Music Business and Trend Mongering

I think there’s no debate that a part of the future of music is going to include an access (as opposed to ownership) approach to listening to music. On a large scale, music consumers have always chosen convenience over almost everything else, and the opportunity to listen to as much music as possible, anytime and anywhere, whether connected to the Internet or not, is a compelling proposition. And while I think it’s only a matter of time before Apple gets the licensing together to re-activate some version of LaLa, there are some great services out there in the US and abroad right now that offer a really compelling approach to music in the cloud.

I’ve been checking out Rdio for the past few months, and been really impressed with what they are up to. They have a pretty extensive catalog (made all the more extensive in recent weeks with the addition of the Beggars Group catalog), and interesting social media tools to help with music discovery.

I spoke with Rdio’s CEO, Drew Larner, a couple weeks back about the service. Here’s our conversation:

Mike: Can you tell me a little bit about the background of Rdio, and how you became involved with the company?

Drew: Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, who were the founders of Skype, are the founders of Rdio, and they are the ones who have been funding it for the last two plus years. I met them first in 2000 and started working for them in about 2003, when they were just kind of getting out of the Kazaa phase of their careers. So it was interesting to meet them at that point because I had come from the film business, I had worked in the film industry for twelve years. To meet them with all that was going on – it was an interesting change for me. Shortly thereafter they started Skype, and then Joost, and now Rdio. So they’ve done a lot of things, and I’ve worked with them in fits and starts over all of that period.

Mike: I talk about Rdio in some of my courses, and one question that always comes up is “Okay, Rdio sounds great, but how do I get my music on the service as an independent artist?” Is there an opportunity for folks that are unsigned to get their music on Rdio?

Drew: We don’t have a self-serve option yet. There are aggregators out there that we’re speaking with that effectively provide that service for artists. You know, content aggregation for a service like this, is a long, and I don’t want to say tedious process, because it’s not, it’s an interesting process, but it’s a long process. So to provide a catalog that you are going to charge people for, you are going to need the building blocks, which are obviously the major labels and the major Indies. You get the publishing deals in place and you start adding to the catalog over time. So right now, we’re at seven million plus tracks. Very, very deep catalog. But like you’ve said, there are lots of great indie artists out there who aren’t yet at a label or may never want to go to a label. The paradigm may be changing where they don’t need to sign with a label and you understand that stuff better than I do. As far as marketing directly, we don’t have a self-service option yet and I don’t think it’s in our future over the short-term but I think once we sign with an aggregator that is a more geared towards indie artists, then that would be the way that they can get on Rdio.

Mike: So, from an overview, you are starting with the big guys, which makes sense in trying to get all of the content that the larger population is going to be interested in, and then your going to be moving down the line into working with an aggregator that is more focused on independent artists. Is that accurate?

Drew: No. I mean we’ve already done deals with IODA and some of the bigger Indie aggregators – what I was referring to simply is almost self-serve. So I guess I’d term it non-label indie artists. Those who aren’t signed to any label but are producing music that they want to be distributed. Yeah, we’ll get there.

Mike: Maybe through a partnership with CDBaby or TuneCore.

Drew: Exactly.

Mike: How difficult is it for you to get the licensing deals done right now, as opposed to three years ago? Is there a shift that you are seeing with the majors where they are saying, “Streaming is definitely going to be part of the future and we have to get our content on there?”

Drew: Well, our deals are done. We needed the deals in place before we could launch the service but it is a very good question because it was an iterative process in that, when we started this over two years ago, we were trying to figure out what the right model was. We were looking at companies that were doing ad-based premium type models and personally, because I am the one who was on the hook for defending the model that we choose to my board and my investors, I didn’t really believe in that ad supported model because the ad revenue doesn’t come in at a level that is significant enough to pay for the royalty costs. You know, I come from the content world and I believe content is valuable and needs to be treated as such, so it’s not that the royalty costs are out of line, they are what they are because this stuff is valuable.

So we kind of thought about what kind of model we wanted, and we decided to move towards the subscription model. The majors, as we were negotiating our deals, were moving in that direction as well. There were subscription services out there already, of course, but the functionality in those services are not as robust as they are now. I think the most important change is the offline caching, which if you are using mobile, you are hopefully using a lot because we think that is kind of the light bulb moment. You know, “Wait a second! I can turn my Android phone into a iPod!” You know, “I have a Blackberry and I can play a thousand songs on my Blackberry!” So it creates a single device strategy, and that kind of functionality is something that over the course of the negotiations came into the deal.

Mike: Are there any limitations to how much music you can cache?

Drew: The only real limitations are on the functionality side – what your device storage limit is. If you have a lot of storage on your device, you can store as many songs are you want. On the deal side, once you stop subscribing, your music is no longer available. But that’s the concept of moving, in terms of the model, from an ownership model to an access model. Meaning that you don’t need to physically purchase every song because they are all there. Why would you need to purchase anymore when you have access to everything?

Mike: Are there any other major partnerships that are on the horizon for Rdio that people can look towards in 2011 that you can talk about?

Drew: On the content side?

Mike: Yes.

Drew: We’re doing deals all the time. While we do have some announcements coming, my PR people would get pissed at me if I blew the lid off. So there is nothing specific I can speak to, but I can promise that stuff is coming. Again, it’s a process where you get those cornerstone building blocks that everybody needs for service, and from there you start adding more and more interesting elements. Whether its world music or classical music or additional deeper jazz – it’s a process! We have someone in-house who is very good and very savvy, and she is just continually doing deals. It’s just that it’s time consuming.

Mike: I was really pleased to see the Beggars Group up there.

Drew: I would agree. I’m very, very excited that Beggars is on there and by extension now, the Arcade Fire. It’s very important to have that extensive catalog.

Mike: Can you speak a little bit to the social component of Rdio and music discovery using the service?

Drew: We keep pushing new updates to the clients constantly and just keep making it a better experience in terms of finding new people to follow and giving you more information as far as new music and music that we think you would like, that we believe is unique and based on people rather than algorithms. Now we do have an algorithmic approach, I don’t know if you checked out the radio that we have? So for me, I like that because I am more of a passive listening guy. If I want to listen to Wilco, I can create a fantastic play list with Wilco, the Jayhawks, and Son Volt; that does it for me. Other people want a more core discovery experience, so we’re constantly updating and making it better, but social is really the core to our DNA. The fact is music brings people together. Music is a social conversation and that sense of community is what we really built this service around, and we believe that this differentiates us from the other services in the marketplace. We believe we’ve created a way to accurately & interestingly filter all that music to give users an experience where, instead of just a static search and play where you need to know what you want to listen to, you can come back to Rdio not just everyday but every hour and you will see new stuff! That we really believe is unique and creates a great experience.

Mike: Are you working with a third party like The Echo Nest here in Somerville for your radio algorithm, or is that homegrown?

Drew: It’s homegrown. We’re all in-house, everything is built in house. We don’t outsource, we really have a fantastic engineering and design team, and you’ve seen the result of it. It’s in-house.

Excellent acoustic cover of a song from one of my favorite records of 2010.

Jónsi – Go Do [Acoustic] – Live at Origami from plastic pearl on Vimeo.

From the LA Times Pop & Hiss Music Blog

“There are a few very valid reasons to be nervous about playing an in-store at Origami Vinyl; loading gear in up its perilous spiral staircase, the remote chance of plummeting off the loft into the crowd, Ali the Boxer dog witholding hugs in judgment of your set. (Full disclosure: I’ve played at Origami Records in my other life as a drummer, and received Ali hugs.)

We may never truly know why Sigur Rós frontman Jónsi pulled the ripcord on his planned acoustic record-store tour after playing Origami last month (he cited paralyzing nervousness at the set’s intimacy, which was unexpected for a singer who headlines the world’s biggest venues with Sigur Rós). But Origami and director Jack Schlinkert just posted two gorgeous clips from the show, each of songs from Jónsi’s recent solo album, “Go.” His otherworldly falsetto is pristine and betrays no trace of what he was feeling at the time, so enjoy these clips as the best evidence that a show like this actually happened, because it apparently won’t happen again.”

I hijacked the Topspin blog yesterday to talk about our Online Music Marketing with Topspin course, which starts this Monday, September 27th. We’ve opened up a sample lesson from the course, which you can access here (you’ll be required to register with Berkleemusic if you have not already). The post I wrote for Topspin is below:

We’ve been teaching the Topspin course at Berkleemusic for just under a year, and personally, it’s been one of the more rewarding things that I’ve been involved in. To get emails like the following from online students really reinforces the fact that we are doing something positive and immediately applicable for musicians and their career:

Subject: Brian Ray Pre-Sale + Topspin Marketing = Success!!

Fiona

I’ve given a bunch of Online Music Marketing with Topspin course demos to folks here at the college, to successful musicians that are visiting our school, and to musician friends that need a hand understanding some of the best practices associated with online music marketing. I thought it might be helpful for all of you to take a look inside our course too, so we made one of the 12 lessons available for free, here (you’ll need to register on our site to view). This is lesson 6 in the course, which talks about forecasting, product and pricing considerations, Topspin’s orders section, and more. This is an archive of a section of the course that my colleague and Topspin ninja, Jason Kadlec, taught earlier this year. If you decide to check it out, be sure to look at the class forum (up top), the assignment page, and Jason’s archived chat. This will give you a good understanding of the communication and interaction between the students and the instructor – the course is a whole lot more than static copy on a page. You’re working with musicians, marketers, and managers from around the world, and led by an instructor that is an expert in Topspin and online music marketing. Again, this is just one of the lessons in the 12-week course, and we go through a ton of topics covering all things online (and some offline) marketing related.

I’m more than happy to chat with anyone about the course. If you want to reach me, I’m at mking [at] berklee.edu. As I mentioned we’re starting a new term on September 27th. Hope to see you online.

Mike

Gail Zappa, daughter of a rocket scientist, mother of Moon, Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva Zappa, was married to the legendary composer Frank Zappa for more than 25 years. Since Frank Zappa’s death in 1993, she has overseen the release of his recordings, including many previously unavailable works, under the Zappa Family Trust.

I had the great pleasure of speaking with Gail recently about a number of topics, including copyright, offering Frank’s music direct to fans on www.zappa.com, and her opinion of third party online retail.

Mike: Can you talk a little bit about the process for choosing the material you and Joe Travers release from the vault?

Gail: Well, I think Joe has a very different process than mine. He’s a fan, which he has been since he was very young, long before we ever met him. First of all, he realizes that he gets to listen to stuff that no one else will ever hear in some cases. So that’s a very attractive part of the job for him and sad at the same time. He’s also interested in finding the source material that Frank used, in finding all of the bits and pieces. Or if he hears about a legendary project, he’ll work on reconstituting it because some of the ingredients of the sauce are missing. So there is a search and seizure part of it that he is always actively engaged in so when he goes into the vault, he usually has a motive; I don’t. That’s the difference; he’s looking for something in particular, usually. The collaboration happens when…. Oh what just happened recently? We sat down (in his office) and I said, “Joe, I need a really good concert and it has to be English. It has to be from Britain” and he said, “OK!” So he knows right where to go because he’s been through there so many times, that he knows. He says, “I think I know some choices” and he makes a selection based on that and then we find out, we’re not covered for a whole concert but we’re covered for several dates at the same time, so that we can pick and choose in terms of the performances. Sometimes you get a concert and that’s it; it’s a one shot deal and you have to go warts & all with what you’ve got and you don’t have the coverage. So, in that case, we’ve gone to fans and gotten bootleg recordings to fill in the blanks when the tape ran out and the reel didn’t get changed fast enough. So you can start with that or you can go to “well, we did several shows in this location over a period of time;” say three Halloween dates in New York. Then you can make one show from all three sources; that’s a different kind of an event. For me, the rule of thumb is, we are not making a Frank Zappa recording in terms of how its produced, but we are making a record from recordings made by Frank; that’s the big difference. There are two of us and that means there’s four feet and there is no way that they are going to fit in those two shoes.

Mike: Are you or Joe releasing material from the vault based on fan demand?

Gail: No. We’ve been releasing things based on what we think is a good thing to release. Joe makes classic arguments over and over again for releasing certain types of things that he’s knows the fans are interested in and those arguments that he makes influence some of the releases, in terms of what the contents might be; I certainly consider his opinion absolutely but my first obligation to Frank is to educate. First, you have to have a context in which you can release these things. For me, I can’t just put out a record and not have some background to it. Recently, we put out The Torture Never Stops as a DVD and this was made as a television show, because Frank had an idea that this would work on TV but this was very early on and nobody (in broadcasting) wanted to see these crazy edits that he was doing so there was a lot of resistance. So the concert, in different forms, ended up on USA Network and on MTV but Frank’s version which he created as a television special, was one particular thing that he put together himself. So my obligation, I feel, to the audience is to put out first what Frank created and then I can go back and take all of that footage, which we intended to do and are in the process of working on, and remix it in surround and put out the whole of the concert series in a big package down the road. But first, you have to see what Frank’s intention was and then you can go back to other opportunities where you can have your way with the material.

Mike: You released the MOFO Project/Object in 2006, and put in the names of anyone who pre-ordered the record into the liner notes of the release. I talk a lot about the importance of artists’ personalizing packages for their fans for direct sales off of their web site, as it helps to build the artist/fan connection. Was that part of the idea with MOFO? How did you come up with it in the first place?

Gail: We had actually done that as an experiment, when we put out our first concert release. I wasn’t sure how the audience would respond and it was FZ:OZ and we put everybody’s name on that, who ordered it in advance, because I wasn’t sure if we were going to be able to make it happen. So the pre-orders gave us an opportunity to see that we could actually manufacture the way we wanted to. I have always felt very strongly about the packaging; I always have. That started with Frank, so even in the face of economic disaster in the industry and digital downloads, I still believe in the physical package. So we had already done that, but the main inspiration for adding people’s names into MOFO, the special edition, was because Frank had listed the names of people who helped to influence that music, in Freak Out. So I felt that for the people, for whom the music exists, and they are going to support it early in, you can have your name and your credit on this too because you deserve it! It wasn’t anything to do, really, with being interactive on the site.

Mike: I know that you area selling a few digital releases of Frank’s music off of your own site, and that there is very little available on iTunes. Is that because you feel strongly about the packaging? Can you talk a little bit about why a lot of Frank’s music isn’t on third-party digital sites?

Gail: Ok, this is a very big answer to what seems to be a pretty straightforward question. First of all, what the studio audience doesn’t know and what’s behind the curtain, is that there is a lawsuit where certain parties are claiming many rights, digital rights being among them. I can tell you, absolutely, that it was never Frank Zappa’s intention that anyone would control the digital rights of his music other than his heirs, so its not anything he ever told me to sell. The fact of the matter is he published a paper on how music would be delivered in the future in 1983 and copyrighted it and just bemoaned the fact that he didn’t have the budget to hire programmers to make that happen. So he was way out there and he certainly knew. Although the term “digital rights”, at the time of his death and the time of the sale, didn’t exist, that doesn’t mean that he wasn’t thinking about them and planning ahead for what would best serve the value of the copyrights that remained with me. So he was thinking about his family at the time and he wanted to protect those rights. That’s part A. Part B is that I am not a fan of iTunes. I am not a fan of their growth through their overbearing means by which they have a reduced value of music. First, they taught everyone how to steal it and then they said,” Oops, sorry here’s how you can pay for it really cheap!” So you know, I’m not a fan of that and I’m not a fan of price-fixing, which is something they do. You don’t have a lot of choice in what you can offer and how you can offer it. I mean they just have rules and I understand that it is probably just a by-product of some of their programming issues but there should be other choices. I believe that the future is that there will be other choices and they will be on every artists own fan site or a conglomerate consortium of artists’ fan sites that’s not controlled by an outside party that does not respect artist’s rights. The part C of this answer, is that up until fairly recently and even still today, the sounds are massively compressed, they are not the way the artist intended them to be presented to an audience for an audiophile experience. So there was a reason for me to engage in that. Now I don’t care so much about Beat the Boots on iTunes because that’s not a recording made by Frank Zappa. Those are bootlegs as opposed to counterfeits.

Mike: I know that the releases you are selling off of Zappa.com are at a higher bit rate. Can you envision down the line that you would be releasing some of Frank’s catalog at lossless quality off of Zappa.com?

Gail: Yes

Mike: How are you working to expose new listeners to Frank’s music? If a lot of Frank’s catalog is unavailable digitally, and physical retail is cutting back with their inventory, what other ways are you working to expose potential fans to Frank’s music?

Gail: In an ideal situation, I would be able to have more participation in the original catalog than I do right now, and that may yet happen in the next few months. If it does, then you will see a very big change. For me, any kind of release that we get out there helps to sell everything. I mean, people think I’ve planned, perhaps with Dweezil, how to do this and Dweezil has certainly contributed to introducing music to a younger audience, for the most part, so that already exists. I get letters from people that are fourteen or under all the time that are interested in the music. The problem is, is that you are fighting a huge battle. It’s great that Dweezil is out there performing the music because the saddest part is that he comes closest to having produced the band that I think Frank would’ve actually hired himself, including Dweezil on “stunt guitar”. That would have been ideal, but there’s nothing else out there that touches that band, in terms of Dweezil’s intention with respect to what he is trying to accomplish with musicians of that caliber.

Mike: I saw them two years back in Boston with Steve Vai and they were just great…

Gail: Yeah, but that was back when everyone believed that you had to have former members of the band. With all due respect, you know, we love Steve Vai – but here’s a disappointment that I have to say fairly regularly, and that is that Frank’s agenda was to educate because when you educate the audience, you give them the opportunity to experience a wide variety of musical entertainment. Now I can’t do that as well as Frank because I’m not in a band. I mean, on stage, he would introduce Stravinsky, Varèse, and Bartok, you know, all sorts of composers and lots of R&B music that he loved when he was a kid and he went out of his way to make sure people heard those sounds and heard that music. It wasn’t so important from them to know who the composer was until he did interviews; you don’t have to announce it on stage because then people don’t really pay attention. The fact is that their ears are being trained; I can’t do the ear training that Frank did but I can constantly reinforce the idea that there is a basis; there is a history behind all of this stuff. It’s based in intention; the composer’s intent is everything. So you can’t just have somebody interpret Frank’s music because in many cases it’s no different than identity theft or character assassination. When people just take it into their own hands and arrange it without getting permission and do terrible things to it that were never intended – because for them it’s easier to play that way. So I feel that I have a really strong contract with Frank Zappa to get that music out there the way that he intended it and that’s the other part of how the releases work.
But, getting back to the disappointing aspect. For me it is that there are all these people that worked under Frank’s baton and not one of them does covers. You know, you would think that somebody would think it’d be a great idea to do a cover version. I’d love to license Frank’s music but it’s just so inappropriate to license classics in so many ways because they were never written or intended for, especially not those performances, they were never intended for commercial exploitation. If people did covers though, I could certainly consider licensing those if they were something that I thought was sincere and represented the intent of the composer.

Mike: Could you give me an example of something that you would be interested in licensing?

Gail: Well, for example, I get a billion requests for “Willy the Pimp,” but there is no way that I am going to let that go out there unless I had some other version because I don’t think that it is right to exploit Frank’s particular statement and that actual recording. I mean a lot of these records were made back in the day, where these studios themselves were instruments in the hands of the composer and that’s no longer true. Everybody works out of a box now that you plug in. Back in the day, the studio was one of the actual instruments and controlling what you could do in a studio gave you as many opportunities in terms of the sounds that you could get as any other instrument. So a studio in the hands of a skilled composer is a whole other animal.

Mike: I read an interview you did where you had this great quote, “my job is to make sure that Frank Zappa has the last word in terms of anybody’s idea of who he is and his actual last word is his music.” What does that mean in terms of your opinion of copyright as it relates to Frank Zappa?

Gail: Well, I think that every person who creates anything in the realm of intellectual property is protected under the Constitution of the United States of America, because that’s what copyright law is. I didn’t invent it. I’m not the bad (or good) guy that said this is how it’s supposed to go. There’s a reason for copyrights to exist because they actually are proof and a working version of the ideas of those people, at this time and this place and I like that idea. The more freedom there is to express these ideas, the better off we all are and that’s the reason why I also love and enjoy the Bill of Rights. However, when you consider the means by which other people are trying to take copyright law and try to take it apart at the seams, they’re doing it by misinformation. It’s disinformation basically. If you want to start a war and pretend that somebody took the first shot, you use disinformation as we’ve seen in the past, to make that happen. This is war against artist rights and I think that it is not a very good idea, in this day and age, to introduce any kind of arts programming, in terms of educational programs, without introducing also the means by which you protect your rights. It’s no different than a signature at the end of the day. It’s like this, if somebody is a Muslim or a Christian, do they have the right to make you be one by voting, by majority vote? No, that’s clearly not the American way and it’s the same with copyrights. If you want to give your music away for free, that doesn’t mean you get to join a group that’s going to take apart everyone else’s rights just because that’s what you believe. You have a choice. Go ahead. Give it away. If you think that that’s the best way to market your music, by never being able to earn a living from doing that, great. Join that fabulous club and enjoy.

Mike: Any other thoughts on the state of the music industry, and ideas on how to move ahead as an artist?

Gail: Mostly, the business of music these days is a popularity contest and it’s the ability of some performer, primarily, to capture the attention of an audience and expand on that. I think as a musician/composer, you can’t look at that as competition. I mean this industry was bound to implode on itself because it’s like any other. Once the distributors are more famous than any artists they distribute, you’ve got a problem because there’s a lot of money going in to support that structure that shouldn’t be in their pockets. You know, its like if an agency is more famous that the actors it represents, in the public’s mind, you can see how that’s a problem. Well that’s what happened to the record companies too, in many ways. The real issue for artists to consider is there are so many times where decisions are being made about your rights and people who are not even including you in the conversation are taking them away from you. A perfect example of that are record ratings. The RIAA bent over and gave away rights that belong to the artists because they wanted their special pay tax bill. We’re about to put out a release so you’ll see that, Frank’s testimony on the issue, but it’s a perfect example of the fact that artist’s aren’t at the table; they aren’t represented. So I would say to any artist that wants to make a living on what he does, the first thing is: don’t stop doing what you are doing. The second rule is keep on doing it. The third rule is get a very long-range plan and stick to it. You’ve got to use the force of your imagination harnessing the force of your will and once you put the two of those things together and you have a clear picture of what it is that your trying to do as an artist, it doesn’t matter how you change your path in terms of how you accomplish your goals but you just have to keep on doing it and don’t let anybody get in your way by telling you that your work is not valuable. Invest in yourself even if no one else does, because that is the only way that you are going to survive. You’ll find ways; first of all, there is no competition for what you do. Absolutely none, anywhere. It is hard to get peoples’ attention but it happens if you work at it! If you do nothing, it won’t happen. That’s for damn sure!

One of the online sales techniques I’ve been advocating in my online courses is for artists to create different physical and digital products and make them available on their own site at tiered price points. The idea is that you can offer something for all of your fans – the hard core fans might be interested in something from you that is a little more personalized and rare, and newer fans might be able to get something from you that wont break the bank. All the while you have the ability to offer something that cannot be purchased at traditional retail, which makes the experience of purchasing off of your site more rewarding for your fans. Here’s an example from the Yim Yames site:

Determining what you offer – and at what price point – is an art that takes into account a number of factors. For example, if the goal of your campaign is to expose your music to as many folks as possible, you’ll want to price some of your items lower and take a lower margin per unit. You’ll also want to take into account what unique items your specific psychographic would respond to the best. If you’ve determined that one of the psychographic traits your community shares with you is a love for vegetarian food, you might want to create a downloadable PDF vegetarian cookbook for your fans as a value add (similar to what Jonsi and Alex did for their fans).

Another important factor in creating an effective product and pricing plan is to use data to determine what options might create the best result for you; which brings me to the point of my post.

John Grubber turned me onto a fantastic post written a few weeks ago by Craig Mod, describing how he and Ashley Rawlings used the fundraising website Kickstarter to self publish a book by generating $24,000 in 30 days. The entire post is well worth reading, and although Craig and Ashley’s goal was to generate funding for their book, I think there’s a lot of similarities between his execution on Kickstarter and the execution of a successful music-focused DTF sales campaign on your own site.

Once Craig and Ashley had determined the overall goal of their campaign – to sell enough books to generate a return substantial enough to further expand their existing or similar publishing endeavors – their next step was to figure out what their strategy would be for the pledge tier offerings. WIth Kickstarter, people pledge a pre-determined amount of money towards a project on a tiered basis, and get something tangible in return, once the project is funded. Kickstarter’s tiered pledge functionality is not dissimilar to what a musician would offer for sale on their own site to their fans.

What was really interesting to me about what Craig and Ashley did for their book project was that they looked at the top 30 grossing Kickstarter campaign to determine the most successful tiers of pledges. This provided Craig with data that he could use, in his words, to “look for a balance between number of pledges and overall percentage contribution of funds.” Take a look at his graph below:

Chris’ analysis of this data is spot in, and I’d like to quote his thoughts from his blog, here:

“This data is, of course, hardly perfect (for example, not every project I looked at used the same tiers). But it’s good enough to give us a sense of what price ranges people are comfortable with.

Having too many tiers is very likely to put off supporters. I’ve seen projects with dozens of tiers. Please don’t do this. People want to give you money. Don’t place them in a paradox of choice scenario! Keep it simple. I’d say that anything more than five realistic tiers is too many.”

The overall results that Craig outlines above are generally similar for musicians who offer a range of products at tiered pricing levels on their own site. While I do think that offerings of less than $25 do make sense for most musicians, Craig’s overall idea of not providing too many low cost items make sense. For example, I’ve spoken to a number of my students and other artists that are interested in offering $1.00 singles off of their site. While this is possible to do, providing a lower revenue option like that tends to incentivize potential curious fans downward, as opposed to incentivizing folks to purchase a higher priced option.

Based on the data that Craig obtained from past Kickstarter campaigns, he created the following pledge tiers:

Lastly, Craig and Ashley engaged in a wonderful online promotional campaign that focused on their permission based social medial digital touchpoints, as well as key design blogs and magazine sites that were completely in target with their psychographic and demographic. They focused their messaging campaign using Twitter and Facebook (their messaging was relevant and minimal, too), as well as their own mailing list.
Craig and Ashley had build up an extensive mailing list of design and art world over the past 6 years, which they leveraged nicely. Take a look at the timing of their targeted email campaigns, and the results:

Example of the artwork that was used for the email:

Perhaps most impressive was Craig’s outreach strategy to the blogs that he felt were a laser shot target for what he was doing with this project, and his method of communication to them. He was not focused on quantity of external outreach – he was more interested in the quality of the blogs he did focus on. Again, this is fundamental marketing strategy that all artists could use to their benefit. Again, in Craig’s words:

“I’m writing to blogs that I’ve been reading for years, so for me, referencing older posts of theirs and personalizing these emails is trivial, and fun. Whatever you do, don’t send scattershot emails to media outlets. Be thoughtful. The goal is to appeal to editors and public voices of communities that may have an interest in your work, not spam every big-name blog. A single post from the right blog is 1000% more useful than ten posts from high-traffic but off-topic blogs. You want engaged users, not just eyeballs!”

Here’s his PR results on the project:

While we’re not talking apples to apples between what Craig and Ashley did with their book campaign and an online DTF music campaign, many of the best practices that Craig and Ashely employed in this campaign, from the data analysis they used, to their communication techniques are exactly what independent musicians should be focused on when they engage in online direct to fan sales and marketing campaigns.

I wrote a course for Berkleemusic called Online Music Marketing with Topspin, which starts this Monday, June 28.

My friend Peter Brambl at Topspin put together a post that details a few examples of the work some of the course graduates have been involved in. Take a look:

Crush Luther

Sheila Hash has been using Topspin to set up what she calls “The Living Room Sessions” for artist Crush Luther.  “Basically, you can request the band play your living room,” says Shelia.  “You need to send pictures of the space and guarantee that at least 20 people will show up. We set up a private ticket link on Topspin and every ticket purchase gets a hard copy of the album upon arrival to the show. It’s been highly successful and the band is booked at various houses throughout the summer. They love it because it’s much more intimate and interactive than a regular show. “
http://www.crushluther.com/

Jonesez

Annmarie McMath is kickstarting a fan acquisition project for artist Jonesez.  “The course was instrumental in not only honing my online marketing skills but educating my artist on best practices for social media marketing and direct-to-fan initiatives,” says Annmarie.  “We have had a steady intake of sign ups, and social media interaction is increasing. We have received a stack of great feedback from fans, musicians and others in the industry..and of course the widgets and music players have been a hit too. Thanks Topspin & Berklee.”
http://www.jonesez.com.au

Brandon Hines

Dan Conway is applying his marketing skills to student projects at Drexel University as well as his own record imprint:  “With our latest release on Drexel’s student run record label (called MAD Dragon Records), we utilized Topspin in creating a new website for the band (streaming player, mailing list, store functionality, etc.) as well as marketing the album using techniques covered in the course. Next year, I plan on incorporating Topspin into the everyday classroom through courses like Marketing and Promotion in the Music Industry and E-commerce in the Music Industry. I will also use it as our direct to fan platform for every Drexel released artist.  Along with my work at the university, I have applied the knowledge at my own record label, Revel Music Group. We used Topspin to release a free promotional “mixtape” for an R&B artist, Brandon Hines, that we have signed. We were able to grow his mailing list from 0 to over 5,300 in a few months (and still acquiring an additional 100 per week) using the email for media widget to exchange 10 free tracks for an email address. We continue to view Topspin as a large piece of the puzzle in both our distribution and marketing strategy and plan to incorporate it into all future releases.
http://maddragon.ning.com/
http://brandonhinesmusic.com/

Soul Mekanik

Ian Clifford is applying the best practices from the course to the marketing of online stores for artist Soul Mekanik. “I had some internet marketing experience already, but I had never applied it in an indie basis,” says Ian. “I learned about the process from the course. In six weeks we have added 600 fans to the email list.”
http://www.soulmekanik.com

Sign up for Online Music Marketing with Topspin, get your own hands dirty with the tools, and send me your success stories to feature next term!

Stefan Lessard is the bass player and a founding member of the Dave Matthews Band. He’s also taking courses at Berkleemusic.com. I caught up with Stefan when DMB played at the Comcast Center outside of Boston. The interview below is part of a larger piece, which we’ll be putting out soon.

Mike King: You’ve been playing with the Dave Matthews Band for 20 years. How did you go from playing small clubs in Virginia to this?

Stefan Lessard: This band, for a while, took every single gig that we were offered. We played every party, every rooftop party, every fraternity; we never said no, we just played everything. I think the most that we played was three gigs in one day and each one of those where about two and a half hours long. So we just worked ourselves silly for four years and when things started growing, we got on the Horde tour. And back when we started, taping was huge. We let people tape our shows and those tapes started getting everywhere and after a few years, we thought, “well, we should probably release a professional sounding live album for our first record.” So we did and we threw a few studio numbers on there but it was mostly just a live show and people loved it because all they had of us was these crappy sounding mix tapes. So finally there was this quality representation of who we were and what we did. It just really grew from there and it was a steady increase. After our first studio record, it really shot up to some sort of success.

Our business model was a lot different back then from most bands at that time, too. For a lot of bands, who are just struggling to play and keep afloat, a record company comes to them and says “We like you guys. We think we can make something out of you. Here’s X amount of dollars upfront and when you are done, we’ll give you X amount more and we’ll give you this amount for tour and give you this percent of merchandise.” What the bands didn’t realize is that the record company was pretty much taking control of the full aspect of things, like the merchandise and the booking and the touring and everything. Once you are theirs, everything went through record companies.

We had such a machine already happening by the time the record companies all got hip to who we were, that they were like, “Well, what do we do with this band? They’re already kind of doing it.” RCA was the first company that came out and saw what we did and said, “This is great! They have their touring and merch down, all we have to do is help them make a great studio record.” They signed us with that sort of freedom and we’ve had a lot of freedom from the start and only have been given more freedom throughout the years. It’s helped us not have to repay so much. It’s really helped us look at the future and move forward.

MK: Was Coran [Coran Capshaw, DMB Manager; founder of Red Light Management; co-founder of ATO Records] helping you set up your infrastructure at the beginning stage?

SL: Well, we were incorporated as a band, which was another thing that a lot of bands did not do, where the lead singer kind of owned the whole thing or the guitar player or whatever, but we came together, and incorporated. The merchandise thing…we just made t-shirts one day and just started selling the t-shirts and people loved them so we just kept doing that. Coran came around because he ran a club that we played at, and we started playing there every Tuesday and he became pretty interested in what we were doing because he saw that there was a lot of momentum. So when he came into it, there was already a lot of momentum, but he definitely helped sculpt the business model that we have used throughout our career. He’s a pretty powerful force when it comes to the business side of the music.

MK: I know you are active on Twitter and Facebook. Can you talk about how you are engaging your fans online?

SL: Our band has always tried to be at the forefront of cutting edge technology when it came to the fan site. When we first started, a fan site was more or less just a mailing list where you would sign a piece of paper and send it to a P.O. box and then maybe you got a t-shirt or a couple stickers or something. There wasn’t really too much incentive to be a fan member. So we created an online fan site and it just took off and that kind of became the model for every band after that.

I have started thinking about a solo record. It’s one of those things, in the history of music, most people that do that, their solo record isn’t something that carries because everyone sees it as project from the bass player for the Dave Matthews Band. So I decided that I would start a website – a platform that I could express myself, so people could see me outside of being the Dave Matthews Band bass player. So it worked and for a little while, people were signing up and talking and I would do little blogs on stuff. MySpace came up and it completely obliterated my whole concept because my concept was MySpace. All of the sudden, I signed up for an account to MySpace and I had 400 more people becoming my friends on Myspace than on my own site. I sort of left my site to the side and I went to MySpace and then from there, I went to Facebook and then from there, I went to Twitter. Next thing I know, I had a voice with the fans. Now it’s gotten to the point where I have to be really careful about what I say because people can take it one way or the other. Sometimes I like that because I don’t mind a little bit of controversy, other times, I want to go out there and squash the rumors. There are a lot of people pretending to be us online. If I find out I’ll go straight to the source, ask BT [Boyd Tinsley, violinist for DMB] if he had a Twitter account and he’d say, “what’s Twitter?” and I was like “Alright guys, FAKE! Don’t talk to him! He’s pretending to be BT”. I think I gained a sort of trust inside the community. Now its just fun and it’s a promotional thing for me. If something happens like the Grand Canyon Adventure [Stefan co-wrote the original music for Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk], I can just start talking about it. I’m taking courses at Berkleemusic, and fans love hearing about the homework I’m doing. I’ve been posting about homework and I think people are starting to think I’m crazy because it’s 4 in the morning and I’m like “still working!” and they’re like “When do you sleep?” It’s been a lot of fun for me and I think the fans enjoy it, so it is something that I’ll keep doing.

I was a huge fan of Kick back in the day, and seeing Berklee’s Annie Clark (aka St. Vincent) cover “Need You Tonight” for Beck’s Record Club series makes me want to revisit the record.

Record Club: INXS “Need You Tonight” from Beck Hansen on Vimeo.

Also: is it just me or is this bass line borrowing from Sly Stone’s “Thank You For Talkin’ to Me Africa?”

More from Beck’s Record Club (including the Velvet Underground!) here.

As I’ve discussed at length on this blog, live events are crucial for developing musicians in acquiring new fans, building a buzz, and getting to the stage where they can monetize what they are doing effectively. For artists just starting off, smaller non-traditional outlets like open mic performances at coffee shops, church or library events, etc can be a good place to make this first plunge into the live performance arena. And for these non-traditional outlets (which are not solely focused on music), hosting live music can bring in some additional traffic, as well as provide a way to support local arts. It’s a symbiotic relationship, which helps musicians to hone their live performance chops, and smaller businesses to engage with their community.

Copyright law dictates that any venue that hosts live music is required to have a performance license, and pay the associated annual licensing fee. As Joan Anderman points out in her Boston Globe piece this morning, the Performance Rights Organizations (who are tasked with collecting these licensing fees and distributing the proceeds to their members) are aggressively pursing these smaller “venues,” many of which make little or no money from the music they present. As such, many of these smaller business owners are eliminating live music from their schedule. As Anderman points out:

Among them is Magret Gudmundsson, who until recently hosted a monthly acoustic open mike in her Middleborough, MA cafe, Coffee Milano. “I like having it here, but we’re not making any money from it and they wanted $332 a year,’’ Gudmundsson said. “The town really needs something like this. They ruined it.”

The PROs counter that the music provided by these artists is adding value to these businesses, and they should pay for this value in the same way they pay for other utilities. There is no doubt that music has value, but if tiny outlets truly are not generating enough revenue from these performances to cover the costs of the license, is it more beneficial for the artists (whom the PROs are representing) to consider these outlets as a way to get their live chops down and hopefully start their local following, as opposed to an income generating vehicle? Are the PROs, as my friend Milan might say, killing an ox for a pound of meat?

I’m all for artists collecting money for their work. But if the end result of PRO field agents (who get paid a commission based on the fees they collect) working coffee shops for a license fee means that there are fewer small outlets for developing artists to perform at and perfect their craft, I’m not sure the ends justify the means.

Take a look at Joan Anderman’s Globe piece here

Check out a thought-provoking TED presentation from Johanna Blakley on how low IP industries like fashion outperform high IP industries (music/books) in both innovation and sales (thanks @guilhermeviotti).