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.
I often get asked what websites and blogs I recommend for music business topics. We don’t have a blogroll on the site so I thought I’d make a post with a list of my favourite sites. Check them out and bookmark them!
It’s always nice to hear success stories from artists who put out their own indie releases, but this year I was able to witness first hand, and be a part of, such a project. I want to share with you how hip hop artist Cambatta and DJ Nice released and promoted ‘The Visionary’.
In 2008 Cambatta was an unsigned artist who was was trying to get his name out there, particularly on the mixtape circuit. With the help of old school friend DJ Nice, he decided to start work on his debut release, titled ‘The Visionary’.
DJ Nice was already an established name on the mixtape scene as both a DJ and producer, and with his experience and contacts Cambatta was granted access to many talented producers and artists to work with.
Before the album was released, Cambatta and DJ Nice did a number of things to create a buzz. They released a few collaborations with more well-known artists for free in order to raise Cambatta’s profile. These songs made appearances on many top hip hop websites, enabling Cambatta to reach a wide audience.
In 2007, Radiohead released its album “In Rainbows” with an interesting twist – along with traditional CD and vinyl versions, as well as 99 cent tracks on iTunes and other digital retailers, the band offered its own digital downloads of the album on a “pay what you want” basis.
While solid numbers are difficult to come by, the experiment appears to have paid off for Radiohead. Along with the huge amount of press the move generated, the band reported over 3 million combined sales (physical and digital), and “rumors, polls, and inside sources” suggest that the average person paid around $4 to download the album. It is also very likely the pricing model itself drove demand for the band – the deluxe edition box set of “In Rainbows” sold over 100,000 copies (at $81 a pop) when it was released three months after the digital release, and Radiohead went on to its most successful tour to date.
But what’s most interesting is how the music industry responded to this experiment – it didn’t.
British pop singer Lily Allen made a post on her Myspace blog (I know right?) yesterday begging her fans to buy CDs. Her argument? Well… she doesn’t really have one.
“The internet is the most amazing thing, but it should be OUR thing,” she said, “and ironically piracy is just playing into the hands of the corporations. What these artists and creators do, they do for the love of it, I know its hard because money is scarce but we have to inject money back into these areas. It’s not fair to steal peoples material,I know it’s art and it has no physical value but even Shakespeare had shares in The Globe Theatre. People will lose their jobs.”
This sounds like something an artist would have said 5 years ago, are artists really still complaining about piracy? Come on Lily, it’s not even cute anymore, it’s just sad. The Internet is going nowhere, it’s time for you and your good friends at the major labels to update your business model.
The funny thing is, Lily Allen actually has a very strong and loyal fanbase and she is good at connecting with them. She could easily drop from her label and and put out her own product like many other big artists have succeeded in doing. It sounds like she’s been brainwashed to believe she needs a record label to survive, either that or she’s just too lazy to open her eyes and see that the industry she was once in no longer exists.
I saw Mike Masnick post this on TechDirt a few days ago but only got around to reading it this morning. This is a paper written by Bas Grasmayer as part of the research for his thesis on the future of music distribution. Bas analyses 5 musical releases that used new business models; Radiohead’s ‘In Rainbows‘, Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Ghosts I-IV‘, Groove Armada’s ‘Drop The Tough‘, Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse’s ‘Dark Night of the Soul‘ and Mos Def’s ‘The Ecstatic‘.
After analysing each one he draws the following conclusions:
What does NOT work (well)
Not going all the way. Fans love free music and so do people that are not familiar with the artist’s work, but if you’re going to give something away then really give it away. If you don’t, you won’t get the attention you were hoping and might even disappoint some fans instead of connecting with them.
Another day, another band bringing their business model into the 21st century. Smashing Pumpkins have announced that their new album, ‘Teargarden by Kaleidyscope‘, will be available to fans for free via download.
“Recording began yesterday, September 15th, 2009 on the new record which will be entitled ‘Teargarden by Kaleidyscope’. The album will feature 44 songs, 4 of which are now being recorded. My desire is to release a song at a time beginning around Halloween of this year, with each new release coming shortly after until all 44 are out. Each song will be made available absolutely for free, to anyone anywhere. There will be no strings attached. Free will mean free, which means you won’t have to sign up for anything, give an email address, or jump through a hoop. You will be able to go and take the song or songs as you wish, as many times as you wish.”
How will they make money? Well with a RtB (reason to buy) of course!
On GrindEFX we’re always talking about fan relationships. Connecting with your fans is a vital component of marketing your music. If you have that personal relationship with your fans they will want to support you by buying your music, merch, concert tickets etc.
“But what does that mean?”
Well, here are 7 ways you can start connecting with your fans today.
Radio station to offer web streaming is not news. Web site to offer radio programming is.
CBS Interactive Music Group recently announced that it will begin offering music programming from Last.fm on HD radio stations in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco beginning October 5th. The stations will effectively hand the broadcasting reins over to the crowd-sourced, music discovery site – bringing listeners “an eclectic mix of music aggregated and influenced by the service’s user-generated weekly charts, combined with live performances and interviews from the Last.fm studios in New York, and event updates.”
According to CBS, this is the “first time a music website has been transformed into its own broadcast entity.”
Earlier today I spoke about Apple’s “reason to buy” fail, now I’m going to show you “reason to buy” done well. It comes from a indie rap group that consists of Dood Computer and Stir Crazy and there new album “Penny Dreadfuls”.
The group have released their new album on cassette which is available for $6, you also get a download card so if you want it on your mp3 player you can.
A lot of you are probably thinking; “what good is a cassette? I haven’t seen a cassette player in years”. Well that may be true, but the cassette isn’t there to be played, it’s there as a piece of memorabilia to encourage people to buy the album. Dood Computer and Stir Crazy have made flyers and a video (see below) promoting the cassette tape, it’s different, it’s fun and it grabs your attention. I haven’t ever heard of the band before, but I would assume they have quite a niche following that would appreciate this kind of humour.
I think it’s a great idea and executed very well, check out the promotional flyers and video after the jump.
It’s always nice to hear success stories from artists who put out their own indie releases, but this year I was able to witness first hand, and be a part of, such a project. I want to share with you how hip hop artist 
In 2007, Radiohead released its album “In Rainbows” with an interesting twist – along with traditional CD and vinyl versions, as well as 99 cent tracks on iTunes and other digital retailers, the band offered its own digital downloads of the album on a “pay what you want” basis.
British pop singer Lily Allen made a post on her 
I saw Mike Masnick post this on 
Another day, another band bringing their business model into the 21st century. Smashing Pumpkins have 
On GrindEFX we’re always talking about fan relationships. Connecting with your fans is a vital component of marketing your music. If you have that personal relationship with your fans they will want to support you by buying your music, merch, concert tickets etc.
Radio station to offer web streaming is not news. Web site to offer radio programming is.
Earlier today I spoke about Apple’s 
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