You’re an artist, you want to succeed, you recorded music. What do you do next?
Below is a blueprint that, if you apply over the next year to six months, should increase your chances of success. Some of you may already be doing/have done many of these things, and should start where it makes sense. Others may need to start at step one.
The goal is to encourage you to measure and track your activity with respect to reaching fans so you can better define what is working, and (equally importantly) stop doing what’s not working. To do this, you’ll need a Dashboard. I’d suggest using an excel spreadsheet or Google doc that has weeks across the top, and the categories you’re measuring on the side (the vertical axis). We’ve supplied a sample spreadsheet for you to view/use here. Please do hover over the cells in the sample we’ve created, as there are explanations for many of the elements.
I’d love to see those in the TuneCore community take the plunge and commit to following these steps starting in the new year, and then check back periodically throughout the year to see what’s working (and what’s not). I’m willing to bet we’ll have some success stories.
“Conversion” and “The Funnel”
Conversion means getting someone to do something you want him/her to do – like download a free song, take a poll, buy a song, give you an email address, etc.
Your entire career is about first reaching people and then getting them to “convert” to do the thing you want them to do.
Therefore, you must define your goals before you can “convert them.”
Once you know your specific goals, you can then go out into the world and engage and interact with people, and try things to get them to do what you want.
For example, you might want to start collecting email addresses of people so you can inform them about your shows, new releases, etc.. Maybe you offer a free song in exchange for an email address; anyone who gives you his/her email address has converted.
This type of approach is often referred to as a “funnel” approach. It means that you – to mix metaphors – cast a wide net with the hope that some percentage of people enter your “funnel,” and that some (always smaller) percentage will do what you want (i.e. ‘like’ you on Facebook).
Eventually, the goal most likely is to get a percentage of these people to buy something from you (a download, a membership, a ticket, merchandise, etc…).
The percentage of people who end up doing the thing you want will be a fraction of those who entered. Because of this, it’s essential to have a large number of people enter the funnel. If, for instance, 3% of people who enter the funnel end up converting, it means that you would need 1000 people to enter the funnel just to have 30 people convert.
One of the best means of conversion continues to be email. That is, the percentage of people who will do what you ask them (come to your site, buy something, etc…) is highest when those people receive an email from you with a request (sometimes called a “A Call To Action;” more people convert via email than when the request comes in the form of a Tweet, a Facebook post, etc…
There are a whole bunch of things that will factor into getting someone to convert – from the music itself, to how you write an email, to what you are offering back to the fan in return for their doing the thing you want.
See below for some specific tactics on how to do this.
Thus, you need goals and a way to track what is and is not working; this will be your “Dashboard.”
Below are seven steps that will help you: (1) get people into the funnel; (2) measure what is working and what isn’t; (3) convert potential fans into customers.
1. Write Some Songs
Enough so that you can start playing live somewhere (this means at least 40 minutes of music – and no, you can’t write one long jam band song). If you’re struggling with writing your own songs, begin by learning the songs of other artists you admire. This will help you see what works and what doesn’t and help you begin to discover your own, unique voice.
WHY: The minute you make these songs tangible, you get six legal copyrights that allow you to make money off your art. Know these rights as they drive your income – you can read more about them here.
2. Play Live
Start playing these songs in front of people. Do this soon. Do not wait around for some “professional” gig. Play in front of friends, family, strangers…whomever, wherever. There’s a big difference between playing songs in your room, and playing in front of people.
WHY: You want to see first hand the reaction to your songs to understand what connects with people and what doesn’t.
This is also your first opportunity to begin measuring. You will quickly begin discerning which of your songs elicit a response, and which do not. Likely, the results will surprise you. Artists often misjudge which of their songs have the greatest appeal (“Satisfaction,” “Single Ladies,” “Maggie May,” “How Soon Is Now,” were originally b-sides).
As part of your Dashboard, you should have a column of songs, performances, and responses. This will help you see patterns. It may be that some of the songs that people don’t respond to well at first, begin to elicit positive responses over time; in other words, people need to hear these songs a few times before they connect. This information will help you create better set lists.
Don’t underestimate the importance of playing live before you record. You do not need a demo to play in front of friends, to play at parties, to play at open mics, etc. And these are precisely the types of places you must play prior to trying to get a “professional” gig at a venue.
3. Record Some Music
Make the recordings as good as you can make them (in terms of sound quality), but don’t go nuts. You do not need a “professional” recording at this point. Rather, in the spirit getting something out there so you can measure and track, it’s far more important that you get a recording done and into the world.
WHY: This will allow you to measure, track, and improve. You are not going to have the “perfect” recording the first time.
As Steve Jobs famously said, “Real artists ship.” In this era where it’s extremely easy and inexpensive to make a decent quality recording, there is no upside to waiting. If you release a song, and people don’t react to it, no damage done. It’s not like the old days where if something doesn’t work your career is over.
Not releasing music puts you at a disadvantage when compared to all those who are out there making connections, gathering information, and — most importantly — refining their work via this feedback so that their next recording is more effective than the current one.
Again, just like the above with respect to measuring the response you gain from performing your songs live, getting these recordings out into the world will provide you with tremendous opportunity to measure and track. Your Dashboard, obviously, must have several categories that allow you to track responses.
At this point, you also need to contemplate how you will distribute the songs, but that part is easy…TuneCore.
4. Create Your Online Foundation
In order to measure the above, you need people to hear it and respond.
I will focus on how to measure and track your responses online, but it is crucial to note that to truly take off, you need to do things off-line, like play live.
WHY: Although you can reach levels of success with an only on-line strategy, you simply cannot build and grow your fan base to its true potential with an only all-online effort.
This does not mean you need to do everything at once; you can start with an online focus (get a quicker, easier, cheaper, more instantaneous reaction, etc…) and then take that information and use it to build your “real world” strategy at a much lower cost and with less risk (i.e. you know what city your fans are in, so you can gig there, as opposed to just guessing).
At this point, it’s now time to create your online foundation.
You must have your own, owned online presence. This means you must create some type of web presence that can live in other places AND that you, and you alone, control. For example, you could pour hours into building a band page on something like MySpace or Facebook, and they either go out of business, get sold and/or arbitrarily (or accidently) delete your page (yes, this does happen). If you don’t have your own web page, you can lose everything.
My suggestion is that you create a combination blog/home page through something like WordPress (it’s free). WordPress has some great templates that allow you to create a very basic site to do a few basic things:
Stream/sell your music directly from your site
Collect emails
Easily update information with respect to live events, other news
Embed videos
Embed live video streams
Receive comments
Embed your social elements (Twitter/Facebook)
Embed polls
View things like traffic to your site, bounce rate, where people come from/go to before/after visiting your site (all of this can be viewed by using Google’s free Google Analytics tool)
If you go the WordPress route (which is open source, and thus constantly being improved and developed for the community of users), you will be able to find plugins that allow you to implement the above on your page.
DON’T PANIC OR GET OVERWHELMED. Start with what you understand, you don’t need to throw everything but the kitchen sink in to begin.
For example, upload a photo, a song, and create a simple poll – Do you like this song: Yes, No, Not Sure
To be sure, this is not easy for most people, and will require some trial and error. The alternative, however, paying someone to build you a site that you can’t update/upgrade/customize is the wrong approach, and will be far more frustrating in the long term.
Your Dashboard, therefore, has some key elements related to your site. Not only traffic, but also how many people are converting to the thing you want.
You are going to need to do things to get people to your webpage – you have to experiment to learn what does and does not work.
You want to use FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube as a way to get people to your webpage, where you then get them to do something.
From these activities, you will — over time — be able to see what tactics have the highest impact with respect to traffic, comments, etc…
5. Create Your Online Solar System
I’m very tired of the word “ecosystem,” and I think solar system is a better metaphor anyway. If you think of the above-described web presence as the center of your online solar system (your sun, I guess), all of the below elements are planets in its orbit.
WHY: In your orbit, you should/must have a Facebook account, a YouTube Channel, a Twitter account, some form of live streaming account (Ustream is a good one), and, as above, tools like Bandcamp can be value-adding.
The absolute key with respect to all of these planets, is that they must direct people back to your own/owned site. While having a lot of Twitter/FB/Tumblr/etc. followers/likes is rarely a bad thing, it’s only a good thing if these people can be driven to your site.
Thus conversion is key.
This means that you must provide a reason in your Tweets or Facebook posts to compel people to follow the link from Twitter/FB to your site. Examples of this abound, but could include things like:
Tweet: For the next hour I’ll be giving away a free song on our site [link to site]
Tweet: Sign up for our email newsletter and get $5 off tix to our next show [link to site]
Facebook Update: We’re playing next week, and want to make sure we perform the song(s) you want to hear. Visit our site [link] and enter your ideal set list.
Facebook Update: Post photos you took from our last show here on FB. We’ll pick our favorites and post them on our site. Come see if yours made the cut [link to site]
In your dashboard you must, therefore, not only measure things like Twitter followers, but also the number of people who come from Twitter/FB/etc. to your site (this is easily discerned via Google Analytics).
You can then measure conversion for things like how many people not only come from these sites like Twitter to yoursSite, but how many provide you with an email, download a song, etc…
6. Connect Your On and Offline Worlds
Peppered throughout, I’ve exhorted you to make sure that you don’t just focus on your online efforts, but rather make sure to keep playing live, and doing whatever else you can come up with offline (i.e. in person) to build and grow your connections with actual people.
WHY: The real key to success is making sure that these offline activities are supported and amplified online. This could be as simple as offering people a discount on purchases of your merch/music at shows when they give you an email address, to as complex as live streaming your shows so that when you play live, people who aren’t there can watch the shows on your site.
In all cases, measure, measure, measure. Some of these “straddle” tactics will work, while others won’t, but the only way you’ll know is to try each of them several times, and collect the data.
7. Shift the Burden: Evangelists
The final stage is the most important. No matter how well you market yourself, no matter how brilliant your songs are, until you shift the burden from you talking about your music, to your fans telling their friends about your music, you will never really take off.
Therefore, you must identify and empower evangelists.
WHY: These passionate fans are the ones who will have the biggest impact in terms of making other people aware of your work.
How do you find these people? You ask (or, even better, they’ll ask you if they can help). However, you shouldn’t ask (and they won’t) until you’ve reached a certain mass of actual fans.
Recalling the funnel, if only 1% of all of your fans will be so impassioned as to become evangelists for you, you’ll need more than 1000 fans before you can find 10 evangelists. Remember, in order to get these 1000 fans, you may need to compel 10,000 people into your funnel.
Once you’ve identified these people (or they’ve self-identified), you have to provide them with marching orders, and you have to communicate with them, and you have to reward them for their efforts. Only you and your creativity can come up with what the specifics are, but do remember that what passionate fans want more than anything else is access to the artist that they love.
Again, at a certain point, your Dashboard needs a column to measure the number of evangelists you have.
Summary
None of these elements will come easy. I’d say that once you have completed steps one through six, you’ll need six months (at least) of consistent work, filled with weekly tactics, offline events, etc., before you will start seeing results. However, if you put the work in — week after week — whether it’s six months or a year, or longer, you will see results. You will see forward progress.
This does not mean that you will become a superstar or even that you’ll be able to make your living off your music. It does, however mean that you’ll be moving forward in a very positive way, and gathering information about what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to how your fans relate to your music.
Over time, if you continue this, you will build a real business. Your fans will want to pay you so that you keep making music, and you will be able to integrate a commerce system that is agreeable to you and your fans. This may or may not be something so simple (and old-school) as having people buy your music. It will likely include this, but will also include things like subscription services, merchandise, tickets, etc.
Too often, people rush to this commerce step before they’ve gone through the steps outlined above that are crucial to actually developing a real constituency. In their rush to sell (really a rush to validate), they misjudge awareness, and then misjudge the result.
That is, because no one buys the music they sell (because no one knows about) they assume the music isn’t good. Typically, this isn’t the case. Most of the time, it’s more an issue of skipping the steps outlined above that are required to actually create awareness and a market for your work.
So, I’d love to see if some people are willing to take the plunge, and start creating tactics that they can measure, and — most importantly — commit to doing so over the next six months to a year. For those of you who do, let’s make public how it’s going. For those who don’t, I’m curious what you’re doing instead.
Saturday, 31 December 2011
Thursday, 3 November 2011
The Changing Face Of The Record Business (2007)
For quite a long time I've been intending to post some sort of commentary on the music industry - piracy, distribution, morality, those types of things. I've thought about it many times, but never gone through with it, because the issue is such a broad, messy one - such a difficult thing to address fairly and compactly. I knew it would result in a rambly, unfocused commentary, and my exact opinion has teetered back and forth quite a bit over the years anyway. But on Monday, when I woke up to the news that Oink, the world famous torrent site and mecca for music-lovers everywhere, had been shut down by international police and various anti-piracy groups, I knew it was finally time to try and organize my thoughts on this huge, sticky, important issue.
For the past eight years, I've worked on and off with major record labels as a designer ("Major" is an important distinction here, because major labels are an entirely different beast than many indie labels - they're the ones with the power, and they are the ones driving the industry-wide push against piracy). It was 1999 when I got my first taste of the inner-workings of a major record label - I was a young college student, and the inside of a New York label office seemed so vast and exciting. Dozens of worker bees hummed away at their desks on phones and computers. Music posters and stacks of CDs littered every surface. Everyone seemed to have an assistant, and the assistants had assistants, and you couldn't help but wonder "what the hell do all these people do?" I tagged along on $1500 artist dinners paid for by the labels. Massive bar tabs were regularly signed away by record label employees with company cards. You got used to people billing as many expenses back to the record company as they could. I met the type of jive, middle-aged, blazer-wearing, coke-snorting, cartoon character label bigwigs who you'd think were too cliche to exist outside the confines of Spinal Tap. It was all strange and exciting, but one thing that always resonated with me was the sheer volume of money that seemed to be spent without any great deal of concern. Whether it was excessive production budgets or "business lunches" that had nothing to do with business, one of my first reactions to it all was, "so this is why CDs cost $18..." An industry of excess. But that's kind of what you expected from the music business, right? It's where rock stars are made. It's where you get stretch limos with hot tubs in the back, where you get private jets and cocaine parties. Growing up in the '80's, with pop royalty and hair metal bands, you were kind of led to think, of course record labels blow money left and right - there's just so much of it to go around! Well, you know what they say: The bigger they are...
In those days, "piracy" was barely even a word in the music world. My friends and I traded MP3s in college over the local network, but they were scattered and low-quality. It felt like a novelty - like a digital version of duping a cassette tape - hardly a replacement for CDs. CDs sounded good and you could bring them with you in your DiscMan, and the only digital music you could get was as good as your friends' CD collections, anyway. It never occurred to any of us that digital files were the future. But as it turned out, lots of kids, in lots of colleges around the world, had the same idea of sharing MP3 files over their local networks, and eventually, someone paid attention to that idea and made Napster. Suddenly, it was like all those college networks were tied together, and you could find all this cool stuff online. It was easier and more efficient than record stores, it was powered by music fans, and, well, it was free. Suddenly you didn't have to pay 15 to 18 bucks for an album and hope it was good, you could download some tracks off the internet and check it out first. But you still always bought the CD if you liked it - I mean, who wants all their music to be on the computer? I sure didn't. But increasingly, more and more people did. For college kids, Napster was a Godsend, because you can all but guarantee two things about most college kids: They love music, and they're dirt poor. So it grew, and it grew, and it started to grow into the mainstream, and that's when the labels woke up and realized something important was happening. At that point they could have seen it as either a threat or an opportunity, and they, without hesitation, determined it to be a threat. It was a threat because essentially someone had come up with a better, free distribution method for the labels' product. To be fair, you can imagine how confusing this must have been for them - is there even a historical precedent for an industry's products suddenly being able to replicate and distribute on their own, without cost?
For quite a while - long after most tech-savvy music lovers - I resisted the idea of stealing music. Of course I would download MP3s - I downloaded a lot of stuff - but I would always make sure to buy the physical CD if it was something I liked. I knew a lot of musicians, a lot of them bewildered at what was happening to the industry they used to understand. People were downloading their music en masse, gorging on this new frontier like pigs at a troff - and worst of all, they felt entitled to do so. It was like it was okay simply because the technology existed that made it possible. But it wasn't okay - I mean, let's face it, no matter how you rationalized it, it was stealing, and because the technology existed to hotwire a car didn't make that okay, either. The artists lost control of distribution: They couldn't present albums the way they wanted to, in a package with nice artwork. They couldn't reveal it the way they wanted to, because music pirates got the albums online well before the actual release date. Control had been taken away from everyone who used to have it. It was a scary time in unfamiliar territory, where suddenly music fans became enemies to the artists and companies they had supported for years. It led to laughable hyperbole from bands like Metallica, instantly the poster-children of cry-baby rich rock stars, and the beginning of the image problem the industry has faced in its handling of the piracy issue. But still, at the time, I understood where they were coming from. Most musicians weren't rich like Metallica, and needed all the album sales they could get for both income and label support. Plus, it was their art, and they had created it - why shouldn't they be able to control how it's distributed, just because some snotty, acne-faced internet kids had found a way to cheat the system? And these entitled little internet brats, don't they realize that albums cost money to create, and to produce, and to promote? How is there going to be any new music if no one's paying for it?
On top of that, I couldn't get into the idea of an invisible music library that lives on my computer. Where's the artwork? Where's my collection? I want the booklet, the packaging... I want shelves and shelves of albums that I've spent years collecting, that I can pore over and impress my friends with... I want to flip through the pages, and hold the CD in my hand... Being a kid who got into music well past the days of vinyl, CDs were all I had, and they still felt important to me.
It's all changed.
In a few short years, the aggressive push of technology combined with the arrogant response from the record industry has rapidly worn away all of my noble intentions of clinging to the old system, and has now pushed me into full-on dissent. I find myself fully immersed in digital music, almost never buying CDs, and fully against the methods of the major record labels and the RIAA. And I think it would do the music industry a lot of good to pay attention to why - because I'm just one of millions, and there will be millions more in the years to come. And it could have happened very, very differently.
As the years have passed, and technology has made digital files the most convenient, efficient, and attractive method of listening to music for many people, the rules and cultural perceptions regarding music have changed drastically. We live in the iPod generation - where a "collection" of clunky CDs feels archaic - where the uniqueness of your music collection is limited only by how eclectic your taste is. Where it's embraced and expected that if you like an album, you send it to your friend to listen to. Whether this guy likes it or not, iPods have become synonymous with music - and if I filled my shiny new 160gb iPod up legally, buying each track online at the 99 cents price that the industry has determined, it would cost me about $32,226. How does that make sense? It's the ugly truth the record industry wants to ignore as they struggle to find ways to get people to pay for music in a culture that has already embraced the idea of music being something you collect in large volumes, and trade freely with your friends.
Already is the key word, because it didn't have to be this way, and that's become the main source of my utter lack of sympathy for the dying record industry: They had a chance to move forward, to evolve with technology and address the changing needs of consumers - and they didn't. Instead, they panicked - they showed their hand as power-hungry dinosaurs, and they started to demonize their own customers, the people whose love of music had given them massive profits for decades. They used their unfair record contracts - the ones that allowed them to own all the music - and went after children, grandparents, single moms, even deceased great grandmothers - alongside many other common people who did nothing more than download some songs and leave them in a shared folder - something that has become the cultural norm to the iPod generation. Joining together in what has been referred to as an illegal cartel and using the RIAA as their attack dogs, the record labels have spent billions of dollars attempting to scare people away from downloading music. And it's simply not working. The pirating community continues to out-smart and out-innovate the dated methods of the record companies, and CD sales continue to plummet while exchange of digital music on the internet continues to skyrocket. Why? Because freely-available music in large quantities is the new cultural norm, and the industry has given consumers no fair alternative. They didn't jump in when the new technologies were emerging and think, "how can we capitalize on this to ensure that we're able to stay afloat while providing the customer what they've come to expect?" They didn't band together and create a flat monthly fee for downloading all the music you want. They didn't respond by drastically lowering the prices of CDs (which have been ludicrously overpriced since day one, and actually increased in price during the '90's), or by offering low-cost DRM-free legal MP3 purchases. Their entry into the digital marketplace was too little too late - a precedent of free, high-quality, DRM-free music had already been set.
There seem to be a lot of reasons why the record companies blew it. One is that they're really not very smart. They know how to do one thing, which is sell records in a traditional retail environment. From personal experience I can tell you that the big labels are beyond clueless in the digital world - their ideas are out-dated, their methods make no sense, and every decision is hampered by miles and miles of legal tape, copyright restrictions, and corporate interests. Trying to innovate with a major label is like trying to teach your Grandmother how to play Halo 3: frustrating and ultimately futile. The easiest example of this is how much of a fight it's been to get record companies to sell MP3s DRM-free. You're trying to explain a new technology to an old guy who made his fortune in the hair metal days. You're trying to tell him that when someone buys a CD, it has no DRM - people can encode it into their computer as DRM-free MP3s within seconds, and send it to all their friends. So why insult the consumer by making them pay the same price for copy-protected MP3s? It doesn't make any sense! It just frustrates people and drives them to piracy! They don't get it: "It's an MP3, you have to protect it or they'll copy it." But they can do the same thing with the CDs you already sell!! Legal tape and lots of corporate bullshit. If these people weren’t the ones who owned the music, it'd all be over already, and we'd be enjoying the real future of music. Because like with any new industry, it's not the people from the previous generation who are going to step in and be the innovators. It's a new batch.
Newspapers are a good example: It used to be that people read newspapers to get the news. That was the distribution method, and newspaper companies controlled it. You paid for a newspaper, and you got your news, that's how it worked. Until the internet came along, and a new generation of innovative people created websites, and suddenly anyone could distribute information, and they could distribute it faster, better, more efficiently, and for free. Obviously this hurt the newspaper industry, but there was nothing they could do about it, because they didn't own the information itself - only the distribution method. Their only choice was to innovate and find ways to compete in a new marketplace. And you know what? Now I can get live, up-to-the-minute news for free, on thousands of different sources across the internet - and The New York Times still exists. Free market capitalism at its finest. It's not a perfect example, but it is a part of how the internet is changing every form of traditional media. It happened with newspapers, it's happening now with music, and TV and cell phones are next on the chopping block. In all cases technology demands that change will happen, it's just a matter of who will find ways to take advantage of it, and who won't.
Unlike newspapers, record companies own the distribution and the product being distributed, so you can't just start your own website where you give out music that they own - and that's what this is all about: distribution. Lots of pro-piracy types argue that music can be free because people will always love music, and they'll pay for concert tickets, and merchandise, and the marketplace will shift and artists will survive. Well, yes, that might be an option for some artists, but that does nothing to help the record labels, because they don't make any money off of merchandise, or concert tickets. Distribution and ownership are what they control, and those are the two things piracy threatens. The few major labels left are parts of giant media conglomerations - owned by huge parent companies for whom artists and albums are just numbers on a piece of paper. It's why record companies shove disposable pop crap down your throat instead of nurturing career artists: because they have CEOs and shareholders to answer to, and those people don't give a shit if a really great band has the potential to get really successful, if given the right support over the next decade. They see that Gwen Stefani's latest musical turd sold millions, because parents of twelve year old girls still buy music for their kids, and the parent company demands more easy-money pop garbage that will be forgotten about next month. The only thing that matters to these corporations is profit - period. Music isn't thought of as an art form, as it was in the earlier days of the industry where labels were started by music-lovers - it's a product, pure and simple. And many of these corporations also own the manufacturing plants that create the CDs, so they make money on all sides - and lose money even from legal MP3s.
At the top of all this is the rigged, outdated, and unfair structure of current intellectual property laws, all of them in need of massive reform in the wake of the digital era. These laws allow the labels to maintain their stranglehold on music copyrights, and they allow the RIAA to sue the pants off of any file-sharing grandmother they please. Since the labels are owned by giant corporations with a great deal of money, power, and political influence, the RIAA is able to lobby politicians and government agencies to manipulate copyright laws for their benefit. The result is absurdly disproportionate fines, and laws that in some cases make file sharing a heftier charge than armed robbery. This is yet another case of private, corporate interests using political influence to turn laws in the opposite direction of the changing values of the people. Or, as this very smart assessment from a record executive described it: "a clear case of a multinational conglomerate using its political muscle to the disadvantage of everyone but itself." But shady political maneuvers and scare tactics are all the RIAA and other anti-piracy groups have left, because people who download music illegally now number in the hundreds of millions, and they can't sue everyone. At this point they're just trying to hold up what's left of the dam before it bursts open. Their latest victim is Oink, a popular torrent site specializing in music.
If you're not familiar with Oink, here's a quick summary: Oink was was a free members-only site - to join it you had to be invited by a member. Members had access to an unprecedented community-driven database of music. Every album you could ever imagine was just one click away. Oink's extremely strict quality standards ensured that everything on the site was at pristine quality - 192kbps MP3 was their bare minimum, and they championed much higher quality MP3s as well as FLAC lossless downloads. They encouraged logs to verify that the music had been ripped from the CD without any errors. Transcodes - files encoded from other encoded files, resulting in lower quality - were strictly forbidden. You were always guaranteed higher quality music than iTunes or any other legal MP3 store. Oink's strict download/share ratio ensured that every album in their vast database was always well-seeded, resulting in downloads faster than anywhere else on the internet. A 100mb album would download in mere seconds on even an average broadband connection. Oink was known for getting pre-release albums before anyone else on the internet, often months before they hit retail - but they also had an extensive catalogue of music dating back decades, fueled by music lovers who took pride in uploading rare gems from their collection that other users were seeking out. If there was an album you couldn't find on Oink, you only had to post a request for it, and wait for someone who had it to fill your request. Even if the request was extremely rare, Oink's vast network of hundreds of thousands of music-lovers eager to contribute to the site usually ensured you wouldn't have to wait long.
In this sense, Oink was not only an absolute paradise for music fans, but it was unquestionably the most complete and most efficient music distribution model the world has ever known. I say that safely without exaggeration. It was like the world's largest music store, whose vastly superior selection and distribution was entirely stocked, supplied, organized, and expanded upon by its own consumers. If the music industry had found a way to capitalize on the power, devotion, and innovation of its own fans the way Oink did, it would be thriving right now instead of withering. If intellectual property laws didn't make Oink illegal, the site's creator would be the new Steve Jobs right now. He would have revolutionized music distribution. Instead, he's a criminal, simply for finding the best way to fill rising consumer demand. I would have gladly paid a large monthly fee for a legal service as good as Oink - but none existed, because the music industry could never set aside their own greed and corporate bullshit to make it happen.
Here's an interesting aside: The RIAA loves to complain about music pirates leaking albums onto the internet before they're released in stores - painting the leakers as vicious pirates dead set on attacking their enemy, the music industry. But you know where music leaks from? From the fucking source, of course - the labels! At this point, most bands know that once their finished album is sent off to the label, the risk of it turning up online begins, because the labels are full of low-level workers who happen to be music fans who can't wait to share the band's new album with their friends. If the album manages to not leak directly from the label, it is guaranteed to leak once it heads off to manufacturing. Someone at the manufacturing plant is always happy to sneak off with a copy, and before long, it turns up online. Why? Because people love music, and they can't wait to hear their favorite band's new album! It's not about profit, and it's not about maliciousness. So record industry, maybe if you could protect your own assets a little better, shit wouldn't leak - don't blame the fans who flock to the leaked material online, blame the people who leak it out of your manufacturing plants in the first place! But assuming that's a hole too difficult to plug, it begs the question, "why don't labels adapt to the changing nature of distribution by selling new albums online as soon as they're finished, before they have a chance to leak, and release the physical CDs a couple months later?" Well, for one, labels are still obsessed with Billboard chart numbers - they're obsessed with determining the market value of their product by how well it fares in its opening week. Selling it online before the big retail debut, before they've had months to properly market the product to ensure success, would mess up those numbers (nevermind that those numbers mean absolutely nothing anymore). Additionally, selling an album online before it hits stores makes retail outlets (who are also suffering in all this) angry, and retail outlets have far more power than they should. For example, if a record company releases an album online but Wal-Mart won't have the CD in their stores for another two months (because it needs to be manufactured), Wal-Mart gets mad. Who cares if Wal-Mart gets mad, you ask? Well, record companies do, because Wal-Mart is, both mysteriously and tragically, the largest music retailer in the world. That means they have power, and they can say "if you sell Britney Spears' album online before we can sell it in our stores, we lose money. So if you do that, we're not going to stock her album at all, and then you'll lose a LOT of money." That kind of greedy business bullshit happens all the time in the record industry, and the consistent result is a worse experience for consumers and music lovers.
Which is why Oink was so great - take away all the rules and legal ties, all the ownership and profit margins, and naturally, the result is something purely for, by, and in service of the music fan. And it actually helps musicians - file-sharing is "the greatest marketing tool ever to come along for the music industry." One of Oink's best features was how it allowed users to connect similar artists, and to see what people who liked a certain band also liked. Similar to Amazon's recommendation system, it was possible to spend hours discovering new bands on Oink, and that's what many of its users did. Through sites like Oink, the amount and variety of music I listen to has skyrocketed, opening me up to hundreds of artists I never would have experienced otherwise. I'm now fans of their music, and I may not have bought their CDs, but I would have never bought their CD anyway, because I would have never heard of them! And now that I have heard of them, I go to their concerts, and I talk them up to my friends, and give my friends the music to listen to for themselves, so they can go to the concerts, and tell their friends, and so on. Oink was a network of music lovers sharing and discovering music. And yes, it was all technically illegal, and destined to get shut down, I suppose. But it's not so much that they shut Oink down that boils my blood, it's the fucking bullshit propaganda they put out there. If the industry tried to have some kind of compassion - if they said, "we understand that these are just music fans trying to listen to as much music as they can, but we have to protect our assets, and we're working on an industry-wide solution to accommodate the changing needs of music fans"... Well, it's too late for that, but it would be encouraging. Instead, they make it sound like they busted a Columbian drug cartel or something. They describe it as a highly-organized piracy ring. Like Oink users were distributing kiddie porn or some shit. The press release says: "This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure." Wh - what?? That's EXACTLY what it was! No one made any money on that site - there were no ads, no registration fees. The only currency was ratio - the amount you shared with other users - a brilliant way of turning "free" into a sort of booming mini-economy. The anti-piracy groups have tried to spin the notion that you had to pay a fee to join Oink, which is NOT true - donations were voluntary, and went to support the hosting and maintenance of the site. If the donations spilled into profit for the guy who ran the site, well he damn well deserved it - he created something truly remarkable.
So the next question is, what now?
For the major labels, it's over. It's fucking over. You're going to burn to the fucking ground, and we're all going to dance around the fire. And it's your own fault. Surely, somewhere deep inside, you had to know this day was coming, right? Your very industry is founded on an unfair business model of owning art you didn't create in exchange for the services you provide. It's rigged so that you win every time - even if the artist does well, you do ten times better. It was able to exist because you controlled the distribution, but now that's back in the hands of the people, and you let the ball drop when you could have evolved.
None of this is to say that there's no way for artists to make money anymore, or even that it's the end of record labels. It's just the end of record labels as we know them. A lot of people point to the Radiohead model as the future, but Radiohead is only dipping its toe into the future to test the waters. What at first seemed like a rainbow-colored revolution has now been openly revealed as a marketing gimmick: Radiohead was "experimenting," releasing a low-quality MP3 version of an album only to punish the fans who paid for it by later releasing a full-quality CD version with extra tracks. According to Radiohead's manager: "If we didn't believe that when people hear the music they will want to buy the CD then we wouldn't do what we are doing." Ouch. Radiohead was moving in the right direction, but if they really want to start a revolution, they need to place the "pay-what-you-want" digital album on the same content and quality level as the "pay-what-we-want" physical album.
Ultimately, I don't know what the future model is going to be - I think all the current pieces of the puzzle will still be there, but they need to be re-ordered, and the rules need to be changed. Maybe record labels of the future exist to help front recording costs and promote artists, but they don't own the music. Maybe music is free, and musicians make their money from touring and merchandise, and if they need a label, the label takes a percentage of their tour and merch profits. Maybe all-digital record companies give bands all the tools they need to sell their music directly to their fans, taking a small percentage for their services. In any case, the artists own their own music.
I used to reject the wishy-washy "music should be free!" mantra of online music thieves. I knew too much about the intricacies and economics of it, of the rock-and-a-hard-place situation many artists were in with their labels. I thought there were plenty of new ways to sell music that would be fair to all parties involved. But I no longer believe that, because the squabbling, backwards, greedy, ownership-obsessed major labels will never let it happen, and that's more clear to me now than ever. So maybe music has to be free. Maybe taking the money out of music is the only way to get money back into it. Maybe it's time to abandon the notion of the rock star - of music as a route to fame and fortune. The best music was always made by people who weren't in it for the money, anyway. Maybe smart, talented musicians will find ways to make a good living with or without CD sales. Maybe the record industry execs who made their fortunes off of unfair contracts and distribution monopolies should just walk away, confident that they milked a limited opportunity for all it was worth, and that it's time to find fortune somewhere else. Maybe in the hands of consumers, the music marketplace will expand in new and lucrative ways no one can even dream of yet. We won't know until music is free, and eventually it's going to be. Technological innovation destroys old industries, but it creates new ones. You can't fight it forever.
Until the walls finally come down, we're in what will inevitably be looked back on as a very awkward, chaotic period in music history - fans are being arrested for sharing the music they love, and many artists are left helpless, unable to experiment with new business models because they're locked into record contracts with backwards-thinking labels.
So what can you and I do to help usher in the brave new world? The beauty of Oink was how fans willingly and hyper-efficiently took on distribution roles that traditionally have cost labels millions of dollars. Music lovers have shown that they're much more willing to put time and effort into music than they are money. It's time to show artists that there's no limit to what an energized online fanbase can accomplish, and all they'll ever ask for in return is more music. And it's time to show the labels that they missed a huge opportunity by not embracing these opportunities when they had the chance.
1. Stop buying music from major labels. Period. The only way to force change is to hit the labels where it hurts - their profits. The major labels are like Terry Schiavo right now - they're on life support, drooling in a coma, while white-haired guys in suits try and change the laws to keep them alive. But any rational person can see that it's too late, and it's time to pull out the feeding tube. In this case, the feeding tube is your money. Find out which labels are members/supporters of the RIAA and similar copyright enforcement groups, and don't support them in any way. The RIAA Radar is a great tool to help you with this. Don't buy CDs, don't buy iTunes downloads, don't buy from Amazon, etc. Steal the music you want that's on the major labels. It's easy, and despite the RIAA's scare tactics, it can be done safely - especially if more and more people are doing it. Send letters to those labels, and to the RIAA, explaining very calmly and professionally that you will no longer be supporting their business, because of their bullish scare tactics towards music fans, and their inability to present a forward-thinking digital distribution solution. Tell them you believe their business model is outdated and the days of companies owning artists' music are over. Make it very clear that you will continue to support the artists directly in other ways, and make it VERY clear that your decision has come about as a direct result of the record company's actions and inactions regarding digital music.
2. Support artists directly. If a band you like is stuck on a major label, there are tons of ways you can support them without actually buying their CD. Tell everyone you know about them - start a fansite if you're really passionate. Go to their shows when they're in town, and buy t-shirts and other merchandise. Here's a little secret: Anything a band sells that does not have music on it is outside the reach of the record label, and monetarily supports the artist more than buying a CD ever would. T-shirts, posters, hats, keychains, stickers, etc. Send the band a letter telling them that you're no longer going to be purchasing their music, but you will be listening to it, and you will be spreading the word and supporting them in other ways. Tell them you've made this decision because you're trying to force change within the industry, and you no longer support record labels with RIAA affiliations who own the music of their artists.
If you like bands who are releasing music on open, non-RIAA indie labels, buy their albums! You'll support the band you like, and you'll support hard-working, passionate people at small, forward-thinking music labels. If you like bands who are completely independent and are releasing music on their own, support them as much as possible! Pay for their music, buy their merchandise, tell all your friends about them and help promote them online - prove that a network of passionate fans is the best promotion a band can ask for.
3. Get the message out. Get this message out to as many people as you can - spread the word on your blog or your MySpace, and more importantly, tell your friends at work, or your family members, people who might not be as tuned into the internet as you are. Teach them how to use torrents, show them where to go to get music for free. Show them how to support artists while starving the labels, and who they should and shouldn't be supporting.
4. Get political. The fast-track to ending all this nonsense is changing intellectual property laws. The RIAA lobbies politicians to manipulate copyright laws for their own interests, so voters need to lobby politicians for the peoples' interests. Contact your local representatives and senators. Tell them politely and articulately that you believe copyright laws no longer reflect the interests of the people, and you will not vote for them if they support the interests of the RIAA. Encourage them to draft legislation that helps change the outdated laws and disproportionate penalties the RIAA champions. Contact information for state representatives can be found here, and contact information for senators can be found here. You can email them, but calling on the phone or writing them actual letters is always more effective.
Tonight, with Oink gone, I find myself wondering where I'll go now to discover new music. All the other options - particularly the legal ones - seem depressing by comparison. I wonder how long it will be before everyone can legally experience the type of music nirvana Oink users became accustomed to? I'm not too worried - something even better will rise out of Oink's ashes, and the RIAA will respond with more lawsuits, and the cycle will repeat itself over and over until the industry has finally bled itself to death. And then everything will be able to change, and it will be in the hands of musicians and fans and a new generation of entrepreneurs to decide how the new record business is going to work. Whether you agree with it or not, it's fact. It's inevitable - because the determination of fans to share music is much, much stronger than the determination of corporations to stop it.
For the past eight years, I've worked on and off with major record labels as a designer ("Major" is an important distinction here, because major labels are an entirely different beast than many indie labels - they're the ones with the power, and they are the ones driving the industry-wide push against piracy). It was 1999 when I got my first taste of the inner-workings of a major record label - I was a young college student, and the inside of a New York label office seemed so vast and exciting. Dozens of worker bees hummed away at their desks on phones and computers. Music posters and stacks of CDs littered every surface. Everyone seemed to have an assistant, and the assistants had assistants, and you couldn't help but wonder "what the hell do all these people do?" I tagged along on $1500 artist dinners paid for by the labels. Massive bar tabs were regularly signed away by record label employees with company cards. You got used to people billing as many expenses back to the record company as they could. I met the type of jive, middle-aged, blazer-wearing, coke-snorting, cartoon character label bigwigs who you'd think were too cliche to exist outside the confines of Spinal Tap. It was all strange and exciting, but one thing that always resonated with me was the sheer volume of money that seemed to be spent without any great deal of concern. Whether it was excessive production budgets or "business lunches" that had nothing to do with business, one of my first reactions to it all was, "so this is why CDs cost $18..." An industry of excess. But that's kind of what you expected from the music business, right? It's where rock stars are made. It's where you get stretch limos with hot tubs in the back, where you get private jets and cocaine parties. Growing up in the '80's, with pop royalty and hair metal bands, you were kind of led to think, of course record labels blow money left and right - there's just so much of it to go around! Well, you know what they say: The bigger they are...
In those days, "piracy" was barely even a word in the music world. My friends and I traded MP3s in college over the local network, but they were scattered and low-quality. It felt like a novelty - like a digital version of duping a cassette tape - hardly a replacement for CDs. CDs sounded good and you could bring them with you in your DiscMan, and the only digital music you could get was as good as your friends' CD collections, anyway. It never occurred to any of us that digital files were the future. But as it turned out, lots of kids, in lots of colleges around the world, had the same idea of sharing MP3 files over their local networks, and eventually, someone paid attention to that idea and made Napster. Suddenly, it was like all those college networks were tied together, and you could find all this cool stuff online. It was easier and more efficient than record stores, it was powered by music fans, and, well, it was free. Suddenly you didn't have to pay 15 to 18 bucks for an album and hope it was good, you could download some tracks off the internet and check it out first. But you still always bought the CD if you liked it - I mean, who wants all their music to be on the computer? I sure didn't. But increasingly, more and more people did. For college kids, Napster was a Godsend, because you can all but guarantee two things about most college kids: They love music, and they're dirt poor. So it grew, and it grew, and it started to grow into the mainstream, and that's when the labels woke up and realized something important was happening. At that point they could have seen it as either a threat or an opportunity, and they, without hesitation, determined it to be a threat. It was a threat because essentially someone had come up with a better, free distribution method for the labels' product. To be fair, you can imagine how confusing this must have been for them - is there even a historical precedent for an industry's products suddenly being able to replicate and distribute on their own, without cost?
For quite a while - long after most tech-savvy music lovers - I resisted the idea of stealing music. Of course I would download MP3s - I downloaded a lot of stuff - but I would always make sure to buy the physical CD if it was something I liked. I knew a lot of musicians, a lot of them bewildered at what was happening to the industry they used to understand. People were downloading their music en masse, gorging on this new frontier like pigs at a troff - and worst of all, they felt entitled to do so. It was like it was okay simply because the technology existed that made it possible. But it wasn't okay - I mean, let's face it, no matter how you rationalized it, it was stealing, and because the technology existed to hotwire a car didn't make that okay, either. The artists lost control of distribution: They couldn't present albums the way they wanted to, in a package with nice artwork. They couldn't reveal it the way they wanted to, because music pirates got the albums online well before the actual release date. Control had been taken away from everyone who used to have it. It was a scary time in unfamiliar territory, where suddenly music fans became enemies to the artists and companies they had supported for years. It led to laughable hyperbole from bands like Metallica, instantly the poster-children of cry-baby rich rock stars, and the beginning of the image problem the industry has faced in its handling of the piracy issue. But still, at the time, I understood where they were coming from. Most musicians weren't rich like Metallica, and needed all the album sales they could get for both income and label support. Plus, it was their art, and they had created it - why shouldn't they be able to control how it's distributed, just because some snotty, acne-faced internet kids had found a way to cheat the system? And these entitled little internet brats, don't they realize that albums cost money to create, and to produce, and to promote? How is there going to be any new music if no one's paying for it?
On top of that, I couldn't get into the idea of an invisible music library that lives on my computer. Where's the artwork? Where's my collection? I want the booklet, the packaging... I want shelves and shelves of albums that I've spent years collecting, that I can pore over and impress my friends with... I want to flip through the pages, and hold the CD in my hand... Being a kid who got into music well past the days of vinyl, CDs were all I had, and they still felt important to me.
It's all changed.
In a few short years, the aggressive push of technology combined with the arrogant response from the record industry has rapidly worn away all of my noble intentions of clinging to the old system, and has now pushed me into full-on dissent. I find myself fully immersed in digital music, almost never buying CDs, and fully against the methods of the major record labels and the RIAA. And I think it would do the music industry a lot of good to pay attention to why - because I'm just one of millions, and there will be millions more in the years to come. And it could have happened very, very differently.
As the years have passed, and technology has made digital files the most convenient, efficient, and attractive method of listening to music for many people, the rules and cultural perceptions regarding music have changed drastically. We live in the iPod generation - where a "collection" of clunky CDs feels archaic - where the uniqueness of your music collection is limited only by how eclectic your taste is. Where it's embraced and expected that if you like an album, you send it to your friend to listen to. Whether this guy likes it or not, iPods have become synonymous with music - and if I filled my shiny new 160gb iPod up legally, buying each track online at the 99 cents price that the industry has determined, it would cost me about $32,226. How does that make sense? It's the ugly truth the record industry wants to ignore as they struggle to find ways to get people to pay for music in a culture that has already embraced the idea of music being something you collect in large volumes, and trade freely with your friends.
Already is the key word, because it didn't have to be this way, and that's become the main source of my utter lack of sympathy for the dying record industry: They had a chance to move forward, to evolve with technology and address the changing needs of consumers - and they didn't. Instead, they panicked - they showed their hand as power-hungry dinosaurs, and they started to demonize their own customers, the people whose love of music had given them massive profits for decades. They used their unfair record contracts - the ones that allowed them to own all the music - and went after children, grandparents, single moms, even deceased great grandmothers - alongside many other common people who did nothing more than download some songs and leave them in a shared folder - something that has become the cultural norm to the iPod generation. Joining together in what has been referred to as an illegal cartel and using the RIAA as their attack dogs, the record labels have spent billions of dollars attempting to scare people away from downloading music. And it's simply not working. The pirating community continues to out-smart and out-innovate the dated methods of the record companies, and CD sales continue to plummet while exchange of digital music on the internet continues to skyrocket. Why? Because freely-available music in large quantities is the new cultural norm, and the industry has given consumers no fair alternative. They didn't jump in when the new technologies were emerging and think, "how can we capitalize on this to ensure that we're able to stay afloat while providing the customer what they've come to expect?" They didn't band together and create a flat monthly fee for downloading all the music you want. They didn't respond by drastically lowering the prices of CDs (which have been ludicrously overpriced since day one, and actually increased in price during the '90's), or by offering low-cost DRM-free legal MP3 purchases. Their entry into the digital marketplace was too little too late - a precedent of free, high-quality, DRM-free music had already been set.
There seem to be a lot of reasons why the record companies blew it. One is that they're really not very smart. They know how to do one thing, which is sell records in a traditional retail environment. From personal experience I can tell you that the big labels are beyond clueless in the digital world - their ideas are out-dated, their methods make no sense, and every decision is hampered by miles and miles of legal tape, copyright restrictions, and corporate interests. Trying to innovate with a major label is like trying to teach your Grandmother how to play Halo 3: frustrating and ultimately futile. The easiest example of this is how much of a fight it's been to get record companies to sell MP3s DRM-free. You're trying to explain a new technology to an old guy who made his fortune in the hair metal days. You're trying to tell him that when someone buys a CD, it has no DRM - people can encode it into their computer as DRM-free MP3s within seconds, and send it to all their friends. So why insult the consumer by making them pay the same price for copy-protected MP3s? It doesn't make any sense! It just frustrates people and drives them to piracy! They don't get it: "It's an MP3, you have to protect it or they'll copy it." But they can do the same thing with the CDs you already sell!! Legal tape and lots of corporate bullshit. If these people weren’t the ones who owned the music, it'd all be over already, and we'd be enjoying the real future of music. Because like with any new industry, it's not the people from the previous generation who are going to step in and be the innovators. It's a new batch.
Newspapers are a good example: It used to be that people read newspapers to get the news. That was the distribution method, and newspaper companies controlled it. You paid for a newspaper, and you got your news, that's how it worked. Until the internet came along, and a new generation of innovative people created websites, and suddenly anyone could distribute information, and they could distribute it faster, better, more efficiently, and for free. Obviously this hurt the newspaper industry, but there was nothing they could do about it, because they didn't own the information itself - only the distribution method. Their only choice was to innovate and find ways to compete in a new marketplace. And you know what? Now I can get live, up-to-the-minute news for free, on thousands of different sources across the internet - and The New York Times still exists. Free market capitalism at its finest. It's not a perfect example, but it is a part of how the internet is changing every form of traditional media. It happened with newspapers, it's happening now with music, and TV and cell phones are next on the chopping block. In all cases technology demands that change will happen, it's just a matter of who will find ways to take advantage of it, and who won't.
Unlike newspapers, record companies own the distribution and the product being distributed, so you can't just start your own website where you give out music that they own - and that's what this is all about: distribution. Lots of pro-piracy types argue that music can be free because people will always love music, and they'll pay for concert tickets, and merchandise, and the marketplace will shift and artists will survive. Well, yes, that might be an option for some artists, but that does nothing to help the record labels, because they don't make any money off of merchandise, or concert tickets. Distribution and ownership are what they control, and those are the two things piracy threatens. The few major labels left are parts of giant media conglomerations - owned by huge parent companies for whom artists and albums are just numbers on a piece of paper. It's why record companies shove disposable pop crap down your throat instead of nurturing career artists: because they have CEOs and shareholders to answer to, and those people don't give a shit if a really great band has the potential to get really successful, if given the right support over the next decade. They see that Gwen Stefani's latest musical turd sold millions, because parents of twelve year old girls still buy music for their kids, and the parent company demands more easy-money pop garbage that will be forgotten about next month. The only thing that matters to these corporations is profit - period. Music isn't thought of as an art form, as it was in the earlier days of the industry where labels were started by music-lovers - it's a product, pure and simple. And many of these corporations also own the manufacturing plants that create the CDs, so they make money on all sides - and lose money even from legal MP3s.
At the top of all this is the rigged, outdated, and unfair structure of current intellectual property laws, all of them in need of massive reform in the wake of the digital era. These laws allow the labels to maintain their stranglehold on music copyrights, and they allow the RIAA to sue the pants off of any file-sharing grandmother they please. Since the labels are owned by giant corporations with a great deal of money, power, and political influence, the RIAA is able to lobby politicians and government agencies to manipulate copyright laws for their benefit. The result is absurdly disproportionate fines, and laws that in some cases make file sharing a heftier charge than armed robbery. This is yet another case of private, corporate interests using political influence to turn laws in the opposite direction of the changing values of the people. Or, as this very smart assessment from a record executive described it: "a clear case of a multinational conglomerate using its political muscle to the disadvantage of everyone but itself." But shady political maneuvers and scare tactics are all the RIAA and other anti-piracy groups have left, because people who download music illegally now number in the hundreds of millions, and they can't sue everyone. At this point they're just trying to hold up what's left of the dam before it bursts open. Their latest victim is Oink, a popular torrent site specializing in music.
If you're not familiar with Oink, here's a quick summary: Oink was was a free members-only site - to join it you had to be invited by a member. Members had access to an unprecedented community-driven database of music. Every album you could ever imagine was just one click away. Oink's extremely strict quality standards ensured that everything on the site was at pristine quality - 192kbps MP3 was their bare minimum, and they championed much higher quality MP3s as well as FLAC lossless downloads. They encouraged logs to verify that the music had been ripped from the CD without any errors. Transcodes - files encoded from other encoded files, resulting in lower quality - were strictly forbidden. You were always guaranteed higher quality music than iTunes or any other legal MP3 store. Oink's strict download/share ratio ensured that every album in their vast database was always well-seeded, resulting in downloads faster than anywhere else on the internet. A 100mb album would download in mere seconds on even an average broadband connection. Oink was known for getting pre-release albums before anyone else on the internet, often months before they hit retail - but they also had an extensive catalogue of music dating back decades, fueled by music lovers who took pride in uploading rare gems from their collection that other users were seeking out. If there was an album you couldn't find on Oink, you only had to post a request for it, and wait for someone who had it to fill your request. Even if the request was extremely rare, Oink's vast network of hundreds of thousands of music-lovers eager to contribute to the site usually ensured you wouldn't have to wait long.
In this sense, Oink was not only an absolute paradise for music fans, but it was unquestionably the most complete and most efficient music distribution model the world has ever known. I say that safely without exaggeration. It was like the world's largest music store, whose vastly superior selection and distribution was entirely stocked, supplied, organized, and expanded upon by its own consumers. If the music industry had found a way to capitalize on the power, devotion, and innovation of its own fans the way Oink did, it would be thriving right now instead of withering. If intellectual property laws didn't make Oink illegal, the site's creator would be the new Steve Jobs right now. He would have revolutionized music distribution. Instead, he's a criminal, simply for finding the best way to fill rising consumer demand. I would have gladly paid a large monthly fee for a legal service as good as Oink - but none existed, because the music industry could never set aside their own greed and corporate bullshit to make it happen.
Here's an interesting aside: The RIAA loves to complain about music pirates leaking albums onto the internet before they're released in stores - painting the leakers as vicious pirates dead set on attacking their enemy, the music industry. But you know where music leaks from? From the fucking source, of course - the labels! At this point, most bands know that once their finished album is sent off to the label, the risk of it turning up online begins, because the labels are full of low-level workers who happen to be music fans who can't wait to share the band's new album with their friends. If the album manages to not leak directly from the label, it is guaranteed to leak once it heads off to manufacturing. Someone at the manufacturing plant is always happy to sneak off with a copy, and before long, it turns up online. Why? Because people love music, and they can't wait to hear their favorite band's new album! It's not about profit, and it's not about maliciousness. So record industry, maybe if you could protect your own assets a little better, shit wouldn't leak - don't blame the fans who flock to the leaked material online, blame the people who leak it out of your manufacturing plants in the first place! But assuming that's a hole too difficult to plug, it begs the question, "why don't labels adapt to the changing nature of distribution by selling new albums online as soon as they're finished, before they have a chance to leak, and release the physical CDs a couple months later?" Well, for one, labels are still obsessed with Billboard chart numbers - they're obsessed with determining the market value of their product by how well it fares in its opening week. Selling it online before the big retail debut, before they've had months to properly market the product to ensure success, would mess up those numbers (nevermind that those numbers mean absolutely nothing anymore). Additionally, selling an album online before it hits stores makes retail outlets (who are also suffering in all this) angry, and retail outlets have far more power than they should. For example, if a record company releases an album online but Wal-Mart won't have the CD in their stores for another two months (because it needs to be manufactured), Wal-Mart gets mad. Who cares if Wal-Mart gets mad, you ask? Well, record companies do, because Wal-Mart is, both mysteriously and tragically, the largest music retailer in the world. That means they have power, and they can say "if you sell Britney Spears' album online before we can sell it in our stores, we lose money. So if you do that, we're not going to stock her album at all, and then you'll lose a LOT of money." That kind of greedy business bullshit happens all the time in the record industry, and the consistent result is a worse experience for consumers and music lovers.
Which is why Oink was so great - take away all the rules and legal ties, all the ownership and profit margins, and naturally, the result is something purely for, by, and in service of the music fan. And it actually helps musicians - file-sharing is "the greatest marketing tool ever to come along for the music industry." One of Oink's best features was how it allowed users to connect similar artists, and to see what people who liked a certain band also liked. Similar to Amazon's recommendation system, it was possible to spend hours discovering new bands on Oink, and that's what many of its users did. Through sites like Oink, the amount and variety of music I listen to has skyrocketed, opening me up to hundreds of artists I never would have experienced otherwise. I'm now fans of their music, and I may not have bought their CDs, but I would have never bought their CD anyway, because I would have never heard of them! And now that I have heard of them, I go to their concerts, and I talk them up to my friends, and give my friends the music to listen to for themselves, so they can go to the concerts, and tell their friends, and so on. Oink was a network of music lovers sharing and discovering music. And yes, it was all technically illegal, and destined to get shut down, I suppose. But it's not so much that they shut Oink down that boils my blood, it's the fucking bullshit propaganda they put out there. If the industry tried to have some kind of compassion - if they said, "we understand that these are just music fans trying to listen to as much music as they can, but we have to protect our assets, and we're working on an industry-wide solution to accommodate the changing needs of music fans"... Well, it's too late for that, but it would be encouraging. Instead, they make it sound like they busted a Columbian drug cartel or something. They describe it as a highly-organized piracy ring. Like Oink users were distributing kiddie porn or some shit. The press release says: "This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure." Wh - what?? That's EXACTLY what it was! No one made any money on that site - there were no ads, no registration fees. The only currency was ratio - the amount you shared with other users - a brilliant way of turning "free" into a sort of booming mini-economy. The anti-piracy groups have tried to spin the notion that you had to pay a fee to join Oink, which is NOT true - donations were voluntary, and went to support the hosting and maintenance of the site. If the donations spilled into profit for the guy who ran the site, well he damn well deserved it - he created something truly remarkable.
So the next question is, what now?
For the major labels, it's over. It's fucking over. You're going to burn to the fucking ground, and we're all going to dance around the fire. And it's your own fault. Surely, somewhere deep inside, you had to know this day was coming, right? Your very industry is founded on an unfair business model of owning art you didn't create in exchange for the services you provide. It's rigged so that you win every time - even if the artist does well, you do ten times better. It was able to exist because you controlled the distribution, but now that's back in the hands of the people, and you let the ball drop when you could have evolved.
None of this is to say that there's no way for artists to make money anymore, or even that it's the end of record labels. It's just the end of record labels as we know them. A lot of people point to the Radiohead model as the future, but Radiohead is only dipping its toe into the future to test the waters. What at first seemed like a rainbow-colored revolution has now been openly revealed as a marketing gimmick: Radiohead was "experimenting," releasing a low-quality MP3 version of an album only to punish the fans who paid for it by later releasing a full-quality CD version with extra tracks. According to Radiohead's manager: "If we didn't believe that when people hear the music they will want to buy the CD then we wouldn't do what we are doing." Ouch. Radiohead was moving in the right direction, but if they really want to start a revolution, they need to place the "pay-what-you-want" digital album on the same content and quality level as the "pay-what-we-want" physical album.
Ultimately, I don't know what the future model is going to be - I think all the current pieces of the puzzle will still be there, but they need to be re-ordered, and the rules need to be changed. Maybe record labels of the future exist to help front recording costs and promote artists, but they don't own the music. Maybe music is free, and musicians make their money from touring and merchandise, and if they need a label, the label takes a percentage of their tour and merch profits. Maybe all-digital record companies give bands all the tools they need to sell their music directly to their fans, taking a small percentage for their services. In any case, the artists own their own music.
I used to reject the wishy-washy "music should be free!" mantra of online music thieves. I knew too much about the intricacies and economics of it, of the rock-and-a-hard-place situation many artists were in with their labels. I thought there were plenty of new ways to sell music that would be fair to all parties involved. But I no longer believe that, because the squabbling, backwards, greedy, ownership-obsessed major labels will never let it happen, and that's more clear to me now than ever. So maybe music has to be free. Maybe taking the money out of music is the only way to get money back into it. Maybe it's time to abandon the notion of the rock star - of music as a route to fame and fortune. The best music was always made by people who weren't in it for the money, anyway. Maybe smart, talented musicians will find ways to make a good living with or without CD sales. Maybe the record industry execs who made their fortunes off of unfair contracts and distribution monopolies should just walk away, confident that they milked a limited opportunity for all it was worth, and that it's time to find fortune somewhere else. Maybe in the hands of consumers, the music marketplace will expand in new and lucrative ways no one can even dream of yet. We won't know until music is free, and eventually it's going to be. Technological innovation destroys old industries, but it creates new ones. You can't fight it forever.
Until the walls finally come down, we're in what will inevitably be looked back on as a very awkward, chaotic period in music history - fans are being arrested for sharing the music they love, and many artists are left helpless, unable to experiment with new business models because they're locked into record contracts with backwards-thinking labels.
So what can you and I do to help usher in the brave new world? The beauty of Oink was how fans willingly and hyper-efficiently took on distribution roles that traditionally have cost labels millions of dollars. Music lovers have shown that they're much more willing to put time and effort into music than they are money. It's time to show artists that there's no limit to what an energized online fanbase can accomplish, and all they'll ever ask for in return is more music. And it's time to show the labels that they missed a huge opportunity by not embracing these opportunities when they had the chance.
1. Stop buying music from major labels. Period. The only way to force change is to hit the labels where it hurts - their profits. The major labels are like Terry Schiavo right now - they're on life support, drooling in a coma, while white-haired guys in suits try and change the laws to keep them alive. But any rational person can see that it's too late, and it's time to pull out the feeding tube. In this case, the feeding tube is your money. Find out which labels are members/supporters of the RIAA and similar copyright enforcement groups, and don't support them in any way. The RIAA Radar is a great tool to help you with this. Don't buy CDs, don't buy iTunes downloads, don't buy from Amazon, etc. Steal the music you want that's on the major labels. It's easy, and despite the RIAA's scare tactics, it can be done safely - especially if more and more people are doing it. Send letters to those labels, and to the RIAA, explaining very calmly and professionally that you will no longer be supporting their business, because of their bullish scare tactics towards music fans, and their inability to present a forward-thinking digital distribution solution. Tell them you believe their business model is outdated and the days of companies owning artists' music are over. Make it very clear that you will continue to support the artists directly in other ways, and make it VERY clear that your decision has come about as a direct result of the record company's actions and inactions regarding digital music.
2. Support artists directly. If a band you like is stuck on a major label, there are tons of ways you can support them without actually buying their CD. Tell everyone you know about them - start a fansite if you're really passionate. Go to their shows when they're in town, and buy t-shirts and other merchandise. Here's a little secret: Anything a band sells that does not have music on it is outside the reach of the record label, and monetarily supports the artist more than buying a CD ever would. T-shirts, posters, hats, keychains, stickers, etc. Send the band a letter telling them that you're no longer going to be purchasing their music, but you will be listening to it, and you will be spreading the word and supporting them in other ways. Tell them you've made this decision because you're trying to force change within the industry, and you no longer support record labels with RIAA affiliations who own the music of their artists.
If you like bands who are releasing music on open, non-RIAA indie labels, buy their albums! You'll support the band you like, and you'll support hard-working, passionate people at small, forward-thinking music labels. If you like bands who are completely independent and are releasing music on their own, support them as much as possible! Pay for their music, buy their merchandise, tell all your friends about them and help promote them online - prove that a network of passionate fans is the best promotion a band can ask for.
3. Get the message out. Get this message out to as many people as you can - spread the word on your blog or your MySpace, and more importantly, tell your friends at work, or your family members, people who might not be as tuned into the internet as you are. Teach them how to use torrents, show them where to go to get music for free. Show them how to support artists while starving the labels, and who they should and shouldn't be supporting.
4. Get political. The fast-track to ending all this nonsense is changing intellectual property laws. The RIAA lobbies politicians to manipulate copyright laws for their own interests, so voters need to lobby politicians for the peoples' interests. Contact your local representatives and senators. Tell them politely and articulately that you believe copyright laws no longer reflect the interests of the people, and you will not vote for them if they support the interests of the RIAA. Encourage them to draft legislation that helps change the outdated laws and disproportionate penalties the RIAA champions. Contact information for state representatives can be found here, and contact information for senators can be found here. You can email them, but calling on the phone or writing them actual letters is always more effective.
Tonight, with Oink gone, I find myself wondering where I'll go now to discover new music. All the other options - particularly the legal ones - seem depressing by comparison. I wonder how long it will be before everyone can legally experience the type of music nirvana Oink users became accustomed to? I'm not too worried - something even better will rise out of Oink's ashes, and the RIAA will respond with more lawsuits, and the cycle will repeat itself over and over until the industry has finally bled itself to death. And then everything will be able to change, and it will be in the hands of musicians and fans and a new generation of entrepreneurs to decide how the new record business is going to work. Whether you agree with it or not, it's fact. It's inevitable - because the determination of fans to share music is much, much stronger than the determination of corporations to stop it.
Wednesday, 2 November 2011
Sunday, 30 October 2011
Siri on iPod Touch 4G - Connected to Apple Servers Finally
Here's a new significant and big step on porting Siri on iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. The last few weeks we saw many screenshots and videos showing Siri running on all iDevices but without connecting Apple servers. Now hackers has just did it.
Steven Troughton-Smith is the guy behind this progress. This guy was the first one worked on porting Siri on iPhone 4 with the iPhone developer Chpwn. Few minutes ago Chpwn confirmed on his timeline that siri connected Apple's servers on iPhone 4 after hack session.
When Siri come to iPhone 4, 3GS, iPod Touch 4G, 3G, iPad ?
No official release date announced so far. But diffidently it looks very imminent.
Siri on iPod Touch 4G [Video] :
Update : Folks at 9to5mac filmed an interesting video that compared between iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S running Siri
Here's an interview with Steven the guy behind this great job.
Mark: Where do you go from here with the port?
Steven: At this point it’s all about confirming this works across devices, making it reproducible (we got it working on two devices today), and documenting everything. It does require files from an iPhone 4S which aren’t ours to distribute, and it also requires a validation token from the iPhone 4S that has to be pulled live from a jailbroken iPhone 4S, and it’s about a 20-step process right now.
Mark: In its current state, is the port 100% functional, is there anything you would like to see work better?
Steven: Yes, it seems to be 100% functional. I’m working on the rough edges, but everything that works on the iPhone 4S seems to work here
Mark: Do you ever see Siri showing up in Cydia (or another jailbreak store) for non natively supported devices?
Steven: No, I could not be a part of that. I have no doubts that others will package this up and distribute it quasi-illegally, or try and sell it to people. I am only interested in the technology and making it work; proving that it works and works well on the iPhone 4 and other devices
Mark: So, you also got Siri working on the fourth-generation iPod touch, how is that working out?
Steven: We got chpwn’s iPod touch up and running with Siri after proving it works on my iPhone 4. Unfortunately the microphone on the iPod is nowhere near as good as the iPhone – you will notice that the Siri level meter hardly moves when you talk to it. While it does work, you have to speak loudly and clearly to the iPod
Mark: How long did porting take you, what was the “I got it” moment?
Steven: Basically, I already had everything I needed to make it work. I had spent a lot of time mapping out in my head exactly how Siri works on the iPhone. All I needed was access to a jailbroken iPhone 4S to put my hunch to the test. It literally took no longer than 10 minutes to put all the pieces in place and perform our first test on my iPhone 4, and it was an instant success.
Steven Troughton-Smith is the guy behind this progress. This guy was the first one worked on porting Siri on iPhone 4 with the iPhone developer Chpwn. Few minutes ago Chpwn confirmed on his timeline that siri connected Apple's servers on iPhone 4 after hack session.
When Siri come to iPhone 4, 3GS, iPod Touch 4G, 3G, iPad ?
No official release date announced so far. But diffidently it looks very imminent.
Siri on iPod Touch 4G [Video] :
Update : Folks at 9to5mac filmed an interesting video that compared between iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S running Siri
Here's an interview with Steven the guy behind this great job.
Mark: Where do you go from here with the port?
Steven: At this point it’s all about confirming this works across devices, making it reproducible (we got it working on two devices today), and documenting everything. It does require files from an iPhone 4S which aren’t ours to distribute, and it also requires a validation token from the iPhone 4S that has to be pulled live from a jailbroken iPhone 4S, and it’s about a 20-step process right now.
Mark: In its current state, is the port 100% functional, is there anything you would like to see work better?
Steven: Yes, it seems to be 100% functional. I’m working on the rough edges, but everything that works on the iPhone 4S seems to work here
Mark: Do you ever see Siri showing up in Cydia (or another jailbreak store) for non natively supported devices?
Steven: No, I could not be a part of that. I have no doubts that others will package this up and distribute it quasi-illegally, or try and sell it to people. I am only interested in the technology and making it work; proving that it works and works well on the iPhone 4 and other devices
Mark: So, you also got Siri working on the fourth-generation iPod touch, how is that working out?
Steven: We got chpwn’s iPod touch up and running with Siri after proving it works on my iPhone 4. Unfortunately the microphone on the iPod is nowhere near as good as the iPhone – you will notice that the Siri level meter hardly moves when you talk to it. While it does work, you have to speak loudly and clearly to the iPod
Mark: How long did porting take you, what was the “I got it” moment?
Steven: Basically, I already had everything I needed to make it work. I had spent a lot of time mapping out in my head exactly how Siri works on the iPhone. All I needed was access to a jailbroken iPhone 4S to put my hunch to the test. It literally took no longer than 10 minutes to put all the pieces in place and perform our first test on my iPhone 4, and it was an instant success.
Friday, 28 October 2011
TECHNOLOGY CHANGING THE MUSIC INDUSTRY
Technology can change things. And in the case of the music industry, it destroyed it.
The two major shifts that have occurred are:
Distribution of your music into stores where people can go to buy it
How people discover music
Distribution of your music into stores where people can go to buy it
A quick description of what the music industry has been for the past 100 years provides a background on how things are changing.
Assume you live in New York and you make a watch you want to sell. You take your watch to the nearest watch store and ask the owner if you can sell it in their shop. They agree and ask how much you want to get paid if it sells. You tell the owner $10 You return to the store a month later, your watch is gone, the owner hands you $10, however you have no idea how much the watch sold for. Maybe it was given away, maybe it was sold for a million dollars.
The next day you get a call from Joe at Joe Smith Watch Distribution. Joe tells you he is a watch distributor from Chicago who can help you sell more watches. If you are interested, you can send him all your watches and he will store them, insure them, inventory them and more.
In addition to warehousing, he also tells you that he has a sales force of 40 people that walk all around the country to watch stores showing the new watches to the owners and he mails out a paper catalog each month to 4,000 watch stores.
Back at his warehouse, he has 20 more people that pick, pack and process the orders. If a watch is damaged, it is sent back and Joe Smith fixes it. Each time a watch leaves his warehouse, you will get paid regardless of if Joe gets paid.
Finally, Joe will provide you opportunities to market your watch in the store. For example, it will be displayed up front when people walk in.
In return for all these services, Joe asks to be paid 25% of the money earned from each watch sale. If a watch sells for $10, Joe will get paid $2.50 and you get the rest.
This is the music industry - only instead of watches, it's CDs, and record labels hire people to make their "watches".
it's about distribution and shelf space.
The music industry is about distribution. Record labels make the "thing" to give to the distributor. The distributor puts the "thing" in the store. The record label then markets the "thing" to create demand.
Stores have a limited amount of shelf space and can only have a limited number of CDs in stock. If a CD is not on a shelf, it cannot sell. Therefore, having a powerful distributor is important as it can force CDs onto the shelves (but the little guys get shoved to the side).
Digital stores like iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, eMusic, etc., have changed all this. To start, they have unlimited shelf space. This means everything can be in stock.
In addition, digital stores are never out of stock - they have virtual unlimited inventory that is replicated on demand. No more need to make CDs and ship them to a warehouse and then re-ship them to a store in hopes the store takes it out of a box and puts it on a shelf. Instead, the music is delivered once to a server and then sits there until someone buys it. It can be found instantly whenever a customer searches for it. When it is bought, the buyer gets a perfect digital copy of the original,nothing comes off the shelf, it's still there for the next customer to find and download.
In the old model, every CD in a store can be returned at any time for a full refund. A sale in the digital world cannot be returned. You know exactly what you sold with no concern of dreaded "returns."
These three changes: unlimited shelf space, unlimited virtual inventory and no returns, make the big warehouses and sales staff obsolete. This means that the four major labels - A.K.A. the four major distributors - have invested tens of millions of dollars into a soon to be obsolete infrastructure as now it's just a matter of getting your music and art digitally delivered once to a store like iTunes.
So who gets access to digital distribution, and under what deal terms? Keeping your rights and getting all the money from the sale of your music aggregators.
Companies called aggregators have sprung up offering artists and bands access to the digital stores. it's a valuable service but the price they demand is out of date, old school and exploitive.
First, they demand exclusive control of your master recordings (digitally) - like a record label - for a period of time (called a Term), usually three to five years. Unlike a record label, they do not: advance you money to record; provide you tour support; help you find a studio, record, mix and master an album; mail out posters to gigs; run print or banner ads; hire independent radio promotion and mail out the CDs to radio; hire a publicist and mail out the CDs to magazines; help you make your art; front the money and make stickers and buttons; pay for band photos; pay for the manufacturing of your CDs; provide you CDs to sell at your gigs and many, many, many other label functions.
Second, just like a physical distributor, they take a percentage of the money you earn from the sale of your music each time your music sells.
But, unlike a physical distributor they do not: pick, pack and ship orders; have a warehouse staff; insure inventory; have a national sales staff; advance you money to pay for advertising programs in stores; fix broken CDs to be re-shipped out; guarantee you will get paid even if the store does not pay them; mail out a catalog, etc.
Technology has changed the music industry, yet aggregator deal terms are still stuck in the old school model of exploiting the songs and artists. In effect, you work for them. You cause the music to sell and they take money from these sales while controlling your rights.
The new model is about serving the artist, not exploiting them. With the launch of TuneCore, for the first time in the history of the music industry, any artist or label can have their music available in the places music buyers go to buy and discover music without having to give up any rights or revenue from the sale of their music in a non exclusive arrangement that can be cancelled at any time. Technology has changed the way the industry works; it is time to change the business model as well.
How people discover music
Music is not food, shelter, or clothing, but everyone wants it and everyone needs it. For the most part, unlike a floor wax or an SUV, people like it when they are being asked to listen to music. The principles to marketing yourself are very basic: you make music, give it to others to listen to and hope they tell others about it.
In the old model, most people primarily discovered music in one of
three ways:
Radio
Print magazines like Rolling Stone
Viacom owned properties like MTV, VH1, BET etc
These three outlets would choose what songs they played, what videos they showed or what bands they wrote about from a limited pool of artists pushed to them by the labels. If you were not on a label, you were not in the pool, and therefore you had virtually no opportunity to get exposure from any of these outlets.
In the new model, everyone has a voice that can be heard - via the net - around the world. In particular, mp3 blogs are extremely effective in getting your music out to the masses. One person from anywhere on the planet can talk about you on his or her blog and provide a link to download your song for free. If people like it, it spreads, and soon you have 10 blogs, 50 blogs, 1,000 blogs all talking about you with links to your music.
Free video distribution sites like YouTube are also changing the game.
Consider the now famous "Treadmill Dance" video by the band OK GO. Using only a store-bought camera on a tripod, four guys danced on treadmills took the online video sites by storm, and propelled the band into the Billboard Top 50.
In the old model, music was discovered from the top down when it was heard on commercial radio, seen on TV and read about in magazines. Today you have the same distribution and broadcast power right from your computer, you to the world, bottom up. Fans discover music and now have an outlet to share their ideas, passions and musical loves with the world,and the world is listening. Look to bands like Arcade Fire, OK GO, Secondhand Serenade, Kelly, Tapes 'n Tapes, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Birdmonster and many more, and you'll see the new model in action.
In other words, you no longer need a label to reach the world. And you no longer need to give up your rights or the money generated by the sale of your music to get global distribution and marketing.
The two major shifts that have occurred are:
Distribution of your music into stores where people can go to buy it
How people discover music
Distribution of your music into stores where people can go to buy it
A quick description of what the music industry has been for the past 100 years provides a background on how things are changing.
Assume you live in New York and you make a watch you want to sell. You take your watch to the nearest watch store and ask the owner if you can sell it in their shop. They agree and ask how much you want to get paid if it sells. You tell the owner $10 You return to the store a month later, your watch is gone, the owner hands you $10, however you have no idea how much the watch sold for. Maybe it was given away, maybe it was sold for a million dollars.
The next day you get a call from Joe at Joe Smith Watch Distribution. Joe tells you he is a watch distributor from Chicago who can help you sell more watches. If you are interested, you can send him all your watches and he will store them, insure them, inventory them and more.
In addition to warehousing, he also tells you that he has a sales force of 40 people that walk all around the country to watch stores showing the new watches to the owners and he mails out a paper catalog each month to 4,000 watch stores.
Back at his warehouse, he has 20 more people that pick, pack and process the orders. If a watch is damaged, it is sent back and Joe Smith fixes it. Each time a watch leaves his warehouse, you will get paid regardless of if Joe gets paid.
Finally, Joe will provide you opportunities to market your watch in the store. For example, it will be displayed up front when people walk in.
In return for all these services, Joe asks to be paid 25% of the money earned from each watch sale. If a watch sells for $10, Joe will get paid $2.50 and you get the rest.
This is the music industry - only instead of watches, it's CDs, and record labels hire people to make their "watches".
it's about distribution and shelf space.
The music industry is about distribution. Record labels make the "thing" to give to the distributor. The distributor puts the "thing" in the store. The record label then markets the "thing" to create demand.
Stores have a limited amount of shelf space and can only have a limited number of CDs in stock. If a CD is not on a shelf, it cannot sell. Therefore, having a powerful distributor is important as it can force CDs onto the shelves (but the little guys get shoved to the side).
Digital stores like iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody, eMusic, etc., have changed all this. To start, they have unlimited shelf space. This means everything can be in stock.
In addition, digital stores are never out of stock - they have virtual unlimited inventory that is replicated on demand. No more need to make CDs and ship them to a warehouse and then re-ship them to a store in hopes the store takes it out of a box and puts it on a shelf. Instead, the music is delivered once to a server and then sits there until someone buys it. It can be found instantly whenever a customer searches for it. When it is bought, the buyer gets a perfect digital copy of the original,nothing comes off the shelf, it's still there for the next customer to find and download.
In the old model, every CD in a store can be returned at any time for a full refund. A sale in the digital world cannot be returned. You know exactly what you sold with no concern of dreaded "returns."
These three changes: unlimited shelf space, unlimited virtual inventory and no returns, make the big warehouses and sales staff obsolete. This means that the four major labels - A.K.A. the four major distributors - have invested tens of millions of dollars into a soon to be obsolete infrastructure as now it's just a matter of getting your music and art digitally delivered once to a store like iTunes.
So who gets access to digital distribution, and under what deal terms? Keeping your rights and getting all the money from the sale of your music aggregators.
Companies called aggregators have sprung up offering artists and bands access to the digital stores. it's a valuable service but the price they demand is out of date, old school and exploitive.
First, they demand exclusive control of your master recordings (digitally) - like a record label - for a period of time (called a Term), usually three to five years. Unlike a record label, they do not: advance you money to record; provide you tour support; help you find a studio, record, mix and master an album; mail out posters to gigs; run print or banner ads; hire independent radio promotion and mail out the CDs to radio; hire a publicist and mail out the CDs to magazines; help you make your art; front the money and make stickers and buttons; pay for band photos; pay for the manufacturing of your CDs; provide you CDs to sell at your gigs and many, many, many other label functions.
Second, just like a physical distributor, they take a percentage of the money you earn from the sale of your music each time your music sells.
But, unlike a physical distributor they do not: pick, pack and ship orders; have a warehouse staff; insure inventory; have a national sales staff; advance you money to pay for advertising programs in stores; fix broken CDs to be re-shipped out; guarantee you will get paid even if the store does not pay them; mail out a catalog, etc.
Technology has changed the music industry, yet aggregator deal terms are still stuck in the old school model of exploiting the songs and artists. In effect, you work for them. You cause the music to sell and they take money from these sales while controlling your rights.
The new model is about serving the artist, not exploiting them. With the launch of TuneCore, for the first time in the history of the music industry, any artist or label can have their music available in the places music buyers go to buy and discover music without having to give up any rights or revenue from the sale of their music in a non exclusive arrangement that can be cancelled at any time. Technology has changed the way the industry works; it is time to change the business model as well.
How people discover music
Music is not food, shelter, or clothing, but everyone wants it and everyone needs it. For the most part, unlike a floor wax or an SUV, people like it when they are being asked to listen to music. The principles to marketing yourself are very basic: you make music, give it to others to listen to and hope they tell others about it.
In the old model, most people primarily discovered music in one of
three ways:
Radio
Print magazines like Rolling Stone
Viacom owned properties like MTV, VH1, BET etc
These three outlets would choose what songs they played, what videos they showed or what bands they wrote about from a limited pool of artists pushed to them by the labels. If you were not on a label, you were not in the pool, and therefore you had virtually no opportunity to get exposure from any of these outlets.
In the new model, everyone has a voice that can be heard - via the net - around the world. In particular, mp3 blogs are extremely effective in getting your music out to the masses. One person from anywhere on the planet can talk about you on his or her blog and provide a link to download your song for free. If people like it, it spreads, and soon you have 10 blogs, 50 blogs, 1,000 blogs all talking about you with links to your music.
Free video distribution sites like YouTube are also changing the game.
Consider the now famous "Treadmill Dance" video by the band OK GO. Using only a store-bought camera on a tripod, four guys danced on treadmills took the online video sites by storm, and propelled the band into the Billboard Top 50.
In the old model, music was discovered from the top down when it was heard on commercial radio, seen on TV and read about in magazines. Today you have the same distribution and broadcast power right from your computer, you to the world, bottom up. Fans discover music and now have an outlet to share their ideas, passions and musical loves with the world,and the world is listening. Look to bands like Arcade Fire, OK GO, Secondhand Serenade, Kelly, Tapes 'n Tapes, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Birdmonster and many more, and you'll see the new model in action.
In other words, you no longer need a label to reach the world. And you no longer need to give up your rights or the money generated by the sale of your music to get global distribution and marketing.
Cashing In on Your Hit YouTube Video
Katie Clem posted a video on YouTube this month of her daughter Lily’s poignant and funny reaction to her sixth birthday present, a trip to Disneyland, for her friends and family. Then it went viral.
Enlarge This Image
YouTube
“Talking Twin Babies,” in which two boys carry on an animated conversation in gibberish.
Enlarge This Image
YouTube
“David After Dentist,” showing a 7-year-old boy talking to his father while recovering from anesthesia.
In three weeks it has been watched more than five million times, and Lily has become a minor Internet celebrity. Of far more importance, at least to Lily’s parents, the video is poised to make enough money from advertisements to send Lily to college.
Creating a video that attracts millions of viewers and becomes a pop culture phenomenon involves an unpredictable cocktail of luck and timing. A dash of cute babies or people acting like idiots can only help. But once a video goes viral, making some cold cash depends on quick action.
Here is some advice on how to take advantage of your 15 minutes of Internet fame from people who did just that.
MAKE AN OUTSTANDING VIDEO There is no recipe for creating a viral video, but there are a few common traits.
Take the time to identify the video by writing a detailed title and description so people and search engines can find it easily, said Kevin Allocca, manager of YouTube Trends. “Surprised Kitty” (55 million viewings and counting) is far better than “Video of Tigger.”
Share it widely on social networks, he said, and let people embed the video on other Web sites. It helps if a celebrity links to it. “Double Rainbow,” a sensation last year, had only 200 views between its debut in January and July — when Jimmy Kimmel posted a link on Twitter and it took off. Current count: 31 million viewings.
It’s not as easy as it looks, Mr. Allocca said. “Make really good content,” he said. “That’s the one nobody wants to hear, but it’s the truth.”
It seems to help if the videos include funny people (especially old people and babies), animals (especially babies) and dancing (again, especially when the dancers are babies). Make a video that is universal yet original to you, recommends Randy McEntee, who posted an iPhone video, “Talking Twin Babies,” showing his twin baby boys having an animated conversation in gibberish.
“I think the reason it’s caught on around the world is there’s no language,” Mr. McEntee said.
Another common piece of advice: don’t set out to make a viral video. “We didn’t try,” said Ms. Clem, who shot her video on a Flip camera and had never posted on YouTube. “I don’t have any advice because I literally went to bed that night and woke up and our lives were completely different.”
GET MONEY FROM YOUTUBE ADS If your video is on the road to viral success, YouTube, a part of Google, is eager to make money from you. It will send you an e-mail asking if you want to become a partner. If you give your permission, the site will run ads alongside your video and share more than half the revenue with you, sending you a check each month.
Some of the people behind viral videos, like the father of the boy coming down from dental anesthesia in “David After Dentist,” have made more than $100,000 from YouTube ads. Ms. Clem has made $3,000 in three weeks and stands to make much more because Disney wants to use her video in a TV ad.
Early on, YouTube would sign people up as partners after videos had been watched more than a million times. But it has since developed an algorithm, which it calls reference rank, to predict whether a video will go viral when it has had as few as 10,000 views.
The most important element is whether influential Web sites post the video. When Reddit posted Mr. McEntee’s video, for instance, its views jumped from 1,000 to six million in three days. YouTube also analyzes other data, like the number of viewers, how many times a video is shared on social networking sites and the rate at which people comment on the video.
Protect the video with a YouTube program called Content ID, which gives video owners the right to block others from using their videos or to be paid when they do. That helps to prevent people from creating copies that might be watched instead of yours. Parodies, translations or autotuned song versions, however, tend to add to the original’s traffic.
YouTube does not offer live customer service for viral video creators. YouTube said it would be impossible to talk to millions of video creators but it has help forums for people to ask questions.
APPEAR ON TELEVISION YouTube may turn us all into TV producers, but one of the best ways to get people to watch your online video is to appear on old-fashioned TV.
Ms. Clem’s video spiked after she appeared on Fox News and Mr. McEntee’s after he was on “Good Morning America.” It rarely helps to try to contact TV shows directly — instead, wait for producers to call you, which they will in spades if your video is popular and touches a nerve, viral video veterans say.
Remember that a dip in views does not mean your 15 minutes are over. The talking twins video had almost five million viewers on its best day, dropped to 50,000 and now gets a couple hundred thousand a day. SELL MERCHANDISE When the boy in “David After Dentist” asked the camera, “Is this real life?” more than 101 million viewers could relate. David’s father took swift advantage of that, opening an online store selling T-shirts and stickers with the tagline.
“All the top creators do that,” said Shenaz Zack, product manager for YouTube partnerships.
Tracking who watches your video can suggest markets. At YouTube Insight, video creators can see detailed data about their audience, like where viewers come from and which Web sites have linked to the video.
They can also read YouTube Trends, a blog YouTube started in December to analyze what makes videos popular, whether they are about babies using iPads or scenes from the earthquake in Turkey.
MAKE A GAME PLAN FOR FAME The celebrity and money that come with viral YouTube videos are not always fun, say people who have lived through it.
The phone rings constantly with TV producers who want to show the video. Do not sign any contracts without consulting a lawyer, said Ms. Clem, because some of the contracts ask you to sign away your rights to the video.
“It’s so exciting and you want it out there, but it’s dangerous because people want to take advantage,” she said.
Set up rules early on, said Mr. McEntee. For his family, that meant no travel to be on TV, no other videos of the children and “to behave in a way that our children would be proud of,” including letting them remove the video when they are old enough to understand.
Talk to other people who have become YouTube celebrities about what they went through — the father of David wrote on his blog that at first he had worried that people were watching the video because they were making fun of his son, for instance.
“It’s actually a really lonely place because there’s no one out there that really has all the answers,” Mr. McEntee said. “It’s just such a rare thing.”
Enlarge This Image
YouTube
“Talking Twin Babies,” in which two boys carry on an animated conversation in gibberish.
Enlarge This Image
YouTube
“David After Dentist,” showing a 7-year-old boy talking to his father while recovering from anesthesia.
In three weeks it has been watched more than five million times, and Lily has become a minor Internet celebrity. Of far more importance, at least to Lily’s parents, the video is poised to make enough money from advertisements to send Lily to college.
Creating a video that attracts millions of viewers and becomes a pop culture phenomenon involves an unpredictable cocktail of luck and timing. A dash of cute babies or people acting like idiots can only help. But once a video goes viral, making some cold cash depends on quick action.
Here is some advice on how to take advantage of your 15 minutes of Internet fame from people who did just that.
MAKE AN OUTSTANDING VIDEO There is no recipe for creating a viral video, but there are a few common traits.
Take the time to identify the video by writing a detailed title and description so people and search engines can find it easily, said Kevin Allocca, manager of YouTube Trends. “Surprised Kitty” (55 million viewings and counting) is far better than “Video of Tigger.”
Share it widely on social networks, he said, and let people embed the video on other Web sites. It helps if a celebrity links to it. “Double Rainbow,” a sensation last year, had only 200 views between its debut in January and July — when Jimmy Kimmel posted a link on Twitter and it took off. Current count: 31 million viewings.
It’s not as easy as it looks, Mr. Allocca said. “Make really good content,” he said. “That’s the one nobody wants to hear, but it’s the truth.”
It seems to help if the videos include funny people (especially old people and babies), animals (especially babies) and dancing (again, especially when the dancers are babies). Make a video that is universal yet original to you, recommends Randy McEntee, who posted an iPhone video, “Talking Twin Babies,” showing his twin baby boys having an animated conversation in gibberish.
“I think the reason it’s caught on around the world is there’s no language,” Mr. McEntee said.
Another common piece of advice: don’t set out to make a viral video. “We didn’t try,” said Ms. Clem, who shot her video on a Flip camera and had never posted on YouTube. “I don’t have any advice because I literally went to bed that night and woke up and our lives were completely different.”
GET MONEY FROM YOUTUBE ADS If your video is on the road to viral success, YouTube, a part of Google, is eager to make money from you. It will send you an e-mail asking if you want to become a partner. If you give your permission, the site will run ads alongside your video and share more than half the revenue with you, sending you a check each month.
Some of the people behind viral videos, like the father of the boy coming down from dental anesthesia in “David After Dentist,” have made more than $100,000 from YouTube ads. Ms. Clem has made $3,000 in three weeks and stands to make much more because Disney wants to use her video in a TV ad.
Early on, YouTube would sign people up as partners after videos had been watched more than a million times. But it has since developed an algorithm, which it calls reference rank, to predict whether a video will go viral when it has had as few as 10,000 views.
The most important element is whether influential Web sites post the video. When Reddit posted Mr. McEntee’s video, for instance, its views jumped from 1,000 to six million in three days. YouTube also analyzes other data, like the number of viewers, how many times a video is shared on social networking sites and the rate at which people comment on the video.
Protect the video with a YouTube program called Content ID, which gives video owners the right to block others from using their videos or to be paid when they do. That helps to prevent people from creating copies that might be watched instead of yours. Parodies, translations or autotuned song versions, however, tend to add to the original’s traffic.
YouTube does not offer live customer service for viral video creators. YouTube said it would be impossible to talk to millions of video creators but it has help forums for people to ask questions.
APPEAR ON TELEVISION YouTube may turn us all into TV producers, but one of the best ways to get people to watch your online video is to appear on old-fashioned TV.
Ms. Clem’s video spiked after she appeared on Fox News and Mr. McEntee’s after he was on “Good Morning America.” It rarely helps to try to contact TV shows directly — instead, wait for producers to call you, which they will in spades if your video is popular and touches a nerve, viral video veterans say.
Remember that a dip in views does not mean your 15 minutes are over. The talking twins video had almost five million viewers on its best day, dropped to 50,000 and now gets a couple hundred thousand a day. SELL MERCHANDISE When the boy in “David After Dentist” asked the camera, “Is this real life?” more than 101 million viewers could relate. David’s father took swift advantage of that, opening an online store selling T-shirts and stickers with the tagline.
“All the top creators do that,” said Shenaz Zack, product manager for YouTube partnerships.
Tracking who watches your video can suggest markets. At YouTube Insight, video creators can see detailed data about their audience, like where viewers come from and which Web sites have linked to the video.
They can also read YouTube Trends, a blog YouTube started in December to analyze what makes videos popular, whether they are about babies using iPads or scenes from the earthquake in Turkey.
MAKE A GAME PLAN FOR FAME The celebrity and money that come with viral YouTube videos are not always fun, say people who have lived through it.
The phone rings constantly with TV producers who want to show the video. Do not sign any contracts without consulting a lawyer, said Ms. Clem, because some of the contracts ask you to sign away your rights to the video.
“It’s so exciting and you want it out there, but it’s dangerous because people want to take advantage,” she said.
Set up rules early on, said Mr. McEntee. For his family, that meant no travel to be on TV, no other videos of the children and “to behave in a way that our children would be proud of,” including letting them remove the video when they are old enough to understand.
Talk to other people who have become YouTube celebrities about what they went through — the father of David wrote on his blog that at first he had worried that people were watching the video because they were making fun of his son, for instance.
“It’s actually a really lonely place because there’s no one out there that really has all the answers,” Mr. McEntee said. “It’s just such a rare thing.”
Thursday, 27 October 2011
After 123 Years, Motion Picture Film Cameras Go Out of Production
Film is beautiful. It’s going to be around for years to come. Plenty of feature films and TV shows are still being shot on film, and used film cameras will remain a viable rental market for a long time. But in the last several months, the major manufacturers of motion picture cameras — ARRI, Panavision and Aaton — have all ceased production of film cameras. Celluloid, you’ve had a great 123-year run. So long, and thanks for all the fish!
Here, then, one last ad for film from Kodak, for nostalgic purposes:
Cinevate HDSLR Products
You could pick apart so many quotes here, from Brett Ratner talking up film even though his latest, Tower Heist, was partially shot on the ARRI ALEXA, to anyone who says film has greater dynamic range (the ALEXA has the same DR, and RED’s HDRx exceeds it). Not to mention that 4K cameras meet or exceed film’s resolution, which is not to say that digital cameras are objectively better in terms of pure aesthetics — the texture and highlight detail of film are still magical — but cost and workflow-wise, digital has come a long way and will continue to improve to the point where it’s not just a matter of meeting film’s image capture capabilities but exceeding it. Here’s the word from Aaton and Panavision:
[Aaton founder Jean-Pierre] Beauviala believes that that stereoscopic 3D has “accelerated the demise of film.” He says, “It’s a nightmare to synchronize two film cameras.” Three years ago, Aaton introduced a new 35mm film camera, Penelope, but sold only 50 to 60 of them. As a result, Beauviala turned to creating a digital Penelope, which will be on the market by NAB 2012. “It’s a 4K camera and very, very quiet,” he tells us. “We tried to give a digital camera the same ease of handling as the film camera.”
Panavision is also hard at work on a new digital camera, says Phil Radin, Executive VP, Worldwide Marketing, who notes that Panavision built its last 35mm Millennium XL camera in the winter of 2009.
One thing I don’t buy at all is people saying that the best way to archive digital material is on film. Sure, there are plenty of concerns about codecs going in and out of use, but you’re telling me that physical celluloid, which is subject to the ravages of time, temperature, fire, mishandling, and accidents, is a better archival material than 1s and 0s which can be stored as exact lossless copies in many locations? If you’re worried about future-proofing your codec choices, output your archival file in several formats. Not to mention that you can keep the NLE timeline and source files in the digital realm, though good luck opening that FCP7 timeline in Final Cut Pro X! Point for film, I guess.
Anyway, we’re going to see plenty of films shot on celluloid for years to come, but for all intents and purposes the last motion picture film camera has already been manufactured. Check out both articles below for more. Onward and upward!
Here, then, one last ad for film from Kodak, for nostalgic purposes:
Cinevate HDSLR Products
You could pick apart so many quotes here, from Brett Ratner talking up film even though his latest, Tower Heist, was partially shot on the ARRI ALEXA, to anyone who says film has greater dynamic range (the ALEXA has the same DR, and RED’s HDRx exceeds it). Not to mention that 4K cameras meet or exceed film’s resolution, which is not to say that digital cameras are objectively better in terms of pure aesthetics — the texture and highlight detail of film are still magical — but cost and workflow-wise, digital has come a long way and will continue to improve to the point where it’s not just a matter of meeting film’s image capture capabilities but exceeding it. Here’s the word from Aaton and Panavision:
[Aaton founder Jean-Pierre] Beauviala believes that that stereoscopic 3D has “accelerated the demise of film.” He says, “It’s a nightmare to synchronize two film cameras.” Three years ago, Aaton introduced a new 35mm film camera, Penelope, but sold only 50 to 60 of them. As a result, Beauviala turned to creating a digital Penelope, which will be on the market by NAB 2012. “It’s a 4K camera and very, very quiet,” he tells us. “We tried to give a digital camera the same ease of handling as the film camera.”
Panavision is also hard at work on a new digital camera, says Phil Radin, Executive VP, Worldwide Marketing, who notes that Panavision built its last 35mm Millennium XL camera in the winter of 2009.
One thing I don’t buy at all is people saying that the best way to archive digital material is on film. Sure, there are plenty of concerns about codecs going in and out of use, but you’re telling me that physical celluloid, which is subject to the ravages of time, temperature, fire, mishandling, and accidents, is a better archival material than 1s and 0s which can be stored as exact lossless copies in many locations? If you’re worried about future-proofing your codec choices, output your archival file in several formats. Not to mention that you can keep the NLE timeline and source files in the digital realm, though good luck opening that FCP7 timeline in Final Cut Pro X! Point for film, I guess.
Anyway, we’re going to see plenty of films shot on celluloid for years to come, but for all intents and purposes the last motion picture film camera has already been manufactured. Check out both articles below for more. Onward and upward!
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