GrindEFX

Been a bit of a quiet week , but I couldn’t let my loyal readers go another day with no posts! So here’s a little something from Bob Lefsetz’s blog – The Lefsetz Letter.

In his article Bob talks about how bands shouldn’t abuse social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, but rather use these as “tools” to build your own network.

Let me go over a few key points:

Social networks are islands that you must ask permission to enter, and behave properly or be ejected.  So, if you think you’re going to leverage all those millions of users, you’ve got another thing coming.

People now have the power of choice, whether it be what music they listen to or what source they get their news from. They like to make their own decisions, hammering a product at them is no longer effective, by “spamming” people you’re only gonna piss them off, and that ignore button is way too easy click! This is an area where a lot of people become unstuck, especially, as Bob points out, old media.

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Wow, this is my third article about Spotify in less than a week. I’m happy it’s getting attention though, I use it everyday and think it could just be the future.

So what has the European streaming service done this time? It has submitted its iPhone app to Apple! It was only last week I was saying how it needed to hurry along with its mobile apps because that’s where its strength and mass appeal is.

The iPhone application will be restricted to Spotify’s premium users, who pay £9.99 a month for an ad-free service and higher quality streaming. So users of the free service will have to upgrade if they want to stream on their iPhone.

Probably the best feature of the Spotify app is the ability to stream over Wi-Fi and 3G. This means even when there is no Internet connection available, you can still stream music offline through 3G (see video demo after the jump).

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Welcome to the first installment of GrindEFX’s introduction to some of the most important, and most confusing, concepts in the music business. These are concepts that serve as required knowledge for anyone wishing to take their music beyond the hobby level. They are also concepts that serve as a constant source of frustration and consternation to those same musicians.

Most, if not all, of this information can already be found on the internet. However, a lot of it is not targeted to musicians – it may be good information, but too complex or irrelevant to musician’s concerns. A lot of it might also provide a good explanation of the concepts but not explain the practical application of the concepts to the music business. And finally, there is plenty of bad or outdated information out there; a new musician may not be able to tell the difference between the good and the bad.

So we at GrindEFX are bringing you, the independent musician, this series that lays out the concepts in an easy to understand and relevant fashion. Standard disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and nothing in these posts should be constituted as legal advice. It is only provided for informational purposes. If you have questions about a specific situation you are in, you should contact an entertainment lawyer.

Let’s begin.

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A second major filesharing trial is getting underway in Boston, MA.

Little over one month has passed since a jury handed Jammie Thomas-Rasset a $2 million verdict. Today, 25-year old grad student Joel Tenenbaum finds himself in court to defend allegations that he used Kazaa to download and distribute 30 songs without permission.

The trial begins at 9AM and is expected to last until 4-5PM EST. The judge hopes to wrap up by July 31st.

For those wishing to stay updated, several commentators and bloggers will be onhand, twittering throughout the proceedings. These include Ben Sheffner, Marc Bourgeois, and the Joel Tenenbaum defense team.

It should prove to be an interesting trial. Both sides have been arguing more substantial points about filesharing in general then what was seen in the Thomas-Rasset trial. And when Harvard law professor Charles Nesson joined the defense team, the pretrial proceedings took on an almost circus-esque tone.

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Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on some changes for GrindEFX, these changes were put into place this week.

First let me introduce our newsletter. As you can see, on the sidebar there is a form where you can enter your email toreceive daily updates from us. This daily email will include all the posts that day and links to view them on the site. After entering your email and clicking ‘Subscribe’, you will be sent an email with a confirmation link. This is a feature that has been heavily requested since we started the site.

And secondly, you might have noticed a ‘Log In’ section on the sidebar. You can now register with GrindEFX and upload information about yourself, as well as an avatar. Currently this will save you filling out out the form when leaving comments and will give us more of a personal connection to our readers. In the near future though we will be adding lots of special privileges and features for registered users. Registering with GrindEFX will automatically subscribe you to the newsletter, so there is no need to subscribe to the newsletter if you register.

We really encourage you to use these new features in order to get the best out of the site. And please send us any feedback or suggesstions you have!

Have a good weekend.

- Jay

Round up of this week’s news:

• Harmonix announce the ‘Rock Band Network’, a platform where indie musicians can turn their songs into gameplay tracks for the video game Rock Band and sell them to other users [READ].

• KaZaa return as a legal subscription service, but seem confused about what consumers want [READ].

• Following its rapid success in Europe, music streaming service Spotify announce plans to launch in the U.S. later this Summer [READ].

• Spotify add another 2 million songs to its library following a deal with online distribution service IODA [READ].

• Brian Message, manager of Radiohead, has started a venture called Polyphonic, which will finance and distribute artists projects in a non-traditional manner [READ].

• Details of Drake’s very unusual deal with Universal are revealed [READ].

• Fees to register United States copyrights are set to rise on August 1, 2009 [READ].

• According to new data released by Nielsen, traffic to Myspace Music has grown 190% since launching in September [READ].

• It looks like the music industry has scared entrepreneurs away [READ].

An article on CNET yesterday highlighted a lack of support and investment for digital music start ups recently.

Music industry veteran and now venture capitalist at Venrock Associates David Pakman said “Investors lost a lot of money in this space.”

“What the music industry never encouraged or even allowed was building an ecosystem around its product,” he added.

I couldn’t agree more with Pakman. Music labels have shunned digital music services since they started cropping up over 10 years ago. Instead of embracing new technology and, as Pakman put it, “building an ecosystem”, the industry has sued the pants off every digital start up it could get its hands on.

Mike Masnick says “Given that (likelihood of getting sued or getting a deal that makes a profitable business impossible), is it any wonder that entrepreneurs are shying away from any sort of digital music startup these days, in favor of opportunities with no obsolete gatekeepers demanding huge chunks of whatever revenue they might one day make?”

Over the last couple of months we have reported on Myspace’s decline, however, according to Nielsen data Myspace Music is growing at quite a rate.

Nielsen figures say that traffic to Myspace Music has grown 190% since launching in September, 2008. Unique visitors to the music.myspace.com subdomain have grown from 4.2 million unique visitors to 12.1 million in June 2009.

When comparing unique visitors of the music.myspace.com subdomain to other sites within the music category in June, it ranked third behind AOL Music and Yahoo! Music and ahead of popular music sites like MTV Networks Music and Pandora.com.

Get ready to dig a little deeper into your pockets.

Fees to register United States copyrights are set to rise on August 1, 2009.

The U.S. Copyright Office lists what fees will be going up. Registering online through the new eCo system will remain at $35 (currently lower than registering by mail). The cost of registering with form CO (a new, universal form unveiled last year to cover most works of authorship) will increase from $45 to $50. If you can still get a hold of the old forms – SR, PA, TX, V, etc – you will be paying $65, up from $45.

This move by the Copyright Office reflects the growing costs of processing copyright registrations. The electronic registration process was implemented in order to reduce the costs involved, and that cost reduction is reflected by the lower fees.

The electronic process is not perfect – early reviews detailed some of the problems with it, and the Washington Times noted that it suffers from delays. However, paper forms suffer from even longer delays, and after August 1 will cost artists and musicians even more. Read more…

My new best friend, Spotify, has just struck a deal with online distribution service IODA, which will add nearly 2 million songs to its catalog.

The music streaming site has already penned deals with all 4 majors (Sony, Universal, Warner and EMI) and over 20,000 independent labels, IODA is another big partner for Spotify and will give users access to artists such as The Prodigy, Burial, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Bashy, Frank Black, Vieux Farka Touré and Broken Social Scene.

“Spotify has created a compelling product that redefines the notion of user-friendly and clearly speaks to the desires of the music fan,” said IODA founder and CEO Kevin Arnold in a statement. “We’ve seen a lot of promise from ad-supported revenue models. Spotify is exciting and unique in that the promise is backed up with a tangible subscription model and a slew of fresh ideas on how to grow the platform.”

Read more…