SoundCloud Streamlines Music Sharing For Industry Professionals

Transferring large files on the web has always been a hassle, especially when you need to do it frequently. One field especially prone to this problem is the music industry - artists often collaborate with eachother by sending rough versions of tracks, but have to rely on clunky services like YouSendIt or FTP servers. SoundCloud, a German startup that launches on October 10, is looking to streamline this process by allowing an artist to upload a file once and easily distribute it to whomever they’d like. The site is currently in private beta, but you can grab one of 500 invites here.

SoundCloud isn’t meant as a consumer site - rather, it’s a service for industry professionals, including artists, music labels, and producers. From the outset, it’s clear that SoundCloud is very well designed, with an intuitive interface that falls firmly under “Web 2.0″. The site revolves around artist profiles and the tracks they’ve uploaded, which are presented in an embeddable basic music widget (you can see one below). Aside from standard playback, the widget also allows artists to open up their tracks to comments from outside visitors, which can be appended to specified times.

Artists can specify how much control their users will have over their content, setting their music to stream-only, or as available for download. The site also supports listener analytics, so artists can see how many visitors have listened to their tracks. And the site supports a wide variety of audio formats, with no restrictions on file size.

SoundCloud also includes some basic social features, with artist profiles detailing professional contact information, much like a musician’s social network, and a follow system that allows you to receive alerts whenever a friend or colleague uploads a track. There’s also a Dropbox that allows visitors to submit songs to you for review - it’s a digital version of the mailed-in demo tape.

Provided SoundCloud can get a foothold in the music industry (which isn’t an easy thing to do), it seems poised for success. There are many other options for media sharing, but SoundCloud has executed extremely well, with an interface that should make sense to even the most technically-challenged users. Major producers and music labels may be hesitant to embrace it in the near future, but there’s a massive market for indie artists and fledgling musicians that will pounce on the service immediately.

Music Business 101: Chapter 6 - Watch a funny movie here

Webcasters Welcome House Vote On Royalties Negotiation

Internet radio stations can extend their negotiations with labels and artists over performance royalties following a key vote in the House Of Representatives.

The legislation, H.R. 7084, was passed on Saturday night (Sept. 27) and now moves to the Senate.

The legislation authorizes collecting society SoundExchange to negotiate new royalty agreements on behalf of copyright owners and performers for internet radio through Feb. 15, 2009.

The Digital Media Association (DiMA), SoundExchange, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) welcomed the vote.

"Everyone is grateful to the sponsors of the bill and to Chairman Berman for getting this through the House last night," said SoundExchange executive director John Simson in a statement. "This bill favors all webcasters and simulcasters - large and small. It paves the way for SoundExchange to use the coming months to pursue helpful solutions that allow all services to focus on business development. And, although there are no agreements yet, I am hopeful."

The modification to existing legislation was introduced because Congress will be out of session as discussions between both sides continue. Negotiations are set to resume when the bill is enacted.

"This legislation benefits all music webcasters and excludes none," added Michael Riksen, NPR VP of policy and representation in a statement. "Passage will facilitate closure of an agreement to enable all public radio stations to continue their public service through the webcasting of music."

The bill does not affect any underlying copyright law.

Personalized Internet radio service Pandora had said it could shut down as a result of the new licensing fees due SoundExchange, under the recent Copyright Royalty Board licensing system.

MySpace new Music service for UK music industry

News Corporation has just started its new MySpace Music service in the United States this week. Almost all the major record labels and a retail partner (in the form of Amazon’s DRM-free MP3 store) co-operated with News Corporation for this launch. However, it is somewhat essential to know what good it will bring for the consumer and the music industry.

Nicola Slade, who is editor of UK music industry news service Record of the Day, said: “No doubt, it’s a great move for consumers as it will help them listen to far more songs than they could listen before.”

Slade added, “The association with Amazon’s MP3 download store would serve as a key that will be there as a serious competitor for Apple and iTunes.”

“It is, indeed, the very first download store that has the ability to reduce Apple’s MySpace share.”

“The service will make consumer realize that there is another world outside of iTunes and the services like 7digital and other smaller services can pick up more business from them as well.”

Joe Wilson, who is lecturer in Popular Music at the University of Gloucestershire, said: “This move from MySpace to offer music through its network is to promote it as a radio service for free music, but you have to pay to transfer to MP3 players,”

Artist of the Week

"It's much too late to do anything about rock & roll now ..."

Jerry Garcia

MySpace Music Launches with Notable Upgrades

MySpace will flip the switch on its long-anticipated MySpace Music service on Thursday, completely revamping every element of the music section of the social network and bringing several elements of the music industry to the table with the launch.

In order to win favorable licensing terms from the major labels, MySpace created a joint venture to oversee the music initiative, which is partially owned by the four major record labels. While Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, and Warner Music Group were known participants for some time now, EMI Music Group joined the joint venture as a stakeholder at the eleventh hour, on the eve of the service's launch.

And while a slight bit of controversy bubbled around the lack of independent labels or digital aggregators involved in the joint venture, MySpace also unveiled licensing deals with not only the Orchard, but also such independent distribution groups as ADA, Red, Fontana and Caroline.

The new music service, while operated as a separate joint venture from the greater MySpace service, is tightly woven into the fabric of the social networking site. Artists with profiles (as well as licensing deals) on the service may now stream their entire catalog in full from their pages, whereas previously MySpace limited it to six tracks.

Other features at launch include:

-Fans can post up to 10 songs on their profile for others to stream when visiting, and up to 100 songs for their own personal enjoyment via a playlist building function.

-When any MySpace member (artist or fan) adds music to their playlist, their entire friend list is notified via the “Friend Updates” feature, which will contain a link to the song added.

-Wherever a song link appears on the service, there is also an “add” button that allows any member to add that song to their playlists, as well as a “buy” button to purchase and download the song via retail partner Amazon.com. Additionally, members can search for ringtones available via MySpace sister company Jamster (parent company Fox Interactive Media owns both companies).

The MySpace Music homepage has also been revamped, including a more robust “featured artists” section and the addition of a celebrity playlist section.

Noticeably missing at launch are several features promised when MySpace first unveiled its music plans this spring. They include:

-The ability to buy concert tickets and artist merchandise. Ultimately, MySpace hopes to add these sales opportunities to every artist profile in a future update.

- Content: Due to the lateness of the EMI deal, as well as the ongoing negotiations with independent labels and their representatives, music from artists other than UMG, Sony BMG and WMG is not yet available. However, new music will be ingested on a regular basis.

-Music recommendations: While friends linked through MySpace will learn of each other’s music additions and recommendations, there is no function to recommend new music to users based on either listening history via some kind of algorithm or by matching members who don’t know each other but who have displayed similar music tastes.

-A syndication strategy. All the playlists created on member profiles are limited to those profiles only. Users can’t post their playlists to other blogs, websites or in any other way take advantage of widget-based distribution.

However, MySpace representatives stress that it will upgrade the music service with these and other features over the course of the next year.
Aside from the features, the model behind the MySpace Music service is generating the most attention. It is by far the most ambitious attempt to profit from free full-song streaming based on advertising.

Officials at both MySpace as well as the various record labels believe the majority of activity and revenue will come from the free ad-supported full-song streaming throughout the network. As part of the streaming feature, MySpace created a music player that pops up in a separate window, both so users can enjoy music while navigating to other areas of the site and also to display banner ads that monetize the service.

All labels and artists licensing music to the site will receive a share of the service’s ad revenue based on the number of times their music is played. The major labels involved in the joint venture will also share a portion of all underlying revenues.

Neither MySpace nor the labels involved will discuss the exact terms of the venture deal, but insiders have speculated that the labels collectively own 40% of the venture, and in return dropped the standard penny-per-play licensing fee for music streamed online.

Also notable is MySpace’s decision to outsource all a la carte sales to Amazon.com. Ringtone sales are outsourced to Jamster, and expect future ticket and merch sales to be outsourced as well.

Digi-Indie Labels

The Major Labels have been known to be unfair to artists. Many Major Label artist are now speaking up about, Major Label shady accounting practices, non-disclosure clauses and delayed payments.

On the postitive side, Major Labels have a great promotion and distrbution structure. This means that if your project is released, the the chances of it being properly promoted and makes money increases greatly.

Although, many talented artists signed to a Major Label, have had projects put on hold, or, “shelved”. It’s been reported that Alicia Keys was shelved by her first record company because the A&R staff couldn’t hear a market for her material(WTF!??).

Major Labels are not the way to go (IMO).

Many Indie Labels fail within the first three years (like your average business). Although Indie Labels are dedicated to the creative proccess,they often lack the capital or connections to compete with and beat the majors at selling records.

There is a third way - a better way that allows you to control your own works. I call it a Digi-Indie Label. A Digi-Indie Label is an Independent Label that is digital based.

A Digi-Indie Label has it’s headquarters in your inside of your computer. With a Digi-Indie Label, you can record your material, manage the administrative, promotion, marketing, distribution and sales of your material all from your computer.