Tunecore + Universal. Catch or no catch?

Ok, that does it. I have to write a post about this whole Tunecore / Universal partnership-thingy that has been going on since the release of the official news last Thursday. For those of you who aren’t aware of this historical event, here’s a quick summary.

Tunecore= low-fee digital distribution platform for bands, that places their music on sites like iTunes, eMusic, Amazone and others. Tunecore launched in 2006 and since then has become one of the most prominent and active digital distribution models out there.

Universal=largest behemoth record label on the planet. Is known to engulf record labels, and many other things.

Since July 9th, Tunecore+Universal=first ever partnership where a major record label offers services instead of offering contracts to indie artists (that I know of).

Since my synopsis might have been unclear, I’ll let Jeff Price, CEO of Tunecore, explain: “In a nutshell, in addition to regular old TuneCore.com, we will also be hosting and serving websites for Universal labels that provide artists distribution while taking none of the artists rights or revenues. At these label portal sites, you not only get distribution but also extra things from each label. We do not yet know what the “extra things” are as each label will be creating their own. These extra things could be musician services, marketing, promotion, information, opportunities etc.“

Here’s also an extract of the Ars Technica review on the matter (recommended read): “any artist (big or small) can sell music through iTunes and Amazon for $9.99 already with the help of TuneCore, but now artists can choose to “sign themselves” to one of UMG’s labels—assuming the label is agreeable—for more marketing and distribution opportunities for a separate flat (and affordable) fee. [...] Each label within UMG will have its own package of offered services, providing many different choices for the discerning musician. Price said that the individual labels will set up portal sites that will outline what they can do for artists, like finding a similar band to open for you at your next show. “The labels are going to do this without pre-signing or tying down the artist,” (first services should open-up around October 2009)

So now artists have the possibility of signing themselves to a major record label. Historical indeed.

Actually UMG and Tunecore have been in partnership since last year – Tunecore bands have the possibility of ordering mastering sessions from Universal’s studios for only $50 a song. Forum discussion confirmed that the quality was pretty amazing for the price. But this new deal is something else. What does it all amount to for both the artists and UMG’s labels? Well I haven’t been able to find the catch yet and I find myself seduced by the greatness of the initiative.

Is this the model the established record industry needs to follow? Outsourcing its services and know-how to the indie market? Artist can now be DIY and DBSE (done by someone else), keep their rights, and have a steady foot in the door of big time players’ facilities and services. From Universal’s standpoint, such a deal amounts to one big A&R operation without the hassle of actually sending out scouts. If there is no blatant catch here, Tunecore artists will be working side-by-side with a major engaging in a healthy B2B fashion. Really sounds like a win-win.

So seriously, what’s the catch? Is there a possibility that there might be no catch? I have been so brainwashed and accustomed to pointing fingers at major labels that I feel there must be one. As cited above, this might be one the solutions we all need right now, because even in the event where a consolidated band gets approached by UMG to sign whatever sort of contract via this system, I have a tendency to think that the whole process would be different, that the exploitation could come to a halt. Why? Well for different reasons, and for me the most obvious one would be because otherwise this whole new relationship UMG will be developing with the indies would crumble. They would get smacked by music communities in not time if they were to abuse their rights. And they know it’s time for a change.

Although this is still business and not some care bear inspired scenario, and although all of this might only be wishful thinking, such a deal has the potential of re-instating mutual trust between majors, unsigned bands and the public, and this might as well lead to music of a more experimental nature to reach a new, long lost level of popularity and properity, since it will be the artists themselves that will intiate the financial risks.

So catch, or no catch?

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NoiseTrade finds a nice formula to connect bands with their fans

Doing my regular routine search on Killer Startups‘ video-music-photo section, I discovered this very interesting widget developer called NoiseTrade that focuses its efforts music promotion.  The start-up’s widget is apparently working wonders in terms of connecting bands with their fans with a single two-sided distribution model. After these two pretty vague sentences, let me explain:

An artists signs-up, uploads up to 20 songs to the widget, and places it wherever he/she desires. The widget enables fans to either a/pay a minimum of $1 to download the promoted album or b/recommend the album to five people of their choice and receive it for free.

This didn’t strike me as a particularly innovating idea before I actually clicked on one of their widget’s eye-soothing orange ‘Tell Five Friends’ button. By spending virtually no more than 2 minutes of your time, you get an entire album for free (192 kb/s mp3s) and you promote an artist’s music directly to five people. Very viral and very community-friendly.

Now on the business side of things, to enroll in the NoiseTrade ‘program’, artists are required to pay a flat fee of $250 to activate their widget giving them 20 000 downloads total (meaning their album can be downloaded 20 000 times for that fee). Once they reached that mark, bands are to pay $75 for every additional 5000 downloads. Added to that, NoiseTrade also scoops up a %10 margin on every ‘pay-what-you-want’ transaction.

This may seem expensive to some, but according to CEO Derek Webb, his bootstrapped company barely makes money with his Amazone S3 hosting eating up most of the profit. Besides, the virality of such a widget can easily make up for the $250 promotional cost.

Derek had released his album ‘Mockingbird’ back in 2006 and gave it away for free in exchange for the downloaders’ information. Within three months he had reached 80 000 downloads and immediately noticed an increase in show attendance and album sales. That experience originated his NoiseTrade concept.

For those of you skeptical about paying what seems to be a fortune in the p2p music world we now live in, taking a step back might help you realize that paying $250 for an immense list of emails and postal codes of fan, or potential-fans, isn’t that much, and NoiseTrade’s aim is to enroll bands who already have an established fan-base.

One thing I really loved about the website is the subtle-sober beauty of its design and navigation. You would expect the artist profile to take you through the usual mind numbing task of entering your band info and uploading songs, but here the process actually felt….not too boring. I barely knew what the service was about that it already made me feel at ease with it, as if the fact that I was uploading songs really meant something. Don’t ask me why, but that’s what came to mind at the time :)

Check it out:
Website: www.noisetrade.com
Blog: www.noisetrade.com/blog/index.php?bp=y

mruff!

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Just hear it: new music search engine looking simple and sober

Checking out this new music search engine called Just Hear It and it’s looking great! I’m happy cause so many of these sites are seeing the light of day these past months and most of them just don’t cut it. Simplicity and soberness are the words of the day and Just Hear It couldn’t be easier of use (and it’s legal – they’re paying licensing fees to ASCAP, BMI and SESAC).

• Type in a song or artist
• List of tunes appears
• Double click on song to load it in player
• Add song to playlist by dragging or by pressing one single button

That’s what Just Hear It allows us to do and that’s about all that needs to be done. I couldn’t ask for less.

Well actually there is more to Just Hear It than just that like sharing links to your songs, and they seem to have some plans for the future. But still, I can’t stress this enough: the fastest way for for us to find and consume what we’re looking for is the best way and Just Hear It seems to have understood that (reminds me a lot of how the old RadioBlogClub used to work, but only better).

They are still in a invite-only private beta phase but you can still browse through songs and create playlists if you don’t have an account.

mruff

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Pay The Band: blog for displeased musicians

Should bands pay-to-play at gigs? Should bands play free shows just for the exposure? Is it a viable business decision to play as many gigs as possible or is it a better solution to be selective? Where to place the fine line between seeing your music as a pure art-form or seeing it as revenue source?

It all depends on so many factors I’m not even going to pretend to have a concrete opinion. Well ok fine, I do have an opinion but it isn’t worth much. I for one am not an extremist on such matters, but that’s probably because I don’t depend upon my music to pay the rent. It wouldn’t bother me to write some cheesy pop song for a good pay check although I’m a musical elitist. I believe most pop trends are laughable and play a poor, vicious role for the young generation’s musical education, but I would still be able to play the game to ease up my bank account.

As mentioned, I don’t live off my music so I can’t compare with artists who do (even if I have done my share of voluntary work as a sound engineer and composer). And as for bands that alter their image and music to get a grip on larger audiences and increase sales, as long as it is not a blatant marketing move and the quality of the music isn’t baffled I’m ok with it.

But the real concern is that music is more often than not taken for granted, and the musicians are those who suffer the consequences by being cornered into playing for free or paying to play. We covered a topic on ‘Should bands pay to play at gigs‘ and got some interesting comments on whether it was a healthy practice or not. On another note, buzz terms like ‘free-music’ and ‘greater exposure’ that come from the online music revolution, are so incrusted in people’s minds that they even have negative effects for musicians in the offline world.

Irminsul (celtic harpist extraordinaire) put me on to this fresh new blog that does a great job expressing its opinions on such issues, and since I had a blast reading its articles I’ll pass it on to you.

http://paytheband.blogspot.com

You already got to love their motto that goes: “Advancing the radical idea that musicians should be paid“. Here’s their ‘About’ description just to get you going.

Pay The Band “is a core advocacy group made up of musicians, music lovers and people with a sense of fairness, who believe that performing and composing musicians have a right to earn a living. We believe that all too often, individuals and businesses seek to advantage themselves using live music, but do not want to pay for it. Therefore PAY THE BAND seeks to spread awareness, partner with sympathetic business institutions and gather information in order to advance fair and regular compensation for working musicians. “A ‘thank you’ doesn’t pay the fiddler” – Gaelic Proverb”.

Very good read. Enjoy.

murff.

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Why bands should consider playing house concerts

Why house concerts?

Playing bars, pubs and clubs isn’t the only way to host a live show. You don’t always have to cope with the usual business aspects of booking a gig in some rut negotiating with a ill-tempered club owner paying you peanuts (kind of extreme, but you get my drift). There are alternatives, and one of them is performing a concert in the comfort of somebody’s home (or your own by that matter).

There are very interesting advantages to trying this out:

• You usually get to plan it how you want.
• Most house venues demand donations ranging from $5 to $20. In many cases the people hosting the show leave %100 of all proceeds to the musicians. Let’s do some quick math: $15 donation/entrance fee with 40 people attending will net you an easy $600 for the night, merchandise not included.
• The people hosting these shows are PASSIONATE about music, so most will leave you all the earnings, plus throw in a free cooked meal and possibly a place to stay for the night.
• These concerts engage the artist and their audience in a level of intimacy that’s incomparable with a traditional venue. This can lead to healthier fan relationships and of course (sorry to always lay down the cash concerns) better merchandise sales.

A couple of websites so you get the idea:

This one site called Concerts In Your Home is a resource/community for artists and hosts. Hosts can search more than 500 artists on the site, and artists can search detailed profiles of more than 200 house concert presenters in the US, Canada, UK, even Australia and New Zealand. Most performers play blues, folk and acoustic styles, so nothing too extreme. Anyways most places don’t have a PA so musicians prepare acoustic sets.

In the same vein we also have HouseConcerts.com. Here the model is a bit different as this site proposes a listing of people who offer their homes to host shows.

For Canadian house concerts you can also  check out www.acousticroof.ca.

There is also houseconcertsyork.co.uk who conduct these events around York, UK.

Besides ‘Concerts In Your Home’, most sites are pretty local and isolated, but by surfing through the web you’ll find tons of them. The house concert movement is definitely stirring.

A couple of quotes so you get an even better idea:

I’ll leave you to some quotes I gathered talking with some house-concert-aspiring-ministrels:

I haven’t done that many house concerts but the ones that I have done have been some of my favorite shows. I generally feel that I’m “at home” and playing for friends. Pay is generally as good or better than small venues. Success level, attendance wise, seems to relate to the host’s knowledge of his or her environment and enthusiasm in promotion. I absolutely love playing house concerts and I’m very grateful for the trend.
Ronny Elliot – www.ronnyelliott.com

I think they are awesome and a lot of times way better than a club gig. People are actually there to hear you which is not always the case in most clubs. Each house concert is run differently, but for the most part, it seems typical that they charge anywhere from $5 to $20 at the door and a lot of times give the artist %100. Some take a percentage, it just depends. Artists also get to sell merch in an intimate environment, compared to a club where that is nearly impossible. I love these gigs and wouldn’t mind supplementing them for clubs gigs altogether (ok, maybe not completely: most home concert throwers have their own guest list, so I could not omit clubs altogether or else a lot of fans would miss out on live shows!)
Rachel McGoye – www.rachelmcgoye.com

I’m finding myself playing more and more house concerts, though I have not given up on live-music in public settings. The appeal is pretty straightforward, provided the host and audience understand the
casual-but-professional dynamic (or are at least willing to follow): low overhead (save, of course, the benevolence and spirit of the host!) and thus much better pay (even 10 people at $10/head makes for a better night than many places’ll guarantee!); great environment in which to connect and interact (vs. noisy pubs, for instance); not nearly so lonely if attendance is light or I’m not as known in a particular community; etc. Word is out, though, so presenters are becoming bombarded just like everyone else in the community.
Wes Weddell – www.myspace.com/wesweddell

And to conclude, here is an extract of ‘The Complete Guide To House Concerts‘ Kevin Kelly (author of the renowned ‘1000 True Fans‘ manifesto) promotes on his website:

At the end of every house concert, at least one person will approach you because they want to set-up a concert with you at their house. And once people find out the Suzie is going to host one, many more will want to show you off to their friends and family too. Before the night is through you will be in the lovely position of adding several names and numbers to your house-concert file and following up with them to book a firm date for each show.
When you play bars or cafes, it is frequently a struggle even getting the booker on the phone. With house concerts you are constantly juggling plenty of gig offers, which come with guarantee money, a guarantee audience, and a minimum of hassles. What could be better?

Apparently there is a booming market for these shows, so if your set can be performed acoustically it seems pretty worth while to give them a shot.

We’ll be posting other quotes on this subject shortly, so stay mruffed.

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