The Guerilla Guide to the Music Business
About the music business by people in the music business
2nd edition
Sarah Davis and Dave Laing
2006
Interestingly, the 2003 survey of the UK music business 'Counting The Notes' said that the public spent over £300 million on concerts. The equivalent US figure for 2004 was $2.8 billion, according to Pollstar magazine...this income is not reflected in what musicians are paid.
logic dictates that most of the bands that play at these gigs will either not get paid or not get paid a nominal amount.
Guerrilla Music Marketing Handbook
201 self-promotion ideas
Bob Baker
Spotlight Publications
2007
"In one year alone, DiFranco performed 130 shows and generated almost $2 million in gross ticket sales."
Tablets are revolutionising the way we make music – just make sure you buy the right model
Have you discovered the smarter world of music production on a tablet? If not, it's time to start: with their mobility, touchscreens and range of music apps, today's tablets are capable of turning into digital audio workstations that previous generations of musicians could only dream of.
"The flexibility is amazing," says Carphone Warehouse's tablet expert Leon Andrews. "You can program in your own music and use the in-built synths to make that music into beautiful songs. You could knock out a tune on an hour's train ride, with drums, synthesisers, everything: some of the virtual instruments that come in these packages are amazing."
If you're going to be producing music on your tablet, Andrews suggests, choose one with a fast processor.
Sony Xperia Tablet Z
A good choice would be a high-end tablet such as a Sony Xperia Tablet Z, which has a quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor which, he says, will "eat for breakfast" powerful apps like the well-respected FL Studio Mobile. FL Studio Mobile is an app which lets you compose and save multitrack studio projects, whether you're inputting MIDI notes with a step sequencer or adding effects.
Because digital studio apps condense a lot of musical information into a single screen, it's also important to have a great display. The Sony Xperia Tablet Z's super-sharp 10.1-inch HD display is perfect for all that fine detail. Looking for a great-value option for production on the go? Then try the smaller, cheaper, 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0. Andrews says its 1GHz dual-core processor has "ample horsepower" and overall the device offers great power for the price.
An advantage of both devices is their portability: the Sony Xperia Tablet Z is incredibly light at under 500g, while the Samsung's 7-inch Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 weighs just 345g.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0
That portability means you can make music on the go. "If you've recorded a few guitar riffs and things at home, and you've got them on your computer, you can bring them in on your SD card or put them in some sort of cloud storage and pull them straight into the app," Andrews suggests. "So you can work on your own pre-recorded music or remix other people's tracks – on the move."
It's not all about music production: there's also a huge range of apps for tablets that make musicians' lives easier, explains Andrews – from metronome apps to tuning apps for your guitar.
"They're not replacing the process of creating music. They're complementing it, meaning you can do it faster – to a higher quality."
To buy the Sony Xperia Tablet Z or Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 or to get advice on tablets, visit carphonewarehouse.com. Its Live Tariff Checker tool compares Carphone's best tariffs against those published in the market, twice a day.
From Tape machine to touchscreen
Carphone Warehouse has launched a short film, as part of its Smarter World campaign, to inspire people by showing the possibilities of smartphones. The film reveals how musicians are using tablets and smartphones to improve their performances. Music producer Darren Sangita, the DJ who worked on a collaborative track for the campaign, says tablet technology is a "dream" to work with.
"I used to work in studios with huge 48-channel decks and two-inch tape machines that cost £150,000. That technology has now been shrunk down to a touchscreen – so you've got everything from synthesis to drum machines, real-time effects and modulations, multi-track recording capabilities and playback."
And with music apps being produced specifically for touchscreen, the creative process is evolving – as Sangita showed while applying multiple effects to the track.
"On a laptop, the mouse controls one knob at a time – so if I wanted to record multiple effects, I would have to go back to the beginning to record each control in. But here I was able to control eight parameters at the same time with four fingers and XY controllers. It's exciting to have that textural control, and it's sped up the process of creation."
"I'm excited about the next three to five years of music-making: people's capability to manipulate, warp and change sound. We're going to hear things we've never heard before."
Darren and four classical musicians have created a special track with the help of smarter technology: check it out here and enter the competition for your chance to win great prizes.
The political MC explained that he’d rather have fans download his music illegally on the Internet than have record executives accusing the youth of stealing, when they’re really the biggest crooks of them all. – due to the way that the industry is all money minded and therefore artists don’t have a direct link to their fans anymore.
“You could type my name, no ebonics, Immortal, live forever, Technique, get on the internet and just steal all my music off of it, because I really don’t care about that,” he toldForbez DVD. “I’ve had lots of arguments with executives about that, and I think that they have a lot of audacity accusing children of stealing music when they’ve been robbing artists for years.“
For Tech, he looks at the industry and sees nothing but corruption. “Even now, it’s come up that they were taking royalties under the guise of licensing for past capital. It’s just an embarrassment for them to be using the word 'steal' when realistically speaking, they’re the biggest thieves and gangstas in this entire business,” he continued. “They make everybody who rhymes about doing gangsta shit look pathetic in terms of the amount of money that they’ve stolen and the amount of culture that they’ve robbed of our people.”
The outspoken rapper suggested that instead of fingering listeners for taking music, the industry needs to re-evaluate its strategy.
“To me, I don’t quantify success in just record sales or YouTube views or Twitter friends. If you have 12 million friends on Twitter but you can only sell 100,000 units, there’s something wrong with you. That means that those statistics really need to be analysed and looked at. So for me, I say yo, go steal all my music if you like what I talk about. You don’t have to agree with everything but if you feel and understand that I’m being genuine, come to a show, check it out for yourself, support us, buy a shirt online, but a CD.”
Spotify to offer 'free' mobile service to Android and iOS
Spotify is to extend its "free" ad-supported music service to mobile devices.
Smartphone users will be able to build playlists of songs and then hear them played back in a random order. Tablet users will have more control, letting them select specific tracks.
The Swedish firm also announced it was expanding to a further 20 countries, taking its total reach to 55.
Experts said it needed to make the moves to combat growing competition, However its founder, Daniel Ek, said bringing a free service to Android and iOS devices would tempt more people to eventually switch to the premium version where they could access higher-quality audio, no adverts and the ability to listen to songs offline.
Until now Spotify has offered a free-to-use product only on PCs, and had restricted its mobile apps to paying subscribers.
The firm is dropping the 10-hours-a-month cap it previously placed on long-term users of its free service.
"Our very clear mission is getting more people to access and discover more great music," he told a press conference in New York.
I personally believe that this development and update to spotify's server will increase subscribers from mobile phone users rapidly as content will now be free but with the addition of advertisement in between. However, this is also beneficial for the company itself as advertisement will play a large part in terms of its financial revenue and thus spotify are not to face any risks once launching free ad supported music onto mobile phones.
Spotify allows people to subscribe to stream music which means that people do not have to download this music themselves. Furthermore, Spotify make their income through advertisements and not as much through subscription therefore they can afford to make the app free for users to use. Its finally in competition and is a threat to the music industry as it cuts out the costs for people to pay to download music. These days, people don't really have the time to download and put music onto their phone; especially with the iphone due to the fact that you have to sync it; therefore streaming is becoming more and more popular to people.
Without technology, popular music would not exist in its present form. Obvious as it may seem, such a statement (like many other obvious ones) deserves closer scrutiny. On the surface, it would appear obvious that without tape decks, stereo systems, CD players and the like, we could not listen to popular music. Fair enough. But, as I will argue throughout the course of this book, it is the technology of popular music production, specifically the technology of sound recording, that organizes our experience of popular music.
Without electronics, and without the accompanying technical supports and technical experimentation, there could not be the mass production of music, and therefore there would not be mass-mediated popular music, or its consumption. But beyond production and consumption, there would also not be the composition of popular music, for popular music is, at every critical juncture of its history, determined by the technology musicians use to realize their ideas. Of equal importance, without technology there could not be the creation of sounds that are today intimately associated with popular music. This is particularly true in the case of rock and roll, as technology often drives innovation in composition.
Why the music industry may gain from free downloading — The role of sampling
International University in Germany, 76646 Bruchsal, Germany
Martin Peitz,
Patrick Waelbroeck
Downloading digital products for free may harm creators and intermediaries because consumers may no longer buy the version for sale. However, as we show in this paper, this negative effect may be overcompensated by a positive effect due to sampling: consumers are willing to pay more because the match between product characteristics and buyers' tastes is improved. This indeed holds under sufficient taste heterogeneity and product diversity.
Media Magazine
In the last decade the music industry has faced the most complex set of changes in its history. The conventional industry models have been challenged, largely due to the emergence of new technologies and new ways for music lovers to listen to, and own, the music they love.
The industry is still struggling to deal with how these changes have affected their balance sheets, and the pace of change doesn’t look like slowing yet, but for those who wish to pursue a career in music, it’s important to see how many of these new developments can be used to your advantage.
In the complex, old-fashioned model, the artist brings the talent, and the label provides everything else that only a large corporation can provide – expensive recording facilities, plants to bulk-manufacture records, the network to distribute the recordings widely to shops, ... a large fund to market the work via traditional media, the logistical expertise to mount a proper tour, the business acumen to collect royalties. In the modern digital world, much of this can actually be done on a smaller scale and we may even be able to circumvent the record companies entirely.
Critical Investigation: Task #3 Historical text analysis and research MTV (originally an initialism of Music Television) is an Americanbasic cable and satellite televisionchannel owned by the MTV Networks Music & Logo Group, a unit of the Viacom Media Networks division of Viacom. The channel is headquartered in New York City, New York. Launched on August 1, 1981,the original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by television personalities known as "video jockeys," or VJs. In its early years, MTV's main target demographic were young adults, but today, MTV's programming is primarily targeted at adolescents in addition to young adults.
MTV has spawned numerous sister channels in the U.S. and affiliated channels internationally, some of which have gone independent. MTV's influence on its audience, including issues related to censorship and social activism, has been a subject of debate for years.
As of August 2013, approximately 97,654,000 American households (85.51% of households with television) receive MTV.
It was formerly known as:
MTV: The Music Channel (May 5, 1980)
MTV: Music Television (August 1, 1981–February 8, 2010, August 2011; 1989–present in other countries
MTV (Music Television) is the oldest and most influential
American cable network specializing in music?related
programming. It was launched on August 1, 1981, with
the words "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll," spoken
on camera by John Lack, one of the creators of MTV.
This introduction was immediately followed by the
music?video clip Video Killed the Radio Star, featuring a
band called the Buggles. The title proved somewhat
prophetic as MTV greatly transformed the nature of
music?industry stardom over the next several years. At
the same time, MTV became a major presence in the
cable?TV industry and in fact in the overall American
cultural landscape.
One of the earliest and greatest cable success stories,
MTV was established by Warner Amex Satellite
Entertainment Company (WASEC) after extensive
marketing research. The key to MTV's viability, at least
initially, was the availability of low-cost programming in
the form of music videos. Originally these were provided
free by record companies, which thought of them as
advertising for their records and performers.
A music video (also called a clip or promo clip) is a brief
(usually three? to five?minute) television segment, usually
shot on film but intended to be shown only on a TV set.
The foundation of a video clip is the soundtrack, which is
a recorded song, the sale of which is promoted by the
video. In some cases, other material such as sound
effects or introductory dialogue may also appear on the
soundtrack.
Music video and MTV are major ingredients of television
programming internationally. MTV Europe, launched in
1987, was followed by an Asian service in 1991 and MTV
Latino in 1993. VH1 seems poised to follow a similar
course, having established a European service in 1994.
Both economically and aesthetically, MTV has wrought
major changes in the entertainment industries. By
combining music with television in a new way, MTV has
charted a path for both industries (and movies as well)
into a future of postmodern synergy.
Many of the earliest MTV videos came from Great Britain,
where the tradition of making promo clips was fairly
well?developed. One of the earliest indications of MTV's
commercial importance was the success of the British
band Duran Duran in the American market. This band had
great visual appeal and made interesting videos but was
not receiving radio airplay as of 1981. In markets where
MTV was available, the network's airing of Duran Duran's
videos made the band immediately popular. Ultimately
MTV proved to be immensely important to the careers of
numerous artists, including Madonna, Michael Jackson,
Prince, Peter Gabriel, and U2, as well as Duran Duran.
The original purpose of MTV was to be "Music Television", playing music videos 24 hours a day, seven days a week, guided by on-air personalities known as VJs, or video jockeys. The original taglines of the channel were "You'll never look at music the same way again," and "On cable. In stereo." Although the original MTV channel no longer plays music videos 24/7, several of its spin-off channels do, including MTV Hits and MTV Jams. In addition, viewers can play music videos on-demand at MTV.com. MTV continues to support a broad selection of music videos on its international channels as well.
The VJs would record "intro" and "outro" segments to music videos, along with music news, interviews, concert dates and promotions. These segments would appear to air "live" and debut across the MTV program schedule 24 hours a day, seven days a week, though the segments themselves were pre-taped within a regular work week at MTV's studios.
During the early days of the channel, MTV would occasionally let other stars take over the channel within an hour as "guest VJs"; these guests included musicians such as Adam Ant, Billy Idol, Phil Collins, Simon LeBon and Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, Tina Turner; and comedians such as Eddie Murphy, Martin Short, Dan Aykroyd, and Steven Wright; as they chose their favorite music videos. --> disscus the fact that this is still the same on some music channels therefore business model is similar in this way
On August 1, 1981, something happened to cable television - something that would define pop culture, change generations, and shape an industry. That something had a name. The name was MTV. It launched at 12:01 in the morning, ushered in by John Lack (then the Executive Vice President of Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment) saying, "Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll." And so it began.
In the late 1980s, MTV began introducing non-music programming and slowly, over time, the flavor of MTV began to change. What happened to the MTV of the 80s? According to some it's been replaced by a commercialized monster.
Soon after MTV was launched it blitz the airwaves with loud commercials where rock stars instructed you to pick up your phone and demand that your cable company adds MTV. The phrase "I Want My MTV" soon became a popular catch phrase, popular enough that British rock band Dire Straits used it in their song Money For Nothing. The campaign was effective as for the next three years as the commercials aired millions did demand their cable company add MTV as a channel. But for the millions who had no cable television there would be no MTV with the exception for the occasional syndication of it's annual music video awards in truncated form.
1983 was the peak of the music video fad, not because people began to lose interest in the format but because MTV decided to take steps to get rid of their competition. Deals were made with record labels giving MTV exclusive rights to air new music videos forcing the others to wait anywhere from a month to a half year before they could air the same video. MTV spent a small fortune buying the exclusive rights to air Michael Jackson's Thriller, an exclusive they held on to for 20 years. The one month exclusive MTV gave them an advantage over the other cable outlets like TBS's Night Tracks which gradually drew away their viewers.
Artists had been filming live performances and even crude concept videos for several years before MTV came along, but the problem had always been finding a consistent outlet for airing them. Much of the preparation of MTV came out of New York City, but an important prototype actually emerged with Warner’s early cable system, Qube, out of Columbus, Ohio. Some of the ideas exhibited there were picked up by executive Bob Pittman, who combined them with early music video work he had already started.
--->>a place where artists would promote their new stuff
The video above is an advertisement on Spotifys YouTube channel. The advertisement represents togetherness and the sharing of music in correlation to making friends. The advert is of a crowd of people at a concert. It emphasises on the fact that no one in the crowds concert knows each other however they are still all together at there favourite artists concert due to one reason and one reason alone... because they share a love for the artist.
Also the use of no words ...
advertising spotify
Through the use of togetherness & music
This is on spotifys YouTube channel in order to promote Spotify to audiences across the world (worldwide). On YouTube there is the same video as the one above however in all sorts of different languages. This is because other people in other countries can now understand the advertisement and therefore Spotify is gaining a wider more diverse audience.
This advertisement poster for Spotify is an attempt to promote and create awareness for them in terms of gaining a greater audience because they are not as well known as they could be. When talking to other people, they actually don't know what Spotify is a and others have heard of it but also don't know what it is. Maybe this is due to the fact that they'd rather use what's more popular in terms of music streaming. Everyone has heard of itunes as it was created by Apple; which is a popular make/brand in terms a technology store.
The poster above is to promote Spotify as a music streaming site for everyone. The use of the line "Because music doesn't judge" promotes individualism and is connoting that everyone has different tastes when it comes to music however regardless of this you can still use this site as it caters for all audiences.
The link above is of an advertisement which is on Spotifys YouTube channel. The video emphasises the fact that Spotify is now free for all users across all the different devices. Just recently before the video/advertisement was released, Spotify announced that they will now be releasing the Spotify app for android users too and that it will be free. Throughout the entire advertisement, a lot of mobile devices are shown/used in order to connote the fact that this service is now out for free on all platforms. There is no commentary or voice-over in the entire clip, but instead just a few short statements with a music playing in the background. The statements are...
'Music for everyone'
'Now free everywhere'
'The perfect playlist'
'The artists you love'
'Play everywhere for free'
'#freeyoumusic'
Note how the word 'free' comes up the most out of the statements in order to get across to audiences/viewers that Spotify is a free service therefore they no longer need to pay to listen to (stream) music. Spotify can afford to advertise their service as 'free' because they are not making their money through subscriptions, but through the advertisers. The free version of Spotify includes advertisements from different organisations attempting to selling their products or brand to people using the service. The advertisement for Spotify addresses viewers directly through the use of words like 'you' and 'everyone'. By saying 'Music for everyone' Spotify is emphasising the fact that they have a ton of music which appeal to a large audience. They can cater to 'everyone' as they have majority of the well known artists on their service and the fact that it's free appeals even more to people as they do not need to go through the hassle of downloading music and syncing it to their device.
Throughout the entire clip, the advertisement really emphasises the concept of togetherness and friends. Everyone in the clip is with someone; whether that is a friend or a partner; to connote the fact that people share music and like similar music and this service fulfils that this so you should download and use it.
