GrindEFX

Brian Mazzaferri, lead singer of independent rock back I Fight Dragons, has made a post on We Are Listening about how he and his band made $10,000 in 48 hours by selling ‘Lifetime Membership USB Drives’.

The band, which is only 9 months old, has focused on building a fanbase and giving their fans lots of free music through their mailing list. When they reached the point where they were starting to think how they could monetize off their music, instead of going the traditional (and outdated) route of recording an album and selling it, they came up with an idea that would not only give their fans a lot more, but them also.

The idea they came up with was to sell ‘Lifetime Membership USB Drives’ which were basically USB drives preloaded with all of the music they’ve ever released and they guarantee the owner a free digital copy of anything they ever release, as well as free admission to any live show of ours now and forever. And there were only 100 made.

Needless to say, they all went quickly, but the question is; why?

Read more…

Donald Passman’s seventh edition of his book “All You Need to Know About the Music Business” is available in bookstores today.

Along with the material from the previous editions – the music industry structure, building a team, understanding copyright and publishing, and literally everything else you need to know about the music business – this new edition adds the latest developments from the rapidly changing music business, including:

* The new 360 model of record deals, wherein record companies share in nonrecord revenue

* The Copyright Royalty Board’s latest decisions regarding online transmissions

* The developing customs on new technologies such as streaming on demand, ringtones, and digital downloads

* Updates on recording and publishing deals, as well as film music

I don’t know what else to say about this book that hasn’t already been said. If you’re even thinking about pursuing music as more than just a hobby, you need this book. If you only get one book about the music business, this is the book to get.

Rather than writing a review, I think it suffices to list the thesaurus entries for “definitive.” This book is: absolute, authoritative, clear-cut, complete, conclusive, exhaustive, precise, and reliable.

To kick off our “re-launch”, here’s a humorous (but very true) article from Bob Baker in which he gives musicians a 7 step plan to ruin their music career. I’ve written out the 7 steps below, but head over to Music Think Tank to read the full article.

1. Give away your personal power.
2. Turn marketing, promotion and sales into a huge burden.
3. Be fearful of being perceived as a greedy, capitalist pig.
4. Use a lack of time, money and connections as your biggest excuse.
5. Market yourself to the faceless masses using traditional big media.
6. Promote yourself sporadically and only when it’s urgent.
7. Know that everyone owes you something simply because you exist.

GrindEFX is back, w00t! Over at Techdirt, Michael Masnick highlights an interesting development in machine-generated music: a company claims to have created software that can recreate musical performances by famous musicians, living or dead.

As described on the blog, “Zenph Studio’s approach is to work out how the musician and the instrument acts and responds, then get a computer to play that track again as a real-time, real-life performance, which in turn can be recorded using modern techniques.”

It’s essentially MIDI on steroids. Zenph claims that through its software process, it can capture the nuances of any performer’s style and translate that into an algorithm to generate new recordings of old songs – or make entirely new songs that sound like they were performed by a famous musician.

Leaving aside whether this is a good idea in the first place – how long before we have Kurt Cobain hawking deodorant? - Masnick concludes with what I can only describe as an excellent law school final exam question -

So, now, take this software that supposedly can perfectly mimic a certain musician’s playing, and have it record a song. Say it’s a new song. Who owns the copyright? What if it’s adding John Lennon to a Rolling Stone’s song? Who owns the copyright? What if it’s an old song, updated in some slight way? Who owns the copyright? What if it’s just the same song but “remastered”? Who owns the copyright? The legal questions raised by this kind of software are going to keep copyright lawyers busy for a long, long time.

Being the slightly sadomasochistic law student I am, I couldn’t resist analyzing the issues raised in this situation. I am not a lawyer, and this article is only for general informational purposes; nothing here constitutes legal advice.

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You’ve probably noticed some strange activity here at GrindEFX over the past few weeks, this was due to an attack on our server. It has taken a while, but we are back up and running now and ready to pick up where we left off. If you received any warnings about malware or viruses on the site, don’t worry, we have given it a thorough check and it is now clean as a whistle.

Apologies for the lack of communication throughout all of this, we’ve now moved the site to a new server and are hopeful this will not happen again. Thanks for your patience!

A few months ago Spotify introduced the ability to purchase songs and albums directly from them, though it was a little long-winded and hard to find. Users had to right-click on songs to see the “Buy” option before being directed to partner 7digital’s site to complete the purchase.

There is now a clear “Buy” button next to all songs and albums available to purchase and the transaction process is pretty much the same as iTunes.

Check out the demo:

Despite the lack of success music subscription services have had, entrepreneurs seem to be lining up to have shot at it. We’re hearing about new subscription services every week, and none of them have a USP. They all seem to have the same business model – pay a high monthly fee for a very limited access to music.

The latest company to try their hand at it is satellite television company Sky. Sky’s plan is to charge £7.99 a month for unlimited streaming and 1 album download (or 10 songs) – downloading more songs will cost extra.

Details on the new service are sketchy, some sources say they have partnered with Universal, while others say they have struck deals with all the majors and a number of indie labels.

Read more…

On September 8th, Apple unveiled its latest ‘innovation’ to help prop up the recorded music industry – the iTunes LP. For only seven bucks more than a regular digital album, you can get some pretty pictures and liner notes. Facepalm!

But the story doesn’t end there.

Last week, Brian McKinney of Chocolate Lab Records told Gizmodo that Apple was charging record labels $10,000 in production costs to release an album in the iTunes LP format – and indie record labels need not apply. Apple later denied that allegation and said it is working on releasing the specs for the LP format and making them available to all, indie and major labels alike.

Regardless of the outcome of this “he said she said” tempest, it amplifies the silliness of the iTunes LP format itself.

Several web developers have dissected the format to find that it is essentially HTML, Javascript, CSS, and multimedia content – a website. For a little more than the cost of an actual physical CD, you get to save files to your hard drive that largely mirror content you can find online, from the artist’s website itself to Wikipedia, YouTube, and others. Read more…

On October 10, 2009 Mariah Carey will make “history”. Well, “history” according to Def Jam and Global Digital Entertainment.

Here’s the details, Mariah Carey recently linked up with Global Digital Entertainment which is, you guessed it, a digital entertainment company. This Saturday GDE will be launching iviago.com, which is, well, let me get to the point.

On October 10, 2009 a concert simply titled “Mariah Carey: Live in Las Vegas” will be the first concert simulcasted to a great number of digital and mobile devices. The only way to see this concert is by texting Mariah @ 313131 for a virtual concert ticket which cost 9.99. (7.99 if you pre-order).

“Fans from all over the world can now share the excitement of a live concert, wherever, whenever, and on whatever digital device they chose,”  - Steve Bartels President and COO of Island Def Jam Music Group.

Read more…

This is just brilliant!

If you don’t know the background, basically over the past week Lily Allen has publicly expressed her distain for file-sharers. Following a huge backlash from her initial blog post, she went back and forth with commenters and pretty much ended up making a fool of herself and deleting her blog all together (if you want more info head over to TechDirt, Mike Masnick made a number of posts picking apart Lily’s arguments).

And of course, you can download this song free here.