Archive for January, 2009
Free With Ads Could Work Should Work
Have you guys seen Hulu? It’s a very good website and it clarifies the value proposition of free. Most of the major networks have partnered with this website and on the site you can stream high-quality videos of popular television shows and movies. I have been using to keep up with the Daily Show and The Office. In exchange for getting the shows in high-quality, for free, whenever you want, you have to watch a pretty minimal amount of advertising. In the context of what you’re getting, it seems totally reasonable and a tolerable trade, even if I have to sit through 5 different “The Uninvited” trailers. This thing works. Check it out.
So what’s the corollary to the music industry? Free songs, licensed legally (this is not file trading mind you), through some kind of filtering/optionality mechanism, served up to you whenever you want them. In exchange, you have to tolerate some ads.
Again, if this is high quality stuff, and you know that the ads are financing the musician, and you get it for free and there’s no DRM on the files and you can have a menu of really good new bands, this seems like a good deal to me.
This is the model that RCRDLBL is pursuing and I think it has a lot of merit.
Are You Listening?
I think one of the problems with Internet music, and the future of the music industry to a certain extent, is the Internet itself. This is only a feeling and it all depends who you ask I suppose but I wonder how many people are actually using the Internet to listen to music.
I do not use the Internet to listen to music.
I use the Internet to graze music. I sample it. I click around. I wander. But this is a discovery process and not a consumption process. The Internet is a street vendor. When I go to eat a big meal of music I download music from the Internet or I buy a CD and then I play that music on my digital music player through my stereo or in my car or as I walk on top of the streets that run through the big cold city.
When it comes to static music consumption, I don’t know that many people that have the Internet hooked up to their home stereo system and that, specifically, are streaming music from the Internet.
I know they’re out there. I know some people put on Internet radio or streaming playlists when they’re sitting around at home or when they’re at work at their desks. But I personally do not really do this and I think the people that do do it represent the vast minority of music consumers but I have no data to support this notion and acknowledge I could be completely wrong but nevertheless I feel it to be true and Stephen Colbert has taught me that that means something.
Add in the fact that I suspect that more music is consumed mobiley either in the car or walking around and we see that the Internet as a delivery channel for music consumption is not there yet and when I say the Internet I guess I mean as a delivery channel for on-demand streaming audio.
The conclusion here is: websites actually are not that relevant when it comes to the music industry or at least to current habits of music consumption. Because people don’t really sit at their computers and listen to music as the way that they listen to music although they do sit at their computers and click around as a way of sampling music.
This strikes me as a not-obvious and mildly significant point. (ed note: Of course it does. You made it, you insufferable self-referential narcissist).
I’m not saying it won’t get there shortly. When streaming can get to mobile devices and to car stereos seamlessly, without a need to constantly buffer the connection, then we’ll be somewhere and the liquidity of the music marketplace will greatly expand with the number of transactions. But, for now, sites like Pandora, Hype Machine, and even stranger sites like Muxtape (R.I.P.) are not and cannot be that relevant (except to the small community of people whose job it is to maintain that they’re relevant) and the reason they’re not that relevant is because they are not yet embedded in the places that people are doing the vast majority of their music consumption.
P.S. If you’re a wealthy technologist-type and your home is wired up with a network and a Sonos system connected to Rhapsody and your house is very big and all that then, no offense, but you don’t count. I’m sorry. We’re talking about the hoi polloi here. Not you.
Muxtape Becomes a Tool
I write a lot about what I see as one central theme for the future of the music industry. Paraphrased it is:
1. Although there’s not much money in making music, many people like making music
2. Because digitality lowers the barriers to entry for music creation, more people will be doing it
3. Therefore, there is some amount of growth in the creation of tools to help people do this
Examples of this thesis abound. Sonicbids, Bandcamp, TopSpin, Soundcloud, for example.
Justin Oullette agrees with me. Here’s his post about relaunching Muxtape as a service for bands.
From my lips to his ears:
Muxtape is relaunching as a service exclusively for bands, offering an extremely powerful platform with unheard-of simplicity for artists to thrive on the internet. Musicians in 2008 without access to a full time web developer have few options when it comes to establishing themselves online, but their needs often revolve around a common set of problems. The new Muxtape will allow bands to upload their own music and offer an embeddable player that works anywhere on the web, in addition to the original muxtape format. Bands will be able to assemble an attractive profile with simple modules that enable optional functionality such as a calendar, photos, comments, downloads and sales, or anything else they need. The system has been built from the ground up to be extended infinitely and is wrapped in a template system that will be open to CSS designers. There will be more details soon. The beta is still private at the moment, but that will change in the coming weeks.
RIP John Updike
Goodbye, sir. You made a difference. The Rabbit books had a fairly profound impact on me. There is an unrecorded EP that I’d like produced by Bjorn Yttling titled “Rabbit Redux” and inspired by the book. Each of the Rabbit books is great but that one has a special sway for me. For me, Updike had a way with scenes. Moments that stick with you. Perfect real honest piercing moments.
Rabbit driving down to West Virginia, the glow of the radio lighting the way. Rabbit and Janice stumbling down the street, German krugerands in their jackets, scared of being robbed in downtown Brewer. Rabbit, Jill, Skeeter and Nelson sitting in the living room talking about race and politics as the smoke drifts towards the ceiling. Rabbit standing in the showroom at Springer Motors, talking to Charlie while the world drifts by. These things just stick with you.
The track-listing for the EP whenever I get around to recording it is:
1. Hey sister
2. Go fuck your face
3. Skeeter and Jill
4. They burned this house down
Godspeed, Mr. Updike.
There Is Nobody On The Internet
This post was accidentally deleted so I’m recreating it from memory which sucks. It may not have the same zing or energy. Do you feel for me? Anyway, here’s the point:
There are, of course, people on the Internet. Many of them. But fewer than we think. And too few to make a strategy of aggregation effective save for all but the largest aggregators (like Google).
Let’s take an example. As of this writing, David Brooks has 138 comments on his latest column titled “The First Test” on the New York Times website. The column went live about 18 hours ago (I think). The number will likely move to about 300 and stabilize there by the end of the day. Do you see where I’m going with this? This is the New York Times. This is Gray Lady. This is the preeminent news organization on the planet and one of the major voices on that website. And he can only get 100 comments in 18 hours?
Something is awry.
I understand all the prerequisites. I understand that the vast vast majority of the Internet is comprised of lurkers and that it’s only a tiny percentage that comment. And I understand that not everybody has the same interest in David Brooks or Bill Kristol or any one of their august group of columnists. And I also understand that there are other websites that have more passionate user communities that can get 100 comments in a post in a shorter time than David Brooks. So this is not the only metric. I understand that.
But all that notwithstanding, this is ridiculous. 100 comments? I thought there were millions and millions of people on the Internet. I thought there were millions of unique visitors on any one site, including the New York Times. Where is everybody? I don’t get it.
I’m left with two conclusions. Either there are far fewer people on the Internet than we’ve been led to believe OR they’re not paying any attention. Regardless, it’s kind of depressing.
But the more important conclusion, for me at least, is that if there are fewer people than we think, than services that serve as aggregators may be in jeopardy. Let’s apply this to the music industry. Let’s look at Hype Machine.
Hype Machine is heralded as the future of the music industry (by some). Why? Because it skims music blogs all over the world and aggregates the songs they’re posting creating a new style of Internet radio/music interface created by users scattered across the information superhighway. The problem, of course, is that aggregating a bunch of websites that nobody’s actually visiting isn’t much aggregation at all. There’s nobody there. Nobody’s home. You feel me?
Click through to any of these music blogs and you’ll see that there are very few comments, very few interactions. Mostly it’s the blogger and their friends diligently posting mp3 files in the hopes that somebody someday will find them. Maybe it’s because music blogging is a terrible way to digest music and it’s a specific medium that has not and will not catch on with the general public.
But, perhaps more importantly, it’s because long tail internet strategies aren’t really that helpful when the long tail is a cold and lonely place, a dead end, a bad part of town, a big abandoned factory, and nobody’s actually there. So aggregating a vast array of nothingness becomes a vapid exercise. Because there is no real liquidity. Because nobody’s there.
If the Internet is as vibrant as people say, I want to see David Brooks get 3,000-5,000 comments when he writes a column. I want to see tiny music blogs get 20-30 comments because people are stumbling upon these little sites, because there are so many people out there, because there’s enough stuff going on that even a small little web can catch a few flies. But I don’t see it happening.
Another spin on this idea: There are a lot of people on the Internet, but they’re trapped in their self-contained worlds and the habits that form their consumption of media are so tightly formed that, despite the enormous possibilities for exploration, most people stay at home, stick to the same couple sources of information and graze casually.
Maybe it’s not that nobody’s out there. But that they’re all clustered in the same big communities and they’re not doing very much while they’re there. This isn’t a permanent state. But I think it’s the state of things right now. Go figure.
Friday Fresh Mix
Deke and Jane have undertaken this experiment where they’re compiling a mix of good tunes on a Friday early afternoon and then sending them out on Friday late afternoon. Just a little tinkering on the edges of the information superhighway. They’ve been kind enough to feature some TFC tunes in the Friday Fresh Mix the past two weeks. Here’s a link to this week’s mix. It’s featuring the tune “If You See Something” of the new album. Enjoy.
