February 2012
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An Inflection Point For Subscription Streaming...
It’s been 10 years since Rhapsody (which was then listen.com) launched it’s subscription streaming service. While the appeal of subscription services was always fairly obvious to crate diggers, these services failed to grow beyond a few hundred thousand users. Nonetheless, looking at some key developments from the last 1-2 years, it finally feels like these services are positioned to...
November 2011
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The End of the World As We Know It
Much has changed in the music industry over the last decade, as technology has enabled new methods of music consumption, distribution, and discovery. While we’ve seen significant change in how music is sold, we haven’t yet seen a significant transformation in which music gets sold (when looking at the overall marketplace). That seems poised to change in the coming years, which should...
June 2011
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Turntable.fm: Huge Opportunity Calls for A...
In its first month, Turntable.fm has generated a tremendous amount of buzz. It’s the first truly social web music service; it’s addicting, viral, and easy to use. This weekend the service hit its first hiccup as it closed the service to users outside the US. This led to disappointed international users who had spent the last few weeks falling in love with it. Before addressing the...
May 2011
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“if you are an aspiring artist: create your own world. put labels/media etc in a...”
– Richard Russell
April 2011
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Dave Matthews Band, Live Nation & the Concert...
Dave Matthews Band was the top grossing touring act of the last decade, with $500+ million in gross ticket sales and 11+ million tickets sold. Instead of touring as usual this year, DMB is playing four 3-day, multi-artist festivals. While an increasing # of artists have been putting on their own festivals, it’s notable given that DMB is such a big draw on the road.
So what does this...
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Pandora's Mobile Challenge
Over the last 2.5 years, Pandora has grown it’s listener hours by almost 4x, from 1 billion hours in fiscal 2009 to 3.9 billion in fiscal 2011. 2/3 of this growth has been from Pandora’s mobile platform. Launch in July 2008 with it’s iPhone app, Pandora’s mobile platform now accounts for greater than 50% of the company’s listener hours. Over the same period,...
February 2011
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Artist Development - Tracking Mumford & Sons...
Although Mumford & Sons didn’t win a Grammy - they walked away with the breakthru performance of the show. Their story is a reminder that the music industry is driven by artist development - getting an artist in front of an audience and building a fan base. Everything else follows from there. While a majority of Grammy viewers may have seen Mumford and Sons for the first time, their...
January 2011
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Kyla La Grange “Walk Thru Walls”
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December 2010
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Previews & Sampling
iTunes recently increased their song previews from 30 seconds to 90 seconds. The reasoning is straightforward: give people an opportunity to hear more music and and you have a greater chance of converting them (provided the content is good). Makes sense. But if I want to preview an album, listening to 10-12 consecutive 90-second clips is not something I would do. I want to hear the album in...
November 2010
2 posts
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Music Discovery: Crate-diggers vs Radio Listeners
Looking at how people discover music, people seem to fall into one of two broad categories. There are those who take an active approach - let’s call them the crate diggers. They used to spend hours flipping through the racks of vinyl/CDs at their record store and reading music magazines. Today they’ve likely moved their attention online – where they read blogs, share music with their...
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Looking forward to hearing more new...
June 2010
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Organizing the web's MP3s
Extension.fm is a Chrome extension that catalogs the mp3 files from the sites you visit into a web-based music library. When you visit a site, the extension adds the site and its mp3 links to your library. As the site is updated, the new mp3s are automatically added to your library. Extension.fm provides an interesting way to discover music, as you have a constantly growing stream of music....
March 2010
2 posts
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Afro Funk mix by Frank from his recent travels to...
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In search of a low-cost business model
The IFPI recently release a report that on average it takes $1 million to break an act, with a 10-20% success rate. While in reality these figures from case to case – they suggest that it takes between $5 and $10 million to break one act successfully (factoring in the 80%-90% that don’t break). While the major labels have reduced their costs over the last decade, the basic investment model...