While I get my lazy ass into gear with two new posts over the weekend I thought I’d do a shameless piece of self plugging (which is very rare for me by the way!) and highlight a couple of posts on this blog from last year that have kinda got buried by more recent posts.

In more recent posts this year, by far the most popular (which surprised me) has been (with this months actual page views March 27th 8.25 est):

10 New Music Industry PDFs That’ll Make You An Expert (1130) followed by:
Resources To Help Get Your Music in Films ans TV (460)
200+ Music Industry, Marketing, Social Media and Tech Blogs That’ll Make You A Media Whore! (397)

Some Other Posts You Should Read…

How To Get Your Music Distributed on iTunes (And Keep Most Of The Money)
This is a year old now but never more relevant than today as the onus on digital distribution gathers pace.

Its Official, Vinyl Not Dead Shock
My defence of the vinyl format vs the iPod! Kind of.

How To Press Up a Vinyl Single and Add Instant Kudos to Your Release
A detailed look at how (and where) to get your vinyl records pressed. There will be an updated round-up of distributors shortly.

The Best Music Biz Book You’ve Never Heard Of
I hold the KLFs legendary book, ‘The Manual (How To Have A Number One The Easy Way)’ in high regard. I followed the instructions it lays out in simple terms and didn’t hit number one, but managed to get into the UK top 30. Others have followed suit. Whatever, its a great fun read which is how I wish all music industry books were written. They’re not.

More soon………….

In a climate where many artists are struggling to find income streams every avenue helps and one area worth exploring is music placement in film and TV.

The ‘gatekeepers’ to these type of gigs are the music supervisors. The music supervisor is a person who coordinates the work of the composer, the editor, and sound mixers. Alternately, a person who researches, obtains rights to, and supplies songs for a production (namely films and television programs).

TV viewers (particularly those who are geeky about music) tend to notice what songs get used on shows, and those touches can be credited to the music supervisor.

If you want to find out who the music supervisor is on any given movie or TV show you might not have earmarked the Amazon owned Internet Movie Database as a go-to  music industry resource but the site is packed with info on cast and crew members, including music supervisors.

Look up movies that have really great soundtracks then scroll through the credits and you’ll find out the names of the person responsible for music supervision.

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This was supposed to be one of those short snappy posts that was concise and to the point. Instead, and this happens all the time, I continued to research as I was writing and the post grew into another lengthy monster. Hey, I’m the editor so I guess its OK.

Anyway I was looking around for radio resources and stations that play independent music and associated resources and as usual the post kept expanding.

I write using Live Writer (which plugs into my WordPress install), pulling notes in from Google Notebook at the same time as having a bunch of web pages open with my RSS reader running in the system tray. Input crazy.

I’ve concentrated mainly on terrestrial radio but I’ve also included a bunch of streaming resources. I came to the conclusion that anyone with a little time on their hands could put together a respectable mailing list for a radio ‘campaign’ with a little creativity.

I’ve also focused on the USA (where I live now) and the UK (where I’m from). I’ll probably extend things to Asia, Europe and the ROTW in a later post.

Where To Start?

Some tips from UK recording artist and radio DJ Tom Robinson first who has one of the best articles I’ve seen for a while on getting radio play. How To Send CDs To Radio. Its written from a UK perspective but the basics apply anywhere.

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Now I’ve used the word ‘music industry’ here to encompass anything connected to digital music stuff, music 2.0, social media, whatever you want to call it. Truth is, the keyword today is convergence.

But if you’re struggling to come to terms with new terminology, new technology and new services I did a comprehensive scan of resources you can print out on PDF that’ll really set you up with an information boost if you’re playing catch up and haven’t got the time to dig around.

There’s some fantastic resources out there and some inspirational writers like Seth Godin, Andrew Dubber, Gerd Leonhard, Derek Sivers and even digital distributors Tunecore all offer some brilliant insight and the best news is its all out there for you to grab free as a bird. And legal too!

Promotion

Music Industry Survival Guide. This compact guide from digital distributor Tunecore crams a lot into its 30 pages covering college radio promotion, iTunes promotion, street marketing, music discovery, mp3 blogs and press and media tips. Some people actually charge for this stuff. There’s seven PDF guides from Tunecore including a vinyl 101 for bands/artists wanting to press up vinyl records.

Their other guides cover mastering, publishing, copyright and mixing.

Mastering The Music Website Cycle.  EasyB.com make e-commerce software for artists to sell music direct from their own websites. The handy 36 page guide goes into some detail on how to make and manage a successful music download website. They draw up a checklist of plans for structure, content and design. Again, some great pointers for many who may find the task a little daunting.

The Leading Question-Voice Of The Fans. This survey undertaken by UK digital music industry company Musically was aired at Midem this January. 1300 music fans were questioned across the USA, UK and France.

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Being in a band, your time is very important. If you are an indie musician your day-to-day can possibly consist of a day job or school, then you need to make time for songwriting, recording, Myspace-ing, Tweeting, booking shows, editing video and fending off e-mails and other online networks. Knowing that your time is important, it is easy to brush off the fans, especially the ones that you do not see everyday, week, month, year or even, ever. That does not mean that they are not important.

Now more than even your fans are vital to your success. They are the ones that dictate your income. You NEED to keep them happy. There is no excuse, no communication gaps or barriers stopping you from developing relationships with every fan that wants one.

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“It’s obvious that in a very short space of time the Japanese will have delivered the technology and then brought the price of it down so that you can do the whole thing at home. Then you will be able to sod off all that crap about going into studios.”

(Bill Drummond & Jimmy Cauty-1988)

Taken from ‘The Manual-How To Have A Number 1 The Easy Way’

PDF Download

I’m desperately trying to cut into my over populated desktop RSS feed reader as I really do not have the time to wade through the amount of subscriptions that I have in there. What with FeedDemon pop-ups and Tweetdeck its like having bloggers ADD (on steroids) and having too much information at your fingertips is as self defeating as not having enough.

Well over seventy percent of my feeds are music related, be they music news, music industry commentary,tech and MP3 bloggers and music 2.0 (is that term still in use?) evangelists. Very few of them are from traditional music biz news outlets like Billboard (USA biz bible) or Music Week (UK equivalent). Simply because I think that  much of the mainstream music press are as behind the rest of us as the recording industry itself. With some exceptions of course.

Walled garden restrictions to content are a major sticking point for me.

Probably the best place to start vacuuming up those music news resources is at Guy Kawasaki’s excellent  Alltop Music, though my main ‘complaint’ is that I have to visit each individual link to grab the RSS feed. A nice touch would be to have the feed URL next to the publishers headline.

Anyway, so I decided I’d do just that. Gather all the most useful and essential music/tech/social media (they blur into each other these days) related websites and blogs together in one big huge collection that I use on a regular basis through the beauty of RSS feeds. So I’ve done a bit (a lot!) of feed harvesting and squeezed everything into an OPML file for data portability.

I’m including an OPML download link so you can import all the feeds within seconds into your RSS reader of choice, whether that be via your desktop app of choice, Google reader online or a Firefox add on (like Sage). There’s an OPML file for each category to import or the whole bunch rolled into one.

Each category has an OPML link so you can grab the feeds by category. Do leave a comment if I’ve missed anything of note (I probably have).

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Old School Marketing

My experience of marketing my music was started back in the late 80s I guess when my idea of ‘marketing’ was spending time stuffing envelopes full of cassette demos and posting them off to indie radio shows in the UK, major record labels, venues and indie fanzines.

Out of a mail out of around fifty tapes (yes tapes!) we got three positive responses. One was a phone call from Steve Lamacq (now at BBC Radio 1) who was helping out at Radio London at the time on the Gary Crowley Demo Clash show. We were being played on air in London as part of the demo clash show, which we were winning too. The DJs would play four new bands, the listeners would phone in and vote for their favorite.

As a result of that airplay we had some major label interest and a London showcase gig. Nothing came of that band (the archive is on MySpace though) though it was fuel enough for me to pursue other musical ventures with some commercial success in the UK some time later.

I’d managed to blag my way into some free studio time at a small studio in London by doing some work as a label runner and promoter and as a result we’d secured a P&D deal with a distributor. An unknown artist presenting a new track on a pristine piece of 12 inch vinyl drew more attention than the old method of the cassette tape and it eventually lead to a deal with a Warner’s sub-label.

Welcome To The New School

Killer marketing tactics will only get you so far but if the music isn’t up to scratch all the effort and money in the world is ultimately going to lead to failure. Get the song right and the breakthrough will eventually take care of itself.

Having said that you can help yourself make some noise using the tools available online today. And being a bit clever about it to set yourself apart from the herd.

One of the things I did that helped re-launched my music was to offer up various parts (vocals, hook, Midi file) of two of my tracks for remix. Its nothing new nowadays, in fact its positively de-rigueur. You can offer parts of your tracks up for download on your own site and MySpace or even newer web communities like MixMatchMusic.

With DIY remix culture exploding and related software becoming more powerful and affordable, sonic manipulators are growing hungry for disassembled pop music, and the music industry is beginning to see the benefit of increased exposure through releasing remix stems directly to the public.

Release a limited edition vinyl single. Its going to cost you around $900 for 500 7 inch singles but the prestige that would add to your release would be invaluable. Since the rise of Napster and, later, iTunes, a market for single songs has been reborn, and one of the unintended benefactors has been the seven-inch. Even Sub Pop Records’ famous singles club has been reactivated.

Singles are also highly collectible. “The punk and indie-rock undergrounds have always been particularly fond of the seven-inch as a badge of fanhood, something doled out in limited quantities and often specific circumstances – on certain tour dates or on labels available only in a certain region.” (from the Toronto Star)

A DJing contact of mine came up with an excellent idea for sending out DJ mixes of his in an effort to get club bookings (if you haven’t released a 12 inch single that’s kicked up some dust!). Rather than do the usual task of sending out CDs he spent something like $200 on iPod Shuffle’s, put his mix on there and sent them out to promoters. It got an immediate reaction just for the original way he presented himself. He also happened to be a great DJ which helped too of course but the bookings he got back as a result paid for the outlay.

Makeamixa do some great looking cassette USB drives which would be great as limited edition albums or to do a cheaper version of the above DJ tactic.

Other Music Marketing Tipsters

Digital distributor Tunecore have these tips to help you promote your release once you get it placed on iTunes and other major distributors. They’re also doing video distribution nowadays too. They also have a bunch of free PDF marketing guides.

Andrew Dubber’s New Music Strategies give some useful insight with How Can I Sell My Music Online? “There are variations on this theme, but essentially it boils down to this very simple question: now that there’s this internet thing, where’s the money and how do I get at it? What’s the best way to sell music online?”

Tom Robinson explains the answer to the questions, Should I Put My Future Hit On MySpace? and Does Your Music Have Value? on his excellent blog.”The more seriously artists treats their own work the more seriously other people will take it. A series of full commercial releases gives you a better chance of airplay at radio. It also gives you a discography.”

Max Lowe writes, 7 Tips To Writing A Crowd Drawing MySpace Blog, “You must write frequently and often for more than one reason. First, the search engines will pick up your blog quicker and more often if you post every day or two. Second, your readers will return more often if they know there is going to be new content every day.

And I couldn’t write this without mentioning something from CDBaby founder Derek Sivers, in particular his much quoted (worth another mention here), Derek Sivers 7 Rules Of Marketing. “Stop thinking of it as Marketing and start thinking of it as creative ways to be considerate. Think of things from the other person’s point of view”.

We’ll have part two later this week. Ideas and suggestions please leave comments!

Related Links

Steve Lamacq (Lamacq Central) MySpace
Tunecore Music Survival Guides (Tunecore.com)
Tips For Playing SXSW (Tom Robinson, MySpace blog)
How To Send CDs To Radio (TomRobinson.com)
BBC-One Music How To..Fat Guides (BBC Radio 1)
30+ Essential Music Industry Resources And Links (Buzzsonic.com)
Should I Put My Future Hit On MySpace? (TomRobinson.com)
XFM Uploaded (XFM Radio)
Radiohead Remix (RadioheadRemix.com)
Remix Culture Is Exploding (Evolving Music)
The Mash Up Revolution (Salon.com)
Record Label Resource (RecordLabelResource.com)
How To Get Your Music Distributed On iTunes (And Keep Most Of The Money) (Buzzsonic.com)
Vinyl 45s Make A Come Back (TheStar.com)
Facebook Music Marketing Tactics (NotEvilMusic.com)

In support of my recent post, ‘It’s Official, Vinyl Not Dead Shock’ and my older more detailed look at getting vinyl records pressed, ‘How To Press Up a Vinyl Single and Add Instant Kudos to Your Release’ , I dug around YouTube and found a bunch of instructional videos that should fill in the blanks for bands and artists looking for the inside look on vinyl pressings, cutting and mastering.

Having said that, Vimeo came up trumps with better quality instructionals but its also worth looking at this YouTube video of Detroit techno cutting engineer and producer legend, Ron Murphy who passed away almost a year ago now.

If you play Detroit techno and have played records with the letters NSC etched into it, you’ve played music that has been mastered by Ron. In fact most of the records that have come out of Detroit have been mastered by him.

Related Research

Vinyl/CD Pressing Plants Listings USA (Buzzsonic.dj)
Long Live Vinyl (Mastered and Manufactured) In Detroit (LX7.ca)
Vinyl Pressings (YouTube.com)
Everything You Need To Know About Vinyl-PDF (Tunecore.com)

I talked about vinyl records here back in March so with year end music sales figures just released this seems like a good excuse to revive that piece. I’ve been releasing vinyl records since 1995 when my first 12 inch single crawled onto London’s house music scene. To see that same medium still making waves thirteen years later is encouraging news in an age when music as a medium has become fast food.

For all its convenience, flipping through the 10,000 tracks crammed onto my iPod has given me the attention span of a common house fly. When I was buying vinyl it was more of an event, you read the sleeve, you held it up and admired it, hell, you even read the label and the etch scratched on the run out groove by the mastering engineer. My first vinyl single was mastered at London’s Abbey Road studios, my last one in 2005 was done on a laptop in a home studio set up. You can’t stand in the way of technology.

Ironically one of my old tracks was recently signed by underground house label Suesse Records and in all likelihood the new remixes will be issued as high bitrate MP3′s and will be found at download stores like Beatport and TrackitDown instead of on the shelves of one of those fast diminishing underground DJ vinyl stores that used to pack London’s Westend.

Figures released by Soundscan reveal that 1.88 million vinyl albums were purchased in the USA, more than in any other year since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking LP sales in 1991. That was an increase of 89%. The previous record was in 2000, when 1.5 million LP albums were sold. More than two out of every three vinyl albums bought in 2008 were purchased at an independent music store.

Industry observers say vinyl record sales have skyrocketed because new buyers are discovering the value of owning albums, with their cover art, large liner notes and warm sound. According to Computer World who spoke to one of the few vinyl pressing plants left in the US, Rainbo,  they’d doubled vinyl production from 2006 to 2007 and more than doubled record output this past year.

Related Links

How To Press Up A Vinyl Single……. (Buzzsonic.com)
Back To The Future:Vinyl Record Sales Double In ’08, CDs Down (ComputerWorld.com)
Web Music Sales Up, Album Sales Plummet (P2Pnet.net)
2008 U.S. Music Purchases Exceed 1.5 Billion; Growth in Overall Music Purchases Exceeds 10% (MarketWatch.com)
Coalition Of Independent Music Stores (Cimsmusic.com)
Almighty Institute of Retail (AlmightyRetail.com)

This is ‘See Me (I Cant See You)’, the latest track from Anniversary Circle and the best thing they’ve done so far. Main songwriter and guitarist Martin Johnson was in a band with me called the Fruit Eating Bears years ago. Our main claim to fame was winning Gary Crowley’s Demo Clash show on BBC Radio London and supporting Divine Comedy at the legendary Bull and Gate in London’s Kentish Town.

Anyway, the track is a cross between late 80s UK goth (circa Banshees) and low-fi new wave, for want of a better description. There’s a fantastic dirty bassline wandering around in there too which brings to mind classic JJ Burnel in his Stranglers heyday.

There’s more music on the bands blog, the choice of which is ‘Winters Children’ and you can grab the MP3 here.

Anniversary Circle
(MySpace)

Its been a good few months since Buzzsonic heard anything of note on the yet to be fully operational Snocap, the legal P2P download service founded by (original) Napster founder Shaun Fanning. Music blogs Hypebot and Coolfer were the first people this week to spot that a new Snocap technology was being used by new (to us) band the Format, selling tracks via their MySpace profile using the Snocap service Linx.

The Format tracks are available as MP3′s at 79c each and use Paypal as the merchant for payment, though Snocap Linx works with MP3 as well as content encrypted with WMA DRM according to the Snocap website. Bands can cut and paste the Linx code into their MySpace profiles (or any website for that matter) much like other online services like YouTube, Slide and Photobucket and are offering code to MySpace users to promote their own services.

Snocap’s Linx service is also designed to let online retailers sell music from the companies huge selection of songs. Snocap has distribution deals with Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI Group and Warner Music, along with a number of independent labels.

David Berlind at ZDNet had an interesting point on the news on his blog this week.

“Actually, it’s the independents that will really benefit from MySpace as a sales channel (while the traditional labels go the iTunes, etc. route). While I don’t believe were at a tipping point yet, the idea of commerce-enabling MySpace for music sales could position indies for an interesting offensive against the entertainment establishment. And, with no DRM, it’s definitely a step in the right direction.”

Related Reading

Napster Founder Commerce Enables Unprotected MP3s on MySpace (ZD Net Blogs)
Snocap Looks Beyond P2P (MP3.com)
Napster Guru Fanning Breaks Snocap Silence (Buzzsonic.com) Dec 3 2005
Mashboxx and Snocap Get Busy (Buzzsonic.com) May 6 2005
EMI Records Join the Snocap Queue (Buzzsonic.com) Nov 20 2004
Napster Founder in Major Label P2P Talks (Buzzsonic.com) Nov 13 2004

As a recording artist myself I’m always looking for new distribution outlets but so far I’ve been slow to exploit digital sales at all. Two mixes from my latest UK released 12 inch vinyl (yes they do still exist) single, ‘I’ll Be There’ are actually available at underground dance store Xpress Beats but with Apple’s iTunes store dominating 70-80% of the download market (depending on who you believe) its the one place you really want to be if you want to get in the online shop window.

I’ve been aware of digital music distribution aggregators for a while and have had a look around well known outlets like CD Baby and IODA so I was very interested in the news of newcomer TuneCore (tip via the essential Moses Avalon). Tunecore works much the same as most digital music aggregators in as much as they sign up artists and label content and place music on the all important download majors like iTunes, Napster and Rhapsody. The difference with Tunecore (FAQs here) is that there is no lengthy terms, no exclusivity and the killer for me, no percentage share of revenue (other outlets range from 8-15%).

There’s a very informative podcast interview with founder Jeff Price at the 75 Minutes blog which is well worth an hour of your time and needless to say Jeff is blogging about the whole thing here. I’ll be commenting further on this as we prepare to upload our first digital release to Tunecore very soon.

Founder Jeff Price is the owner of Spin Art Records other board members include the former head of RykoDisc, George Howard and Toolshed Inc. owner Dick Huey.

Related Reading

Digital Distributor Comparisons (MosesAvalon.com)
Back From Canadian Music Week (BradSucks.com)
Digital Music Report 2006-24 page PDF (IFPI.org)
Digital Music:Industry Answers (BBC News)
The Long Tail (Wired.com)
99th Floor Elevators (Floorelevators.com)
iTunes Outsells Traditional Music Stores (CNet News) Nov 21 2005
Apple Touts iTunes 80% UK Market Share (The Register) Sept 7 2005

Its been a while since we featured any posts on musical mash-ups here. Since the last mention (the excellent Green Day mash) the word mash up has taken on a slightly different meaning. Now the term is more likely associated with the latest Google Maps Api mash up rather than the latest frankenstein pop remix flying out of some digital DJ’s laptop studio.

Latest renegade remixers to join the fray are the Brooklyn based DJ duo Sound Advice who have ironically (see DJ Dangermouse) chosen to weld the music from the ubiquitous Gnarls Barkley album ‘St Elsewhere’ to the vocals from deceased rapper Biggie Smalls biggest hits.
The result is Gnarls Biggie a hit and miss collection of eleven tracks (all available as MP3′s naturally). ‘Smilie Faces Hypnotize’, ‘Gimme The Online Loot’ and ‘The Last Nasty Boy’ are worth more than one spin but the simple A vs. B formula is not nearly as inspired as the more elaborate examples of the ‘art’ like DJ Dangermouse’s (half of Gnarls Barkley) groundbreaking Beatles vs Jay Z mash up the ‘Grey Album’ or the aformentioned Green Day (or Dean Gray) remix project.

The guys have already got themselves banned from MySpace (though another ‘fan page’ has already sprung up). The cease and desist is in the post.

Related Reading

Gnarls Barkley Mashed Up with B.I.G (Spin.com)
Green Day Mash Up Leads to Cease and Desist Order, Grey Tuesday Style Protest (MTV News)
Grey Album Poducer Danger Mouse Explains How He Did It (MTV News)
Gnarls Barkley (Wikipedia)
Sound Advice Blog (Blogspot)
Party Ben (PartyBen.com)
Mark Vidler (GoHomeProductions)
Grey Tuesday:A Quick Overview of the Legal Terrain (EFF.org)
Grey Tuesday-Free the Grey Album (GreyTuesday.org)

The brilliant Green Day mash-up album we mentioned a few days ago has already had the plugged pulled by Warner Bros music officials apparently.

You can follow the subject at mashers hang out Get Your Bootleg On. Naturally the old download link is now dead but there’s a growing groundswell of support for the project just as there was for the famed (and similarily outlawed) DJ Dangermouse mashup, ‘The Grey Album’. You can, as of this minute grab the album here and read up further on the planned music activism set for December 13th.

Elsewhere this week we’ve stumbled across a Madonna mash-up project (‘the Immaculate Concoction’), one from Radiohead and a 50 Cent/Queen ‘co-lab’. Of course the artists themselves are blissfully unaware of all the DiY remix activity going on.

Related Links

Dean Grey Tuesday (Alt.fm)
RIAA Targets Mash-Ups (BoingBoing.com)
Grey Tuesday, Online Cultural Activism and the Mash up of Music and Politics (FirstTuesday.org)
Raiding The 20th Century, the History of the Cut-up (Musicalbear.com)
The Grey Album by DJ Dangermouse (BannedMusic.org)

The expected new update of Apple’s all-in-one music jukebox software, iTunes 4.8 was released today and adds new video playback features, including the ability to drag and drop movie clips from your computer into the iTunes Library for easy cataloging and organization. The video clips appear with a new movie camera icon in your library.

There’s three options for video playback under the preferences tab which gives you the choice of full screen, separate window, or main window playback. You can drag the borders of the video to change the size of the screen. There’s also a new iTunes store preference with a choice of 1-click buying (though not sure Amazon will be too pleased with Apple’s use of that term) and ‘buy now’ shopping cart puchasing . Its all pretty seemless and using my Paypal account plugged into iTunes its made buying music the easiest its ever been for me in over thirty years of musical fanatasism, going back to the days of the 8 track cartridge.

Download iTunes 4.8

Related Reading
Apple Releases iTunes 4.8 [iPodLounge.com]

We covered early developments on the forthcoming legal P2P services, from Mashboxx and Snocap back in November of last year. Napster (MK 1) founder Shaun Fanning’s new legal P2P (ie:major label friendly) service Snocap had agreed a deal with the Universal Music Group to distribute the major labels content using the digital fingerprinting software being adapted from a Philips blueprint.

At the same time Sony/BMG had been in talks with Mashboxx boss, ex-Grokster and Blubster president, Wayne Rosso.

Snocaps talks with the EMI Group began almost six months ago and an official deal with the UK major was announced to the press yesterday.

David Munns, Chairman and CEO for EMI Music, North America said in a statement, “This deal with Snocap underscores EMI’s commitment to developing legitimate ways to deliver our music in more ways to more fans, including peer-to-peer distribution models that ensure creators are compensated for their works.”

He continued, “This sends a signal to music industry critics who claim we are technophobic. If anything, we are embracing technologies like Snocap, which allow the P2P community to share music legally. It’s a big step forward for fans, artists and copyright owners.”

Mashboxx, who are going to be using the Snocap technology for their own P2P service started signing up beta testers on their website today, for the yet to be seen music delivery service.

Snocap is a technology embedded in a P2P network to block sharing of unauthorized works, including unlicensed music and pornography and facilitate commercial transactions. Audio fingerprinting provides the digital ‘fingerprint’ of an audio recording by deriving unique features that can be used to identify the music by comparing it with reference fingerprints stored in a central database.

That fingerprinting tool could be integrated into the file-swapping software itself in several different ways. Once an identification is made, the download could be blocked, unless the computer user pays a fee, as if they were downloading a song from iTunes or another digital song store.

Mashboxx’s P2P app will use Fanning’s technology to reveal which shared songs are being monitored on behalf of Snocap’s label customers. Download a track that is, and Mashboxx’s software slips in a DRM-protected version that invites you to pay, to listen, to burn or whatever usage the copyright holder permits.

Background Reading

EMI Signs Up For ‘Authorised’ Online Music Sharing [Reuters]
Mashboxx Opens Beta Test Scheme [theRegister.com]
EMI Signs on With Snocap [Slyck.com]
Content Identification:Audio Fingerprinting [Philips Research]
Napster Founder in Major Label P2P Talks [Buzzsonic News]
EMI Records Join the Snocap Queue [Buzzsonic News]
Napster Guru Fanning Breaks Snocap Silence [Buzzsonic News]
Grokster [Wikipedia]
The Major Labels [PBS Frontline]
Wayne Rosso on File-Sharing Frontiers [TechNewsWorld.com]

We ran a report on the uber-fast Internet2 college broadband network back in November last year. At the time the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) were said to be in tentative talks with the administrators of Internet2, hoping both to test next-generation video delivery projects and to monitor peer-to-peer piracy on the ultra high-speed network.

No great surprise that today the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) filed lawsuits against 405 students at 18 colleges in the U.S. , alleging that they are using the private-research network to trade pirated songs. According to the RIAA, students with access to Internet2 are increasingly using a file-sharing application called i2hub to “steal copyrighted songs and other works on a massive scale,” the organization said in a statement released yesterday.

“Students find i2hub especially appealing because they mistakenly believe their illegal file-sharing activities can’t be detected in the closed environment of the Internet2 network,” it continued.

To connect to this extremely fast network students need to download a free client from Direct Connect who’s website states, “Unlike other impersonal, server-driven file-sharing networks, Direct Connect offers a community-oriented, open, user-controlled network.”

Internet2 is part of the Abilene network and is essentially a vastly faster version of the Internet, a proving ground for high-bandwidth technologies. Speaking to Tech Republic last year Steve Corbato, the director of backbone network infrastructure for Internet2 said, “Abilene has become a necessity for research universities,and it’s not just about building a really fast network. University members rely on it to collaborate with colleagues and students around the world.”

The network used by Internet2 was launched in 1998 by a nonprofit consortium of 206 universities, 70 corporate partners (including IBM and Microsoft) and a number of government agencies, including the Library of Congress, to develop the next generation of Internet technologies.

The RIAA has sued more than 9,000 people for distributing songs using peer-to-peer software like Grokster and Morpheus in the past two years.

In a seperate action announced yesterday the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the world governing body for the international music industry said they were launching the biggest wave of legal actions against internet music file-sharers yet. New cases were launched against 963 individuals in 11 countries across Europe and Asia. Netherlands, Finland, Ireland, Iceland and Japan pursued illegal song-swappers for the first time

Related Links

RIAA Targets New Piracy Epidemic On Special High-Speed Campus Network [RIAA]
High-Speed US Net ‘Pirates’ Sued [BBC News]
RIAA Sues More Than 400 College Students Over Internet2 Downloads [MTV]
New Wave of Lawsuits to Hit ‘Illegal File Swappers’ [the Register]
Music File Sharers Face Biggest Round of Legal Actions Yet [IFPI]
Internet 2: 2004 And Beyond [Tech Republic]
MPAA Eyes Internet2 P2P Traffic [Buzzsonic News]

New York based ‘culture meets technology’ activists IPac are , according to their website, dedicated to preserving individual freedom through balanced intellectual property policy. Their latest project is Jailed For A Song which looks at the US Congress’s brushes with copyright law in 2004 and examines several of the craziest items on Big Content’s wish list.

Being Jailed For A Song is what a proposed law would allow. “Skipping commercials is stealing? That’s what some copyright holders think. And spending millions of taxpayer dollars to hunt down file-sharers? Congress nearly passed not one, but two bills that would have done just that in 2004.”

Included in some of the scary looking all encompassing law’s was, S.B. 3021. The bill (passed by the U.S. Senate on November 20, 2004 though still not passed as law due to procedural problems) specifically said that sharing a single pre-release work (song, movie, etc.) carried a possible five-year prison term for even first-time offenders. The two others we all read about last year were ‘The Piracy Deterrence and Education Act’ (PDEA, H.R. 4077) and ‘the PIRATE Act ‘(S.2237) which would have diverted law enforcement agencies to the pursuit of file-sharers at a time when the RIAA’s suits are paying for themselves.

“Copyright infringement is a problem, but the radical political agenda of copyright holders is far beyond what normal Americans want. We need constructive proposals for how to pay artists, protect technical innovation, and end the record & movie companies’ crazy litigation campaign. Congress isn’t listening to the public, and we need to be loud if we want to be heard over the Hollywood lobbyists and record label flunkies.” Points out the site. IPac are urging supporters to get involved and make a stand in the 665 days leading into the next federal election and make every day count.

Related Links

Electronic Frontier Foundation [EFF.org]
Banned Music [BannedMusic.org]
Downhill Battle [DownhillBattle.org]

The Record Industry Association of America unleashed another barrage of lawsuits at file-sharers illegally trading in music using P2P software this afternoon. The 754 new lawsuits were filed in federal district courts across the USA, including 20 alleged file-traders using university computer networks.

With the latest round of legal action, the RIAA has now sued more than 7,700 alleged file-traders since September 2003, including more than 3,000 lawsuits since Oct. 1 of this year.

As in previous cases, the new lawsuits were filed against “John Doe” defendants identified only by their numeric Internet protocol addresses. Music company lawyers must obtain the identity of defendants by issuing subpoenas to Internet access providers. Last month the recording industry body issued suits against 761 alleged illegal file sharers.

RIAA President Cary Sherman, said in a statement that: “With legal online retailers still forced to compete against illegal free networks, the playing field remains decidedly unbalanced, That’s why continued enforcement against individuals stealing and distributing music illegally is essential, as is holding accountable the businesses that intentionally promote and profit from this theft.”

Despite increasingly high profile suits from both the RIAA and the film industry association the MPAA, recent studies measuring the effect of the legal action suggest that it has had little or no deterrent in stemming the actions of file sharers using P2P networks.

Latest figures from P2P monitor Big Champagne reveal that in November, the average number of people simultaneously logged on to the P2P file sharing networks at any given moment increased significantly from 6,255,986 in October to 7,452,184. The number of users on P2P networks in the US went up from 4,435,395 in October to 5,445,275 in November.

“While these increases are consistent with the trend we’ve observed in Q4 in previous years, strong growth in the USA in particular has yielded an active (logged-on) P2P user base that’s more than one-third greater than it was in the fourth quarter of last year,” Big Champagne CEO Eric Garland told news site P2PNet earlier this month.

Related Reading

Record Industry Sues 754 for Internet Song Swaps [Reuters.com]
Computer Users Sued for Swopping Music [SiliconValley.com]
Chilling Effects Clearinghouse [ChillingEffects.org]
File Share Top 10 [P2PNet.net]
New Survey Indicates Musicians Split On File Sharing [MusicbizNews24.com]
Big Music P2P Stats Dont Tally [P2PNet.net]
How File Sharing Works [HowStuffWorks.com]
Big Champagne’s Burst Bubble [bIPlog]
New P2P File Sharing Stats [P2PNet.net]

Musicians believe the internet is an essential tool to help create and market their work, but at the same time more than half of artists say file sharing of unauthorized copies of music should be illegal, according to a new report. The study titled, “Artists, Musicians and the Internet,” by US. researchers suggests that musicians do not wholeheartedly agree with the tactics adopted by the music industry against file-sharing, artists are divided on the issue but not deeply concerned. 60% said they did not think the lawsuits against song swappers would benefit musicians and songwriters.

In Spring of this year, the not-for-profit Future of Music Coalition and the nonprofit, non-partisan think tank the Pew Internet & American Life Project worked with an array of other musician and songwriter organizations including Just Plain Folks, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, CD Baby, the Nashville Songwriters Association, Garageband.com, and the American Federation of Musicians. to conduct an online survey to gauge musicians’ opinions of copyright and the internet in general. Over 2700 musicians completed the survey, the results of which were revealed yesterday.

“Even successful artists don’t think the lawsuits will benefit musicians.” “We looked at more of the independent musicians, rather than the rockstars of this industry but that reflects more accurately the state of the music industry,” research specialist and author of the report Mary Madden told the BBC News website.

52% of all artists and 55% of Paid Artists believe it should be illegal for internet users to share unauthorized copies of music and movies over file-sharing networks, compared to 37% of all artists and 35% of Paid Artists who say it should be legal.

Songwriters Eric Lowen & Dan Navarro, who wrote the Pat Benatar hit “We Belong” said free file sharing can have tremendous promotional value, but artists should be able to decide if they want to give away their music. “I want the ability to choose whether it goes out there for free or not,” Navarro told Wired. “When people start taking (the music for free), it takes the control away from us. I don’t think that’s fair.”

Makers of file-sharing software like Kazaa and Grokster may be unnerved to learn that nearly two-thirds said such services should be held responsible for illegal file-swapping; only 15 percent held individual users responsible.

The report continues to say that 87% of the musician respondents say they promote, advertise or display their music online, and 83% provide free samples or previews of their music on the internet. 69% of the respondents say they sell their music online. 63% say that they sell their music online someplace other than their own Web site.

56% sell CDs through online stores like Amazon.com or CDBaby, 28% sell downloadable files through digital stores like iTunes, and 18% sell their music someplace else online.

“Some in the policy community and in media companies have feared that the internet would bring financial Armageddon to musicians and other artists,” said report author Madden, “What we hear from a wide spectrum of artists is that, despite the real challenges of protecting work online, the internet has opened up new ways for them to exercise their imaginations and sell their creations. To many, this feels like a new Digital Renaissance rather than the end of the world.”

For independent musicians, in particular, this newfound ability to bypass traditional distribution outlets and geographic boundaries has been a watershed. One musician explained that having the ability to sell music online was the most significant impact of the internet.

“A huge positive benefit is being able to have my music available for sale to anyone in the world who wants it. Ten years ago there was absolutely no way to sell your CD except through major distribution deals or at your own shows.”

The survey found that musicians were overwhelmingly positive about the internet, rather than seeing it as a threat to their livelihood. Almost all of them used the net for ideas and inspiration, with nine out of 10 going online to promote, advertise and post their music on the web.

The survey is the first large-scale snapshot of what the people who actually produce the music that downloaders seek (and that the industry jealously guards) think about the Internet and file-sharing. The Recording Industry Association of America, the trade group for the major music labels, declined to comment on the study.

Download the 61page PDF. report.
‘Artists, Musicians & the Internet’

Related Reading

Study:Musicians Dig the Net [Wired.com]
Musicians ‘Upbeat’ About the Net [BBC News]
Pew File Sharing Survey Gives a Voice to Artists [NYTimes.com-reg. req.]
How do Musicians Feel About File Sharing? [USAToday.com]

Further Reading

The WIRED CD: Rip. Sample. Mash. Share.[CreativeCommons.org]
File-Sharing Getting Bad Rap? [Rolling Stone] April 2004
Download This! Chuck D Interview [CBCNews.ca] March 2004
Grey Album Fans Protest Clampdown [Wired.com]
Killing the Music [CommonDreams.org] Feb. 2004
An Eagle Almost Gets it [A Networked World blog]
Musicians United for Strong Internet Copyright [MusicUnited.net]
RIAA Radar [Magnetbox.com]
Downhill Battle-Music Activism
[DownhillBattle.org]
Feeding the Mouth that Bites [ChrisVreeland.com]
Let the Music Play [EFF.org]
Recording Industry Association of America [Wikipedia.org]
Model & History of File Sharing [InfoAnarchy.org]
Tracking the Downloading Revolution [BigChampagne.com] PDF
Privacy & Piracy: The Paradox of Illegal File Sharing on Peer-to-Peer Networks and the Impact of Technology on the Entertainment Industry [US.Senate Study] 169pg PDF
Rappers in Disharmony on P2P [Wired.com] Oct. 2003
Changing Industry:Moby [Moby.com] Sept. 2003
Moby on File Sharing [Moby.com] Aug. 2003
the Internet Debacle-An Alternative View [JanisIan.com] May 2002
Lars Ulrich’s Death Wish: Metallica v their Fans [Disinfo.com] Oct 2000
Chuck D: Gotta Share the Tunes [Wired.com] Oct 1999
Downloading the Future. The MP3 Revolution & the End of the Industry as We Know It [LAWeekly] March 1999
Negativland and the RIAA
[Negativland.com] 1998

After months of quiet background development and some (mainly) unsubstantiated stories more recently, ex-Napster founder and P2P poster boy Shawn Fanning finally broke the veil of silent mystery surrounding his new P2P start-up Snocap today with the official launch of the company with a press release and the unveiling of the company website which filled in some of the blanks about their proposed plans for the much talked about new venture.

Fanning and major record labels are hoping that the peer-to-peer filtering software that his company have been developing will legitimize the revolution Napster started back in 1999. Snocap claims to be the first music licensing platform that will allow music download services and P2P networks alike to allow any track to be delivered or shared in the knowledge that the copyright holder gets paid. The software works by attaching a digital fingerprint to media that determines whether it can be shared and at what price.

Snocap has developed a proprietary content identification service system using technology licensed from Philips Research Labs which uses audio fingerprinting and scans downloads as they pass through the Snocap system and compares them to music in the company’s database. If there’s a match, the royalty rate is decided and usage rights applied. Philips have been working on the fingerprinting technology for a number of years and it is already in use by mobile music specialist Musiwave and music recognition database Gracenote.

“There are some good authorized online music services but they have limited content and a comparatively small number of users. There are unauthorized services that have content and users orders of magnitude higher, but the service they provide is inferior and they are at odds with rights holders. Snocap is the means to bridge that divide for the consumer.” said Fanning.

The company also confirmed rumours that it has signed a landmark agreement with Universal Music Group to provide technology and database services for the online distribution of the company’s entire catalogue. Universal has already begun to register its catalogue with Snocap. EMI and Sony BMG are reportedly in active negotiations.

Snocap received a $10 million round of financing led by WaldenVC, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm that has a strong focus on digital media companies, and Morgenthaler Ventures, a leading national venture capital firm focused on information technology, internet services and life sciences. According to WaldenVC General Partner Art Berliner, “Snocap represents the future of online music. We are excited to work with Shawn Fanning and his team in greatly expanding the boundaries of the digital media universe.”

The Snocap team is comprised of three of the old coding team from the Napster days, Fanning himself, Ali Ayder and Jordan Mendelson and headed up by venture capitalist veteran Ron Conway, who also invested in the original Napster.

The Snocap system will incorporate its technology into various P2P clients, In order for it to work, peer-to-peer networks must agree to build Snocap’s technology into their software, wether that will include current market leaders like Kazaa, Grokster, eDonkey and Morpheus depends on those companies agreeing to dumping their old ‘revenue model’ of free. So far the first P2P application using Snocap technology is expected to be Mashboxx, with an early 2005 launch date.

‘Rival’ P2P filter Audible Magic CEO Vance Ikezoye told the L.A. Times, “There will be peer-to-peers that are able to make that transition and compete, but technology is not the problem; it’s the business model, how do you convert somebody who’s getting something for free?”

Related Stories

Shawn Fanning’s Snocap Touts Vision of P2P Heaven [the Register]
Napster Founder Goes Legit [MercuryNews.com]
Napster Founder Basks in Funding, Label Support [CNet News]
Shawn Fanning’s New Tune:Snocap [BusinessWeek.com]
Napster Creator Touts Legal File Sharing [Forbes.com]
Napster Creator Reveals Next Step [BBC News]
SNOCAP Melts Barriers to Growth in the Digital Music Marketplace [BusinessWire.com-Official Press Release]
EMI Records Join the Snocap Queue [MusicbizNews24.com]
Napster Founder in Major Label Talks [MusicbizNews24.com]
Paid P2P Options Gain More Traction [MusicbizNews24.com]
Content Identification Audio Fingerprinting Technology [Philips Research]
A Highly Robust Audio Fingerprinting System [Philips Research] 9pg PDF

Napster Background

Napsters Back, What Did Silicon Valley Learn? (Oct 2003)
the Download on Napster (August 2003) [Alwayson-Network.com]
Napster Becomes Dot-goner After Sale Blocked (Sept 2002) [MercuryNews.com]
Napsters CEO Splits on Sour Note (May 2002) [BusinessWeek.com]
Inside Napster (August 2000) [BusinessWeek.com]
It’s a Rad, Rad Napster World [Darkridge.com]
All the Rave : The Rise and Fall of Shawn Fanning’s Napster [JosephMenn.com]

According to the latest digital music research undertaken by analysts at JupiterResearch their latest survey strongly supports two critical JupiterResearch forecasts: subscription services will eventually outpace a la carte downloads and CDs won’t be replaced by digital music in the next five years.

The study, “Consumer Survey Report: Music, 2004“, was based on a survey of over 2,300 online adults, and also compares results with a survey of over 2,100 online teens, ages 13-17 and suggests that by 2009 digital music sales will still represent just 12% of consumer music spending.

The majority of online adults, 51%, think physical music is more valuable than digital. “CDs offer higher sound fidelity, aren’t burdened with awkward copy protection and are compatible with pretty much every way people listen to music,” said JupiterResearch VP and Senior Analyst David Card. “MP3 players and portable rentals could turn around that value perception, but it will take time,” added Card.

“Digital music is a young person’s game,” said Josh Green, Analyst at JupiterResearch. “Forty one percent of 18-24 year-olds burn CDs and 31% use file sharing. For the over 25 crowd, those numbers are only 14% and 4%,” added Green.

A seperate study conducted by the Online Publishers Association in partnership with comScore Networks earlier in the month revealed that online music sales, seriously came into fruition in the beginning of 2004, and pushed the entertainment and lifestyles category of online content up by 78.3% in the first half of 2004 to a grand total of $182.8 million in spending.

It was the first time that the OPA had included online music in its online content measurements. The OPA report also noted that nearly all online content spending in the US is attributable to subscription payment programs, at 90% of sales.

In another report, published a week before the Jupiter study, Simon Dyson, editor of the ‘Music on the Internet’
survey for the Informa Media Group confirmed predictions that it’s going to be a long time before digital music downloads challenge CD sales, even in the online world. The IMG report says that by 2010 global online music sales will exceed $6bn. An impressive number, but still only 15.2 per cent of total spending on music worldwide.

Dyson, told BBC News, 2004 had been an “important” year for the digital music sector. But he warned that converting illegal peer-to-peer file sharers was central to the industry’s long-term success. He added that legal action being taken by record companies against illegal downloaders had so far failed to make an impact. But the IMG report differed from Jupiter in its predictions regarding subscription music services saying that digital downloads would continue to dominate (in terms of the value of sales) against subscription-based services.

Related Research

JupiterResearch Full Press Release [Yahoo Biz]
Subscription Services to Drive Digital Music [CNet News]
Digital Music a Long Way From Displacing CDs [the Register]
Inside Digital Media Interviews [InsideDigitalMedia.com]
TEMPO:Keeping Pace with Digital Music Behavior [Ipsos-Insight.com] PDF
Researching the Digital Music Landscape [Ipsos-Insight.com]
Can Music Move Online Content Mountain? [E-Marketer.com]
Online Publishers Assoc. Online Paid Content US. Market Report Nov.04 [online-Publishers.org] 18pg PDF
CDs Still Overshadow Digital-Music Downloads [NewsFactor.com]
Industry Focus:Music [Forrester Research]
Online Music Report-2004 [IPFI.org] 20pg. PDF
Digital Music Research Network [Queen Mary, University of London]
CDs May Soon go the Way of Vinyl [CNN.com]
CD Prices Sing the Blues [CNet News]

Jean-Ren� Fourtou, the CEO of Vivendi Universal met in Paris last Friday with more than 70 business executives, brought together by the International Chamber of Commerce from a broad range of companies and trade associations to unveil a plan to create an international organization called BASCAP, or Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy.

Vivendi are the parent company of Universal Music Group who have had high profile battles against piracy and Fourtou’s message was stern, “”This illegal activity is spiraling out of control. It is a major threat. It’s like a cancer”. Fourtou and the International Chamber of Commerce are trying to initiate a global offensive to combat the darker side of commerce and promised that the new initiative would “take the fight against intellectual property theft to a new level”.

“Globally, it’s hard to believe,” Fourtou said, “but two of every five recordings are pirate copies.” One of his ambitions, he said, is to explain to customers the devastating results, particularly in countries like Germany or Brazil, where the fakes have drained away local investment in music. Fourtou wasn’t just talking to music industry executives but an eclectic and global mix of industries. Piracy is practically the only issue that could draw a tobacco manufacturer and a music producer like Vivendi, to the same meeting.

Fourtou took over the helm of the then flailing Vivendi from the ousted Jean-Marie Messier in 2002 after the company recorded losses of 23.3billion euros ($30.8billion), a record for a French company.

more [International Herald Tribune]

Related Reading
Corporate Anti-Piracy Battle Goes International [GlobeandMail.com]
BASCAP Programme 16pg PDF [Iccwbo.org]
Who Owns What:Vivendi Universal [CJR.org]
Speaking of Music Piracy.. [Wired.com]
Federation Against Copyright Theft [Fact-UK]
What is Piracy? [IFPI.org]

The long running saga of the music industry’s copyright battle against the worlds most popular peer to peer file sharing software Kazaa moved to Australia today as case number NSD 110, Universal Music Australia Pty Ltd v Sharman License Holdings Ltd got underway in the Federal Court of Australia in Sydney.

At the start of a trial over the legality of Kazaa software, the court was told today that Kazaa had 100 million users worldwide, sharing three billion music files a month. Five major Australian record companies-Universal, EMI, Sony BMG, Warner Music, Festival/Mushroom and 25 oth