music promotion

The New York Times’ Freakonomics blog has an interesting post about Mike Skinner of The Streets, and how he’s giving away music on social networking site Twitter:

He’s giving away new songs using Twitter because, he writes, “all this trying to sell you music … wastes valuable time.”

A new study out of Norway suggests Mike’s business model may be a good one, for it shows that people who download music for free (legally or not) are 10 times more likely to pay for music than people who don’t. This seems to make digital bootleggers the music industry’s biggest customers. All the more reason for labels to stop suing them?

Freakonomics seems to be blurring causation and correllation.

Those people that download music from the Internet are 10 times more likely to buy music, not because they’ve downloaded music from the Internet, but because they’re already hardcore music freaks.

Freakonomics also seems to want to draw conclusions from musicians that are outliers.

Like Trent Reznor, Skinner is an established artist with a large fanbase, so what works for him may not work for new artists, indie or mainstream.

Nobody knows yet what the new model will be for music exposure and distribution. It’s going to be happening over the Internet, though.

What do you think? Is it a waste of time, in this day and age, to try and sell music?

Techdirt’s Michael Masnick discusses why Nine Inch Nails is the future of the music business:

Since completing his earlier major record label contract, musician Trent Reznor has been experimenting with a variety of new and unique business models for Nine Inch Nails to reach and connect with fans.

This case study explores Reznor’s experiments, examining what has worked and what has not – and why.

If you can get beyond the cheesy consultant-style acronyms, there’s a good overview here of how NIN is using new media.

Solipsistic Nation, a podcast that covers all genres of electronic music, sent word about an upcoming show focusing on electronic musicians on Twitter.

Here are the details:

If you’d like to participate in the Twitter mix here’s what I’m looking for:

1. Your best track. The duration or the genre of electronic music is not important. I’m looking for quality stuff.
2. Keeping in the spirit of Twitter, I’d like you to record a 140 character intro for the song. It can be why you chose the song to be featured on the Twitter mix or what inspired the song or how you recorded, etc. Anything to give the listener a connection to your song.
3. I’d also like you to include your website where people can find you on the web and on Twitter. This bit of information is not limited to 140 characters. Both your intro and your personal info can be sent to me as an MP3 at solipsisticnation@gmail.com or you can record it on my voice mail at 1-619-717-6322.
4. Please keep your intro and personal infor brief one to two minutes.

Here’s Solipsistic Nation’s page on Twitter.

If you’re already using Twitter, this is a great opportunity to get your music heard. If you’re not using Twitter, this might be a good opportunity to give the free service a try and see what it’s about.

And, while you’re there, follow my account, podcasting_news, where I post updates about electronic music, new media and other interesting tidbits.

Need a reminder that the Internet has changed the economics of music?

Nine Inch Nails‘ Creative Commons licensed Ghosts I-IV, which was released as a free download, is ranked the best selling MP3 album of 2008 on Amazon’s MP3 store.

Despite the fact that you could download Ghosts legally from file-sharing networks, and despite the fact that you could copy the album and share it with your friends, people, in droves, purchased the release at Amazon. 

I’ll be very surprised if more artists don’t try to reproduce NIN’s success in 2009. 

What do you think this means for artists that don’t have the high profile of Trent Reznor and NIN?

via CC

Last week, I mentioned that I’m checking out the new music sharing site SoundCloud.

I asked readers to share some tracks via the service. The tracks been coming in ever since, from Synthtopia readers around the world.

One of the options that you can set within SoundCloud is whether or not you want your music to be downloadable. Many of these readers set their tracks to be downloadable. If they did, there will be a download link in the upper right-hand corner of the player.

So, check out some great music from Synthtopia readers from around the world. I’ve included links to each musicians’ SoundCloud page – check out the rest of their music and give them some feedback, too!

From Canada, Craig Pearson, aka Monospark, shared Agoba Can’t Dance. Pearson describes it as a “Quick and whimsical track I created with the synth lead meant to sound as if it was talking.” Read more…