Digital Purchase vs. Streaming
Posted: January 11, 2012 Filed under: Music | Tags: digital sales, iTunes, Music Business, Spotify, streaming Leave a comment »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.
Upcoming Epitonic Saki Sessions
Posted: January 10, 2012 Filed under: Live Sound, Making of Music | Tags: Epitonic, Recording, Saki Leave a comment »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
Is Facebook the choice for musicians?
Posted: December 16, 2011 Filed under: Music Leave a comment »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.
My thoughts about Amazon’s cloud service for music
Posted: March 29, 2011 Filed under: Gadgets, Music | Tags: Amazon, clouds, Music, streaming 1 Comment »I love the idea and how amazon started cloud service before anyone else but it failed to achieve In many ways.
First, how does it work?
It let’s you upload your own music, movies, and etc. to cloud and let you stream through your Android app or computer’s web browsers.
It sounds pretty good, isn’t it? But why is it a failure to be a great service?
1. It won’t let you find new music and purchase them, it only plays music you already own.
2. What about iOS, BlackBerry, and other devices??
I’ll give it a go for now but I’ll wait and see how Google or Apple will launch better service. Oh maybe and hopefully Amazon will improve it’s service next few days/weeks.
What is the right price for music?
Posted: September 29, 2010 Filed under: Music | Tags: Amazon, iTunes, Music, music industry, price Leave a comment »Source: Digital Music News
What is the right price for music? It is a great question to ask everyone who are in the recording industry and consumers who listens to them. It is sad to see when everything else is getting more expensive as time goes, music gets cheaper and cheaper. It is even to a point cheaper than a cup of coffee.
Amazon.com often offers a special daily deals of an album right below $3 for digital downloads, Best Buy and many other retailers sell new release CD right below $10, and I think new LP with free digital download of the album is around $20. In a letter from Sufjan Stevens from Asthmatic Kitty Records (follow the source link) wrote
we personally feel that physical products like EPs should sell for around $7 and full-length CDs for around $10-12 We think digital EPs should sell for around $5 and full-length digital albums for something like $8.
It sounds about right with the pricing, but i personally think whether it is digital or a physical CD the price should be same at $7 for EP, $10 for a CD, and $12 for a special edition. In order to push this price plans, individual song sale price needs to be raised too. $2.99 for feature songs and $1.99 for any other songs. It may sound too expensive, but in reality there are millions of purchase a day in app stores and they don’t complain much about price they pay. Eventually record labels need to turn into marketing companies as technology develops and easy of release albums through many different formats. They dont’ need this giant distributors but they still need a company to market them. When consumers know purchasing an album doesn’t really help artists they loves to listen to, $2.99 a song will sound too much but let’s say 30% go to iTuens/Amazon, 30% record label, and 40% to the artist should be enough to encourage fans to purchase albums and songs.
Yeah, instead of a giant advances paying money for recording and all, but spend a lot of money in marketing only. Since artist’s portion of royalty at 40% is great enough to recoup the costs of marketing easily and after all fans will purchase music they like, record labels make money without too much of risks, and artists don’t have to only look for a giant advanced but enjoy writing new songs and engaging with fans.
an open letter to customers from avid.
Posted: April 5, 2010 Filed under: Music | Tags: Avid, Digideisng, M-Audio, Pro Tools Leave a comment »The future of Digidesign: An open letter to customers
It is interesting to see how avid is heading towards. Include me, many of us were wondering what is going on with digidesign. Especially mbox lineups and 003 series. Since the introductions of M Powered Pro Tools and Pro Fire series it was such an easy guess to say Pro Tools LE will be completely replaced by M Powered series. Actually I should say that M Powered is the one going away and simply Pro Tools LE that will work with any Avid non-HD interfaces.
So what is going to happened now?
All under one roof of Avid all other company becomes as brand. It actually sounds better to me as a customer.
I hope Avid pulls it right and well, so it’ll be beneficial to many of us!
Apple and Music Industry.
Posted: February 11, 2010 Filed under: Music | Tags: Amazon, apple, eBook, iPad, Music Leave a comment »Apple iPad – it has been a buzz word since Apple announced it back on January 27th. Without question, Apple’s iPod and iTunes shook up and changed the music industry. Likewise, the iPad is already generating a lot of changes in the eBook industry. Three major publishers left Amazon due to Amazon’s fixed price policy and are now in process of renegotiation. Why? Apple simply worked with them to decide the price on eBooks. Apple lets publishers dictate their own contents’ price… but why not for music?
Apple sells 3 out of 4 songs that are sold digitally. Apple had complete domination over digital music sales since the launching of the iTunes store and the iPod. Prices were fixed – $.99 per song and $9.99 for an album. Recently Apple allowed the music industry to have fluctuating prices ranging from $.69~$1.29 per song. Currently, the result of this pricing is the decline in sales. My personal theory in the pricing of music is that a CD should be around $9 so anyone can purchase one within $10. When it comes to a single, it should been priced around $2.99. Every album has at least 2~3 songs that grabs people’s attention. I’m pretty sure people can justify purchasing the whole album if they plan to purchase 2~3 songs – it’s only fraction more. However, my theory seems too late and probably ineffective judging by the decline of sales at $1.29. To Apple contents sales are just additional revenue. Apple would never distribute part of revenue generated from its device to content providers. I believe Apple should listen to the music industry about pricing like they are doing with the publishers for eBooks when thinking of the future.
WavesLive
Posted: December 7, 2009 Filed under: Live Sound Leave a comment »
Screen Shot of WavesLive website
Say good by to your heavy racks!!
Little late news but my favorite plugin company Waves introduced live solution.
All you need is a laptop and audio interface, connect to your current console and voila!
You can access all mighty powerful Waves plugins on the go!! very sweet, isn’t it??
09.12.2009 – U2 360 Tour Chicago
Posted: September 30, 2009 Filed under: Life, Music Leave a comment »Image from official U2 Website.
U2 Chicago Set List:
Breathe, No Line On The Horizon, Get On Your Boots, Magnificent, Beautiful Day – Blackbird, Elevation, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For – Stand By Me, Stuck In A Moment, Unknown Caller, The Unforgettable Fire, City of Blinding Lights, Vertigo, I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight (remix), Sunday Bloody Sunday, Pride, MLK, Walk On – You’ll Never Walk Alone, Where the Streets Have No Name, One, Bad
U2 Encore: Ultraviolet, With or Without You (lyrics), Moment of Surrender
What a blast I had. I anticipated to go to U2 concert for past many years but never had any luck to attend one. Finally I got a chance to witness one of my favorite band performing. I got the tickets on the day from my friend, I couldn’t find anybody who wanted to go until almost last minute lol. I actually dragged Eunhye with me to prove how great U2 is. Anywho we sat in 300 level seats so it wasn’t any close to the stage but it was fantastic eperience. Oh yeah, also it was the first time I ever sat in the soldier field. One day i’ll go to bears game for sure lol.
I loved how they mixed up old and new and yes Bono is very vocal about what he believes and I love how he is, so many things he said it didn’t bug me at all.
Lighting was fantastic, i loved their screen that stretches and somehow lights from behind shows up and etc. Edge played different guitar every single song, Adam Clayton was rock solid on bass and loved his sparkling bass lol, and man.. Larry Mullen, Jr. seems like he never get tired nor miss his beats even singing!
It was great 3 hrs of entertainment, I’d love to go see them again.
(yes, it already been 3 weeks.. so i forgot a lot-)
BBE D82 SONIC MAXIMIZER PLUGIN REVIEW.
Posted: May 17, 2009 Filed under: Making of Music | Tags: 3/5, 482i, 882i, BBE, D82, Sonic Maximizer Leave a comment »
D82 Sonic Maximizer Plugin
The BBE D82 Sonic Maximizer software plug-in reproduces original program material with the subtlety, nuance and presence of a live performance. You can expect all of the same qualities of this plug-in that you’d find in the hardware version of the BBE Sonic Maximizer:
- Low frequencies become tighter, punchy and well defined.
- Highs are more articulate, detailed and present.
- Vocals and speech intelligibility are greatly improved.
- Plucked and percussive sounds, such as guitars, drums and pianos are cleaner.
- Sound effects such as explosions, gunshots and the roar of fighter aircraft take on a realism that envelopes the listener.
So that’s what BBE claims what it does. I recently purchased this plugin with huge anticipation to use. My first impression? Maybe it won’t be for everyone.
First of all, what does it do? and how does it work?
Sonic Maximizer is pretty much aligns sound waves so they won’t have phase issues such as unwanted cut and boost. So it results in cleaner, brighter sound in higher frequencies and tight and thumpy lower frequencies.
I’ve used rack version for many years running live sound, it always did a great trick to the sound and brought clarity and detail many different times in many different locations. Now the question is will this do same trick for me in my pro tools for mix downs???
So first thing first, it won’t clean up the messes completely. It’s not a magical software that will make your mix or recording sounds boom! professional grade.
This plugin looks and work exactly like 482i or 882i. Exact same looking front face and three control knobs, LO contour, Process, and output level. LO contour controls low frequencies (make your lower end thumpier, boomier, cleaner), Process controls higher frequencies (cleaning up signals), and output level dictates your output level (most of times either I don’t have to touch it or lower it).
Surprisingly I found it useful on bass tracks, drum tracks, and acoustic guitar tracks rather than using it for master bus plugin. Another funny thing is I’ve been using them as quick way of EQ than playing with EQ for tracks. Why? it’s simple and it does the job in a lot shorter time. Also don’t use it on master bus too much. It rather makes whole mix sounds grainy and harsh. Easily distorted.
If you are in low budget, if you don’t have good tracking environment (such as not treated tracking room, not so good microphones, not so good mic pres, and etc), if you don’t know how to use EQ well, or if you are simply lazy like me, for $99 you can get a great tool to clean up sound and bring the clarity of your mix in few clicks.
Cons? Rather give you harsh sound than warm sound. In short amount, it’ll become cleaner to distorted very quick. Maybe it’s me who’s consistently give out user error.
Oh well, it’s a good grab but definitely not necessary. Use your own discretions.
My rating for this plugin is 3/5
