Looking forward to hearing more new material…
Song Of The Day: Wakey!Wakey! - Great Lake Love
The first new W!W! song the band has recorded since the current album, and a b-side to the new Dance So Good (Full Band Version) single which is set to go up on iTunes later today. Please support the band! :)
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. There’s also an iTunes like UI, which lets you access your library by song, by artist, or by source site.
By mapping song metadata to mp3 links across the web, Extension.fm is building a music catalog around which it can enable other features, like playlist sharing or a social recommendation service like M-Flow in the UK. Of course, the catalog is limited to mp3s available on the web, but there aren’t any licensing roadblocks - since the sites hosting the mp3s are responsible for licesning, paying SoundExchange, etc. This dynamic may change if Extension.fm’s usage grows significantly, particularly since the service won’t necessarily drive traffic to the underlying sites they way HypeMachine does (the source site of a track, while visible, isn’t really central to the product).
Regardless, it’ll definitely be interesting to watch the product develop. Dan Kantor, the founder, previously founded music-streaming service Streampad. And the company recently raised a first round of funding from music-loving VC Bijan Sabet (Spark Capital) along with Betaworks and Founders Collective.
A nice addition to the NYC music-tech scene.
Afro Funk mix by Frank from his recent travels to Ghana/Nigeria. Check out his blog Voodoo Funk for more music and chronicles of his travels thru West Africa collecting vintage African records.
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 remains. Sign artist –> record album –> market artist w/multi-single radio campaign. This is high-cost, push model that was built for a much different market.
That isn’t to say that labels haven’t adapted (albeit slowly). They greatest innovation has been on the distribution and marketing front. Music is monetized across multiple platforms and formats. Digital marketing places a significant role in every campaign.
But the same level of innovation hasn’t taken place with respect to the artist investment process. It needs to. The artist development companies that prosper will be those that combine a strong creative pipeline with a lower cost artist development process.
