music, culture, discourse, new media
the business of music
20 years of Ninja Tune
Aug 21st
This year, British indie label Ninja Tune celebrates 20 years of bestowing upon us layered beats of aural bliss.
Founded by the musical duo Coldcut in 1990, the highly-regarded label has made a significant contribution as a pioneer and major influencer of the electronic music space. Now, some 90 artists deep (including artists like Ghislain Poirier, Amon Tobin, DJ Vadim, Roots Manuva, and Mr. Scruff) the label continues to serve as inspiration to artists everywhere including those they’ve sought relentlessly to promote.
Like similar electronic labels (Warp, Ghostly, DFA) the Ninja Tune sound is distinct, it’s brand is quality, and it’s street-cred thankfully remains intact in a marketplace with increasing crossover between electronic music and pop.
To celebrate, the label has issued Ninja Tune XX Box Set (to be released 10/5) , and the book 20 Years of Beats & Pieces (10/12), telling the story of the label, their artists, and their art.
More:
Free Ninja Tune iPhone app by Mobile Roadie
Related:
10 Years of Warp Records
The first HTML5 album, from Francis and the Lights
Jun 30th
Muxtape founder Justin Ouellette is back with a design created specifically to play on the iPhone 4 and iPad. This is a great workaround as both operating systems notoriously don’t stream Flash. You can listen to the full album, embed it, and download tracks directly from iTunes all while multitasking (a new feature for the iPhone). Pretty cool!
A Rant on Accessibility, Part 2: Gimme Gimme
Jun 25th
Music Technology is slowly changing. It’s adopting to consumer needs by giving music fans access to music anytime, almost anywhere, from anyplace.
New models like Rdio and Spotify allow us to search and listen for pretty much anything as long as there’s a solid network connection + computer or smart phone. We can easily create playlists and share them with friends. We can discover new music and in the case of Spotify, collaborate on dynamic playlists and create artist or decade-centric radio stations.
Old models like Rhapsody work like a storefront while granting us access to music in exchange for a monthly subscription fee. This model, although advanced at the time, still doesn’t allow us to see other users’ playlists or collaborate in an interactive way.
MOG is a strong contender in the marriage of content with editorial. With a firehose of musical content coming at us constantly, it’s nice to have direction from tastemakers to learn about what’s worth checking out.
Most notably, portability has become a reality with the development of apps for the smart phone. On the open-source Android platform, music specific apps like iMusic and Chompin make listening to music on the go a breeze – and are possibly the cleverest of the new breed.
Both apps aggregate music from blogs rather than hosting the content locally.
iMusic snags it’s musical database from what users are already listening to, similar to how Last.fm agreggates possibly one of the largest collections of music metadata on the internet simply by leveraging the data provided by its users.
By aggregating music from blogs, both services eschew potential legalities of making music available that hasn’t been officially released to the marketplace yet. It also broadens search.
Crawling blogs makes the odds of finding the exact track one is looking for – a b-side, remix, or live version – much greater.
This is particularly important because music fans take pride in discovering something new and/or exclusive. We invest our time in these sites. It’s disappointing when we can’t get access to music we know is out there. We can’t play DJ, or personalize playlists on your site as much as we’d like to.
What iMusic and Chompin are doing is brilliant, not only because it makes the user experience better – but it’s also indicative of a newer and perhaps broader way of purchasing music.
Labels are still hesitant to leave content in the hands of consumers. Sure, we download illegal promos, search for torrents of leaked albums, and unflinchingly pass along un-licensed mixtapes. But in truth this isn’t a bad thing.
Here’s why: music fans do it feverishly. They do it with a passion. They chomp at the proverbial bit for these leaks.
We want to be tastemakers. We’re eager to be the first to tell our friends about something new. And when we like it, we’re telling everyone we know. Hyperdistribution, anyone? Even according to the old business model, this remains the single best way to acquire a superfan.
If a record has stickiness, it can be released into the wild and it WILL be noticed.
It might not be picked up on the traditional charts but you’ll see it on Hype Machine. It’ll appear on We Are Hunted. You’ll see friends dedicate singles to one another and watch viral videos over and over again. Let these users decide what they like. Give them access to everything, and keep an eye on the numbers. If the music is good and the marketing power behind the band is smart enough – the revenue will follow.
The concept of music ownership is affected by the aforementioned technologies anyway. Why would I want to tend to my un-wieldy music collection when I can queue up a playlist in the cloud?
To be clear, ownership is not going away. It’s simply changing.
If I can listen to a full, lo-fi version of a amazing record on repeat – for free – I’ll gladly shell out my hard-earned moolah for hi-res WAV files.
I’ll buy a ticket to the show when the band comes to town. If I’m in love with a particular record (which tends to happen every week with die-hard music fanatics), I’ll see them again and again. I’ll be inclined to purchase vinyl or limited-edition items like prints and other merch.
Make music more accessible – and let the fans decide.
If it’s good enough, they’ll tell their friends. And buy concert tickets. And a hi-res copy of the album. And subscribe to the fan club.
And so on, and so on.
related:
Choice Albums of 2009
Dec 12th
There were many amazing releases this year from all genres, ranging from well known artists to the obscure.
Below are my top 10 pics for 2009 as well as a quite considerable list of notable runners-up!
Runners Up:
Doves “Kingdom of Rust”
Bodycode “Immune”
Silversun Pickups “Swoon”
Muse “The Resistance”
White Rabbits “It’s Frightening”
Nosaj Thing “Drift”
DJ Vadim “U Can’t Lurn Imaginashun”
One Eskimo “One Eskimo”
Ingrid Michaelson “Everybody”
The XX “xx”
Volcano Choir “Unmap”
The Antlers “Hospice”
Dead Weather “Horehound”
Neon Indian “Psychic Chasms”
Dead Man’s Bones “Dead Man’s Bones”
Califone “All my Friends are Funeral Singers”
Mayer Hawthorne “A Strange Arrangement”
Monsters of Folk “Monsters of Folk”
Phoenix “Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix”
Click here for last year’s choice music podcasts of 2008.
Mining Moof
Oct 25th
Moof.com is one service of many that’s a step closer to granting us an all-access portal to our iTunes music collections from off-site.
A simple .xml export/import from iTunes allows Moof to quickly assess your library, referencing all tracks and playlists located there.
Moof currently pulls content from YouTube. Often, it pulls live versions of songs rather than the original, making it fun to watch video playback while adding a new dimension to the casual listening experience.
The site brings closer the idea of having access to our music collection anywhere, from any device of choice (almost – when am I gonna get access from my car stereo receiver, anyway?). A huge bonus is the ability to share songs and playlists with others.
Some sites like Drowned in Sound and We Are Hunted already do this on cloud-based music streaming service Spotify.
It will be interesting to see if Moof – or a related site – will eventually partner with content providers to enable full-on access to everything in my iTunes library whether it be live versions, remixes, rarities, or originals.
I want to Spotify
Jun 12th
Spotify, a music service currently only available outside of the US, is a social streaming site that allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums.
Users can easily share their library with friends and collaborate on playlists.
Although ownership of music is important to users in general a more pressing issue is accessibility. Sites like Hype Machine and Imeem allow us to share songs with friends, but we can only share the content that those sites have available to us.
By employing the peer-to-peer model like Spotify does, I can upload those special gems and curated playlists I spend weeks agonizing over. My friends can then stream the music and click-through to purchase for legitimate ownership of the song.
Spotify takes advantage of the “cloud“- data living over the internet as opposed to locally on your computer. We can peruse music quickly this way without downloading it first. Then, if a user wants ownership of the song, it can be purchased – supporting the artist rather than jacking it from a blog.
Makes sense to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify
New Music: Lee Fields & The Expressions
Apr 26th
Lush soul music from an artist who is the real deal. Lee Fields recorded and released on his own independent label in the 70′s and has returned with “My World”, produced by NYC’s Truth & Soul label and production team.
Lee Fields’ voice, not just his name, may also sound familiar as he’s made appearances in the past on Sharon Jones’s critically acclaimed album “Naturally”, and recorded alongside French house producer Martin Solveig.
This one goes out to all you soul-revivalists out there.
Singing About Songbird
Mar 31st
Note: This article is syndicated at made this for you.
When it comes to media management, iTunes is a staple for handling my music library. A self-professed music junkie, I need a library that’s seamless to navigate, highly organizable, and can accommodate a limitless amount of files in a variety of formats.
I don’t infrequently tie my needs to any particular brand or product line. Although I love Apple products and require them to function on a daily basis, I try to switch it up whenever possible by incorporating tools and technologies from a variety of sources.
And I thought nothing could top iTunes until I discovered what Songbird can do.
Songbird offers the basic functionality of iTunes – unrestricted file capacity and unlimited playlists, navigational ease, import/export options; but tricks it out on many levels.
The open-source software offers total customization of your audio player. It offers plug-ins called “add-ons” that pull in bonuses while your music plays like concert info, data from last.fm, Shoutcast radio, and more. The MashTape add-on looks for related content like photos, video, and reviews from your bands by pulling in data from Flickr, YouTube, and Amazon. Online digital music store 7Digital recently partnered with Songbird to offer full integration. The store, currently in beta, will offer 320 kbps DRM-free MP3 downloads. They also promise to offer custom recommendations in the future based around what you’re playing from your library.
With all of these features, Songbird is a serious contender in becoming a viable alternative to iTunes. The only major downside is that Songbird doesn’t seamlessly connect to AirTunes allowing wireless playback from Songbird to a home stereo. A quick fix is a tool called Airfoil from Rogue Amoeba (the same company that created Audio Hijack). Although it will set you back $25 it seems to do the trick.
Songbird is an open-source, fully customizable music player built on the open-source media framework Gstreamer. You can participate by hacking on the software and trying out new builds before they’re released. A developer Recipe Book offers code snippets for “Featherers” to tinker with.They sell some pretty kick-ass t-shirts too!
Contribute: http://getsongbird.com/contribute/
Get Songbird v 1.1.1 now: http://getsongbird.com/
Musings: Crafting Mixtapes in a Digital Age
Mar 2nd
At the end of each month I make a mixtape and send it to a small group of friends. It’s a mix of new, old, and remixed music, with some fun rarities like unreleased b-sides or cover songs thrown in for good measure.
15 years ago I made mixtapes using a different methodology – cassettes. I taped songs from the radio or dubbed songs from other tapes or CDs. To my friends’ dismay I would cut in and out of songs, looping bits, chopping about to create my own customized mix. I decorated the CD case with felt-tip markers and distributed the batch from a tattered, blue plastic Gap bag that weekend or whenever I saw someone next (In other words they didn’t receive the mix right away. You can see where I’m headed with this).
Technology has made it innumerably easier to create and distribute a digital mixtape. However, these mixtapes are frowned upon by the powers-that-be because rights for each song need to be cleared prior to streaming them.
In a digital age of advanced marketing and cross-promotional tactics – why can’t a mixtape become a promotional vehicle, a flipped funnel so to speak – rather than totally shut out as a viable way of sharing music?
Hyperdistribution can work for an artist, not necessarily against.
15 years ago an optimal distribution method would be me sharing a song that I’m crazy about with, let’s say, 10 friends. Great case scenario, 5 of those 10 friends go out and buy the CD and even tell another friend or two about the band. Fast forward to now and this translates to quick dedications, sharing, tagging, and embedding with hopefully the eventual intent to buy the single or album.
I understand the popularity of widgets to share and track music. But I think there’s a need for something even more nimble; a universal technology that can allow a song to travel further by becoming directly associated with the content.
Perhaps something along the lines of an embed code could travel with each song, containing an accompanying click-thru link for users to purchase the content. The code could incorporate tracking so promos intentionally leaked to blogs could be followed and music could become legitimately spread by fans on a viral level. The code could be user or label assigned and registered in a database somewhere, like a Gracenote vox populi.
By tracking content but allowing it to travel freely everyone wins. The artist gets marketing feedback, promotion, potential sales and recognition, and I can safely put together a mixtape that rocks, all the while knowing that I’m not only telling my friends about this cool artist but also making it super-easy for them to buy the work or tell someone else about it.
This kind of technology could potentially legitimize sites like Muxtape, a playlist-building site that allows users to upload their playlists and share them with friends on a streaming-only basis.
Playlist building sites like Imeem are great because they clear rights from the labels up front – allowing users to stream, share, and embed content hassle-free. But what about us die-hard music fans who want to share the remixes, rarities, and b-sides – stuff that”s just not out yet?
DJ’s and music fans have been clamoring for decades to be the first to drop that unreleased promo or song that is bound to make everyone go nuts. The digital age hasn’t changed that. if I get my hands on a hot new song, I want to tell everyone I know about it. That’s the job of the DJ. It’s the job of a music fan. And that won’t change now or 15 years from now.
A rant on accessibility (or, i left that perfect song at home yet have 3 iPods on me)
Feb 14th
I’m a sucker for streaming content and the possibilities thereof. Not just because having ‘content in a cloud’ sounds sexy or because I don’t have cable at home and want to scratch a pop culture itch.
I believe that media should be accessible anytime, anyplace, from any device of choice.
From a user perspective it’s just convenient that way.
For example I want my music library with me at all times. I want access to my eMusic, Rhapsody, Last.fm, Blip and Slacker accounts and my purchases from Amazon Mp3 and iTunes. In a perfect world I would have all of these things with me at all times so I can cue up a song in the car, at the gym or at home. I want to tag a song on the go, share it with friends, and add it to a playlist to listen to later.
I want to tag a song I hear and reference it later quickly and easily.
I realize that there are many hurdles from both biz and tech standpoints for this to happen anytime soon. But do I think that syndicating content across platforms and creating ops for ad revenue there could be a good thing.
