One of the areas of music business I’ve always been interested in is retail. The romantic notion of owning a record store and being surrounded by so much great music all day is really appealing. As, of course, is the idea that your opinions about music will be sought and respected.
The online environment has given me an opportunity to experiment with that - but without all of the headache of stocking, shelving, cataloguing, orders, returns and the general day to day business of running a physical shop.
Using ithinkmusic.com - a rather clever, artist-friendly and independent label compatible music retail platform based in London - I have built Liquid Crunch - an online music store with a bit of a difference.
I did a Strategies For Success seminar in Plymouth today for the Musicians Union, and I did it along the the theme of the ‘Questions I Keep Getting Asked About Music Online’. I managed to get some of it recorded, which has allowed me to experiment with the fact that Flickr now has video.
Since Flickr only (inexplicably) does up to 90 seconds, here’s a very brief snippet from today’s seminar.
How much should an mp3 cost?
There are some other bits of video that are longer, and if you’re interested, I can post them as well. I really like the look of the Flickr video, and I’ve been reasonably happy with Viddler - but can anyone recommend The Best Video Sharing Site in terms of clean presentation, interface, picture quality and usability? Flickr’s the best I’ve seen so far - but the 90 second limit is unhelpful.
Now Oasis and Jamiroquai want to give their music away too. But do they actually understand what’s going on?
It’s amazing how many massive acts are currently without record deals at the moment. Oasis and Jamiroquai are just the tip of the iceberg. But they’ve had a look at what Radiohead are doing, and they want a piece of that.
VI (Virtual Intern) Laurence pointed me towards an article in the Telegraph in which major recording stars have noticed that Radiohead are getting a lot of press and reaching the ranks of most popular music website on the Briternet.
Their solution? Give music away for free.
And, in a sense, they’re absolutely right — but I’m not convinced they’re sure why or how.
I mean, this feels like a bubble, doesn’t it? Sooner or later Elton John, Billy Joel or Def Leppard, Amy Winehouse, Norah Jones or Britney is going to come along with a shiny new album, get a bit of token coverage in the Daily Mail, LA Times and the Sun, get a modest 20,000 downloads and come away with not very much at all.
Something’s going to go ‘pop’ and it’s not that catchy single.
When I talked to Gerd Leonhard from Sonific on this blog recently, I mentioned I’d be featuring another widget-based tool for online music distribution. Introducing Nimbit.
I’ve been looking around at widgets that musicians and their fans can embed into their MySpace page, website, blog or whatever. Sonific was a really good example of something that allowed people to share tracks they liked and link directly to a way of purchasing.
Nimbit’s a little more ambitious, and essentially wants to be the full online merchandise and music fulfillment package. I’m worried that it might look better on paper than it does deployed in the field, but its ambition seems to be its strong suit.
"Music futurist", "Music thought leader", "Music business innovator". Whatever jargon you might want to use to describe Andrew you'll be using the word 'Music' and wanting to know what he has to say about the subject.
It’s amazing how many massive acts are currently without record deals at the moment. Oasis and Jamiroquai are just the tip of the iceberg. But they’ve had a look at what Radiohead are doing, and they want a piece of that.
