MUSIC INDUSTRY stats summary CDs behind streaming

UPDATE: 

http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/mastodon-guitarist-says-bands-cant-survive-current-economic-climate/

Guardian: UK record labels' revenue grows at fastest rate since 1995.


The disruption from digitisation is now a long established phenomenon in the music industry - the outdated chart below fails to distinguish the collapse of the digital download market, and its near-complete replacement by streaming.



You can see the enormous impact of digital disruption here:




Here's a calculator.
I tried the Astrid S example of the 47m streams of Such a Boy:




In this post I blogged on multi examples, including One Direction, a big mainstream pop band's estimated $50m from a hit album ($36m sales, $14m from streams) ... just a sixth of their $300m touring income over the same time period (2015), not counting merch! Revenue directly from music sales/streams is falling overall, though labels are finding new ways to keep their overall revenues up.


Here you can see the staggering difference in how many sales/streams it takes for an artist to earn $1,260, ie the US legal minimum (employers cannot pay any lower!) monthly wage, which of course they want more than!!! You need 1m Spotify streams, or 4m YouTube streams to earn this!!!









...

DOWNLOADS DEAD? iTunes ceases from 2019

I've blogged on this before, predicting the digital download would all but disappear in as little as 2-3 years ... and here we go.

The market-dominating iTunes will cease to offer downloads to 'own' (the legal status is controversial, but ownership is clearly restricted compared to physical media) from 2019, as streaming surfs to the top of Apple's, and the wider music industry's, strategy.

The dominant mode of distribution not so long ago is rapidly disappearing, though I'm sure some smaller sites will continue to offer DL options. How many major artists will bother offering this? Could still be quite a few - many digipak and vinyl sets come with DL codes for MP3 or even FLAC files.

https://www.baeblemusic.com/musicblog/4-13-2018/itunes-announces-all-music-downloads-will-be-shut-down-and-its-not-a-black-mirror-episode.html

DIGITISATION INDUSTRY Infographic on streams needed for minimum wage

We keep hearing that revenues have collapsed from physical media sales, but what about the explosion in streaming and associated revenues? This article puts some figures on that ... using an infographic - good example of how you might this within your blog (or in Evaluation)!

Hyperlink below the line

Interactive videos - Dylan, Queens of Stone Age etc

There are screenshots/links below to several egs of interactive vids: QoTSA, Death Grips, Bob Dylan etc

Writing in The Guardian's Music Blog, Harriet Gibsone reports on a new phenomenon, one which takes the postmodern/web 2.0 notion I often raise, the blurring (at least) of the producer/audience divide, on to a new level:

His video for Subterranean Homesick Blues may have unwittingly pre-empted the lyric video by 50 years, but Bob Dylan's telly-hopping interactive video looks like it could be another first of a kind.
With Like a Rolling Stone as its soundbed, the player allows its audience to flick through a range of fake television channels, each of which features different characters lip-synching the words to the 1965 classic. "I'm using the medium of television to look back right at us," director Vania Heymann told Mashable.
While Dylan's new video feels like an inventive way to breathe new life into an old tune, other artists are using the format to make a quick online buzz: in the past week alone we've seen interactive videos from Queens of the Stone Age, who are at the end of their album campaign, and Bombay Bicycle Club, who happen to be at the very start.

Here's a screenshot from the Dylan site, where I've 'switched channels' to a shopping channel:

iPad apps replacing albums? Snoop, Bjork, Gaga...

Rather different from the usual album review! (on Biophilia)

IN BRIEF:
With major artists Bjork, Jay-Z, Lady Gaga and Snoop Lion amongst those releasing iPad apps, does this mark the end of the album - or, at the time of writing at least, are these apps simply another promo tool seeking to flog merchandise ($100 pseudo spliff anyone? comparable to freemium games?) as well as tracks?

Ideas of this nature are far from new - I remember picking up several CD-Rom albums ('multimedia-a 2007 article posed the question: '“Interactive” Album Art: The CD-ROMs Of The Digital-Music Age?'
enhanced') back in the 90s ... and pretty much never bothering with the added content. Indeed,

WMG tried adding interactive booklets to about 75 albums sold on iTunes this spring, providing extra photos, lyrics and links to multimedia content much like extras on a DVD. But the booklets require Flash technology, which Apple later disabled in Quicktime because of a security flaw for which it has yet to release a patch.

So, are we moving beyond the concept of a traditional album, with its dozen or so tracks sequenced and packaged with cover art? Actually, hasn't that already become passe with most iTunes (etc) users picking up specific tracks not albums, and Spotify users creating track-based not album-based playlists?

XBox Music to rival iTunes?

News of a new, potentially powerful rival to the all-conquering iTunes; read article below.

Xbox Music: Microsoft launches challenger to Apple's iTunes

Cloud-based offering will allow users to synchronise across multiple devices including PCs, tablets and smartphones

• Keith Stuart
• guardian.co.uk, Monday 15 October 2012 10.56 BST

Xbox Music will be available across several different platforms

Zune failed to take on the might of the iTunes music service, but now Microsoft is back for another bite at the cherry or, more accurately, the Apple. The software company has announced Xbox Music, an all-in-one digital music service that will make 30m tracks available to users via Xbox 360, as well as PCs, tablets and smartphones running Windows 8 or Windows RT.
The new platform is split into three strands. A free streaming service will provide ad-supported access to the library, but this will be limited to a certain number of hours after six months. Alternatively, a premium, unlimited, ad-free streaming option is available for £8.99 a month. Customers will also be able to purchase and download any track from the catalogue.
Launching on Xbox 360 on Tuesday and other platforms later in the month, the cloud-based service will allow users to synchronise their music across multiple devices.

Adding audio to your blog

I'm reposting this from the AS coursework blog
Basically, you need to create an MP3 file, upload this to a site which will give you an embed code- I suggest www.divshare.com - and then copy/paste in the embed code.

The two screenshots show you how this works; as with Scribd the upload is very simple; you now click on more options and  you'll see the box in the 2nd screen shot appear - now just copy the embed code.

I'll test this out with a random music track...[14th Feb: changed this; must have mistyped the email adrs on the account sign up]






As you may well be using a video camera to record your audio, an alternative to extracting the audio track and putting it through GarageBand/iTunes is to add some relevant stills to the imported track within Final Cut (preferrably - try to start using this!), upload it to YouTube and use the embed code it generates. You're also then using additional new media for your project.

How to convert your audio file to mp3

You can import your file into iTunes where you can convert it ... but you have to change some settings to do this.
Open iTunes
Click 'iTunes' on the top menu
Click 'Preferences' from the drop-down list
Look under the General tab for 'import settings'
By default, iTunes will convert files to the aac format ... no good ...
So change this to mp3 from the drop-down menu

Quicker still, import an audio file into iTunes, click ADVANCED and select CONVERT TO MP3

UPDATE 18TH JAN 2011: Blogger provides a guide to audio/podcasting, including a set of links to several audio hosting/upload sites: http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=80259

PROBLEMS WITH GETTING AN EMBED CODE - OR GETTING THE EMBED CODE TO WORK?

If you're struggling to generate an embed code its very likely because the file you've uploaded isn't an MP3! ALWAYS EXPORT AND USE MP3 FILES FOR PODCASTS!
Also, if you copy a post from a group colleague you may find that the embedded audio in their post doesn't appear in yours - you simply need to copy/paste in the actual embed code again - to repost this post across 3 blogs, I had to go into the EDIT HTML tab, find that code and copy it.

Rock dinosaur finally go digital

With The Beatles marking their belated permission to market their back catalogue digitally with a publicity blitz taking in The X Factor and a series of mini-vids released on YouTube (featuring clips of tracks only), the ultimate rock dinosaurs, Pink Floyd have now followed suit ... not long after winning a court case to prevent their label, EMI, allowing online consumers to cherry-pick individual tracks. They're now generously going to allow the great unwashed to download individual tracks, instead of being forced to buy entire albums. A few more 10s of £millions for the pension pots then
See http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jan/04/pink-floyd-emi-single-digital-downloads

Vids for older tracks: Beatles

The Beatles have provided the perfect example of how record companies are looking to wring sales out of their back catalogue (cf. the long tail theory). They timed the week the X Factor had a Beatles theme to coincide with their finally allowing iTunes to release their back catalogue - but only at a higher price than anyone else. They've released a series of teaser vids for many of these, one eg below:



See also http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/mojo/14873/beatles-not-for-sale/