When Sellaband launched in August 2006, it introduced music fans and unsigned artists to a revolutionary approach to meeting and collaborating with one another. By providing a financial incentive at the very core of its proposition, the German upstart pioneered an investment platform that provided fans with a stake in their favourite artists’ assets, and artists with a means of raising capital for recording and distribution from the folks who care about them the most: their fans. A seemingly far-fetched idea, the platform took off and, today, boasts an extensive fan funded artist base that has managed to raise over $2,200,000 collectively. Although a handful of fan funded music dotcoms exist, including SliceThePie and TheNextBigSound, Sellaband is leading the trend that has yet to illustrate its full potential as an industry shifting force. The company is now setting its sights on the US market with a high-profile endorsement from Chuck D.
Slicethepie and Bebo announced a co-venture this week whereby Bebo members will have the opportunity to grab the A&R seat at Slicethepie’s artist career-funding network. Strikingly similar in concept to Sellaband, Slicethepie is tapping into the leading British social network’s community assets while Sellaband remains very much an independent platform. The music “business” role-play idea has been embraced by a number of players in one form or another, including Songness, TheNextBigSound, and Soundout, a Slicethepie imprint, based on the belief that if potential fans are provided with both a true hand in an artist’s fledgling career as well as a financial incentive, consumer loyalty and word-of-mouth shall follow. Perhaps the shape of things to come.
An independent artist by the name of Rustcycle contacted me a couple of days ago about his interesting marketing idea and cross-over musical offering. Rustcycle (a.k.a. Adrian Johnson) developed a gorgeous looking 255-level iPhone and iPod Touch game which mimics the natural flow of particles when the player manipulates the electromagnetic field with his finger. Far out. The $0.99 game, aptly named NANO, is set to Adrian’s self-composed and produced ambient music, creating a “meditative, serene journey that stands in contrast with the tense experience of many other iPhone games.” Adrian has differentiated himself by bridging two talents to create an experience that few artists can compete with or even conceive of. By drawing users (paying users, incidentally) into a world of nodes and particles, Adrian is exposing his musical facets to a highly targeted new audience.
I love the thinking behind this and I praise Adrian for identifying and employing his strengths as a creative programmer in order to bring his musical attributes to the fore.
I’ve been following Bandcamp for a little while now (see earlier post) and I noticed today that the company made some revisions to its home page. Most notably, Bandcamp created a “features” page which lists the entire suite of tools and services. I was also delighted to learn that Bandcamp now provides Creative Commons licensing designations:
Under the Creative Commons licensing designations, artists who make their music public, in this case via Bandcamp, are providing limited rights to other artists and music fans who wish to remix, share, or use the music in a variety of ways without having to formally ask permission.
Music search engine, SeeqPod, that has already indexed (but not stored) 12 million songs, has been handed a formal complaint from EMI following a lawsuit from Warner last year. Unlike Pandora and Imeem, the company has not pursued licenses to provide “playable search results” maintaining that they are not responsible for content sources and, therefore, free from any obligation to the copyright holder. Legally questionable, Seeqpod has become very successful and the two major labels are probably going after it to settle on a mutual business model rather than to shut it down. The news prompted me to play with the system a little and I enjoyed learning about their artist-centric advertising progamme that’s highly targeted and cost competitive. Providing 5000 “exposures” (i.e. impressions) a month for $19.95, SeeqPod Echo is a nicely put together search-oriented advertising interface which may very well generate some relevant traffic for artists and music promoters who wish to tap into SeeqPod’s massive music listening community. I’m curious to learn how the conversion rates stack up.
It’s been more than a week now since I downloaded Officer Roseland’s album and I’m still waiting to receive my $1. I don’t want to be a jerk about this because I love the concept but, clearly, the band was unprepared for the overwhelming response. Their strategy was to pay users $1 if they downloaded the entire album for free. Fans had the option to donate their dollar to charity but it appears that the band’s target audience, myself included, is not as selfless as the band members anticipated. As such, Officer Roseland is facing a backlog of downloaders who submitted their PayPal addresses but have not yet received the one dollar contribution promised to them. I imagine that the group’s arrangement with the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation is more flexible than the opportunistic demographic the campaign was aimed at. I received a group email from the band this evening assuring me that the money is on its way… and that I can still change my mind and donate my one dollar, if I wish. I think I’ll stick to my guns on this one, not to be a jerk or anything, just to see what happens.
Here’s Officer Roseland’s response to the campaign:
Kyte, the San Francisco based company providing turn-key solutions for online and mobile digital content production, distribution and monetization, has announced the launch of custom iPhone and iPod Touch apps as a new means for music fans to access their favourite artists’ music, videos, news, and exclusive content. In a separate affair, 90’s rock group, Presidents of the United States of America, who made a name for themselves with “Lump” and “Peaches”, have just released their own iPhone app along the same lines. For $2.99, fans can stream the band’s entire catalogue over a Wi-Fi or cellular connection, as well as gain access to exclusive content and previously unreleased music. This is exciting music industry news! iPhone apps are hugely popular and provide an unparalleled platform for artists to access their audience and visa versa. It won’t be long before we see more and more artists, from megstars to indies, harnessing this technology to promote themselves, monetize their catalogue, and upsell associated initiatives and assets such as concert tickets and merchandise.
Philadelphia group, Officer Roseland, has taken the “free download” marketing strategy [flawlessly executed by Trent Reznor] a step further. As part of their marketing campaign for their fourth album release, “Stimulus Package”, the band is offering to pay $1 to every person who downloads the album. Each user has the option of “taking” the dollar or “giving” it to the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation. I entered my name and PayPal details to “take” the dollar on www.mystimuluspackage.org, opted-in for the band’s newsletter (by default), and received an email with a link to download the album. I am now waiting to receive my dollar…
Audiolife is an LA-based artist services company founded in 2005 by three USC graduates. Their mission is “to create a middle-class in the music industry by giving all artists simple tools to generate revenue so they can spend time on what they love and do best – make music!”. Currently in public beta, the company announced this week that it will be accepting submissions for its “Artist Advancement Scholarship”, an initiative geared toward college level music school students, artists and otherwise, in pursuit of a professional career in the music industry. Don’t let the inclusion of the word “scholarship” fool you though; this is a writing exercise where $500 cash is on the table for one winner, not a scholarship application to potentially finance your future academic studies. I imagine that Audiolife is seeking to achieve two things with this campaign, the first is to establish the company’s perceived value and, the second, to draw more users to learn about their offering by writing competitively about it. Personally, I would prefer to reward the best ten applications with $50 each and use their essays as original content on the site to raise Audiolife’s natural search ranking…
Applications must be received no later than 11:59 p.m. PST on April 1, 2009, in the form of an essay addressing the question, “How do you see Audiolife affecting the music industry in the next two or three years?”, in 1000 words or less. Students in any accredited academic university or music institution enrolled at least part-time during the 2009 academic school year are eligible. A winner will be selected by Audiolife’s management team and announced by April 20th, 2009. Essays should be emailed to Travis Dean at travis[at]audiolife.com
Ethan Diamond, the brain behind OddPost, the web mail service acquired by Yahoo! and, more recently, founder of Bandcamp, dispatched a newsletter today announcing the band portal’s new feature-set and recent upgrades. The free publishing platform boasts nifty and relevant tools for artists and band promoters to optimize their online presence and provide an uber-cool experience for fans and new comers. Armed with features such as domain redirection to a unique domain name within the site, fan email capturing on transactions, and IP licensing control (courtesy of Creative Commons) associated with the variety of ways to transmit music files, Bandcamp is set to become a popular choice for the brand conscious and online promotion savvy music community. In addition to Bandcamp’s visual bells and whistles and you-control-your-music ethos, the company focuses on pertinent music file meta-tagging and artist profile-specific search engine optimization for its individual members. Did I mention that it’s free? Bandcamp is really quite simple, down to earth, and rather wonderful.
Philadelphia group, Officer Roseland, has taken the “free download” marketing strategy [flawlessly executed by 
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