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.

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.

We’ve seen musicians use this strategy already, Trent Rezner and Amanda Palmer are two of the more well known success stories, and it very much comes under Mike Masnick’s “Cwf + RtB” idea that we’ve discussed a lot. Giving your music to fans for free in order to strike a connection, then providing something of extra value that your more serious fans will eat up.

When you give your music away for free, you are increasing the chance of more people hearing it and broadening your fanbase. As your fanbase widens, you will have more people wanting to support you by buying merch, concert tickets, special editions etc., your imagination is your only limit. Amanda Palmer sold one of her fans an empty wine bottle for $300!

I urge you to experiment and find a business model that works for you. What is successful for someone else may not be successful for you, think outside the box and try out different things with your fans. You’re not going to be right all of the time, but it only takes one great idea!

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).

Not just anybody will be able to publish songs, potential publishers will need a membership to Microsoft’s XNA Creators Club Online in order to test and publish game content. The service will only be available to those who purchase a premium membership to Microsoft’s XNA Creators Club Online, which can be purchased for four months at $49.99 or for a year at $99.99.

Now while many of you may think that’s a downer, I think it’s a good way to stop the network becoming saturated with every Tom, Dick and Harry trying to make a quick buck from their garbage music. All songs will also have to be reviewed by Rock Band before being published.

“Our goal with Rock Band has always been to go beyond making music games and create a true music platform,” said Alex Rigopulos, CEO and co-founder of Harmonix. “With the Rock Band Network, we’ve evolved the platform to its next logical step, giving players access to an incredible amount of new music by putting the professional tools we use in the hands of the artists themselves.”

“The Rock Band Network enables songwriters and musicians – at any stage of their careers – to create their own paths through the interactive music realm,” said Paul DeGooyer, Senior Vice President, Electronic Games and Music, MTV Networks Music Group. “Our download store has been an extraordinary success, and it’s exciting for us to provide access to our platform through this uniquely elegant solution.”

I think we all saw this coming, allowing bands to actually sell their own music through the game was the next logical step for these types of games. I’m sure Guitar Hero will soon be following suit. We will keep you updated on this. Check the video below for a look at the service.

What a way to start the morning. I’m sure some of you may remember me posting up a free e-book called: 20 Things You Must Know About Music Online.

Well the university the author works for created a series of videos based on the sections of this book.

Note: This is not a video version of the book, it’s 20 different video podcasts of the author discussing each section of the book.

Enjoy

Source: New Music Strategies

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!