1. Follow Terry McBride CEO and Co-Founder of Nettwerk Music Group
Terry McBride is a two-time recipient of the Pollstar Industry Award for Personal Manager of the Year for his work with Sarah McLachlan (1997) and Avril Lavigne/Coldplay (2002), and recipient of the Walt Grealis Special Achievement Award at the 2003 Juno Awards, recognizing an outstanding individual who has contributed to the growth and advancement of the Canadian music industry.
2. Follow Derek Sivers Founder and former President of CD Baby
Winner of the 2003 World Technology Award, Derek Sivers founded CD Baby “by accident” in 1998 and turned it into the largest seller of independent music on the web, which he sold a decade later to Disc Makers.
While next-generation music pros are angling for music 2.0 success stories and peddling self-promotion concepts to upstart artists, Bruce Warila of musicXray wants us all to take a breather, not go overboard and lose our shorts. Bruce colourfully describes the myriad of current industry obstacles and unveils a step-by-step coup d’état. I particularly enjoyed this analogy, perhaps one of Bruce’s softer moments:
“Genres are coastlines, niches within genres are beachfront properties, and standalone artists are rocks or grains of sand. Sticking with the metaphor: coastlines and beachfront properties are compelling, interesting and entertaining; rocks and sand are things that get stuck in your shorts and sandals.”
Three very important shifts have taken place over the last decade. All of them are having a major impact on the way independent artists build their career. First, the record labels, movie studios, and other media companies no longer spend the time and energy they once did on discovering undiscovered talent. They’re more interested in promoting established artists, which they believe is a safer bet. Second, the tools to produce music, movies, books, and other kinds of art have been democratized: from ProTools to Garage Band to Final Cut Pro, they’re accessible and inexpensive. Third, the channels to distribute all sorts of creative products have also been blown wide open: today, anyone can distribute a video or a song or an image to a global audience, for free, on sites like MySpace, YouTube, and iTunes.
The result is the noisiest, most chaotic marketplace that creative artists have ever known. That noise and chaos creates the two biggest challenges facing artists today: how do you cultivate a big audience for your work, and how do you leverage that audience to support your career financially?
Scott Kirsner wrote Fans, Friends & Followers to address those challenges with useful strategies, examples, explanations, and first-person success stories. It includes an overview of the tools, sites, and services that pioneering artists are using to create a new relationship with their audience. The heart of the book is a collection of thirty interviews with visual artists, comedians, animators, documentary filmmakers, musicians, writers, and others who’ve pioneered new ways to build a creative career online (and off). It delves into the business models that can support leaving the day job behind. Musicians in the book include Damian Kulash of the band OK Go, talking about how they collaborate with their fans; Jill Sobule, who financed her 2009 release, “California Years,” through her Web site; DJ Spooky; lounge lizard Richard Cheese; and Jonathan Coulton, who has legions of fans who produce their own videos for his songs. And all of the material in the book was collected in 2008 and 2009.
On demand music streaming service, Spotify, has been on my radar since the company announced a distribution deal with CD Baby in the first week of February. CD Baby, the leading force in independent music retail and digital music distribution, represents more than 175,000 artists which account for over one million tracks, all of which are now available through Spotify’s lightweight music streaming application. This licensing deal marks the ‘long-tail’ trend in music availability and consumption, and celebrates the access independent artists have today to mass audiences through pioneering music services, many of which had treated indie talent as nothing more than an afterthought after securing major label catalogues. Under the aphorism of “access not ownership”, the Luxemburg-based company has been growing exponentially since its €15.3m venture capital injection in October 2008 and, in turn, joining an elite group of legal music experience providers such as Pandora, Last.fm, TheSixtyOne, and others, which have found success in catering to music consumers through a balanced and worldly music library whilst reserving significant real-estate for up and coming artists: a pop-culture and grassroots music mix that appears to be paving the way for a new industry. A spot in Spotify’s limelight is not yet available directly for small acts and labels but CD Baby has certainly lowered the barrier of entry. Thank you Derek or, rather, Disc Makers for making this possible…
The ridiculous feud between Gene Simmons and Bob Lefsetz came to a head at Canadian Music Week yesterday and has since been getting a lot of coverage. The entire exchange portrays both parties as ungainly and slapdash, and the issues neither relevant nor compelling. Just silly… but a good laugh. See for yourself if you haven’t already.
Stop motion video editing is popular on YouTube. I first got sight of its viral potential when young Lasse Gjertsen uploaded his outrageous piano and drum montage:
More recently, Oren Lavie enjoyed tremendous success beyond his YouTube exposure with a beautifully conceived yet shoe-string budgeted piece:
Yesterday, I discovered a symphony of YouTube clips that, collectively, sound quite amazing and reflect the exciting prospects of remixing previously published and shared content:
Over the weekend, I learned that Nimbit, which has been on my radar since Jon Delange of Tinderbox Music introduced me to the company’s CEO, Patrick Faucher, several months ago, has secured venture capital to the tune of $1 million. The company provides eCommerce solutions for artists and music promoters, and bespoke services such as digital distribution, CD/DVD replication and merchandise production, and web design. The company’s turnkey approach incorporates web technology to market and distribute digital music with physical solutions such as download cards and promotional prints. Nimbit appears to be acting in two ways: the first, as a technology company developing digital retail and marketing solutions such as embeddable storefront apps; and, the second, as a broker for commercial print requirements, from CD/DVD replication to custom-branded merchandise which complements its web facet.
Nimbit’s DownloadCards (credit card-sized branded cards with a unique ‘download’ code) can be sold or given away to the fan at the live venue and later redeemed online as digital tracks through a custom Nimbit store. This is an excellent example of digital commerce converging with physical commerce, however, DiscRevolt offers an almost identical solution. Emusu is also competing for a share of this market. In terms of digital music distribution, Nimbit is facing strong competition from TuneCore, ReverbNation, and CD Baby. As for print and duplication, Discmakers dominates the US music market and recently acquired Oasis, another formidable opponent in this space. Although Nimbit’s individual services are not particularly competitive as stand-alone features, the services, as a group offering, and Nimbit’s convenient all-under-one-roof approach, may satisfy artists and promoters with a slight edge.
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.
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:
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