NEW Music Sites (digital music services)
Hype Machine – 1m Users. Plays on iPhone. Andorid, Windows.
Soundcloud – 8m Users. The Flickr of Audio. Sound design.
Soundhound - Mobile phone platform plus share features.
Mobile Roadie - Apps for Artists
Mixcloud - Radio
.MXP4 - linked to Facebook. FB has 800 Users
Spotify (2m Users) and Pandora (60m Users) - Music streaming sites. Many of the new music sites work on a sharing basis.
The Ease of Free Access
Authors are worried where the future of book sales is heading in this age of free access. I heard an author on the radio the other day saying back in the past writers (and artists and musicians also) were given time and allowed to fail in Public but this is not the case now. Being able to sustain popularity after a breakthrough isn’t so easy.
In the Book World festivals matter as book experts study the world book market and carefully evaluate the best writers out there. The music business by comparison with the book world is 'over-diversified' with the ease of access and time… it takes much longer to read a book after all!
What does a new band need to do? Oddly with all this internet activity and more music available than ever before, it is harder than ever to get heard! When MTV started we had ONE excellent music channel, now we have many channels that are diluted. The hard part today is finding the ‘quality’ amongst it all. That is why independent Radio, Websites, DJs, Podcasts, Blogs etc. matter a great deal.
The ‘market-driven’ approach of today's music business takes a broad ‘democratic’ look at ‘polls’ which asks the media which artists they are already supporting and inevitably some of the more innovative music gets sidelined. Marketing polls matter for the likes of Live Nation, labels and the main music festivals.
However to quote Tony Wadsworth former head of EMI Records UK.
‘I’d prefer to listen to the opinion of one trusted blog, magazine or DJ that I’m confident has a history of turning me on to good new artists, rather than the democratic view of the entire business.’ . In music some festivals matter – while some music festivals are mostly Label controlled.
