Archive for Audio & Music Publishing
The Future Of Music: A Video Interview With Gerd Leonhard
Posted by: | CommentsWhat is the future of music? A recent report quoted by the RIIA, says that “global music piracy causes $12.5 billion of economic losses every year“. How can the music business change to survive?
Photo credit: Robin Good
In the future of music there will be no CDs or MP3s. Music on the web will be unfettered and purchased in the same way in which you consume music on the radio or television. You do not pay an extra fee for music inside your favorite TV shows, right? Media futurist Gerd Leonhard defines this idea “music like water“.
How can music be like water?
Providers will be offering music as a small portion of payments you already make. It may be your hosting provider fee, your e-mail account, or even part of your telephone subscription, but you will have access to an unlimited quantity of music without even noticing.
“There should be a provision for me to pay along with the DSL or the mobile phone subscription. [...] In most contexts, this would be paid for by advertising so [music] would be subsidized [...] like we have now for BlackBerry.”
Allowing people to have an “unfettered, unrestricted and unlimited” access to music on the web, may also lead music piracy slow down. Copying and sharing music illegally no longer makes sense when you listen to as much music as you like, without paying for any single song.
In this video interview shot by Robin Good, Gerd Leonhard explains why the “business model of music is completely broken” and shares this exciting vision on the future of music.
Here all the details:
The Future of Music – Gerd Leonhard
Duration: 2′ 10”
Full English Text Transcription
Gerd Leonhard: In my view of the future of music… the good news is that of course everybody wants to listen to more music and consuming more music all the time.
We have more people listening on the web, more people listening to radio and television. Interest in music is booming.
The bad news is of course the business model of music, which is completely broken. It was based on selling units, selling copies.
Now we are switching to a model to where we are selling access first, and then the copies. It is a service model. Music as a service, music, as I like to say: “music like water“.
If you go to musiclikewater.com you can see what I write about this.
Basically it is a model that says that music should be included in the network access, just like music is now included in radio. We do not pay for music when we listen to radio and, of course, television.
Similar to that, music should be included when I go on the web. There should be a provision for me to pay along with the DSL or the mobile phone subscription. I would say in most cases, in most contexts, this would be paid for by advertising, so it would be subsidized or by bundled subscriptions, like we have now for BlackBerry.
We can see the first couple of models about online music evolving already in:
- Canada: the Canadian songwriters are making proposals for flat rate for ISPs to essentially pay for the music, both by advertising as well as by making my own payments.
- It is already happening with Google in China: Google is paying for the music, and all Chinese that use the Google search engine get free music downloads and streams for free.
These models make a lot of sense, because the future of music, in my view, is basically an unfettered, unlimited, unrestricted access on a revenue-sharing basis, so that we go away from the climate of having a certain file format or a certain price or a certain way of delivery and we can open up the ecosystem.
I think that is true, in general for all future of media: we are moving to an open platform, a connective platform, a revenue-sharing platform. Basically an ecosystem of how the money flows rather than monopolies of how the money flows, which is what we had so far.
The Challenge For Independent Musicians – Gerd Leonhard
Duration 1′ 50″
Gerd Leonhard: The Internet is both good and bad news for independent musicians.
The good news is that we all get to use the tools that only the professionals had or the ones that were signed to major labels until now.
For example:
Those were tools that 10 years ago were only available with professional PR agencies or filmmakers and so on.
All these tools are now widely becoming available:
- I can build my network on the web,
- I can have a showcase,
- I can talk to people,
- I can Skype with everyone.
That is the good news.
The bad news is that because of the ease of this channel becoming available to everyone, the noise is just crazy. That is not really bad news. The bad news is that you have to cut through the noise.
The challenge for the independent musician or for independent labels is to get attention. To get people to pay attention, because when you get attention, you can turn that into money if you wish.
Without attention there is no money.
The challenge is – and this is what my advice for musicians would be – get as much attention as you can for your high-quality stuff.
This is the other really tough thing on the web: If you are not really good, nobody will pay attention. You cannot lie on the web, and I think that is good news, but some people think it is bad news.
You cannot act like you are good and not actually be good, because on the web you get found out. That is true for bloggers, writers and filmmakers. It is a very Darwinistic system.
For musicians, assuming that you are good, my word of advice would be:
- Get as much attention as you can for everything you should do,
- publish everything,
- build the audience, and then
- start converting the audience and the attention into some sort of way of monetizing it.
Video clips originally recorded by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia. Article editing by Elia Lombardi and Daniele Bazzano. First published on October 16th, 2009 as “The Future of Music: A Video Interview with Gerd Leonhard“.
About Gerd Leonhard
Gerd Leonhard is a media futurist as well as an author and writer, a media and Internet entrepreneur, a strategic advisor, and a keynote speaker & presenter. If you want to get a good feel for what he does, you can check out Gerd’s blog MediaFuturist or visit his Youtube channel.
If you are looking for a way to create an online compilation of your favorite songs, or a music playlist that you can openly share online, there is a new group of free services that allow you to do just that, while enabling you to publish your newly created music playlist on any blog or web site.
Photo credit: Robin Good
Playlist creators are built around search engines that index music tracks wich are publicly accessible on the web. You can search for any song you want, listen to it and then add it up to a music playlist, just like people used to do with cassette tapes back in the 70s. The nice thing is that you can tap into an enormous collection of music and can create a music compilation widget which can be publicly shared and republished on any web site or blog.
No matter which music playlist creation service you chose, the approach to creating a playlist is pretty striaghtforward:
- Search for the songs you want to have by author name or title.
- Add your favorite tracks to a new music playlist.
- Order the sequence of your music tracks (if permitted)
- Personalize the look and feel of the embeddable playlist widget. In most cases you can change the color, size and theme of the player and also fine-tune other options like auto-play or auto-shuffle.
- Grab the HTML code of your music playlist and paste it onto any web page or share your music compilation through social media sites like Facebook or Twitter.
When using a music playlist service are you infringing any copyright? Hard to say my friend. For the time being, these music playlist creators live in a kind of limbo between legal and illegal music streaming.
For obvious reasons, recording labels are not very happy with services like music playlist creators who mediate the access to their copyrighted songs. Given this uncertain situation, the future of these services is quite complicated. No-one can say clearly whether a music playlist creator will last forever or will perish to avoid lawsuits or copyright issues.
I myself experienced this uncertainty when two services I used to create my own mixtapes, Mixwit and Muxtape, disappeared some time ago to avoid pressures from recording labels.
To overcome copyright limitations, some of these music playlist creators provide access to 30-second long previews of the songs you request. Unfortunately, it is really difficult to imagine how anybody could create a decent compilation by using only 30 second chunks of songs.
Here, the key differentiating features I have used to put these services through their paces:
- Collaborative editing: Edit a music playlist in a collaborative fashion with other users.
- Look and feel personalization: Customize the appearance of an embeddable music playlist.
- Track Uploading: Contribute your own tracks to create a music playlist
- Sequence control: Choose the order of the songs inside a music playlist.
- Registration-free: Avoid any registration process to create a music playlist.
Please find below a comparison table and a full set of mini-reviews of all the available online services to create embeddable online music compilations.
Here all the details:
Where To Create Music Playlists, Compilations And Embeddable Music Mixtapes Comparative Table
Where To Create Music Playlists, Compilations And Embeddable Music Mixtapes
- Deezer
Deezer is a free music playlist creator and a radio streaming service. You can listen to complete music tracks from popular artists and, after registering, create a custom playlists to embed on your web site or social media. Deezer playlists are fully customizable: You can re-arrange the order of your tracks, choose between three widget sizes and set other options like auto-playing, auto-shuffle, equalization and even adjust fade-in / fade-out settings to smoothen the transition between tracks. You can also upload your own MP3s to mix with tracks you collect on the web and create collaborative playlists with other Deezer users. To share your playlists, just grab the specific HTML embed code and paste it on your website or social media page. You can also share your custom playlist via e-mail, Twitter, or simply via URL. Deezer is also accessible from iPhone and iPod Touch with a dedicated app.
http://www.deezer.com - Jamendo
Jamendo is an online music community where all songs are published under Creative Commons licenses. To use the service you can register as a listener or an artist. Listeners can browse the music catalogue, listen and download tracks, and also share songs or entire playlists on the web. As an artist you have the same privileges as a listener, plus you can upload your own tracks and even monetize your music through Jamendo ad-revenue sharing program or donations. Each playlist you create may contain single tracks or entire albums that are inside the Jamendo library. Tracks inside a playlist can be freely re-arranged, but there are no other customization options available. Each playlist has a specific version to be embedded on MySpace. Jamendo also offers free online radio streaming. Just pick a radio according to a music genre and listen to it inside a browser pop-up. Collaborative playlists are not supported.
http://www.jamendo.com/ - Songza
Songza is a free online music search engine that helps you find your favorite tracks by aggregating results from YouTube and Imeem. Some songs can only be played for 30 seconds due to copyright restrictions. The service has a very intuitive interface that allows you to click on the title of a song and then listen, rate, share the song via URL, Facebook, Twitter or e-mail, and also add the song to a custom playlist. All items inside a playlist are freely re-arrangeable, but no other customization options are available. To save and share a playlist you need to create an account on Songza. When you are listening to a song, click on “listen to similar” to have Songza suggest other possible tracks you might like. Uploading your own songs and creating collaborative playlists is not supported for the time being.
http://www.songza.com/ - Grooveshark
Grooveshark is a free music playlist creator. You search for songs you like on the web and then arrange songs into a playlist. You can then modify the order of your playlist, save it and embed your playlist on your web site using a web widget. To save and embed your tracks registration is mandatory. Currently there are two types of widget you can fully customize to match the look and feel of your web pages: You can change widget color, size, theme and also set advanced options like auto-shuffle and auto-play. To share your songs you can also use Twitter, Stumbleupon, Facebook or email from the widget itself. Users that want to distribute their own songs can upload their tracks to Grooveshark. Collaborative playlists are not supported.
http://listen.grooveshark.com/ - Imeem
Imeem is a social media service that allows you to create free playlists from different sources like music tracks, images or videos. With the remix feature, you can also re-arrange the items of your playlist and add transition effects between tracks and images. You can also upload your own tracks and collaborate with other Imeem users to create playlists. Registration is required to use the service. Once your playlist is ready, you can embed it on any web page or social media site using a widget. The widget is fully customizable to match the look and feel of your site: You can change size and colors and also edit other settings like auto-play and auto-shuffle. Imeem users are free to share, rate and tag all playlists on the site. Due to copyright restrictions, some songs can only be played for 30 seconds. Imeem is also accessible from iPhone, iPod Touch and Android mobile phones.
http://www.imeem.com/ - Finetune
Finetune is a free music playlist creator and a radio streaming service. You can search for songs and playlists and start listening immediately using the Finetune player. When you search for a song, the service automatically creates a playlist with other recommended music tracks you might like. You can then share your playlist using a web widget. The widget displays album covers to browse in an interface similar to CoverFlow by Apple. Items inside playlists are not re-arrangeable and you cannot customize the appearance of the widget. Registration is mandatory to create playlists. Finetune has also a free Adobe Air client for Windows and Mac, an iPhone app, and works on Flash-enabled mobile phones. Uploading your own songs as well as creating collaborative playlists is not permitted.
http://www.finetune.com/ - Datpiff
Datpiff is a music community where you can create mixtapes without spending a dime. Without registering you can search and listen to any song you like, but to create your own mixtape and download tracks you need to create an account. After registering, you can also upload your own tracks to Datpiff. All mixtapes can be embedded on the web and redistributed for free by sharing the playlist URL, or using a widget (which also has a custom version for embed on forums). Widgets are not customizable nor you can rearrange the tracks inside a playlist. Users on Datpiff can rate, favorite and comment other mixtapes. Creating collaborative playlists is not supported.
http://www.datpiff.com/ - Spool.fm
With Spool.fm you can build free music playlists from tracks available on the web. Without registering, you can search and arrange your favorite music tracks into a sequence, but to save your playlist and re-distribute it on the web you need a Spool.fm account. Playlists can be freely shared on Twitter and embedded on your blog or social media using a widget. The widget is not customizable, nor you can upload your own tracks to create a playlist. With an account, you can also check what your friends on Spool.fm are listening in real-time and listen to their music like a live radio station. Collaborative playlists are not available for the time being.
http://spool.fm/ - 8tracks
8tracks allows you to share and discover music by creating online playlists for free. Without an account you can search for songs, listen to mixes on the site and export mixes anywhere on the web using an embeddable player. After the registration process, you can combine tracks to create a playlist, which should be at least 30-minute long (about eight tracks). Be sure to choose your songs in the correct order form the beginning because songs cannot be re-ordered at a later time. To share your tracks you can use an embeddable widget. You can customize the color of the widget, but other options are not available. 8tracks also allows you to upload your own tracks to distribute to other people. No collaborative playlists.
http://8tracks.com/ - MixTape.Me
MixTape.me is a free web service to create mixtapes. You simply search the web for music tracks you like and then add the songs to a new mixtape you are building. You can either use the traditional mixtape builder or the “Quick playlist” option, which allows you to create a sequence of songs using a drag and drop interface. By registering to MixTape.Me you can also share your music using a web widget. Unfortunately, no customization options to style the widget are available nor you can re-arrange the order of your tracks inside a mixtape. The service has a built-in feature that displays contextual info abut the songs you are playing, like: artists bio, lyrics, artworks, and videos. Creating collaborative playlists and uploading your own tracks is not permitted.
http://mixtape.me/ - Playlist.com
Playlist.com lets you arrange music tracks from the web to create a playlist to share on your site. You can either create a playlist on your own or invite other users to add their suggestions. To use Playlist.com, register to the service and then simply search the web for music tracks, order your songs and then use a widget to share your playlist to any web page or social media site. You can customize the color of your widget to match the look and feel of your site. If you prefer, you can also export the songs of a playlist to Windows Media Player, send your tracks via e-mail or share your music on third-party social services using an AddThis button. Uploading your own songs to Playlist.com is currently not supported.
http://www.playlist.com/ - MixPod
MixPod is a free music playlist creator that allows you to combine multiple tracks to embed on your blog site or social media. There is no need to register and you can start right away searching for songs and arranging tracks into a playlist. Do not worry about putting songs in the correct order, because you can freely re-order your tracks at a later time. Once created, you can freely redistribute your playlist using a customizable widget. To personalize your widget, choose among several ready-made skins, pick your preferred colors, and adjust other parameters like auto-play, auto-shuffle and play in loop. You can also set whether your playlist should be public or private. You cannot upload your own tracks nor build a playlist collaboratively with other users.
http://www.mixpod.com/ - 500 Days of Summer Mixtape
For the launch of the movie 500 Days of Summer, Fox has started a web service to create free mixtapes to share on the web. To create a mixtape you need an Imeem account and only 30-second previews of the songs are available. After registering, choose a set of tracks, order them and then customize the look of your playlist, which is displayed as an old-fashioned cassette: Add labels, text, themes and then publish the cassette on your blog site. You can also share your cassette via Twitter, Facebook and other social media. Collaborative playlists are not allowed, nor you can upload your own songs.
http://www.500daysofsummermixtape.co.uk/
Other Music Playlist Creators
- Blip.fm
Blip.fm allows you to create your own web radio station for free. Just register to the site and add some of your favorite artists to discover other users that match your musical tastes. Then start searching for songs you like and share them by adding a personal message. You can also associate your social media accounts with Blip.fm to send updates each time you “blip” a new song. Embedding a playlist of your songs is also allowed by selecting the blips you want to embed and pasting a snippet of HTML code to your site. Unfortunately you cannot control the sequence of your tracks, create collaborative playlists nor upload your own tracks.
http://blip.fm/ - Soundtrack of My Life
Soundtrack of My Life is a free service provided by Billboard.com that creates a playlist with all the songs that remind you a milestone you achieved in your life. Your first kiss, the day you got your license, when you got married… you just input a date for all these moments and the service automatically creates a playlist containing songs that were top of the charts in that period. When your playlist is created you can listen to a small preview of your songs. If you register to Billboard.com, you can also share your tracks on social media or embed a widget with your playlist on your site.
http://www.billboard.com/soyl/wizard#/soyl/wizard
Sample music playlist created by Robin Good on Playlist.com
Originally prepared by Robin Good and Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia, and first published on August 17th, 2009 as “Create Music Playlists, Compilations And Embeddable Music Mixtapes – Guide To Best Online Services“.
Online Music Collaboration: Best Tools And Services To Collaborate On Music Projects
Posted by: | CommentsOnline music collaboration services allow you to play, rehearse and record music with remotely connected like-minded people from around the world. You connect with other musicians, vocalists, songwriters and even to your own music fans to create the music you like either in real-time or asynchronously. You can also exchange ideas, discover new music from other independent artists and experiment freely without the pressure coming from knowing that you are renting an expensive recording studio.
Photo credit: picpics
Unless you have decided to do a real-time jam with your remotely connected musicians, online music collaboration services work all pretty much in the same way: You record a music track with your own instrument connected to a computer and then you upload the track for others to work and build upon.
If you and your music partners already have a speedy broadband Internet connection, you can also use online music collaboration services to play in real-time without worrying about the typical delays that are characteristic of transmitting audio on the Internet. You just plug your instrument to your PC / Mac, find your musical buddies and you are set to play.
Collaborative music projects can be both public or private, depending on your production needs, and some of the music collaboration services I am showcasing here in this guide, also provide a direct marketplace for you to distribute and sell your songs.
Interestingly, DJs and creative people who are not musicians can use some of these music collaboration services to remix and mash-up old and new stuff.
In this MasterNewMedia guide you can find a comprehensive map of the online music collaboration services available out there, including some of their key characteristics and a comparative table that puts them through their paces. When reviewing each one of the services, these were the key items I checked:
- Supported file format: File types accepted to upload your music tracks.
- Public / Private sessions: Free or restricted access for musical projects.
- Distribution / Sales: Music tracks distribution on third-party websites or social networks.
- Rating: Mutual evaluation of musicians.
- Pricing: Basic starting cost and feature.
Here all the details:
Best Tools And Services To Collaborate On Music Projects Comparative Table
Online Music Collaboration: Best Tools And Services To Collaborate On Music Projects
- eJAMMING AUDiiO
With eJamming AUDiiO you can create, perform and record musical tracks online and in real-time. The software (for Win and Mac only) allow you to connect to other musicians both by public or private chat and by creating or joining a session. Inside a session you get in touch with up to three other musicians for real time music collaboration, creation and recording. Or you can also play on your own and record your creation. All you have to do is plug your instrument to your computer and then configure the software with the instructions available on the website. You cannot upload your own tracks for the time being. Each musician has a skill level rated by the eJamming community, so you can decide whom you want to play with. Once you have recorded your tracks you can also send your music to a friend or jam-mate. eJamming AUDiio is priced either $9.95/month or $89.95/year.
http://www.ejamming.com/ - Kompoz
Kompoz is a social workspace for musicians and songwriters. You can record a music track, upload it and then invite others to contribute to your song by adding other instruments or vocals. Public and private projects are available, so you can collaborate with anyone or specifically select the people to work with. Check the ratings of your selected musicians to choose the right co-author for your creation. Then upload a music track (MP3, AIFF, WAV, WMA, OGG), a PDF with tabs or vocal parts and meet your jam-mates to start collaborating together on your own song. To get feedback from the Kompoz community, you can use the forum discussions to share opinions and suggestions with other members. When your project is ready, share it via Twitter, Facebook or your own website by grabbing the embed code. Public projects are free and licensed under a Creative Commons license. Each private project you start costs $8.95 and you can choose either to share your music under a Creative Commons license or traditional copyright.
http://www.kompoz.com - JamNow
JamNow is a free online collaboration platform that allows you to play, record and collaborate with other musicians. You can host live shows for your fans or just play and record your tracks on your own. To use JamNow you have to download a free software (Win and Mac) on your computer. The software allows you to get in touch with other passionate musicians and supporters via chat or using a microphone. Your music projects can be both kept public or private and all members have a rating score, so it is easy to meet the people you need to perfect your songs. No exposure features to distribute your music on third-party websites. No info either on file formats supported to upload a music track.
http://www.jamnow.com - MixMatchMusic
MixMatchMusic is a free community where artists and music lovers meet to share their tastes or collaborate on music projects. You can connect with other members to create, complete or remix tracks using MixMatchMusic suite of audio tools. Then upload your own tracks to start or use a “stem”, a music sample you find on the site. To find the right musicians look at their ratings from the community. Once you are satisfied with the results of your project, publish your music on the website. Each song costs $1 and for each track sold $0.85 go to those people who collaborated creating the music. To release your song on third-part locations you need either to have permission from the company or the co-authors of the song. No info on file formats supported to upload a music track.
http://www.mixmatchmusic.com - Tune Rooms
Tune Rooms is a free online service to create and remix music tracks with the help of other musicians. You can create your own music sessions (or “tune rooms”) by uploading your own tracks in MP3 format or by adding existing tracks already on the website. Then allow others to contribute with their own song sketches to help you complete your songs. Tune rooms allows users to assign a Creative Commons license their works, featuring the license prominently on each composition. No ratings or distribution tools available.
http://www.tunerooms.com - Oomix
Using Oomix musicians can collaborate online on their songs and even monetize their music without spending a dime. Record and upload a single-instrument MP3 track to Oomix and let others play their own groove and complete your track. Some others may want to remix different tracks and create a unique music piece using the Studio tool (Windows only). Each song perfected and created by a group of musicians is sold for a pre-determined price. Each musician or remixer assigns a percentage to her contribution that identifies the amount of work done (e.g. 30% bass guitar, 30% guitar, 20% drums, 20% remix). The money each contributor gets is calculated according to the percentage of work done and total earning made from the sell. You can rate each musician but not freely distribute the songs you create (only sell is allowed). Private projects are not permitted.
http://oomix.com - Jamglue
Jamglue is an online community for creating and sharing original music and audio. You can upload your recorded music (MP3, WAV and WMA formats allowed) or voice track, create mixes, and then share your creations on your blog or MySpace profile. You can either upload a track from your hard-disk, a URL, or use JamGlue library to mix different tracks using a Flash-based interface; no software to install on your computer. Once your mix is completed, you can download the song for free. You can also write mini-review or comments to rate your favorite artists. Private projects are not allowed. Free to use.
http://www.jamglue.com - WeMix
WeMix is a free online service where musicians can collaborate together and produce original songs. Co-founded by the rapper Ludacris, WeMix usage is simple: you sign up, create your page and upload your original songs, beats, vocals, riffs in MP3 format As a member you can collaborate on songs using WeMix Mashpit, offer feedback, rate your favorite artists and share ideas for new music with others. If you want to distribute your music you can grab the embed code of your published songs and paste it onto your social media pages or website. Top performers also get a shot to turn their songs into real records by collaborating with star musicians and the entire WeMix community. Your show might even be broadcast on TV.
http://www.wemix.com - Indaba Music
The mission of Indaba Music is to foster a community that offers artists to connect and work creatively together on music projects. Create a free blog to share your music (MP3 is the only format accepted for upload) and photos or connect with other musicians to work on a project together using a web-based workspace. Each musician is rated by other members and has a personal profile page to facilitate your choice. If you are not a musician, you can also browse the Indaba Music library of Creative Commons-licensed songs and remix a song, even privately. Basic plan to join Indaba Muisc is free and you have all it needs to create, remix and share your songs. If you need advanced audio tools you can purchase one of the two premium plans starting at $5/month or $50/year.
http://www.indabamusic.com - MyOnlineBand
MyOnlineBand.com is a network of professional and would-be musicians that want to share their music tastes and play collaboratively on music projects. Once you register to the network you can upload your songs (MP3 or WMA only) to share with others and use a live-chat facility to communicate in real-time with the musicians of your team. You also have a public profile page that works as a resume to help other people evaluate your contribution to their tracks. People can also support you economically through a dedicated link, though this is not compulsory to download a song. In fact, all you need to do is download tracks from the MyOnlineBand library, add your own audio contribution and then re-upload the song to the site. You can also upload document files to provide your jam-mates with chords, lyrics and tabs that will help you improve the songs. Both public and private projects are allowed. MyOnlineBand is free to join. No rating allowed.
http://www.myonlineband.com - MyBlogBand
MyBlogBand is a virtual jam room where you connect to other musicians, play and publish you recordings for free. You simply post your creation on the forum area of the website and let others add more instruments, give feedback, make suggestions, and collaborate on the song. If you like the additions made, you can then share the revised collaboration. You can also choose to work alone and open a private project or publicly release your creations. Audio tracks must be submitted in MP3 format and you can post lyrics, tabs and any other document that might help co-authors create songs. No rating and no ability to distribute your songs on third-party websites.
http://www.myblogband.com - Dopetracks
DopeTracks is a free online music collaboration network where you can record your beats and sing together with other vocalists. Just plug your microphone to your computer and use the built-in Flash application to record your vocals. Then upload your track to the service and provide lyrics so that your fans can sing along. Other users can also comment, “dope” (rate) and help you improve your beats participating to your vocal performances. Once you are satisfied with your beats, distribute your performance to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or Xanga. No info on the file format needed to upload your vocals and no private projects allowed.
http://www.dopetracks.com - Virtual Recording Studio
Virtual Recording Studio is an online music collaboration venue where musicians meet to work together on new music. All you have to do is upload an original music track in MP3 format and then start a project to let others contribute to your song. Projects can be either public or private. In a private project you selectively control who can hear your music or collaborate on your songs. Ratings and comments are allowed, but you cannot distribute your finished creations on third-party websites. You can also install Virtual Recording Studio on your own web server to create your personal music collaboration community. Free to use.
http://thenetstudio.com/Scripts/VRSLogin.vrs
Originally prepared by Robin Good and Daniele Bazzano for MasterNewMedia, and first published on July 13th, 2009 as “Online Music Collaboration: Best Tools And Services To Collaborate On Music Projects“.
CarCast is a new hybrid Internet audio capture, playlist library and automatic audio synchronization system which allows you to take just about any audio track you hear on the Web to your portable and car-friendly USB music player.
If you are looking for an easy and straightforward way to convert into downloadable and portable audio audio content what you normally listen to on the web, CarCast may likely be the only tool you need.
If you, like me, have been frustrated by the myriad of different formats audio formats out there and the ton of commercial recording utilities claiming to be able to capture your favorite audio streams, you will find the WebCarCastRecoder to be a marvellous new technology capable of recording automatically just about any audio stream you run into.
The CarCast audio system is a new service consisting of a web-based personal audio library, a unique Firefox-based on-the-fly audio-recorder (it can record anything you find on the web) and a small utility to download and synchronize your favorite audio to your USB memory stick.
“Thanks to CarCast with any USB memory stick, an Internet connection and a USB in our car, we can always keep us updated and listen to our favourite programmes: just select online the content that we are concerned and, each time inserting our memory stick in any computer connected to the Internet, it will update with new content always ready to be heard while on the car between a traffic light and a jam!“
Here all the details:
CarCast Overview
Launched in Beta about two months ago, CarCast is a new hybrid (Web+software) system capable of ripping, recording, saving, organizing and converting most any audio you can run into on the Internet. CarCast is also a simple to use to audio, web-based audio library service which allows you to pick and add any podcast or on-the-fly recording you have made to it, much like you would do in iTunes.
Behind this very useful and innovative new service are the great guys of Inrete, who launched over a year ago the unique television-to-web personal recorder, Vcast / Faucet.
The cool innovative differentiating trait is that CarCast also allows you to record just about any audio you may run onto on the Web. Even the one from video clips out there. You just go to a web page where the audio is and CarCastWebRecorder (a Firefox plug-in) automatically records it for you.
Not only.
CarCast provides you also with a cross-platform utility which you can use to download all of your favourite audio recordings, podcasts and music to your favorite external device, be it a USB stick, portable media player or an external disk.
This unique recording software gets installed on your USB memory stick and it synchronizes the content that you collect inside your CarCast audio library to your external memory device any time you insert it in an Internet-connected PC or Mac. Your browser is only needed when you want to add new content or update the audio playlists you have created. All the rest is automatically done by the USB memory stick itself.
But there’s more: now your audio-synchronization becomes truly “nomadic”, meaning that you just need a computer (Mac and even Linux are all supported) connected to the Internet to update the music / audio recordings you have in your USB memory stick.
Last but not least, CarCastUSB, the synchronization software that you first install on your USB drive, does also work on ANY removable media, as much as it does on ANY fixed hard you have.
Still in full development and released as a Beta, CarCast keeps adding new features and capabilities on a weekly basis.
CarCast Components
CarCast is made of three parts:
1) The CarCast Website
The purpose of the CarCast website is to help you manage your subscriptions and define what to put on the USB memory stick. By providing the proper information you can set which podcasts to receive and how many episodes to keep from each one.
2) USB software
The CarCastUSB software needs to be installed on your USB memory stick. What it does, is to synchronize the content you have selected from the web and placed into your CarCast audio library with the contents of your USB memory stick. The beauty of this USB-based synchronization system, is that all of it happens automatically and with a single-click any time you insert your USB drive into an internet connected PC or Mac.
You can download and install CarCastUSB for your platform of choice:
3) CarCastWebRecorder
CarCastWebRecorder is a powerful audio ripper / recorder, dressed as a Firefox plugin capable of detecting and capturing just about any audio you happen to browse.
CarCastWebRecorder is “always on” and relentlessly checks the content of your web pages for multimedia content. When it finds it, it attempts to access it and cache it in the background, without ever interrupting your browsing activities. It records everything you listen to and more.
CarCastWebRecorder can be immediately downloaded and installed on Firefox.
The CarCast My Audio Library
The My Audio Library
The web-based, iTunes-like audio library for the CarCast system is called MyAudio.
Inside it you can see all of the audio tracks you have recorded and added to the library as well as any podcast you have subscribed to. From the library you can listen, rename or delete any of the audio tracks.
To add content to this MyAudio library you can either:
a) Subscribe to any audio podcast
b) Add it directly from your computer
c) Save it in the MyAudio library from your collection in the CarCastWebRecorder shelf.
For each audio item you add to the MyAudio library you can specify and edit the track title, author and description.
Then, when you insert your USB “CarCast-ready” USB-key, all of the audio contents of this library will be reflected on your USB stick.
But there are two more major options as well:
1) You can also SELECT which types of files to download in your external USB drive by choosing among MP3, MP4 (mp4, m4a, m4v, aac), DivX (avi, divx, xvid), Windows Media (wm, wma, wmv, wmf, asf).
2) You can choose which type of file organization you want to use among CarCast three possible alternatives:
- FLAT
Everything goes inside the MyAudio folder of the USB memory stick.- FOLDER
You define the different folders inside MyAudio where you want to put the files, so that you can easily find the audio tracks you want to listen to.- PLAYLIST
All audio files are in one folder but you can organize them into separate playlists.
Other Key Features
- Capture any audio format
One of the key goals of CarCast is to keep improving this system and to make it soon capable to record just about any audio stream type you can think of. For example, as of now, live streaming music stations like Somafm.com cannot be recorded by the CarCastWebRecorder though support for these will come in the near future. - Format conversion
CarCast integrates an .MP3 automatic audio converter which makes it possible for you to get even the audio track from your favorite video lecture or video music clip into a standard audio music format. - Other output formats
In the future CarCast will convert also to other formats as well. In particular, Giorgio Bernardi of Inrete reported to me that Divx support and ability to convert to what he calls the “portable media player format“, which is a MP4 320×240 pixels multimedia file that can play over Ipods, PSPs, Nokia cell phones, HTC and BlackBerry devices and more.The output to video format is meant to support playback on Ipods (which do not play flv – Flash video files) and USB-stick playback from DVD players (under the TV) equipped with USB port but which support only DIVX formatted video content.
- Max Number of Recordings – Limitations
CarCast has implemented a self-sustainable viral marketing strategy by limiting the number of “tracks” you can pile up inside your audio library. The limit, which is now set at 50 max recordings, can be easily overcome and pushed to the next level simply by inviting someone else you know to use the CarCast service. Just like Google did with GMail, everyone is encouraged to use the service and recommend it directly to his friends.To overcome the 50 items limit, inside the CarCast “MY AUDIO” page you can now click on “Get more Items” which allows you to send an invitation directly to a friend or colleague. Please note that the limit is not fully lifted but simply extended to allow you another 50 recordings to be added inside your audio library. In addition the bonus is granted only when anyone of your invited friends does effectively complete the CarCast registration.
How To Use CarCast
Here is the basic workflow you need to adopt to use CarCast correctly.
1) Log in to CarCast, install the Firefox plugin, and access your MyAudio Library.
2) Add relevant podcast and audio recordings you have been able to capture with CarCastWebRecorder to your library.
3) Organize your audio contents by creating folders and playlists as you need.
4) Download the CarCastUSB software and install it on your external USB key drive. (See detailed instructions here below)
5) Plug your USB key drive into any computer USB report and synchronize your USB key drive with all or some specific content from MyAudio library.
6) Take your USB key drive into your car and plug it in to listen to all of the audio selections you have saved.
How To Install CarCastUSB on An External Drive
CarCastUSB is the software that you need to install on your USB drive (or to any other mass storage device of your choice). The CarCast system has been designed to provide a useful service for car drivers who want an easy way to get audio and music they hear online into their portable music devices and so the USB type memory drive is used here as a most fitting example.
The first important thing to know is that the CarCastUSB software needs not to be installed on your computer.
You only need to save it on your USB key in an uncompressed format.
Here the specific steps to take to install CarCast USB from a Windows PC computer (Alternative instructions if you are on a Mac – Linux geeks need no help I suppose):
- Download the CarCastUSB software simply by clicking on the Windows icon that appears on the CarCastUSB page.
- Plug the USB key in your computer and take note of the drive letter that gets assigned to it.
- Right-click on the CarCast USB.zip file that you have just downloaded and select to extract the zip file contents to the drive letter you have identified in step 2.
Disconnect the USB key once the process is finished.
From now on, no matter in which computer you will insert that USB key, you will see immediately
a control panel that will allow you to automatically start the synchronization of your CarCast MyAudio library with your USB key.
Examples of Web Audio Sources That You Can Record From
Here is a rather short initial list of online music sources that I have personally tested against WebCarCasrRecorder ability to record Internet audio from the most diverse places.
- Musicovery.com
- Last.fm
- Mixwit.com
- Jango.com
- Tunes.co.uk
- Any YouTube video
- Most any web-page-embedded online video clip.
If you know of more relevant sources that should be listed here, please let me know via the comments section below.
In the future:
Streaming stations like Somafm.com and similar ones will be captured as well
How To Get CarCast On Your Computer
If you don’t have already a friend using CarCast (who could invite you in) nor an Invitation Code, you may still be able to get access to CarCast.
In fact, if you are a blogger or someone interested in testing and trying out this new tool and willing to provide feedback to the team behind it on how to further improve it, you can ask for a Invitation Code directly to CarCast Labs. Send an e-mail that introduces you and your reasons for wanting to try CarCast out to carcast [at] staff.inrete.it
Summary Review
Pros – Key Strengths
- Automatically detects and records many types of audio and video content
- Cross-platform – Firefox plugin works on PC, Mac, Linux
- Easy to use
- Provides offline access to Internet audio content that would be otherwise difficult to listen to
- Works not just on USB key drives but on just about any mass storage device that you want to use it with
- Free – there is for now no cost involved in using CarCast or anyone of its components
- MP3 automatic audio format converter
- Automatically recorded audio clips can be added in one-click to the CarCast audio library
- CarCastWebRecorder recognizes audio it has already recorded and it does not record it again if it is already available
Areas for improvement
- Official CarCast web site interface and its navigation
- My Audio library – interface and usability – lots to do here – iTunes is a distant memory, but ehy not use a true iTunes-like open-source product like Songbird or a similar solution?
- CarCastWebRecorder support for automatic recording of more audio formats and types
- Automatic recognition of music titles and artists name – Names of songs often go unidentified as the recorder can guess about information that is not reaily contained in the web page or feed where this is coming from. (see Gracenote capabilities)
- Improved usability and functionalities inside CarCastWebRecorder – Navigation among recorded items is frustrating at best. You need to keep moving your mouse up and down to play different items. It takes time to go through the audio library to name properly items and to clean up junk or incomplete recordings that have ended up in there. A double click option that would playback any item so invoked would be much more usable. Furthermore a simple audio playback interface allowing easy access to stop / play / next / previous functions would also be very welcome.
- Better detection of relevant audio content
- Product presentation, marketing and video introduction
Editor’s Comments
CarCast is an innovative solution to a growing pain: taking any audio or music you like on the Internet and bring it with you offline anywhere you want. The iPod is one step in that direction, but the iPod doesn’t allow you to grab a song you hear on an Internet radio station or a cult groove you have just discovered on a digital mixtape that a friend has just sent you, or a great undeground tune you have just spotted on Somafm. Same if you are on Musicovery, Jango or Last.fm. You can listen but you can’t record and take that stuff offline with you.
Or can you?
I am not talking from a legal viewpoint but from a technical one. How do you record that stuff?
If you start searching for tools that claim to record audio from the Internet you run into a barrage of utilities claiming to work only with certain formats or audio types. But which one is right for you? And what happens when you want to record something else? Most of these tools cost $20 to $30 so you easily risk to waste your time and money unless you know pretty well all of the tech issues involved in doing this.
CarCast, attempts to solve ths very need by providing a free, universal web audio recorder that, when fully mature, is going to be able to capture most any audio format and delivery type you may run into.
This by itself is no small feat.
If two days ago you had asked me for a way to take with you offline any of my passionate digital mixtapes, as some of you have indeed, I wouldn’t have had a solution to suggest. For example there was one of you in South Africa, who having a very slow connection wanted to get a specific mixtape down on her computer for listening to it properly and even when offline. CarCast may provide a solution for my sweet friend in CapeTown as well.
What I like the most about the CarCast system is its hybrid web-based / offline nature perfectly matching my need to find and capture online audio with my need to bring the same audio content offline, anywhere I am.
CarCast is also the first audio recording system for web-based audio content that does not require me to buy and install a dedicated and platform-specific audio conversion software. CarCast makes it completely effortless for me to record music tracks and audio clips from an infinite number of diverse Internet sources I run into during my online browsing.
But for as much I dig my newly earned ability to record a great deal of music, which before I could only access while connected to the net, I remain pretty disappointed by the very primitive interface of the CarCast web-based components, the MY Audio library and in general by the overall interface design and usability of some of its facilities. Given that the team behind CarCast is probably not made of any professional web designers or usability engineers this should not be much of a surprise.
What I care to highlight here is the how inseparable are the operatibility of a tool with its technical capabilities. In other words, I strongly believe that you cannot separate the quality of a technology from its interface and usability aspects. They are one thing.
I mean: you can have the greatest idea, technology or feature set but what is the benefit if only early adopters, geeks and power users can make sense of how to make it work for them?
Whether you build, create or code new technologies for experimentation, passion or big business, people have to interact with it and be able to make sense of it in the least possible time. Placing these needs in a lower, secondary priority level in favour of the more important engineering tasks, is just like developing a new car by looking only at the engineering aspects. People do not buy cars for how their engines are built. They buy them for their size, comfort, speed, looks.
My advice to the Inrete team is to consider looking at new technology development as an organic effort in which features, technology and UI (user inteface) must work together and not be separate components, created in separate departments and slapped onto each other before being shipped. That’s the sensation I get when using CarCast: a great idea with a yet too primitive implementation.
At this stage CarCast remains a tool for geeks, power users and passionate early adopters who, much like me, care to install the latest and most interesting new tools out there. Especially for those who have a specific need to frequently capture or bring to the offline world audio content that is not normally downloadable, CarCast provides a truly “magic wand“.
CarCast is also another sign of the increased and natural flow of music and audio toward ubiquity. Music wants to be everywhere and be as easy to access and listen to as water or electricity. The CarCast system does nothing but further help this natural flow and extending further music natural drive toward such ubiquity.
For music rights holders concerned or preoccupied by CarCast slick online recording abilities the cure is not to send another score of legal letters to the development team at Inrete, but to proactively work at realizing the idea of new music economic system that prizes in each and every way near-free ubiquitous music access.
For those looking at where technology is going, CarCast is a great lead to keep under your radar, and given their track record on other media-related technologies for recording and accessing audio and television content offline, one that would be worthwhile partnering with to develop commercially some of the very cool new media technologies they have launched in the last 18 months.
Just to hint at the potential these guys have already developed, think for a second about the power that the combined synergy of Inrete latest tools can have. If you mix together Vcast -Faucet and CarCast you have a complete system capable of doing scheduled and on-the-fly recording of any audio or video content being broadcast on the net or on the traditional airwaves. Matched to a system that synchronizes across your different media devices, and enhanced by a true iTunes-like management system CarCast would really be a breakthrough technology that would be adopted by thousands of users every day.
So this is the future, it works now and it can be very useful. It’s not for everyone, but if you are geeky enough not to give up right away, you may love it.
But if you are looking for a what the future of personal online audio recording is going to be like, this is just a draft of what is yet to come. The idea is all there, but the delivery and “format” is all yet to come.
In all cases I eagerly recommend to those wanting to understand more, to give CarCast a good try now and to post here (in the comments section below) or to write to Inrete your sincere feedback and ideas.
Written by Robin Good for MasterNewMedia and first published as “Record Any Audio From The Web And Listen To It Offline, From Your USB Drive, Wherever You Are: The CarCast System” on September 10th 2008
Music Should Be Shared: Joss Stone
Posted by: | CommentsJoss Stone, a music artist who won a Grammy Award last year, is another one of the many pop stars who is most clearly voicing her support and open-minded approach toward music sharing, P2P and the Internet.
Photo credit: (c) Joss Stone
Joss Stone, if you don’t know her, is an English soul and R&B singer-songwriter and occasional actress. Stone emerged to fame in late 2003 with her multi-platinum debut album, The Soul Sessions, which made the 2004 Mercury Prize shortlist. Her second album, the also-multi-platinum Mind, Body & Soul, topped the UK Albums Chart for one week and spawned the UK top ten hit “You Had Me.” Both her album and single have received one nomination at the 2005 Grammy Awards, while Stone herself has been nominated for Best New Artist. Stone’s latest album, Introducing Joss Stone, released in March 2007, has already gone “gold”.
Throughout her career, Stone has sold over ten million albums worldwide, and has won two BRIT Awards and one Grammy Award. She also ventured in the film business, making her acting debut in late 2006 with the fantasy adventure film Eragon, as the witch Angela.
But here’s the scoop: In a recent interview she said that – unlike herself – most artists are brainwashed by the industry, and she encouraged people to share her music.
Joss defines the whole idea of music sharing as “brilliant” and has no hesitation in saying tha the thing she likes the least about the music industry is the business side of it. She believes also that most music artists are brainwashed by the industry, and that there is nothing wrong in passing up your favorite music to your friends.
“Stone is not the only artist who actually wants people to share their work. Last year rapper 50 Cent made some positive remarks about filesharing, and Nine Inch Nails takes it even further, as they upload their music onto BitTorrent sites themselves.
These artists are spot on, in fact, several studies have shown that artists actually benefit from filesharing. The more music people share, the more CDs they buy and the more concerts they visit.”
Source: Torrentfreak
Here the video interview with a full text transcript:
Joss Stone: Music Should Be Shared
Video Interview Full text English Transcription
Interviewer: Now that you are in the show business, what do you think about “piracy” and “MP3″ and “internet” …about music?
Joss Stone: I think it is great….
Interviewer: Great?
Joss Stone: Yeah I love it… I think it is brilliant and I tell you why:
Music should be shared.
I believe this is how music turned into some kind of crazy business.
Now the only part of music that I dislike is the business that is attached to it.
Now, if music is free, then there is no business. There is just music.
So, I like it. I think that we should share.
It’s ok, if one person buys it, it’s totally cool, burn it up, share it with your friends, I don’t care. I don’t care how you hear it as long as you hear it.
As long as you come to my show and have a great time enjoying the live show… it’s totally cool. I don’t mind. I am happy that they hear it.
Interviewer: Wow, I think you are the first singer telling this story to me!
Joss Stone: Yeah, most people have been brainwashed.
The future of music, as pointed out before, is all about sharing. If you are still thinking to make music by selling your own CDs or if you have some hope that record labels may recover some of their lost ground and prestige… think again.
Photo credit: Viktor Gymria
“In the immediate future of music we need to get our heads around the fact that the less control we impose on the users of content the better.”
The new goal for the independent music producer and small recording label alike is to engage more specific audiences, to provide them with great quality music, and use that music as a communication channel, a marketing and distribution arm to get really into their hearts and minds. If your music can flow like free water, money and revenue can be generated by monetizing premium products, merchandise, concert tickets, and a lot more.
“Attention is indeed the new distribution. And real money will be paid for real attention.”
The new realization should be that we are no longer trying to monetize plastic copies of sound files but the entire range of assets and events that can be created around an artist or a music band. If you can wrap your head around this new concept, then you may be as much interested in checking out how in such scenario innovative music licensing approaches could provide a much larger revenue stream for all musicians while becoming almost “transparent” to the final music fan.
Gerd Leonhard, Master New Media special envoy into the future music world explains why and how this is all goign to work.
Here the details:
Intro by Robin Good
The End of Control: Music Like Water, and the Flat Rate
by Gerd Leonhard
From Controlling Distribution To Deserving Attention
The music industry makes a great case study as far as relentless obsession with control is concerned: Despite a long, hard struggle to retain (or even increase!) control over what people do with music, the music industry has in the most spectacular fashion irretrievably lost control over the distribution of its product.
The only thing left for the music industry to do is to admit it, as is now happening with EMI’s new Terrafirma’ed management team ( they have a long way to go but what a relief to have someone wake up and actually do what needs to be done!) .
Not that the impending loss of distribution control wasn’t obvious more than ten years ago, which is why the steadfast refusal of the music industry’s “leaders” to acknowledge and act on the fact that the user is now the one in control of distribution is utterly astounding.
Many music executives still think they are entitled to run their content-is-king-doms as they see fit (imposing copy protection and other restrictions) while the consumers should remain relegated to the good old take-it-or-leave-it role. Thus, the end of control over distribution is hitting major label music executives particularly hard, and the longer they wait to accept this basic fact of control-loss, the less likely they are to survive this shift to a new ecosystem, much less prosper in the Music 2.0 world. Long-term denial does have its side effects.
Access Replaces Ownership
The reality is that it has never been easier to share songs and get free music via P2P filesharing (still a popular pastime but contrary to popular myths, far from being the most popular way of sharing music), Bluetooth, USB-stick swapping, hard-drive trading, instant messaging, Skype, Gmail, social networks, MP3, blogs, stream-ripping, and hundreds of music widgets that offer the world’s music catalogs on demand, for free.
Even in free sharing environments, access now replaces ownership, and a vast cornucopia of music-sharing tools has recently opened, making Napster look like a soda straw.
Let’s face it: Music sharing is alive, well, and growing exponentially. Just wait until we have millions of iPhones and millions of Wi-Fi-enabled iPods, with Apple’s new iPhone SDK luring thousands of enterprising young developers into creating the coolest new music-sharing applications, which those pesky digital natives will gobble up at the speed of sound! Add another two billion second-generation, interconnected Nokia, Samsung, LG, and Motorola mobile communication computers (a.k.a. cell phones), and you have a mobile sharing nirvana.
Still dreaming of controlling distribution? Still not interested in putting a metering device into this digital musiclike-water stream?
Anyone who still argues that music distribution is not totally out of control must either be a highly paid and reality-numb lawyer for the RIAA or drinking some really serious DRMlaced Kool-Aid.
Embrace The End Of Control
If it wants to stay alive, there is now only one option for the music industry: Embrace the end of distribution control, and move forward to share access-based revenues that are already generated by all those “pirates” that have free access to music, regardless of lack of permission.
The very use of the term “pirate” is, of course, indicative of the music industry’s dilemma: Its (mis)leaders still can’t fathom that the People Formerly Known as Consumers (PFKACs) have finally had enough and actually dared to search and find their own sources of music, outside of the controlled domains of major music labels. The industry’s response: criminalize its own customers, equating them with those hard-core piracy operations that produce billions of counterfeit CDs and DVDs in some Mongolian pressing plant. Talk about warping public perception!
In any case, history has already shown a pretty good path out of this dilemma, in the shape of the blanket licenses that public performance societies such as SACEM or BMI and ASCAP (which were formed precisely for this reason) have been providing for over 100 years now – France’s SACEM launched in 1851.
Rather than asking each and every user (or each service provider) to get individual permissions for each individual musical work, the industry – often aided by some not-so-gentle government pressure – instituted a negotiated, default, and standardized license that is available to everyone who cares to be licensed.
Even though they can be improved upon, these existing public performance blanket licenses, granted by copyright collectives, are generally easy to get as well as economically realistic, and they can cover just about every usage scenario. At least, they used to, until the advent of the Internet.
This sometimes clumsy but legally straightforward system, administered via national performing rights organizations such as ASCAP, BUMA, and SACEM, has allowed listeners to enjoy the benefits of public performances in clubs, restaurants, concert venues, and radio for quite some time now. Collective blanket licenses, although often contested and sometimes renegotiated by the involved parties, provide all-inclusive access for the users and to a very large degree solve the problem at hand: enabling every user -and the companies that serve them – to be legal while filling up a nice pool of money on a recurring basis. A win-win-win, really, until now.
A New Blanket License For The Use Of Music On The Net
It is becoming more obvious by the minute: What we need is a new blanket license for the use of music on digital networks, voluntarily agreed upon and provided by the creators and their representatives, and a fair way to split it up: Music Like Water. And I believe that this new license is very likely to be the music industry’s only realistic option to create a new basis for re-monetizing music in the age of uncontrolled distribution. But take note: The flat rate is just the beginning of a new music ecosystem in which many new revenue streams will become available.
The end of control of distribution is here now, just like the end of control of public performance (a.k.a. broadcasting) arrived 100 years ago, forcing the music industry to adjust. The fact is that a blanket-license scenario works just fine for the use of music on cable TV and for radio (and yes, eventually for Internet radio as well). And a flat fee-based model for basic water, power, and wireless services works well, too: Pretty much everyone can become a legalized user, and those who don’t (for whatever reason) can easily be absorbed without breaking the system.
Depending whether we’re discussing unique, tangible atoms or losslessly reproduced bits and bytes, a flat fee either ensures my basic connection (as with water) or includes unlimited use (as with TV). And this is indeed a fundamental difference we should note: Water is not freely reproduced; unlike copies of music files, a liter of water used in one location can no longer be used somewhere else.
The reproduction cost of digital music is, however, essentially zero, and we must therefore not provide just flat-rate access but also flat-rate consumption – unlike water where the access is flat-rated but the use is not. Bits and bytes require licensed ubiquity.
With many flat rates, the payments are woven into other service offerings and therefore become less obtrusive, morphing into an accepted and even expected mode of getting what you want without having to make a new decision every single time (such as iTunes still requires).
No excessive granularity can be employed (e.g., counting how many hours of TV you watch, or how many people are actually sitting in front of the tube), few restrictions on usage are imposed (e.g., there are no extra charges if you get more than the usual number of emails on your BlackBerry), and no substantial harm is done if some determined users really do circumvent the system (such as freeloading on cable TV).
Attention Is The New Distribution
In the immediate future of music we need to get our heads around the fact that the less control we impose on the users of content the better.
In music, our goal will always have be to attract and retain large and engaged audiences – to enthrall the highest possible number of interested people, and by extension to have everyone share their music discoveries with others, thereby driving exposure through the roof. Again, since all audio files are now freely available anyway, the more we control, limit, or otherwise inhibit the sharing process, the less attention we will get to take advantage of: Attention is indeed the new distribution. And real money will be paid for real attention. (See Chapter 1)
Based on the realization that it is no longer just the copies of sound files (or pieces of plastic) that we want to monetize, but the entire range of assets that the artist’s brand represents, we simply can no longer ignore the powerful solution that the flat rate for music represents. Granted, a sharp-minded reader may retort that we are now simply moving from controlling distribution to controlling attention. That isn’t entirely wrong but it’s probably wishful thinking.
While the large music and media companies were indeed able to control distribution with iron fists that clung to their exclusive copyright ownership, attention must be earned, kept, and maintained – again and again. And only the most daring wordsmith would still call that “control”. Instead, I believe the users are now controlling whether a media provider still qualifies to get their attention, every time they click. They’re dealing in trust, in other words. That’s tough luck for large companies that look for large margins at low costs, and I think they are not very likely to engage in music ventures, going forward, for that very reason.
Music That Feels Free – But Generates Real Revenues
So, the key question remains (and I will investigate this more extensively in the upcoming chapters): How will content creators actually monetize this attention and turn it into real dollars, euros, kroners, rupees, or yen?
Let’s start by giving everyone “feels like free” access to music (and later, other media). Access that in itself already generates real money, be it through subscriptions, advertising, bundling, sponsorship, product tie-ins, or by simply generating traffic in the context of another service or product (see Gmail or Google Adwords).
Radio now generates billions of dollars in ad revenues based on music licensed via the now-compulsory music license. In fact, radio churns out more cash than the recorded music industry itself! In 2006 Kagan Research projected that U.S. radio revenues would grow to as much as $25 billion in 2011. Bizarrely, though, by the time the rights holders got around to actually licensing radio (in the U.S.), they were no longer able to argue that the use of the recording should be paid for (just like the use of the composition). And so, in the U.S., the overall flow of money from radio remains less than it would have been if a license had been made available much earlier. Take note, lawmakers.
I have written extensively on the flat rate for music in the past (see Music Like Water) and have created several presentations on this, as well.
The flat-rate-licensed usage of music on digital networks, be it for streaming or downloading, would quickly generate billions of dollars of revenue that could efficiently be distributed to the creators. These creators are now ill-served by the way their representatives refuse such licenses and deny the use of music more often than allowing it.
The music industry must move toward allowing the use of music on a blanket basis rather than asking for individual admission deals.
In other words: Give up control of those entry gates. And that is where the trouble lies.
Originally written by Gerd Leonhard for MediaFuturist and first published on 24th January 2008 as “The End of Control: Music Like Water, and the Flat Rate”
Gerd Leonhard is a media futurist as well as an author and writer, a media and Internet entrepreneur, a strategic advisor, and a keynote speaker & presenter.
If you want to get a good feel for what he does, you can check out Gerd’s blog MediaFuturist, or watch some videos from the new Media Conversations Future Talks series (to select an episode just click on the book icon / guide button, and go from there). You can also visit his Youtube channel, or subscribe to his video feed.
Photocredits
From Controlling To Deserving Attention: Marc Dietrich
Access Replaces Ownership: Mipan
Embrace The End Of Control: Pryzmat
A New Blanket License For The Use Of Music On The Net: Dzmitry Stankevich
Attention Is The New Distribution: Mitar Gavric
Music That Feels Free – But Generates Real Revenues: Kuzma