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.
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.
Electronica artist Moldover has come up with a very unique concept for his new CD. Not only has he built his own custom circuit board for his album artwork, but the CD itself is a musical instrument. Awesome! Yet another example of an indie musician using his head and giving fans a reason to buy.
You can listen to Moldover’s album for free on his website.
In this video Chris Anderson, author of Free: The Future of a Radical Price, is talking about free business models for news websites. Though a lot of what he talks about can be related to the music business, there was one thing he said in particular that I think a lot of musicians should think about.
Use free to reach a mass audience, and use paid to monetize the people who value it most.
Rock Band, Guitar Hero and Singstar have become huge in the video game market over the past few years, and for a very obvious reason; everybody wants to be a rockstar. But Rock Band are about to take a big step, they’re becoming a distributor.
The Rock Band Network, which will launch in beta next month in the US, will allow musicians to turn they’re songs into playable, Rock Band tracks. Not only that but they will be able to sell their songs to other Rock Band users for a price of their choice (between $0.50 and $3) and take a 30% cut of each sale. These won’t just be cheesy, polyphonic versions of your songs, this service will allow you to take the digital master of your song and turn it into a gameplay track (video after the jump).
AEG Live CEO Randy Phillips sat down with media outlets yesterday (July 2) to discuss the ticket refunds for, what would have been, the highest grossing single concert engagement ever.
More videos after the jump in which Phillips talks about a possible tribute concert, the hundreds of hours of rehearsal footage they possess and the pressure of booking the 02 Arena for their Summer dates.
Singer Amanda Palmer recently revealed on her website how she made $19k in 10 hours on Twitter. She accomplished this not by selling music, but by selling t-shirts.
I won’t tell you exactly what happened, it’s only a short video so watch it. Oh, and if you didn’t see my post on Mike Masnick’s NARM presentation about the “Music Commerce Frontier”, GO THERE NOW!
Jbara wasn’t just hand-wringing though. Instead, he was stating what has been obvious to many in the industry for some time. He and the other panelists sounded optimistic about the state of the music industry. They discussed issues that showed a clear grasp of how technology has changed music consumption and how the industry needs to respond, a clarity that, self-admittedly, was lacking even a few years ago.
Another NARM video, this time from Mike Masnick of Floor64 and TechDirt.
This presentation was fantastic, Mike prepared 515 slides of examples of musicians using their music to connect with their fan base to make profit. He explains how this is different to musicians just selling music and the advantages of offering your music for FREE to encourage fans to buy into your brand.
Mike used Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails as one example. They released their album “Ghosts I-IV” initially as a free download for the first 9 tracks, and $5 for all 36 tracks under a Creative Commons license. The Creative Commons license allowed fans to legally share the album, so essentially the album was released for FREE.
However they grossed $1.6 million after just one week. How did they do this?
Earlier today I spoke about Apple’s 
, is talking about free business models for news websites. Though a lot of what he talks about can be related to the music business, there was one thing he said in particular that I think a lot of musicians should think about.
Rock Band, Guitar Hero and Singstar have become huge in the video game market over the past few years, and for a very obvious reason; everybody wants to be a rockstar. But Rock Band are about to take a big step, they’re becoming a distributor.
![music piracy 150x150 [VIDEOS] 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online](http://www.grindefx.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/music-piracy-150x150.jpg "music-piracy")
What a way to start the morning. I’m sure some of you may remember me posting up a free e-book called: 
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