Apple | Solveig Whittle

Apple Music Connect: DTF Savior or MySpace?

June 18, 2015 3 Comments

A lot has been written about the recently announced Apple Music as a streaming music service for consumers, but one thing I have been curious about as an indie musician is the new Connect service. How does it work? What impact will it have on me and you as indie and DIY artists? Should we make the effort to “claim” our Connect artist profile pages? Is Apple going to save the music industry or has it replaced Google as the new 500 lb gorilla villain?

A Powerful New Direct-To-Fan Platform

Benji Rogers of PledgeMusic recently wrote:

“Previously one of the biggest impediments to artists letting their fans know about external offers was the fact that iTunes and services like it owned all of the fan data. Therefore, they owned that connection. Using Apple Music’s Connect feature, artists can let their fans know in real-time what they are working on, link out to their pre-order pages and gather their fan data into a destination that they actually use and control. Artists can post ticket links, bundles and exclusive content to those who want to see it and, consequently, control the conversation.”

Rogers concludes his post with the prediction that “The platform that becomes the thinnest skin between the artist and fan and fosters a meaningful two-way communication between them, becomes a bright part of the artist’s and industry’s future, no matter what.”

So is Connect the best thing to come along for DIY artists, or is it just another Ping, or worse – MySpace? What do we know and what should we make of it?

Marketing, Music, Thoughts

Walking The Dog Episode 10: @Mark_Mulligan on #Streaming and Albums Vs. Singles

May 30, 2014 No Comments

Walking The Dog Episode 10 Solveig Whittle

In this 18 minute podcast, I cover two current issues:

The $2.6 billion acquisition of Beats by Apple, and why indie musicians should care.
A discussion last night on the popular indie music and music marketing Twitter chat, #ggchat (archives available here), about whether artists should release singles or albums (EPs, LPs, etc.)

I start the podcast with the recent Hypebot post Mark Mulligan: Apple’s Beats Acquisition Driven By Streaming Music’s Mutual Fear Factor. Mark is a respected music industry analyst and consultant, and former Pinnacle and Forrester analyst who publishes on his own SEO-friendly-titled blog as well, Music Industry Blog.

As indie artists, we probably don’t care much who wins the streaming music wars – Pandora, Spotify, Apple, YouTube (Google), or Amazon. We should care, however, that the flow of revenue to artists from streaming music consumers becomes more transparent and equitable.

[Tweet “”If streaming music becomes less crowded, at least we’ll know who to shoot at.””]

Apple revolutionized music consumption and propelled the consumption of digital music into the 20th century with iTunes. Perhaps their acquisition of Beats will help drag the music industry into the 21st century and make payments more transparent. A humble indie artist can only hope!

The majority of the podcast is a discussion of the issue of whether indie artists should release singles or a bundle of songs (an EP, LP, or album.) I am in the process of releasing what I call an EP later this summer, so this issue is personally relevant to me as an artist.

I draw some of my argument from an excellent (if a bit dated) article on Music Think Tank by Frank Woodworth, entitled Unbundling the Album: A Business Case for Releasing Single Songs. I believe the discussion should really be about how indie artist can best market and promote songs, not really how we release them.

Please feel free to leave comments and opinions, experience and arguments below! I love to hear from you.

Marketing, Music

iTunes Past and Future: Hypebot’s Spitz and Bylin [Podcast]

May 8, 2013 No Comments

Alas, a decade is practically an eternity online, and as such, the download-to-own concept that iTunes revolutionized is already showing signs of age. The growth of subscription-based streaming services like Spotify and Pandora, and the current cultural dominance of YouTube, with its more than three billion videos viewed daily, hint that that music consumers are now largely content to listen, rather than own. – Time Entertainment, April 28, 2013

In this two-part podcast, Jason Spitz and Kyle Bylin of Hypebot’s Upward Spiral Podcast and I discuss some of the customer needs and behaviors that drove iTunes adoption: the unbundling of the single from the CD purchase, as well as the product characteristics (seamless integration with the iPhone, ease of use, standardized pricing). It’s interesting to hear the generational differences in how we adopted (or didn’t!) iTunes to build our personal music libraries, and to note that iTunes clearly was a substitute product for pirated music, even if an imperfect one.

In the second half of our discussion, we cover the transition of customers from download to streaming and debate where the future may lie for Apple’s iTunes and the consumption of music. We discuss iTunes competitors, and what factors might determine whether Apple will continue to dominate music distribution, such as the ubiquity and seamlessness of wifi, and the deep pockets of a platform player like Google, Amazon or Apple, as compared to a software-only offering such as Spotify or Pandora.

Kyle Bylin is the founder and editor of sidewinder.fm, a music and tech think tank, and also conducts research and develop music product concepts for Live Nation Labs. Jason Spitz is an ecommerce expert helping bands, comedians, and other artists build direct-to-fan businesses. In addition to being super-knowledgeable about the music industry, Jason and Kyle are expert conversationalists, and they always pick topics that are timely and interesting.

I sure had fun talking to these guys. Please let me know what you think of our discussion in the comments below!

Music

Streaming Music: A 5 Horse Race?

November 12, 2012 2 Comments

***UPDATE: Google To Launch Music-Streaming Service (Market Watch, May 14, 2013). This could be a game-changer, as Google is a major infrastructure challenger to Apple. Also missing from my analysis below is Amazon, who could also become a major player, and does have a cloud-based music storage system today.

On the eve of the Future of Music Coalition’s Summit, where music licensing is prominent on the agenda, it appears that the horses in the streaming music race are finally lining up. Now, I could be totally off base on this, I’m just an indie musician with a software background and not a lot of insight into the behind-the-scenes happenings, but I think it’s shaping up to be an interesting race. I believe there are some silent bettors, the major music labels and Google, and it’s not really clear (yet) whom exactly is betting on whom. These players are listed in no particular order:

First, we have the apparent favorite, Spotify (16 million active users, 4 million paying, subscriber-revenue-driven). They’re about to close another $100 million round of investments led by Goldman Sachs, who knows a good investment when they see one, right? Why is Spotify such a good investment when they are bleeding green? Because it reportedly has licensing agreements with the major labels that guarantee it will make a 25% margin, while handing over 75% of its revenue to the labels. Some view this as a millstone around Spotify’s neck, but if Spotify can hold on long enough to dominate the market and achieve some kind of workable cost model, they become a utility: an entity with a guaranteed margin and guaranteed income.