New Media Ark (under construction)

While a lot of the old heads stand in the raging rains waiting for it to pass, we have these new media sites which are becoming an ark. So when the water eventually passes over everybodys head, only those that go with whats now and keep building on their ark will survive.

As pointed in earlier posts, everybody knows about the declining record sales and feel as though their drowning in their past plans. From several counts it can be to lack of good music- But with about 40 different genre’s and many variations with the lowest near 200,000 and top over 2 million on myspace artists (myspace) I’m pretty sure that’s not the case. Some call it over satuation which could be the case. It could be the overal quality?

Well we’ll look in hindsite and see where we went wrong when we find the finished Ark of our new media, but I don’t think there will ever be a finished ark. With media and software always changing, so should the ark. Those who stick to the old ways will fail, and those who are late on whats new will just miss the ship. Those who don’t use Twitter, facebook, myspace (which is quickly becoming old), pandora radio, and/or any other startup sites that use a word of mouth approach to marketing.

Right now the best sales pitch is coming friend to friend, not billboard to billboard on the highway. New marketing is free, its just a matter of standing out, which is why the ark will never be finished, just like in DC it’ll always be under construction. Just always be on the lookout for whats new and jump on the ship before its time to build another.

From the mind of

Keveeno Reeverts.

Fame? Money? Success? Pick one

The state of the industry is becoming sort of like a scientific hypothesis. You can’t just make a star overnight like you did with some of the greats from before. It is more of a guessing game with a lot more dedication and hard work from the start. Instead of just telling an artist your going to get the fame/ money/ success that comes with a rock star, you let them choose, and it becomes more like a step program.
Through youtube, fame can be reached easily. Just look at these numbers comparing 2006 to now

(Information from wiki)

August 2006- Youtube hosted about 6.1 million video’s, requiring bout 45 terabytes of storage space .

April 2008- 83.4 million video’s, requiring the amount of the bandwidth of the whole internet in 2000, costing roughly $1 million a day.

Now if you wanted your company to get any fame, getting on the front page of youtube would be great publicity. That would run you about $175,000 a day! So it does cost money to get fame, so the question is…. What is the return? Is it worth your investment? The price of fame has become cheaper over the years so the return has dropped considerable. I’ve known people to get over 1 million people to check their youtube video, and has yet to see a cent. Brings me to the next step after you get fame…. Money.

This breakdown is derived from Coolfer.com

Their breakdown is of TI’s new album, Paper Trail.

Alight so paper trail’s first week sales were 568,000, the single ‘whatever you like’ moved almost 335,000 units. Now comes in the fame aspect with Myspace. With the new Myspace music, you get around a penny a song if you’re with a major label. So if you average 1.5 million views a day, that’s $15,000 a day of extra income.

Combine sales of cd’s, single song downloads, myspace streams, and any other source and you come close to success. You’ll have fame and money, but of course happiness is most important. Success is how you define it personally, and not what anybody else tells you. I say in today’s terms, you have to pick one of the three because they don’t all come together like paper and glue like they use to. You can have a number 1 song with no income, so it is not a success. You may get a whole bunch of money from so many sources with your music from shows, but your still not in the light of fame which many die for. Success is to each their own, so fame and money may not be involved. What I am studying and working on now is a business plan to reach all three for artists I work with. There are many more steps, but like I said before it is all a scientific hypothesis that all comes back to the artists and how hard they are willing to work for. You can’t just be a internet star cause we got millions of them.. and you can’t just be the biggest local act ever if it stays local, but you have to start somewhere. No more overnight artists, it is all about the struggle of making music a career and not a hobby. It is all about picking one of the 3, or going for the long run of all of them.

From the mind of

Keveeno Reeverts.

Give a mouse a cookie* My little bit on myspace music

*May require a service download, a lot of commercials, and the same shit you can hear on the radio free.

Myspace music will launch for the first time in about an hour or less, so it will launch before I finish this. So I will write about what I know of the leaked version. Basically its a new music service where everything is on myspace, and you can hold up to 100 of your favorite songs (good idea) on your page. Share your music, and through what I do not know, they will pay the artist (label/ manager/ distributer/ their mama/ their rent/ and even pay for a new cookie) a sum of less than a penny for a hit. That takes a step back from the millionaire artists to thousandair artists through this method. Now being a thousandair is no joke. That can buy you chipotle and maybe a year or 2 of rent. Information on this is scattered, but this is one of the screen shots I got from Tech crunch

Now the first shows the music player looking different, can’t tell but it seems you can buy the DRM free (meaning you can transfer it anywhere) from amazon.com, and it has a add function that if added, hopefully that can pay the artist per play as well. Imagine a top hit song, added by a million people, played 20 million times… that can get the artist maybe a few thousand dollars. Which is good considering CD’s probably will not get you anything anymore, and after free… most people don’t want to pay anymore (the majority does not pay, and if you do thats good. But by majority I mean people around the teen to older teen (24 and below)). We’ll see how this goes on launch, and I call it Give a mouse a cookie* because after being able to download music for free, why would you want to listen to it with restrictions and all these rules after pretty much being able to do anything. They should start calling them Record Labels* because do they even want records as their main income anymore?

*****************

After midnight, and a few drinks… I do not see a major difference yet? Now myspace wasa site full of music before, and now I am becoming skeptical on how much of a difference maker this will be. Will it be a competitor to iTunes? Or will it fall like every other plan for music that has come out sine iTunes launch that is still not successful compared to P2P sites in sharing music, but is the best one when compared to money to the record labels as well as the artist and mouse’s.

Will launch a part 2 with a  lot more information and a lot less intoxication. Till than…

What has come of a new plan will either thrive or fail but what has come is a new plan. Until we give up, new idea’s are needed, so even though the cookie as an asterik*… and until I find more, this cookie comes with a question mark?. So before we accept this plan as the 3rd coming of jesus, we have it remember that it is something that has been thought of but never put into action. So with Myspace’s power, this has a chance at an impact and it has me excited. I will check it out more tomorrow with coffee and advil, and until more information has been found, this is…

From the mind of

Keveeno Reeverts

*edites

From Hypebot

“At launch new MySpace Music includes:

• The new, ‘MyMusic,’ personal music management toolset
• Free and unlimited ad-supported, full-length audio streaming
• Free and unlimited playlist functionality
• Free discography and content catalogues for SONY BMG, UMG and WMG artists
• DRM-free MP3 music e-commerce downloads powered by Amazon MP3
• Ringtone e-commerce powered by Jamster”

All of this is great… but one thing I will wonder is if this will all be available for easy use from  Indie artists? Or is this the time where myspace goes completely comercial and only allows the larger players to make money, making the major label deal soooo much more apealing?

Keveeno

Why Myspace is still essential, and tools to use it still.

**I found this statistics on http://techradar1.wordpress.com/2008/01/11/facebookmyspace-statistics/

Alright so I have a lot of artists who come to me, and ask if they still need myspace. Some come to me and ask if they still need any physical distribution of their music. Personally, I say why not do both, but just like in college have a major/ minor. Figure out which one you will devote 80% of your time/ money, and 20% to the other. Going in 50/50 has gotten a lot of people fucked (excuse the language, but its just the truth). Going 100% in one direction is no good either for your losing revenue from a potential of millions. A potential because it all depends on talents and consumers tastes of style.

Now comes to myspace. This to me seems a little low, but all the statistics are from January 2008. Myspace has over 110 million users around the globe, with an average of 300,000 new people a day. There has been over 14 billion comments, and more than 8 million artists.

How do you stand out with 8 million artists? Easy. Be better than them. Have the 7 second rule for your starting song, if the song just doesn’t catch my interest within 7 seconds I move on. There has been a few successes, but do not use your myspace as a selling tool for your album. You can promote it, but don’t have people buy off myspace, you should link them to your official page. Myspace is really a promotion site for your artists, not generally a selling tool. Every artist I have seen selling off their myspace using snocap or something else doesn’t know of the better tools like Nimbit.com, reverbnation.com, or even amazon.com. Plus why should I be interested in your music if the artists themselfs do not invest the time/ money to put into their art? I mean doing a little research can be great, and you can find so much great stuff  that can be essential to an artists career, but not too many people do that? Why? They think Talent alone can get you a deal and make you money. Wrong! You need sites like myspace/ facebook and other social networking websites to network, and get your music in the ears of listeners.

I mean its been so oversaturated that everytime I get a bands request now on my personal page, I just decline it unless they have a cool name, or their front page looks legit. On my business page, I accept everybody but rarely check their music unless the friend request is followed up with a comment or a message. That shows your interested in every fan you could receive. Mass friend adds is last year, and now you have to add a personality with the message. Anybody can copy and paste and work to make it personal, but what if you search for… let me say a random artist, Jay-Z. Lets say I still hate Jay from the studio beef between him and Nas, so in my favorite artists section I put, “Nas is the best, fuck Jay-z” (excuse the profanity again, that was taken from somebodies profile as is.). Now you do a search of profiles for Jay-Z fans, and my name pops up, and you say Hey, saw your a fan of Jay, I sound similar check me out. I would probably delete and report spam just because your trying to be personal and your not.

So pretty much, use myspace for a marketing tool to promote for your music/ shows and have links to those pages where to purchase the music/ tickets. Merchandise is in the same boat. If you do all of the above and  you still are not getting a piece of those 14 billion comments from your fans now “friends”, than check your style or just the people you send the request to. You do hardcore rock, and you sent a request to some 87 year old man in Virginia whose favorite artist is Willie Nelson and stated in his profile his distaste for Harcore rock. That really is not gonna work out now is it? I mean, you can send it but don’t expect an accept. Be smart with your myspace, and myspace will pay back. Be dumb with your myspace, and your one of the people who still think it doesn’t matter. its just a tool, use it, don’t live it.

From the mind of

Keveeno