Are they missing something or what!?

I really don’t understand why they’ve decided to take this actions on October 2007. It would have made perfect sense to me a few years ago, but not now, not after everything that we’ve learned, not after artists finally deciding to quit on contracts. And this just keeps getting better and better, now the IFPI is giving this ridiculous and stupid excuses, and they’re actually behaving worse than those they’re trying to reprehend.

Don’t get me wrong for the title of this post, I don’t think that OiNK’s administrator is a pirate, but I definitely believe that the IFPI is worse than those bastards that charge for the distribution of copyrighted material. They’ve managed to hijack OiNK’s website, to put on their propaganda, and all of this without ANY real legal base. Is this an ethic behavior? Also, they are lying without any hesitation about the activities that went inside this private tracker saying that users were charged in order to get their memberships, and of course this is absolutely untrue, I was a member for over a year, and I was NEVER asked for 1 penny. And why not lie some more? They’re also saying that users were encouraged to upload pre-releases, also NOT true, and this is actually they’re strongest argument against the tracker, since OiNK was the primary source of leaks for unreleased albums, but there has been, for a long time, discussion over this because it is very likely that this leaks came from insiders from the record industries themselves.

Pointing the obvious, this is clearly a ‘last-breath’ type of action. Since P2P networks showed up I’ve been questioning myself about the future of record companies (generally speaking), and I’ve always came to the conclusion that they were not meant to disappear, but they’re actually digging dipper into they’re graves by the minute.

There are tons of examples of artists that have managed to use P2P as a beneficial method of distribution along with their record sales. There’s another ton of stories where record industries use P2P networks as ginny pigs for their releases [1]. Why would they take actions such like these?

Deeply, from the heart of a young (and confused) man: Please stop wasting your time and start delivering some new business models for the music biz, stop messing around. We are not afraid of your “scary messages”. Please IFPI, quit the crap!

Now, OiNK’s administrator has been released from custody after a very obvious attempt to scare P2P users, and attracting media’s attention. Here’s a video from BBC covering the arrest:

To put the cherry on the top, Jeremy Banks from the IFPI itself declared that “This was not a case of friends sharing music for pleasure”. Jeremy… TFSU!!!

Links: TorrentFreak [2] [3]

As everybody knows now, Radiohead released earlier this month “In Rainbows“, and they decided to quit on record labels for good by giving away the album through their website. As I see this, with a traditional release, the album would appear on every P2P network out here about a month earlier, fans would had payed anything for the CD, and the band would had received a rather small share of these sales. Instead, they gave a choice, so that people that were going to download it anyway for free could still do this. And as for the fans, they could pay whatever they thought the album is worth.

But this wasn’t easy. I think Radiohead planned this very well because they managed to “distract” everyone by giving false hopes that the album was going to be released until 2008. And why? I believe this was a way to calm down all those “early released CD hunters” so that the band could give away the record and have total control over the downloads. They announced the whole project just 1 week before the release date, and this gave very little time for everybody to look around and pull some strings. And I think it worked. They managed to keep the record on the dark until a few hours before when some sources revealed links to download it.

So, as I said, it seems that everybody needed a role model, a kind of “example” or simply inspiration to take the next step. Trent Reznor posted that they were going “free agent, free of any recording contract with any label” just a few days later than Radiohead, although, this is a battle that Reznor has been fighting for a long time, and I’ve been admiring him the past few years for this, since NIN is a band that has been under recording contracts for over 18 years as the original post says.

This week I read that rumor has it, In Rainbows had over 1.2 million downloads. The donation average was between £1 and £4 (mainly £4), so this means that maybe, Radiohead’s initiative does seem to have some future (and some nice new sound processors and toys for the boys).

Pointing the obvious, now everybody thinks it’s a nice idea, but its not a new one though. There are many services out there that provide their catalogue under a “pay-what-you-want” business model like Songslide, or the ones (slightly different) I posted here.

The thing that excites me the most, is that now I can do this too, and not be catalogued as “weird” or “poor” (in an artist-like sense). As for the past few years, artists that explored this new business models were basically unknown and ignored by “common internet users”, but now, people will realize that they can find great quality music, and they’ll recognize this as it should be. Now, they know the drill.

I love it when you can find quality stuff for free like this, and it doesn’t come as a surprise to me because it’s known that Trent Reznor and the band have been offering some of the songs on Apple’s GarageBand format since “With Teeth” (previous to the newest album), so they make it easy for the fans to come up with great stuff like this.

Another example? LCDRemixed.com, a website that hosts a complete version of “Sound of Silver” from LCD Soundsystem (and calls it “Sounds Like Silver“). These guys are the team also responsible for remixing The Prodigy’s “Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned” and “Push The Button” from The Chemical Brothers (called “Flip The Switch“).

Pointing the obvious, if you wish to generate a “forward-thinking-like” response, you have to begin with your own actions and stepping at least a bit outside standard procedures. Great things may come from those actions.

Via: Digg

Despite labels’ efforts to keep new music under wraps, it’s no longer a question of if an album will appear online before its official release date, but rather when and how. Here’s why.

An extensive explanation of why a new record gets leaked on the internet. I wonder if all these reasons are not related to the artists?

Jack White went crazy about the leak of his latest White Stripes album but then he cleared out that that leak affected him as the master recording owner rather than him as an artist. Is this about money? I’m not sure. As for today, Icky Thump has over 3, 000 downloads on the “not so popular” p2p network OiNK, which tells me that at least a thousand of the downloaders are hardcore fans and they probably bought the record when it came out, but the White Stripes got another 2, 000 people to listen to it and maybe, some of them, bought it as well. As for the ones that didn’t buy it I could almost be sure that they were not going to spend money anyway. And this is only one tracker of thousands out there.

I pointed earlier at the Michael Moore case and his movie Sicko (also leaked previous to the official launch). It went pretty well on sales as well as the latest album from Linkin Park… also leaked…

Pointing the obvious, I think we should ask ourselves if a leak is the end of your career or a great marketing tool for promoting new material. I’ve already made my statement and I stand on the idea that it really helps.

An extensive study of many similar stories is available on the original post.

It’s called Sellaband, and it’s basically a system that supports new artists from their fans. They put it like this:

1. Find believers (people who will be willing to give up some cash for the project)
2. Record a CD
3. Make money

Now, the most interesting thing is that Sellaband is supporting free downloads, which I believe is great for promoting new (or maybe not that new) bands. So you raise fans (5, 000 to be exact), and each one of them gives away $10 bucks so that Sellaband can hire an A&R expert that will guide you through the recording process with a producer (also by Sellaband) in a “state-of-the-art” studio. There you can build your CD (actually a limited edition CD) which of course will go to all the 5, 000 believers you gathered, and then you give away the music on the internet so that you can get more fans. Sellaband says they’ll only give away three of the songs which I believe circles around the same concept we’re trying to escape but, what the hell… someone has got to make money!
What they do is that they put up for sale the rest of your songs on their website as paid downloads. Each download costs $50 cents and the profits go to you of course, your believers (interesting) and Sellaband. In addition, the website has advertising that generates profit to all members of this business as well, based on market share which basically means the more unique downloads you generate, the more money you make (and of course your fans will too).

Then you have the choice to ask for more copies of your CD so that you can sell it at gigs (technique proven to be VERY effective), your website, local stores, etc. You can set the price of this CD but you have to save $2 dollars for your fans and Sellaband gets nothing, but they’ll put the CD for sale as well on their own terms. For offline sales you get nothing, for online sales you get an equal revenue share with your fans as well.

I know what you are thinking, these guys must own all my music after all, but they say “no strings attached”. You are free to go whenever you like through the whole process. I find this very interesting as a band member, but also as a music fan. As a believer, you’ll notice you can make an investment and get some money in return (a small one though), but it’s not all about Sellaband or the artists, so it is quite a project.

As for today I haven’t heard of anyone of the artists nor the music that came out from Sellaband but they say there are some success stories so far (from both believers and artists). They also have a chart that shows how much money the artists have made so far.

Pointing the obvious, I’m not sure if this is the answer or the next big thing, but at least it is a new way of making music and money. It is very important that new ideas like this come out and break the paradigm of the music business as we know it.

Found via: Springwise

Update: I forgot to point out that Amazon decided earlier this month to invest on Amie Street, one of the most interesting startups in the music biz. I posted about it on Dixo if anyone is interested. Here is a link to the original post.

As a friend always says: “music is culture, and it has to be shared”

A few days ago I was reading about Sicko, the new movie from Michael Moore (it’s great, I totally recommend it), and how it had a great revenue from the box office even when it got entirely leaked weeks after its arrival on theaters. The whole projection they had for the box office was reached and it had already been seen by thousands of people in the U. S. Is this luck?

I believe music can achieve the same results, and it can get a lot better. I think today we suffer from what I call “disposable music”, and while I was talking to a friend about this he said something you’ll find very interesting:

In the 80’s, you listened to the radio. Artists were presented there, along with their hits. If the band was lucky (or big) enough you could find the record in stores, so if you really liked it, you could go and purchase it. Then became the ritual of listening it a thousand times if it was necessary while reading the box again and again until you learned the lyrics for you favorite song. Actually, listening to the record in your house needed of some sort of attention and time. Today, we can download (legally or illegally) hundreds of songs. If you really are into music, you can get from 5 to 10 records every week. All of them new. If you are a bit obsessed maybe more, who knows, but the fact is that most of this music you’ll probably hear just 1 or 2 times. If you really really like one song maybe you’ll stick to it for around a month or so. And all of this music is never to return to your playlists.

So what’s the point with selling records these days? As Rafa J. pointed out on his comment in the last post, the CD format is due to disappear very soon, I mean, we already know that iTunes is the third largest music retailer in the U. S.

But… and there is always a but… Mexico is not quite the same as other countries. Here is a funny example. We have this band called Porter. This guys went from zero to famous with just one song and this song wasn’t even published when it suddenly got some serious heavy rotation (as requested by listeners) on the radio. So, they started playing live a lot around the country (still without any published song) and several months later they decide to make their record by themselves, and came out with a relatively small number of them to sell it on venues. Early this year we had the Vive Latino 2007 festival and they sold 4, 500 copies of their newest material (second album) that day. They sold it “small”, and now, you can find pirate copies in every corner of the city and of course on every peer-to-peer network.

When Moby released “Play” in 1999 it became the first record ever to license each and every track on it. This of course gave him a significant amount of money that didn’t came from the record sales. It was mind opener for a lot of artists that were searching for different ways of commercializing their music. Moby managed to put his songs in several movies, television shows and commercials, and this helped of course to keep the record on the charts for years after the release. It has sold over ten million copies worldwide.

So, pointing the obvious, I think the best way of succeeding in the music biz is to get your songs heard as much as you can without worrying about the money at least until you are known. Licensing over songs is a great opportunity to earn some money and get heard. At the same time, if you choose not to leak your songs, you can always use other online alternatives like WE7, Amie Street, GoodStorm Music, websites like MySpace and other social networks, and of course Creative Commons (here is a post I made about this).

Since this blog is read only by 3 people I’ll give you a special gift Hope you like it!

P. D. Recently two torrent trackers were shut down in Spain, and their founders ended up in jail for copyright infringements. According to the authorities, they are responsible for a loss of 500, 000 €

A true act of ignorance if you ask me, some people just don’t get it.

Link: BitTorrent Sites Shut Down, Admins Arrested

1. Distribute it yourself (which requires a lot of money to make the record)
2. Distribute it with a record label (small or big)

I’m not even gonna start with number 2.

To make your way on distributing it yourself you’ve got to have the media support on any level in order to have some sort of recognition for your work. I’m not talking here about fame or great deals of money, just selling a couple thousands of records to make it worth it. Since we are dealing with a third world country, people don’t always have the resources nor the knowledge to access the internet, buy magazines or have paid television in their homes, so this leaves you with a very small window of opportunities to get known. One of them (and the most important I think for music) is the radio. But this is not a secret of course, and the record labels know this, so what can you do when you have basically one important channel of distribution (and with a very poor offer I must say)? You, as a big label, go and buy the stations. Pay the programmers. You make sure your catalog gets heard (and with quite a large rotation).

So where does this leave independent bands? Mexico City suffers from a lack of options on the radio. There are nearly 62 different radio stations. A large percent of those are focused on news and politics. Then you have the popular ones which are targeted to people with small incomes and then you have a very very small percentage of rock and pop stations. One example of this is Reactor. This frequency is supposed to be the one that talks to students. Young people. People who like rock and pop. This frequency is owned by the government. As we say in Mexico, “it is the only option we have to hear this kind of music” (although this is not true, there are another few examples). But since Reactor was created to host some of the most “popular” djs at the time, it quickly gained its popularity and its opportunities. And by opportunities I mean great deals with OCESA (number one mafia around the entertainment business) and great deals with the record labels paying money to its known dj Rulo to play their music. This practically wipes out any other content provider (and I also include internet in this). I mean, what good can a record label get from promoting their material on any other media when you’ve already bought an entire radio station which by the way teenagers happen to hear since there is no other one?

So, of course, as an independent band that its not intended to sell 100, 000 records in one month, you have to look out for friends in the industry or literally throw your music on the internet hoping that someone will pick it up and hope for the best.

This is where prosumers get in the picture. We are used to get lots of information every day, so it is very hard to get someone’s attention and this got me thinking for a while that the best way to get your product out (whatever it is), is to point at small niches. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get all the attention. You can get a lot of small groups of people around the world. If this people like your product, they’ll do the rest for you posting about it on blogs, making reviews and building that which you couldn’t get from the different mobs in the industry. This is why I call them prosumers (although the term is intended for other purposes, I think the term applies well).

I should say though we’re a lucky band. We’ve got a lot of friends in the industry, and that has helped us a lot to play frequently and from time to time be part of a music festival. But this doesn’t change the fact that we are trying to survive in an industry that closes itself to popularity. It doesn’t matter any more if the music is ok, it is all about how many records can you sell, and you can’t sell records if you don’t get played, so it is a very complex circle that has only one exit: leaking the album for free on the web and hope for the best (its not like we were expecting money for the selling anyways).

So, pointing the obvious, this is a very complex subject with a lot of exceptions I must say, it is not always like this, but it is also a very tangible truth for the rest. This mafias will eventually have to stop and hear people. I thin the most important thing to do is always look for more. If you are tired of the radio, go and look for more on magazines or the internet. if you are tired of the two network television monsters giving crappy shows, go and look for more. If you don’t like it, don’t consume it! There is always another option available.

I’ve always thought of mexicans as siths, they deal only in absolutes.

P. D. I’ll let you know when the album gets leaked

In a direct comparison with other offline services this just doesn’t happen. For example, here in Mexico the most important telephone and internet service dealer is Telmex and everybody knows it just sucks for many reasons, but it is the kind of company that improves it’s services when another company offers a better one and so on, but they are not gonna make any move just to improve their customer experience in any way just for fun.

Tim O’Reilly put it very clear by asking the simple question “What would google do?” in terms of explaining what is happening online with web 2.0 services and the offline ones like banks, telephone, insurance, etc.

Perhaps the way of thinking of this companies is directly related to the need you have as a consumer to this services. Changing your bank account or internet provider is not as easy as hitting the back button or entering another URL in your browser, so pointing the obvious, Google maybe experiencing the need as a company to offer the best service as possible (even if they are already the best ones out there).

I remember the day I first got my router from Telmex and it stopped working after a few days, so I called customer service and we got into a long fight that ended with this guy saying to me something like: “So… what are you going to do, this is the best service out there”, and when I made a comparison with the service offered in other countries like the U. S. and Japan he said something like: “Oh… that is Japan dude… this is Mexico, this is as good as it gets”.

Quite scary.