Apple recently accquired Lala. I have a sneaking feeling that the one time free listen will be done away with – which, to me, is really the only selling point to the site, unless you enjoy buying web albums.

Either way, it’s definitely worth checking out.

Just for a few minutes sit back and relax, collect your thoughts, be at ease with the world (click here) and listen to the songs of the season.

I was a big fan of Imeem.com since it started. Mainly because it allowed music fans to upload their favorite songs, so other people could stream them. It was a democratic music concept if ever there was one.

MySpace initially blocked Imeem playlists and songs from its website. Of course that was because MySpace was planning to essentially copy Imeem’s free streaming model.

Earlier in 2009, when Imeem pulled the plug on uploading videos, it was “the writing on the wall”. In early December of 2009, MySpace purchased Imeem. It was the end of  a classic site dedicated to free music. Much like the recent acquisition of LaLa by Apple, the acquisition of smaller Internet companies by corporate beasts continues (i.e. Google buying YouTube). Now the only question is whether Imeem will have any influence on MySpace’s Music section, now that most of the site’s users have migrated to Facebook.

Would you be willing to give up your music library?  I’ll admit that I’ve stopped purchasing CDs a long time ago.   If I can’t download my music it right to my iPod than I don’t want it to be bothered.  However, I wonder if I’d be willing to simply stream my music and not actually “own” any of it in my personal music library.  In many ways I’m already doing this by playing DJ on blip.fm, acting as my own radio programmer listening to Pandora on my Blackberry or creating my own playlists on Playlist.com.  In fact, truth be told, I often go to these playlists before I listen to my own in my iPod.

SAN FRANCISCO — With its deal this month to buy the Web music service Lala, Apple may be pointing the way to the future of music.

In this future, the digital music files on people’s computers could join vinyl records, cassette tapes and CDs in the dusty vault of fading music formats.

Instead, music fans will use their always-online computers and smartphones to visit a vast Internet jukebox, where Gregorian chants, Lady Gaga tracks and the several centuries of music in between are instantly available.

For a small but growing cadre of music lovers, the vision is not that outlandish. Josh Newman, a 30-year-old technology consultant from Toronto who travels widely, pays $16 a month for Spotify, a subscription music service that, for now, is officially available only in Europe. Spotify allows unlimited listening to its online music library.

Since Spotify introduced an application for the iPhone over the summer, Mr. Newman has begun listening to the service almost exclusively, even though he has 35,000 songs on hard drives at home.

“The irony is, I don’t even go back to that music,” Mr. Newman said. “I’m almost too lazy. If there’s an artist I want to check out, I’d rather listen to it on Spotify than have to dig through my collection.”

The idea of a limitless jukebox in the sky — or in tech-speak, “in the cloud” — has been around for some time, but it is consuming music executives who now associate the word “funk” with more than just a musical genre. The recording industry, which had $40 billion in annual sales a decade ago, is now bringing in half that. More ominously, the growth of revenue from digital downloads, still only a fifth of the total sales pie, is slowing

Read the full story here:

With Apple Purchase of Lala, Music Business Heads into the Virtual World – NYTimes.com.

Apple не е единствената компания, гони уеб-базирана музика стартиране на Лала, изглежда, Google също бе в преследването, със стремежа да копая дълбоко в онлайн музикален бизнес.

Google загубили тази битка, с Ябълка придобиване на компанията за около $ 85 милиона ипотпалци, според WSJ.

Ако Google купи Лала, тя би била в състояние да се реализират на продажби и абонаменти от един от партньорите си в музиката за търсене в Google. В същото време, Chrome OS позволява на потребителите да слушат музика на своите машини, заобикаляйки ITunes – това ипотпал може да е друга точка на интеграцията.

След като загуби върху Лала, можете да се обзаложите, че Google е на дебна за друга музика, свързани с придобиването.

Upon my recent review of Pandora and my excitement to share it with the masses I have discovered that has become first of all limited in its availability worldwide, and second, the artist profile that one creates barely plays the artist’s songs.  Sorry Pandora, but I’m not impressed any longer.  My “Zappa station” now plays ONE Zappa song per 10 songs and often, the same song? Lame.

I was introduced to an alternate online music source called LaLa and I have to say that I am rather impressed with the variety of artists available and also the amount of control the user has over listening to what you want (and all songs in their entirety!).  Please check this online source out and ditch Pandora since they are clearly a “bait and switch” site.  When they first introduced Pandora it was much cooler, not anymore.

I’m impressed how much Iron and  Wine, Nick Drake, and Elliot Smith they have, you can buy whatever you like at any time, but you can also create personal playlists to play, nice.  Ok, so here’s the catch- you can only listen to one song in its entirety once then you have to purchase it.  So, yeah, it’s free…but then it’s not, but the songs appear to be cheaper (.79 cents vs. .99 cents or more depending) to purchase than iTunes and the variety is pretty good. 

When you initially visit the site they give you 25 credits towards web songs you can add to a LaLa player which is free.  Each song is one credit and you can build a 25 song playlist after setting up a free account.  A cool thing is that you can listen to as many songs as you would like in their entirety prior to adding them to your playlist.  So, if you customize a playlist of things you might listen to all the time you might find the value in it.

Granted, Pandora is absolutely free but it has very serious limitations and becomes horribly redundant in its variety. 

Check out LaLa by clicking here and tell us what you experience.  Worldwide readers, please let us know if you can access this player as well.

Last year I compiled a list of some of the websites I visit most. Since the new year is fast approaching, I thought I would re-compile this list for the year of 2009, but, being the lazy ass that I am, I’m only doing five websites. Firstly, I would like to note that the following websites I have found most interesting this past year. I would also like to note that these websites were not created in the year 2009.

The first website, which actually was created this year, is SoundCloud. SoundCloud was created scary recent to the Apple-LaLa takeover. My guess is that the SoundCloud folks, who created a lighter version of their service for iPhone OS a couple weeks ago, knew that Apple would be buying LaLa before anyone, probably as a tip from the LaLa folks, or they were just really lucky and were at the right place, at the right time, on the right day. Kind of like Bill Gates. SoundCloud is a cloud music sharing service as well as a platform for bands, artists, and fans.

Another web-based music service, Last.FM, is also on my list. Last.FM is much like Pandora, except you specifically get to choose what you want to listen too. You can listen to just one song over and over, multiple songs, genres, artists, bands, and there is also a “Pandora” mode (radio by what kind of music you like.) Last.FM also stores what music you have listened to through a desktop client or their website. By doing this the Last.FM engine is able to create accurate playlists of artists that you will like. In my experience, it has been much better than Pandora. Oh, and it uses Lucida Grande as a font… So, no question there, better than Pandora.

I’m a big fan, you must know that, of blogs. After all this website is a blog. That being said, I like to visit many other blogs and one of them is OS X Fanatics written by Matt Hartley. The blog is unique. VERY UNIQUE. When an idea for a post pops into my head for this blog, I usually had just seen something on a mothership Apple-news website, such as MacRumors. I don’t know where Matt gets the ideas for his blog, they he writes about so many things that really aren’t relevant to what is going on, but regardless of that, it is some great content. I urge you to go visit his website right now.

Cocoia, a company with one employee, focuses on icon design and runs a variety of other smaller websites, including Cake, a tool used to group together your socail websites, and Icon Resource. Icon Resource is a tutorial program that teaches the buyer the basics of icon design. I find it simply amazing that the owner of Icon Resource who is an icon designer himself (and doing quite might I add) is selling his knowledge to people who would like to compete with him in that profession. Sebastiaan de With, the man behind this magical company, is also an avid gamer, visiting several conventions. He is usually the only person who has Mac at the conventions and we salute him for that. Sebastiaan lives with his girlfriend and cats in the Netherlands. Please visit his blog and commercial webite. If you have some icons made, this guy better be somewhere at the top of your list.

Many of you know that I absolutely love photography and film. They give messages and morales in their own way and are entertaining and puzzling at the same time. Flickr is the site I use to share and view photos with others who enjoy it. It has been around for a while but it seems to be getting a lot more attention lately. I expect it to he up on the news like Facebook and Twitter are very soon. Although videos can be uploaded to Flickr, I believe Vimeo is much better. YouTube is quite clunky and there isn’t a lot of quality content. Vimeo on the other hand, is home to many great start up directors or people who are passionate about film.

Stuff from the past week, my Toyslogic package arrived yesterday and various dolls that arrived throughout the week. Although they are not pictured I did also get several small things for my pullips like a new two-tone wig, various clothes and a ton of LPS.

Anime Figures-
Ikki Tousen- Sonsaku Figma
Prism Ark- Priecia Nendoroid
Shining Wind- Kureha Nendoroid
Kannagi- Zange-chan Nendoroid
Vocaloid – Rin & Len GSC Figures
Gurren Lagann- Sheet Set

Dolls
Pullip- Hello Kitty (rewigged)
Taeyang- Horizon
Pullip- Comic-con Exclusive LE 300 Lala

This should be for new arrivals until Christmas when I get to unwrap the anime goodies/dolls Santa brought me. I have ascertained that there is at least one pullip and one blythe under the tree, I recognize the shape of the boxes anime figures are kind of harder to gauge though so I can’t tell if there are any under the tree at the moment.

Some of us are a wee bit fixated on the fate of nifty music service Lala now that it’s part of Apple. Peter Burroughs has a story in BusinessWeek with a hopeful-sounding headline: “Apple Will Let Google Continue Using Lala.” It refers to the agreement between Google and Lala that puts links to free Lala music (and purchase options) in some of Google’s music-related search results.

After reading Burroughs’ story, I’m not so sure how hopeful to feel. Google’s RJ Pittman told him that Apple and Google “are agreeing to continue to leave the service as is” and that Lala will “remain live for the forseeable future.” But it’s Apple that’s going to determine Lala’s future–and Apple spokesman Steve Downling’s only comment to Burroughs was that Apple doesn’t comment on acquisitions.

So I’m left with all the same questions I’ve had since news of the acquisition broke.

How much (if any) of Lala will make its way into iTunes and/or other Apple services such as MobileMe? Lala lets you buy streaming only-songs for a dime apiece (and listen to them via an interface that already looks like iTunes in your browser); it gives you access to streaming versions of songs you possess in MP3 form; and it has some cool community features that let you peek at what your pals are listening to. A Lala-ized iTunes could be wonderful, but it’s also possible that Apple bought Lala for its engineering talent, not its service.

Will the Lala site and service continue on? It’s hard to believe that Apple would just leave it as. Over time, it’s surely either going to get sucked into iTunes, or cease to exist.

Will Apple put Lala’s impressive iPhone app on the iPhone App Store? (“Approve” doesn’t feel like the right word when you’re talking about a piece of software now owned by Apple.) It’s not necessarily a terrible sign if it doesn’t show up–Apple may merely be so excited about the app that it’s working on an Apple-ized version.

Will the Google deal continue on? I hope so, but I won’t be traumatized if it doesn’t–in part because Google has a similar arrangement with iLike.

Apple almost certainly isn’t going to share any of its intentions for Lala–whatever happens will just  happen. Building any of the service’s capabilities into iTunes would take a while, so I’m not going to feel downright pessimistic until (A) any aspects of Lala in its current form go away, and /or (B) major new releases of iTunes and/or the iPhone arrive with no signs of Lala influence. In the short term, no news may well be good news…

Years ago, back when people still owned CDs, I joined this tiny little website called Lala.com. It was a CD trading site. You’d make a list of CDs you had but didn’t want, and a list of ones you wanted but didn’t have, and the site would match you up. There were special envelopes and plastic cases they sent you for shipping your cds (jewel case free) to people, and for every one you sent somewhere, you’d get one back from someone else. It was awesome.

I eventually ran out of CDs, and patience, and started buying more stuff online so I stopped visiting the site.

Imagine my surprise to happen across it again today to find out that it’s become something akin to Rhapsody.com except so much better! The design, for starters, is gorgeous, and there don’t appear to be ads chunking up the place. There’s no idiotic “subscription” policies, just a per song/album download concept like iTunes, but DRM free. And cheaper, at $.89/song and $7.49/album.

And, AND, there’s also a “web album” feature. Which means you buy the album, but you can only listen to it online from the website. Each album is about $1. ALBUM, I SAID. You can also upload your own music collection to your personal Lala site. So if you’ve got, say, an internet enabled cell phone device, (and I’m assuming here, since I’m not that fancy) ostensibly you can buy shit for next to nothing and listen to your whole library to it to your hearts content.

I’m excited that this place has expanded into something so lovely. When it was small, everyone was helpful and friendly, and to see it grow into something that is so damn awesome is really great. Couldn’t happen to nicer folks.

Now pardon me while I spend my entire paycheck on a backlist of CDs I’ve been meaning to get. Starting with this one:

Have you ever met an angel?

Every Tuesday and Thursday morning walking to my Psychology class, I always see one of the shuttle drivers.We stop and exchange the routine, “Good morning. It sure is beautiful this morning! Have a great day!” conversation. Although I never knew his name, I always considered him to be my newfound friend. Today, however, I finally had the pleasure of meeting him.

On the shuttle ride, we talked about the weather; we talked about the morning. He told me that he didn’t understand how someone could be a “morning person.”He told me that he was “an all-day person.” “Every day is a gift,” he told. “After seventy-five years of gifts, you realize that every day should be filled with smiles.” I was so touched by his optimism, a rare jewel it seems, that I introduced myself before I got off. His name was Charles, but he told me to call him “LaLa.” While I shook his hand and received the blessing of his smile and his wishes for a good day, I realized that I had met an angel.

Today, go out into the world and find your angels. Have a “Tuesday with _” you fill in the blank. Find and appreciate those that God has placed in your life to encourage you in your walk with God. Sure, we have hard times, but God is calling us to live like my friend LaLa—abandoned to the ways of this world and trusting that God is in control.

“These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). Only once we “let go and let God,” we are finally able to spread the joy of Christ. We are finally able to be someone’s angel.

After months of rumors and speculation, it’s official: the Google phone is real. It’s called the Nexus One, and several Googlers (Google employees) have been issued beta devices and are using them now. Google has been working on a partnership with T-mobile to offer the phone at a discount, after Verizon turned down the deal. However, the Nexus One will not be exclusively sold through T-mobile, it will be an unlocked device (unlike how the iPhone is tethered to AT&T). News about the Nexus One is all over the web, but a good place to start is with this Mashable article.

More changes to how Facebook handles privacy settings.  With an update last week, users can now set privacy settings for each wall posting separately, and now Facebook profile information can be indexed by search engines (which has implications for real-time search). Be sure to read up on the changes from cnet News and PC World.

Holiday shopping is in full swing, and analysts have reported an up tick in online shopping this season. New research from comScore has shown just how much social media is effecting holiday shopping.  Check out this TechCrunch article for details, stats and charts.

A great article from ChannelWeb discusses Google and Apple’s dance with acquisitions. Earlier, Social Media News reported Google’s acquisition of AdMob. Recently, Apple just purchased online music streaming service LaLa, which may revolutionize the way Apple sells music.

Mashable

What Do Goo.gl and Fb.me Mean for Bit.ly?

8 Must-Have Traits of Tomorrow’s Journalist

Friendster’s Fate: Sold to Malaysian E-commerce Giant

Facebook Connect: 365 Days, 60 Million Users, 80,000+ Web Sites

What Do Seniors Do Online? Visit Facebook and YouTube, of course [STATS]

Nexus One: T-Mobile Partners on Google Phone

Ad Age

Augmented Reality Is Overhyped And Abused

Tech Crunch

Apple Brings iTunes Gift Cards To Its Facebook Fans, With Help From Black And GroupCard

Online Holiday spending Reaches $16 Billion; Social Media Continues To Influence Purchases

MySpace Kills Off Imeem API Without Warning Developers

Yahoo! News

How fakes sites trick search engines to hit the top

What the Apple-LaLa Deal Cpould Mean for Video Streaming

cnet News

Facebook backtracks on public friend lists

Facebook details new privacy settings

Fast Company

Today’s vision of Tomorrow: All Your Music in the Cloud

Major Print Publishers Gang Up to Pre-empt Apple, Already Make Mistakes

Cheddar for Tweets: @HuffingtonPost’s Twitter-Based Revenue Scheme

Blogs & Other News Sources

Facebook Simplifies Privacy Options (PC World)

Love The One Your’re With: Apple Wanted AdMob, Google wanted Lala (Channel Web)

HarperCollins Joins Ranks Of Those Delaying E-Books (WSJ)

Online, Offline, No Line (WSJ)

Google ponders risky Android solo act (CNN Tech)

What’s cool about this list is not the music – although the music’s excellent – but it’s the fact that Paste includes embedded LaLa players so that you can listen to every one of these 25 albums. Sweet functionality.

http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2009/12/the-25-best-albums-of-2009.html

Ello, Ipang, Berry St. Loco, Lala – Buka Semangat Baru

Bootleg tapes, CD-Rs and P2P. All frightening adversaries that threatened to take down the music industry at one point or another by taking the legs out from under CD sales. Record companies did everything to stop the pursuit of free music from banning tape recorders from shows during the 80s to which punk bands responded by handing out blank tapes. CD-Rs and P2P services are still around and record companies and the RIAA are throwing around million dollar lawsuits pretty much monthly against both the services and even against individuals using those services. But, regardless of what record companies tried to do, they all inevitably affected the industry in one way or another. CD sales are now down to only accounting for a 1/3 of musicians’ overall income with merchandise, touring and other forms of revenue making up the other 2/3s. As a result, bands have taken to the internet to release free content in order to attract consumers rather than relying on cracking the top 20 in Billboard sales.

Jesse von Doom works at CASH Music, a non-profit organization that offers artists the tools to release content ranging from single tracks to full albums to even concerts for free online. The site has worked with bands like Portugal. the Man and Earl Greyhound to release both live performances and an entire EP for free online in order to promote their music. In an email exchange, I asked him about what it’s like to distribute music for free.

Me: How do you go about getting the content on your site? Do bands approach you to distribute their content or do you ask them?

Jesse von Doom: How we get content: we work with artists we know, or artists who have been invited. The content is always theirs, and it’s always coupled with specific goals on their end.

Me: Your site is about offering free content to the consumer. How do you see offering things like free album streams and full live concerts helping artists?

JvD: How free content benefits artists: exposure and data collection. Free content has been around for years in the form of radio and MTV, neither of which pay performance royalties. Thankfully that’s changing, but it’s still vital that artists get their music out in some way that can make people excited and willing to purchase. Sometimes the benefit is simply giving a taste and hoping that people buy a full release. In other cases it has more to do with collecting data like email and location, enabling an artist to better market their live show. There are other benefits to free as well, such as building rapid popularity and cashing in on sync licensing (music for TV and film.)

Me: Do you feel like offering all this free content cheapens the idea of music or is just the next logical step how people digest music?

JvD: Free cheapening music: well music pre-dates capitalism and will be around long after the last penny has lost its luster. So no I don’t think the price cheapens the art. I do think that giving too much away can be detrimental for an artist if they don’t have a plan. It’s a very valid practice, but as an artist you have to know where your revenue is coming from and plan for that.

Me: Ultimately, what do you feel your site offers as an open-source website and where do you want your site to go in the future?

JvD: The future: Ultimately CASH is looking to become an established foundation benefitting artists and the music industry as a whole. There’s a bit of a social obligation to keep music alive because it’s more than simple commerce… it’s culture as well.

Perception

The idea of giving away free music on the internet goes beyond simply bands giving content away. In this new era of the internet where instant gratification is only a few clicks away, people expect that they are going to be given some form of content for free. Michael Porch, a 21-year-old junior, says “I expect there should be some way to hear their music for free before buying it.” With sites like Myspace and Facebook allowing consumers to sample bands’ music for free, people now no longer have to rely on their local record store or even radio station for recommendations.

Free Streaming/Downloads

Now sites like Grooveshark and Lala (Which was recently purchased by iTunes) allow users to stream any track they want for free for a limited time. Also, bands like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have released entire albums where people could choose their own price. The albums were a large breakthrough in the industry, creating a different standard for how people digest their music. Radiohead reported about 1.2 million downloads in the first week, with around $10 million dollars in revenue. “I think the option to pay is a pretty good deal,” said Porch, “I remember I downloaded the one Saul Williams album off his website and I remember at the time I didn’t have any money. I had no way of paying online so I downloaded it, but I know my other friend donated like $10 because he liked the album.”

Piracy

However, these are all remedies for a much larger problem. As mentioned before, piracy is a large problem in the music industry. In 2007, the Institute for Policy Innovation reported that $12.5 billion dollars are lost annually due to piracy. Joe Lamberti, a 20-year-old junior, estimated that about 50% of his music library is through actually purchasing an album. “It used to be way more, but CDs are definitely not something I invest money in. All in high school, I would buy CDs, but now I don’t have money, so I just download them. And I feel bad, because I feel like I’m kind of obligated to buy albums of bands I really like because I always have in the past,” he says.

Now sites like Grooveshark and Lala using ad-based revenue to give users the ability to stream music whenever they want in order to combat these long-running problems. Lala.com offers a service where users can spend only $0.10 in order to stream a song whenever they want. And now with Apple acquiring the site, cloud hosted streaming could move into the mainstream if Apple decides to us Lala’s service on iTunes.

Whether Radiohead’s solution orApple’s solution proves right, ultimately they are both solutions to a billion dollar problem.

(By the way, this would be my final project.)

lala