Digital Purchase vs. Streaming

Source: Spotify Doesn’t Sound So Great to Some Artists

The article talks about how major acts from major labels refuse release their new albums on Spotify despite of big advances labels took. Also at the end the Author mention how artists are losing a source of income to Grooveshark and Torrents illegal downloads.

Probably all you can think is lady Gaga and $160 check she got from Spotify for 1 million plus plays. Here’s some things you need to know. She did not get paid as the artist. She got paid a as a writer. Even as a writer, she is a half owner of the song. On top of this, publisher took a good chunk of her royalties too.

Now let’s talk about some numbers between Digital Purchase vs. Streaming.

When it comes to iTunes sales…
Writers get mechanical royalties same as CD sales, which is a great thing, however reason why labels prefer actual CD sales are the money they get is much higher. They dont’ have to pay Apple, distributer/aggregator (when it is a CD sales major labels own distribution channels), and all of the above that takes money away. Label gets less than a half of $9.99 an album sales. It looks pretty bad, right? Streaming is even worse.

When it comes to streaming…
Here it gets interesting. It starts from how much revenue a streaming service generate that month, quarter, an year. From the revenues, they will take out all expenses (staff, servers, buildings, and etc), divide all that into how many songs have been played. Then pay aggregators, and pay to the labels according to their royalty deals. How much labels get paid? A fraction of a cent. Per album, they would get paid few cents. So how much do artists get paid? A fraction of a fraction of a cent. I am talking here with paid subscribers. With freemium users this number gets even worse.

Plus Spotify will never release exact figures how much they paid royalties to who. Why? The deal between Spotify and each labels are different.

My Thoughts…

If you are a label or an artist, which one would you prefer? Isn’t the answer too obvious? Would you think label would encourage artists to promote and embrace streaming when both of them knows digital sales will pay them much more? Are they really losing a money to illegal downloads and torrents? I bet illegal downloads are and will happening no matter the songs are available right away on any streaming services.

Streaming services can be a future, however,t as of now it is a very poor business model for labels and artists. Sure, labels have stakes in Spotify and got advances already meaning they got money already whether their songs are played or not. Unless it was written on the contract that the labels must make any music their artists release available on Spotify, they are not doing any wrong here. Spotify subscribers can complain all you want. If you truly support your artists, simply purchase their songs.

Music Labels are not stupid, yes they are behind of technology in many aspects, but I am confident that they can can calculate how much money they can lose and gain from releasing albums to spotify early even with the risk of torrents and grooveshark. So let’s not cry over the songs get delayed to be on Spotify.


CES Show and manufactures’ problem

Source: The ‘CES curse?’

I do not have any issue with the CES show. It is a trade show. It is given that there will be c crap load of junks. It is like finding a gold at a closed gold mine that are open for a tourists. There are always few great stuff announced at the CES show. What is the point of the article? The point of the article to me was “Apple is not here, therefore the show lost its original purpose.” What a joke. The author wrote some examples of recent failure of the big announcements that were failed and wrapped that as a curse.

Let’s look into what really happened.

WebOS was absolutely stunning. It is still stunning despite of many improvements it needs.What happened to WebOS? It took way too long from the innovation to actual products. One thing I admire apple so much is they do not announce any of their products till close to the final version. It takes only few months from the announcements to actual release. Palm took forever to release Pre. When it came to the HP? An awful long time to release newer version of phone and tablet. When products announced, it was a huge reap forward. However, When actual products were released, it took awful long time that Apple already exceeded what new innovation HP came up with.

Netbook was a great idea in concept. In reality? What a joke. Qualities were poor and performance was even worse. Stripped down version of windows should been must yet all manufactures sold them with full of crap-wares that slow down even poor performance computers. However, is it a failure? No. Companies made so much profit out of these junks. Asus never had this much presence in the market until the success of the netbooks. I do not have exact sales figure in the states yet counting couple hundred million units since 2009 as a failure would be a poor judgement.

With such fast paced innovation and developments of new technology, it is harder for CES to be successful. Manufactures cannot wait to announce it’s newly developed products at CES before it becomes outdated nor announce new products too loose consumers interest near the time of releases. It is better move for the manufactures to hold its own press release conference rather than using CES as the place to be.

My recommendation to CES is hold an event every 6 months with smaller scale. This way CES can save money and many manufactures can utilize the show better to introduce right products at the right time.


Upcoming Epitonic Saki Sessions

This Friday, Jan 13th, 2012

Epitonic Saki Session will feature Hospitality at 6:00 pm

I will be there to record. BYOB. Come and enjoy the free show.

Location:

  • Saki Store
  • 3716 w. fullerton ave. map
  • chicago, il 60647-2306
  • 773.486.3997

Happy New Year!

It’s been a while since I uploaded something here.

  • Happy New Year to all! May this new year be filled with blessings and breakthroughs!
  • Yup, my birthday just passed. I am 28 now =)
  • Headway Studios is the official startup online audio mixing, editing, and mastering service that I offer.
  • This year’s goal? I want everything to be simpler around me.

Is Facebook the choice for musicians?

Original Source: “How Musicians used Facebook in 2011″

This is a great article! Every musician should read and take some note on it. RootMusic points out that “There is a huge active audience of music fans on Facebook, and a large part of your success comes down to how to properly engage those fans.” However, I would like to complaint about the engage part of Facebook.

Let me start with this. I am not a fan of Facebook. Honestly, my world would not have any impact without having one, yet I have one so people can try to reach me through Facebook. Here is my biggest issue to choose Facebook to be your first and formost way of engaging your fans. YOUR WALL POSTS DOES NOT LAND ON FAN’S STREAM ALL THE TIME!

I liked few musicians and companies myself. Do I see what they update daily/weekly/monthly? I rarely do. By the nature of Facebook, you get more updates by people who you engage the most. Unless a fan go to your page every single time, leave comments every time, and spend their time on your facebook page often, it is safe to say THEY DO NOT SEE YOUR POSTS. 

I am happy to see Facebook is becoming useful in any way, especially in Music Industry, however, there has to be a better way to engage 47.5 million Rihana fans.


I’m planning to open up my own business

Name is unknown yet, but I’m trying to open up mixing and mastering services all done throughout online.

One by one, I will flip this site to that until I finalize the name and open up completely separate site.


HP TouchPad craziness and its lesson to all tablet makers.

Since the announcement of HP TouchPad fire sale, there has been many surprise changes. Now discontinued model became the number two best selling tablet period (500,000 units) yet far behind of Apple’s iPad (27 millions). HP lost over millions of dollar and now trying to sell entire PC division. HP is now saying it will continue TouchPad production till the end of October. Last but not least, many online retailers got slammed with bad reviews with bad handling over TouchPad.

Out of all these craziness, tablet makers have to take a note of one thing.

Consumers are thirsty for low-priced with decent performance and functional tablet.

Let’s face it. Every single one of tablets is struggling to be like iOS. The best selling android tablet is free with purchase of their 3D television. Manufactures keep pumping out $600-$900 inferior tablets and asking consumers to sign up for 2 yrs of contract. It doesn’t matter no matter how much companies think their tablets are superior. As much as I love android, it followed the way apple created the market and not innovated by its own. At least palm completely innovated yet failed due to time it took to deliver products to consumer was way too long (TouchPad was in works for two years… It had a chance to kick iPad but absolutely no chance for iPad 2). Consumers think every tablet out on the market is inferior than iPad. Sure, they are big tech giants but now it is time to reconsider their strategy. You are not the market leader. You are late starters and followers. Unless you can completely ditch Apple’s shadow of design and performance, acknowledge your market position and build tablets are price and functionally appealing to consumers to capture market shares.

Yes, I grabbed a touchpad for $150 (32gb) and actually gave my iPad to my sister. To me webOS is much superior platform that failed to optimized. I’d purchase decent tablets like this for $250-$299. I believe that will be the sweet spot for mass to jump in for a tablet. For $500? I still don’t see any tablets out there that works as good as iPad. So my answer is I will get iPad every time someone asks me what to get for $500. Vizio is a good starts. Forget sub-par crippled tablets for $200. Give us decent well working tablets for $300.


It’s been a long time.

I neglected this website for a bit.. It’ll be completely redone sometime soon

I PROMISE!


busy busy busy…

Life has been hectic yet I’m rejoicing over Passion Week. What a glorious week in the history. Thank You Jesus. Thank You Father.


snow? for real?

Light coat of snow in the middle of April. How can I not love Chicago? Cloudy and very windy day again in Chicago.