MUSIC INDUSTRY BLOG

Tomorrow, MySpace Music will open its gates to TuneCore artists, Wired.com reported.  TuneCore’s artists will be able to distribute their music through MySpace and benefit from streaming royalties, though the company has not commented on how much.  Probably very little.

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Yesterday, TechCrunch reported that Google is preparing to launch a music service.  The project, in partnership with LaLa and the recently acquired iLike, is expected to surface during a Hollywood event dubbed “Discover Music!” on the 28th October 2009.  More details here.

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MySpace Disables Auto-Play Feature
Twitter users are more engaged with music

MySpace disabled its auto-play feature last month in a bid to save $10m/month in streaming fees.  Next Big Sound reported on the impact this move has had on the number of overall plays on the site and, interestingly, how “the number of streams MySpace reports is no longer inflated by auto-play and is more directly impacted by true fans listening to their favorite songs.”

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Twitter users are more engaged with music
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Quit your day job.  Start a label.

Launching this month, Freak is a new drama made for MySpace from the creators of American Idol, Fermantle Media.  Freak will air each week in 15 minute doses on MySpace, with sponsoring brands, Red Bull and Tampax, tied into the plot… It’s a semi-reality treatment reminiscent of MTV’s The Hills with a social networking twist where fans of the show follow the characters’ individual MySpace profiles and take part in the content, context and direction of the show.  Best of all, you can submit your band’s MySpace profile for consideration for the program’s soundtrack, here.

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MySpace and Toyota have teamed up to promote Rock the Space, an unsigned artist contest where the winner wins a record deal with MySpace Records plus $10,000 worth of Fender gear.  There’s an entire experience around the submission process, from uploading music and photos to customizing your “demo tape” widget and getting your friends to add it to their page.  The design-your-tape wizard is pretty cool.  Five finalists will be selected for a public vote.  Deadline July 1st.  Free to enter.  Details here.

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The six finalists of Breaking the Band 5.  A winner will be announced shortly.

Skittles have the right idea.  When engaging their customers online, rather than developing an all-encompassing website, they simply grouped together their community assets (i.e. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter etc.) into a single navigation menu and window interface.  For instance, on Skittles.com, if you click on ‘Pics’, you go directly to Flickr.  This approach inspired UnHub to create  a service that will help you build your online presence by grouping your various network pages into a single URL.  Simple, clean and brilliant.  I created an example for We Are Listening.

Starting at approximately $1000, emusu provides a turn-key solution for managing and selling your digital assets from your own domain, as opposed to distributing to third-party ecommerce websites or via social network applications.  The system is entirely web-based and the company is sinking its teeth into the music industry.  Ouch. 

The service allows its customers to create custom web pages from a series of handy templates and enable fans to buy directly from the source or incorporate its technology into an existing site geared for music retail.

The fact is that most artists simply don’t sell.  In fact, most labels don’t sell a volume of any note.  As such, even if the service was free, managing your own music sales is not too far up your priority list unless you’re shifting so many units that iTunes’ commission significantly diminishes your bottom line.  Furthermore, if MySpace, boasting approximately three million *active* musician users can’t make Snocap work on exclusive terms, how is emusu going to convince prospective clients that they can sell – and sell more – on their own?

At a time where the industry is shifting away from record sales and toward ticketing, merchandising, bundling, licensing, sponsorship, and advertising, emusu is a surprising entry into the space.  Selling recorded music is no longer the end game but rather the marketing collateral to sell something else.  The infamous 360 deal is a tribute to this strategy and Live Nation is a testament to its success.  Starbucks too.

However, if emusu can leverage its platform to forward thinking megastars such as Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails, both of which ’sold’ direct-to-the-fan, they may have a lucrative client.  Or two.

If you Google – myspace music marketing – you will find a medley of useless tips on how to add more friends, write enticing messages, customize your page, and do more of what approximately 3 million active musicians on myspace are already doing, most of whom are still not getting any more attention than they did when they first joined.  Don’t get me wrong, I love myspace and I believe that myspace music marketing is absolutely essential.  Actually, I hate myspace but I do believe it’s essential and, now, a music industry standard.

Forget about robots for your myspace music marketing strategy.  And don’t worry, labels are no longer counting the number of friends and plays on your profile (it’s hard to believe they ever did!) so you need not spend all day and night adding friends aimlessly.  Start thinking about a targeted myspace music marketing approach whereby you only contact ‘friends’ you truly believe will take an interest in you and your music.  After all, online social networking answers to the same principles as day to day networking: you may work the room, but you don’t go into business with everyone you meet.

If you’re eager to raise your profile, dig deeper.  Rather than thinking about your number of friends, think about the ratio of friends vs. plays.  For example, If you have 1000 friends and 1000 plays, that should raise a big red flag: your friends accepted your invitation, listened to your music once (on average), and never came back.  For a truly effective myspace music marketing approach, keep your outreach to a minimum and focus on the folks that listen to your brand of music, attend live shows by artists with mutual musical qualities, and are likely to show up to your next gig.  If you don’t play outside of Nevada, why badger someone in Minnesota every other day?  Keep your myspace music marketing initiatives user-specific, short, and to the point.  Spend less time marketing to everyone and more time marketing to a small group of truly potential fans.  Before you know it, your myspace music marketing campaigns will be powered by your fanbase, a more potent and authoritative music marketing force than just you.

“MySpace has reinstated the registered URL www.myspace.com/mobile to the band–this was an error on our part and we apologize for any inconvenience caused. The band’s profile has not been altered in any way.”

MySpace took http://www.myspace.com/mobile which Canadian group, Mobile, registered with two years ago and redirected it to its new mobile enterprise.