Indie Music Tech

MOG Raises $2.8 Million

In case you haven't heard, MOG, a music sharing and discovery site announced they've received a $2.8 million investment from the Universal Music Group and the Angels’ Forum. According to CrunchBase, MOG has raised at least $6 million since their founding in June of 2005 by David Hyman.

This round of funding for MOG pushes music technology investments since the beginning of the year to over $60 million. That's impressive. Who's next? If you know of more, or one in the works, just send me an email and I'll add it to the list.
----------------------------------------------------------
I was listening to Honestly when I wrote this post

San Francisco Music Technology Summit

Last week I wrote about the sizable investments (over $58 million) in music technology companies since the beginning of the year, and it seems this activity is spawning conferences like the SanFran MusicTech Summit. Interested? Here's a brief FAQ I put together to help encourage you to attend:

What's the purpose of the summit? The purpose of the summit is to "bring together the best and brightest developers in the Music/Technology Space, along with the musicians, entrepreneurial business people, and organizations.... to discuss the evolving music/business/technology ecosystem in a proactive, conducive to deal making environment." Sounds brilliant! I'm seriously considering attending this event.

Who will be speaking and/or presenting? Here's a brief sample, or you can view the entire list here. As you can see, it's an impressive group.

• Ann Chaitovitz - Executive Director, Future of Music Coalition
• Richard Conlon - VP New Media & Strategic Development, BMI
• Tim Westergren - Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Pandora
• Ty Roberts - Co-Founder and CTO, Gracenote
• Derek Sivers - Founder, CD Baby
• Lars Murray - Senior Director Digital Media and Marketing, SONY BMG
• Paul Anthony - Founder and CEO, RumbleFish

How much does it cost? It depends. For students/musicians it's $99.00, developers $199.00 and $299.99 for general admission. Wow, that's inexpensive! You can purchase your tickets here.

Also, here's an interesting video clip discussion on the future of radio from the inaugural music tech summit held just a couple of months ago:

This summit sounds like a great way for indie artists to learn about current and developing technologies they can use to more effectively manage their careers. It also sounds like a good networking event for folks building music tech companies like myself, but I can't discuss any details until we launch, so that will probably prevent me from attending.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
I was listening to The Grateful Dead as I wrote this post.

Music Technology Turns up Investment Volume: a few stats and trends

Is it me, or is music technology off to a great year! Since January (just over 100 days ago), VCs have invested over $58 million into music tech companies, and that doesn't even include deals where the terms weren't disclosed, like INGrooves. Moreover, most of these investments were aimed at companies marketing their services to the indie music industry, so that's great news for musicians and bands looking for tools to build and manage their careers. Here's a couple of stats and a quick summary of some of this activity since the beginning of 2008 (If you know of more, just drop me an email and I'll add it to the list):

updated April 29, 2008

• MOG secures $2.8 million (April 29)
• Imeem secures additional funding (April 15)
• Sellaband scores $5 million (April 8)
• MTraks raises $500K (April 7)
• Imeem acquires Snocap (April 7)
• MySpace announces joint venture with major labels (April 2)
• Universal Music Group invests in INGrooves (April 1)
• OurStage secures $13 million (April 1)
• Universal and Interscope invest $25 million in Buzznet (March 29)
• iLike users triple to 22 million (February 21)
• Imeem acquires Anywhere.FM (January 28)
• 7digital raises $8.5 million (January 28)
• The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry announces that global digital sales for 2007 were up 40 percent from the previous year to $2.9 billion (January 24)
• We7 secures an additional $6 million (January 21)
• Motorola acquires Soundbuzz (January 7)
• Also, the term "Music" has been mentioned in about 20,000 blog posts almost every day since January 1 (see below):

It looks like the music industry's tail is becoming a powerful whip! Btw, I review these kinds of music related companies here, so if you're involved with one and would like me to write about it, just send me an email.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was listening to the : Red Hot Chili Peppers as I wrote this post.

Georgia Music Hall of Fame Interview

Last week, I had the opportunity to meet with Lisa Love, Executive Director of the Georgia Music Hall of Fame and editor of Georgia Music Magazine. Her rich understanding of the Georgia music industry is impressive! Not to mention, Lisa has an uncanny ability to recall obscure artists and their relationship to Georgia. Unfortunately, my digital recorder ran out of memory during our conversation, but I was able to capture some of her great insight in this podcast. If you are an indie musician/band based in Georgia, be sure in listen to the middle part of this interview as it pertains to you. These are a couple of the highlights:

• The Georgia music Industry is over $1billion and growing
• This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Georgia Music Hall of Fame Awards
• The museum receives about 50K visitors per year

While our conversation did not focus much on the museum itself, it's spectacular, and a must see! So the next time you're heading down to Savannah or Florida, or just looking for a day trip from Atlanta, take the time to visit - you will not be disappointed!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I was listening to one of Georgia's music legends and 1998 Music Hall of Fame inductee, The Allman Brothers (of course) as I wrote this post.

CD Baby Turns 10! Still #1 for Indie Artists!

I've been buying music on CD Baby since 1999 and selling music there since January of 2000, and today, I received an email from Derek Sivers and the wonderful folks over at CD Baby that they are now 10 years old, having started in March of 1998. Wow, time has flown by - Congrats Derek and everyone at CD Baby! You guys really do rock!!!  Here are a few snippets from Derek's email, or you can read his post.

"CD Baby has paid over $70 million dollars(!!) directly to musicians. And despite the moaning you hear from the majors, independent artists are selling better than ever. Even physical CD sales are up 30% over last year!"

Wow, I remember when Derek broke $1 million paid and we were all celebrating - what a great accomplishment for them... separately, it's interesting to note that physical media is still selling well... how long will that last?

"Helping you develop, create, promote, and sell your music makes me happier than anything.  It's still why I bounce out of bed in the morning. I love it even more than making my own music. (Weird, huh?)  By helping you get your music out to the world, and helping you make a living doing it, I feel that in a way I'm making more music than ever."

This kind of thinking is just another reason why after all these years, CD Baby remains the number one place to sell your music on the net, not to mention their easy-to-use interface.

Keep on keeping on CD Baby! It's companies like yours that are truly changing the way businesses do business.

Oh, and btw, if you're not selling your music on CD Baby yet, you can signup here. And if you're already selling your music on CD Baby, tell your friends to buy it there instead, as you get 91 percent of the total sale, and that's a great deal more than you would get somewhere else.

----------------
listening to Shark Quest when I wrote this post

Rodney Mills Interview: An Audio Podcast on the Art of Mastering

Atlanta based audio engineer and friend, Clay Smith recently interviewed the legendary sound engineer Rodney Mills who has produced, recorded, mixed and mastered over 40 gold and platinum albums for influential artists such as Lynyrd Skynyrd, Pearl Jam, Curtis Mayfield, R.E.M., and many other global acts.  The interview is focused on the art of mastering, but it's a must listen for any artist considering DIY mastering versus outsourcing to a professional mastering engineer. Click here to listen to the entire interview.
----------------
I was listening to Hank Crawford & Jimmy McGriff - Peanuts via FoxyTunes when I wrote this post.

Recovering Recording Costs, a Response by Jimmy Ether

A couple of months ago, I wrote about the challenges musicians face trying to recoup their recording costs. Specifically, I asked how bands and musicians that do not tour frequently recover these expenses when the general public wants their music for free? Jimmy Ether, a musician, engineer and studio owner responded with such thoughtful and detailed comments that I thought his reply would be better suited as its own post, so here it is:

"Hey man, just taking a peak at your blog and thought I'd offer my perspective on all this. First, a little correction on the recording side of thing. There is a big difference in major label and indie rates in the recording business. There are literally dozens of good recording studios in every major city who provide great quality recording at around $500 a day, and a lot of those are having to cut deals to entice the home recordists to step up in quality. $1500/day studios are strictly for major label acts and there isn't a single sane independent artist that would use them.

That said, it would be quite impossible in this day and age to track and record an album in less than a week and you'd need another week to mix (unless you are, like Frank Black, going completely live to 2-track. Most records take about 3 to 4 weeks. But, you're price is pretty close. Most quality indie "studio" records are made in between $4000-$10,000.

I agree that there is no way the industry can function on a entirely free model, but I also firmly believe that most bands and labels are far too short-sighted with their tight-hold on their music. Free music goes both ways. If you can entice (essentially link-bait) press, bloggers, fanatical music lovers, etc. to write, talk, review, distribute and promote your music by giving them music for free, then your gain far outweighs your cost (in fact, in digital, the cost is essentially nil provided that the person otherwise would never have purchased it). There just have to be terms and limits. You have to figure out the value of a digital asset verses the potential value of an action resulting from allowing that asset to be given to someone free. The more direct control you have over that, the better return on investment.

There is also a pricing:convenience ratio. If the price is reasonable enough and the payment/download process is significantly easier than dealing with P2P, a large enough percentage of people will buy the download to make it profitable. $1 a song... is *not* that price.

I'd love to see a number on the budget being spent to subvert P2P file-sharing. If that amount were instead spent on making the experience easier for the consumer and *especially* on artist development (which is basically non-existent these days), then the industry as a whole would be in a much better position.

People who trade on P2P are a label and band's best friend when you get the model right. They are DJs sans-payola. P2P is the new radio. It is practically impossible for an indie-band to get attention without them. Just look at the correlation between the artists who are traded on these networks with the playlists on top college radio, 'zine coverage, indie store sales rankings, paid digital downloads, and blog coverage. Is it that the media is feeding the P2P? Nope, because the records are getting leaked (by, *cough* smart label promoters) to P2P *way* before even press copies get mailed. They'll never admit that in public, but the smart ones know it works.

I'm not saying the Radiohead model works. It doesn't, *unless* you are already a famous artist on the level of Radiohead. They only rose to that level because millions of dollars were spent in the promotion of their previous albums. Promotion costs a lot of money and far eclipses production and manufacturing costs. That's a budget that has to come from somewhere. And where to find that money is the major problem we face with new industry models.

Good blog BTW!"

Great feedback Jimmy, and I agree with you that P2P can certainly be a musician/band's best friend "when you get the model right." This philosophy also seems to be the direction Larry Lessig is suggesting, as seen in this video - as it becomes a middle ground where P2P becomes the distribution vehicle for music, but artists are still compensated.

Again, thanks for your detailed reply, and best wishes in 2008!

Btw readers, the picture in this post is of Jimmy Ether's  studio.

----------------
As I finished this post, I was listening to: Melpo Mene - Hello Benjamin via FoxyTunes

AjiSignal Interview: What can AjiSignal do for your band?

I've been following upstart AjiSignal, a blog network of music journalists for several months now, and I'm really liking what they are doing and the direction they are heading in: to "organize the world of music blogging." Essentially, AjiSignal brings together indie music blog writers from around the world to contribute to city specific music feeds. Recently, I had a chance to ping co-founder and editor Patrick Woodward with a few questions about AjiSignal, and here is what he had to say. His responses are really helpful, and if you're a musician or in a band, read 3 & 4.

Many thanks to Patrick Woodward for taking the time to respond and talk about AjiSignal!

1) Why did you start AjiSignal?
We're coming to it with the goal of trying to organize the world of music blogging.   There are so many music blogs out there but it can be difficult to connect with anything amongst the endless supply of music being served up by writers all over the world.  As a reader, if you find music you like, its nice to be able to associate the music with something.  We decided one way to do this would be to break it down by city.  We think a city is something that can be attached to an artist as part of their defining characteristics.  If a listener thinks in terms of an artist being *from* a specific city it can give the listener something else to relate that artist to.   Hopefully it helps implant that artist into the listener's mind a little bit deeper.  Organizing music by city to show what kind of music a city produces has been really interesting.  A lot of the stylistic differences have been really unexpected.  Its cool to see the differences from city to city with respect to musical styles and sounds.

2) What does the name mean?
Aji means "taste" in Japanese.  AjiSignal is a "Taste Signal"   I spent time in Japan last year-it's a little carry over from my experiences there.

3) So what can AjiSignal do for a musician or band?
AjiSignal highlights artists in cities around the world.   So, for artists in those cities what we do is give them a feature article at AjiSignal.com.  In addition to an article we provide relevant links to other places on the web where the artist has a presence whether its Last.fm, MySpace, Amazon, FoxyTunes or YouTube.  We want to give the reader a robust representation of who the highlighted artist is and what they're all about.  If the artist has any upcoming shows we'll include that information as well.  Since we're city specific, AjiSignal is a great way for a artist to be highlighted amongst peers from their home base city.

4) Can a band submit their own information or article about themselves?
We have writers reporting on the music in their city.  That being said, an artist can certainly submit information about themselves but what we'll do is forward that information to a writer we know in the artist's home base city.  If we don't know of a blogger in the artist's city, we'll find one.

5) How many readers do you all have?
Well, we've been up and running since Aug 15 and we average about 3,800 page views a month right now.

6) What kind of music stories are you looking for? That is, are you only looking for articles about new music?
Thats a good question and one we've had to contend with over the course of the past few months.  We are in fact most interested in new music that is emerging.  On the rare occasion we've highlighted established artists but new music is what we're most interested in. 

7) Are articles edited in any way?
With the exception of necessary tweeks here and there articles are not edited.  We try to make it really clear to contributing writers as to what AjiSignal is all about and what we look for in the articles so that editing isn't a necessity.

8) What are your top 5 cities that you would like to have music journalists in?
If we had five *more* cities on board they would be Stockholm, Tokyo, Austin, Philadelphia, Paris.
          (editorial question: What about Atlanta?)

9) How is AjiSignal different than the Indie Music Project?
What AjiSignal does is really very simple.  We're music in cites.  A music reporter/blogger in a city uses AjiSignal to talk about an artist they are into at that moment and that they feel is an important part of the musical fabric of their city.  Dan and I take that material and add to it any other web presence the artist may have so the reader has a rich representation of the artist being highlighted.  We want the artist, the writer and the city to be super visible for the reader.  The Indie Music Project brings together different types of city specific content.

As you can see, AjiSignal not only helps music enthusiasts discover new music through its network of music bloggers, but it can also help emerging artists attract a larger audience outside of their local sphere of influence. I think AjiSignal will be highly successful in college markets with strong music scenes like Athens, GA or Charlottesville, VA. If you would like to become a contributing music writer for your city/area, please contact AjiSignal.

Advice for Indie Musicians, Part 2:

Below are some brief video interviews from part 2 of my two part series on advice for musicians by musicians. All four videos come from Artists House Music. In the first video, Guy Erez compares working in the music business to running a marathon, because focus, stamina and determination based on a deep desire to be in the music industry are all required just to survive, and even then you may not ever make it.

According to Kirk Whalum only musicians that "are called" with a God given talent should be in the business. And the only way they will make it is if 1) they are serious about their music and 2) they are "doing their thing very, very well."

Here, Brad Wavra, maintains that passion, discipline, patience and persistent are all critical to making it in the music industry. He suggests that if you don't possess those qualities than you should do something else.

Lastly, Alan Ett suggests that you have to believe in yourself and keep an open mind about your role in the industry, as there are so many things one can do in the music business. So, if you don't make it as a musician, maybe you could still work in the industry you love doing doing something different.

I hope you found these videos helpful. At the very least, they should have been inspiring. As always, I welcome your comments. Peace.

The Ethics of Filesharing

Below are two really good videos on the ethics of filesharing. No matter which side of the argument you support (pro-artist/revenue model or pro-consumer/free model), these expert interviews are thought provoking, providing an intelligent discourse without emotional pleas from those that just want to have it their way. As I've stated before, there has to be a middle ground. Both videos come from Artists House Music, which is arguably the best site out there for indie musicians and I highly recommend you subscribe to their feeds.

The first video, an interview with Professor Russell Rains discuses the general ethical issues surrounding filesharing with an emphasis on the legality of filesharing.

The second one is with Lawrence Lessig, also an attorney and a professor, and the founder of Creative Commons. He discusses the pros and cons of filesharing. Note how he believes that filesharing is currently being misused and he does not support that kind of activity, but he also offers insight into a potential middle ground between utilizing P2P filesharing networks as a technology, while at the same time protecting the rights of the artists. I couldn't agree with him more, and I've been saying this for years, as that's what it will take to make it viable for both parties. While it's an older interview, it's still very good and applicable, and should be watched by all consumers and musicians:

IMHO, P2P as a technology will only continue to grow, but it may not remain free. As Professor Lessig alludes, P2P filesharing networks will become an integral part of the Internet, but there will also be built-in technology that will protect the rights of the artists - it's just a matter of time before that part of the equation is developed, and no, I'm not talking about DRM.

As always, I welcome your comments.