crashroots

Allmost a year ago sources claimed to have confirmed: Jay-Z is launching a record label with Apple (mashable.com)

As rumors go, this has not been confirmed up to this day. But back in the day the whole rumor package apparently came from someone high-up in Jay-Z’s organization. It´s still a interesting concept and i wonder if there are any updates on this or similar deals?

theindiedigest.com has a great summery on why to give your music away for free. Free music on the internet is nothing to be scared of or feel threatened by. In fact as you will no doubt discover it can be incredibly valuable for all involved. We have reached a pivotal point where the cost of music distribution has fallen to a stage where we can effectively consider it to be free. That is to say, it costs me and you nothing to ‘listen’ to a song I want to hear. Recording a song still costs money, but listening to it no longer does. As with any industry that undergoes a rapid transformation where scarcely controlled goods (CD’s, Tapes, etc) become infinitely available goods (music downloads), in order to gain a strong foothold you need to stay ahead of the curve and adapt as soon as possible.

1. Maximises The Possibility Of Discovery

2. Builds Attention

3. Builds Your Brand

4. Helps You Make Money

read full post at theindiedigest.com

webdistortion.com has a great blog post about emerging opensource music sites. Here´s a summery:

“hopefully this compilation of free open source and creative commons licensed music will help you to find the tunes you need to compliment your project. Large artists are starting to go down that route, Nine inch nails and more recently Portishead after freeing from their record label have started looking towards creative commons licensing models. Read the full post here.

Archive.org  Open Source Audio http://www.archive.org/details/opensource_audio
OpSound http://opsound.org/music
BradSucks http://www.bradsucks.net/
Josh Woodward http://www.joshwoodward.com/music/
Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts http://ghosts.nin.com/
Jamendo http://www.jamendo.com/en/
Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/audio/
CCMixter http://ccmixter.org/
SectionZ http://www.sectionz.com/cc.asp
Audionautix http://www.audionautix.com/html/free_music.html
FreePD http://freepd.com/
SoundClick http://www.soundclick.com/business/license_list.cfm
Magnatune http://www.magnatune.com/

(via hypebot)

Trent Reznor is warning artists to steer clear of Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want scheme. Sure, he has ranted about his fellow digital revolutionaries before, calling their offer “a bait and switch to get you to pay for a MySpace-quality stream,” but this time he is more specific about the danger of letting fans choose the value of your music. Here’s the full excerpt:

Pay-what-you-want model

This is where you offer tracks or albums for a user-determined price. I hate this concept, and here’s why. Some have argued that giving music away free devalues music. I disagree. Asking people what they think music is worth devalues music. Don’t believe me? Write and record something you really believe is great and release it to the public as a “pay-what-you-think-it’s-worth” model and then let’s talk. Read a BB entry from a “fan” rationalizing why your whole album is worth 50 cents because he only likes 5 songs on it. Trust me on this one - you will be disappointed, disheartened and find yourself resenting a faction of your audience. This is your art! This is your life! It has a value and you the artist are not putting that power in the hands of the audience - doing so creates a dangerous perception issue. If the FEE you are charging is zero, you are not empowering the fan to say this is only worth an insultingly low monetary value. Don’t be misled by Radiohead’s In Rainbows stunt. That works one time for one band once - and you are not Radiohead.

Read more here.

Take the music industry. You come closer to spelling out where it’s going to go.

A: Music’s already there. We don’t have to guess about what the future of music is; we can already see it. It’s interesting as an analogy. We wrongly correlated, or equated, the music industry with the record labels. It now turns out in fact that the labels are now the least important part. If you look at the rest of the industry now, from the bands to the fans from Apple to tour promoters, everyone’s doing OK, except for the labels. So there’s really nothing wrong with the music industry; we’re just redefining what it is. And I wonder whether we’re going to see a similar fragmentation and reformation of media. Right now, media is defined as those who own the presses – the presses meaning either the physical presses or broadcast towers or whatever. We’re beginning to see a new class of professional media which operate on internet economics. They’re still small, and they don’t make anything like the money. Read the full article. (via dailyswarm)

Business models are a tricky subject. There is an old saying among entrepreneurs that there is no real value to writing down your business model, as it will have changed by the time you commit it to paper. The joke has truth to it; I can personally attest to its veracity. But there is something brewing in the larger world of Internet business models that has wide implications: freemium.

Fred Wilson, famed VC and blogger, originally came up with the general concept of freemium, which he explained this way:

Give your service away for free, possibly ad supported but maybe not, acquire a lot of customers very efficiently through word of mouth, referral networks, organic search marketing, etc, then offer premium priced value added services or an enhanced version of your service to your customer base.

This concept, building an audience, then implementing paid features as later expansions, is slowly becoming the de facto model for online companies. Of course, there are many successful Internet companies today that avoid it entirely. However, they all seem to lose money. Digg, Twitter, and the other media darlings of the Web 2.0 world still live in red ink, even after scaling to mass market size. Read more at bulding43.com

In this podcast NPR Radio is asking if Record Labels still Matter. Host Bob Boilen talks with Monitor Mix blogger Carrie Brownstein, All Songs Considered producer Robin Hilton, and Song of the Day editor Stephen Thompson about some of their favorite labels, as well as the role those labels play in making music great. Download here. (via dailyswarm)

The dailyswarm has a interesting post about about the cult front man Ian Astburys opinion on LP: “There will be no new album. I don’t think we’ll ever see a Cult album. Albums are dead. The format is dead. iTunes destroyed albums. The whole idea of an album. Albums were established in the ‘70s and ‘80s and into the ‘90s, but they’ve been dead for a long time. Nobody buys albums. It’s been proven. It’s an arcane format, as much as the 78 rpm or writing sheet music for an orchestra. It’s an old form and, for me, it’s much more about if we have a great song we really believe in, then we’ll record it and release it.” Read more…

Its about time we get a industry wide naming naming convention on how to call the rapidly emerging new music business and cultural models. Among many people, i´m suggesting calling it “opensource music” (OSM) or “music 2.0″. What is your opinion? Leave a comment and let us know!

Techdirt has a good post about why the “i sue your mum” record industry has not sued the mashup artist girltalk yet. It all comes down to this: “When asked, Gillis has repeatedly stated that if he’s sued he believes he has a strong fair use defense. Perhaps the lawyers at the record labels (and representing certain musicians) have all recognized the same thing. Gillis will almost certainly win in court, and all those terribly decided cases that ignore fair use in music will get pushed aside.” Read more..

Michael Masnick’s (founder of Techdirt) recent presentation at the NARM 2009 conference is great. It summarizes a few key new music 2.0 business models in a entertaining way. Read more at Createdigitalmusic.com

Sure, you could post a “bassist wanted” ad on craigslist instead of the old coffeehouse bulletin board. But there’s a better way to find kindred indie spirits. A host of Web sites have sprung up to help musicians connect and collaborate online. Whether you’re seeking virtual bandmates for a recording or soliciting remixes from up-and-coming producers, you can now tap into a worldwide talent network from the solitude of your home studio. With scads of sites competing to cash in on the community-generated music craze, the discerning artist may need some guidance.Read the full hit list of the best services at wired.com.

James Boyle, is William Neal Reynolds Professor of Law and co-founder of the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke Law School. He is also the author of the brilliant book “The Public Domain”, and in this Google Zeitgeist 2008 video he does a great job explaining why we tend to favor anything but Openness, and why copyright as we know it is turning 1.3 Billion Internet users into perpetual infringers. Read more at MediaFuturist.com

Buzzsonic has a fantastic post about the digital music distribution “jungle” featuring a fantastic video interview with Denzyl Feigelson. Read the full post.

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! Read the full post at Buzzsonic.com

It’s time to add “music video production” to the list of industries the iPhone threatens to disrupt. Read the full blog post at wired.com

MAMA Group, the AIM-listed artist management firm, and Radiohead’s manager Brian Message are taking on the music majors by launching a record label through which artists retain their copyright and digital delivery of music is key. 

Founded with an initial financial commitment of more than $20m (£12.2m) for its first year of operation, new label Polyphonic will partner artists and their managers to provide them with capital to operate their businesses without going to a traditional music label. Read more…

Download Chris Anderson’s new book “”The Future of a Radical Price as PDF or Audiobook for free via Wired.com. Great read, good audio book and informative videos: check it out now!

Still need proof of the power of  free? Or maybe you just want to be sure it’s not going to cannibalize your opportunity to make a little money? Wired Editor Chris Andersen’s book Free: The Future of a Radical Price comes out this week and the debate is certain to heat up.  But in the meantime, here’s  a real would example: Moby wrote to Bob Lefsetz a couple of days ago to point out that his top selling  track on iTunes is also the one he’s giving away free.

Read more at hypebot

CCMixter is a great site and a pioneer in the music 2.0 arena.

wayneandwax.com has a informative blog post about the ongoing major shifts in the music industry and the society as a hole: Songs have always been shareable and shared. People, young and old, share songs with each other – by singing or playing them - in a variety of ways and settings, through a variety of technologies and media or other manner of accompaniment.. Read more.

I´m very pro sampling, its our way of being creative since the dawn of humanity. I just the last 100 years with the dawn of recorded media that the idea of copyright etc. made an impact. In my opinion though its very crucial to declare the sample source. With no reference to the original sample, there is no music journey to be followed. Shame on you Black Eyed Peas (and the majority of the dance music scene) ! (via dailyswarm)

Techdirt has an interesting look at copyright and the idea that an author is the originator of a new work. Instead, the piece suggests that all works are in some way based on the works of others (even our own copyright law), and the system should be much more encouraging of “remixing” work into new, unique experiences.“Friedman also points back to another recent post where he discusses the nature of content creation, based on a blog post by Rene Kita. In it, she points out that remixing and creating through collaboration and building on the works of others has always been the norm. It’s what we do naturally. It’s only in the last century or so, when we reached a means of recording, manufacturing and selling music — which was limited to just those with the machinery and capital to do it, that copyright was suddenly brought out to ‘protect’ such things.” (via slashdot)

Jay Rosen of NYU and PressThink describes the ethic of the link in blogging and news media. This is an excerpt from a Carnegie Council panel on April 3, 2008.  Read this good read over at MediaFuturist to: A new economy of Links & APIs, and the Interdependent Content Ecoysystem

Checke out this great blog post over at Mediafuturist.com about Music 2.0. Read more…

• 105,575 albums released in ‘08
• Less than 1% of all releases or just 950 albums sold more than 25,000 copies
• Those 950 accounted for 82% of all new releases sold
• New release album sales fell 18% to 149 million
• That’s half the new release sales generated in ‘01
• 50,000 digital only albums accounted for 1.8% of all new release album sales