Dan Bull Talks About Trying To Reach The Charts While Giving Away His Music

from the sharing-is-caring dept

Earlier this week, we wrote about Dan Bull's new song and new experiment: could he release a track via The Pirate Bay for free... and still get it onto the music charts? We talked to Dan to see how the process has been so far, and discussed a few other things as well. Dan also mentioned a new carrot that he's added to the promotion. If you buy all 10 versions of his song he'll put your name into his next song (and try to make it rhyme with something). You can see him talking about that program here: Onto our interview:

What are you hoping to accomplish/show with "Sharing is Caring"?

I want to show that it's possible for musicians to achieve whatever they set their mind on without the need for the protection / interference of record labels and their lobbyists. The BPI, who already helped to force the Digital Economy Act through Parliament during the scrutiny-free wash-up week, are now trying to have The Pirate Bay censored in the United Kingdom. This is a website that does not host any copyrighted material but merely connects people who want to share their own files. It's also a site that does more for unsigned musicians like myself than the BPI ever have. Of course, on top of this, it'll be a great personal achievement and hopefully give a boost to my musical career.

What is your opinion on the music charts?

As a young lad I used to listen avidly to the charts every Sunday, and I'd promptly go to the record store and buy the top hits the next day. The charts is a powerful force in influencing young people's musical purchases. It's a shame, because the charts are no mark of musicianship or long-term listenability - merely whatever has managed to sell the biggest quantity of copies that week. It's odd that weekly sales is considered the most important measure by which we judge the success of a piece of music.

What do you think the successful music careers of the future will look like?

The long tail of the music business is going to get longer and fatter. Many more unsigned and niche musicians will find their audiences and be able to support themselves thanks to the way the internet allows them to find a sizeable audience around the globe. The top 1% of musicians might see a dip in sales - perhaps they'll only be millionaires rather than multi-millionaires. Why is this such a problem?

What's the reaction to "Sharing is Caring" been so far?

The feedback has been great. People like the idea behind the campaign, and equally importantly they're enjoying the song. There have been detractors too - someone said "you're not getting a free song into the charts, you're selling it. Every other song in the charts is available for free somewhere online." The difference is that I have published the free download myself and am encouraging people to download it - in hope that it'll lead to more engagement later. Major label artists who do this (or are even allowed to do this) are few and far between.

I'm not sure how well the single will do in the "official" charts - whatever "official" is supposed to mean - but it's currently swamping the Amazon hip-hop charts with half of the top selling MP3s being my songs. One of the b-sides is also at number one in the reggae charts - three places above Bob Marley, despite the release of the new documentary film about him. Are there certain protections you think artists do need? As in, how do you deal with truly bad actors?

I don't see why creators need special legal protections more than anyone else in society. I was asked yesterday "well what if someone uploaded all your music and claimed it was by them - wouldn't you want it taken down?". Well, yes I would want it taken down, but I don't think there needs to be a law enforcing that to happen. It just means that the person was behaving like a dick and I would make that fact known. It's too difficult to draw a line between "fair use" and "unfair use", I believe we'd be better off giving everyone the benefit of the doubt in order to stop mashups and parodies being caught in the crossfire.

Is there still a role for pop stars, or is that going away?

People will always love a pop star to read about and gossip about. They won't go away any time soon, but as I said before - people are listening to a lot more music. You used to buy a new record every couple of weeks perhaps and not listen to much else. With the advent of services like Spotify, a person might spread their listening time over 50 artists rather than 5. This is probably a far bigger reason than piracy as to why the sales of the biggest artists might be reducing. Listening habits have changed and you can't legislate against that.

How important have tools like YouTube (and Megaupload?) been to you in getting your music out?

They've been absolutely vital. YouTube is how most of my listeners discover me. I also became a YouTube partner last year which means I can earn money from streams of videos I've uploaded. It's a great place to discover and collaborate with other artists.

The Megaupload takedown damaged my musical career. Supposedly done in the interests of artists like me, what it actually did was turn all the links to free downloads of music, on blogs, review sites etc, into deadlinks. Why was this allowed to happen? I'd love to see Megaupload's prosecutors explain to me personally how their actions are helping artists such as me.

Thanks to Dan for taking the time to chat.

Filed Under: bpi, dan bull, long tail, music charts, pop star, sharing is caring, the pirate bay
Companies: amazon, megaupload, youtube

Finding The Long Tail In Music

from the it's-out-there dept

In the past we've had an ongoing discussion with some folks on this site concerning whether or not it's now a better time to be a musician than before the internet became central to everything music-related. We've argued that today there are more options and more opportunities for bands than ever, and that's only a good thing. It doesn't mean that every band will be a success or can make a living. That's never going to be true (and has never been true, either). Many will still fail, but there are more tools and opportunities that if you learn to embrace them, you can absolutely do much better than you ever could under the old system -- which required massive backing to become successful. It was the golden lottery ticket story of musical stardom.

Last week, we wrote a post about an interview with Tommy Boy Entertainment boss, Tom Silverman, claiming that just 14 unsigned artists "broke the obscurity line," -- which was defined as sales of 10,000 albums. Amusingly, three days after this post, I met Silverman on an airplane over the Atlantic... and only realized it was him when he started talking to the guy seated next to me about my post not realizing who I was (small freaking world). We had a brief, but quite enjoyable conversation, and while I see his point, I'm still not convinced his conclusion is correct on the issue of breaking artists (his view of business models, however, seems right on). Meanwhile, in the comments to our post, Peter Wells from TuneCore disputed Tom's numbers. Since then, both have expanded on the discussion.

Tom provided more details on the number of totally independent success stories (decreasing the sum from 14 to 12 due to the fact that they had mischategorized 2 of the bands) over at the MusicianCoaching.com site. He then went on to claim that the long tail doesn't seem to be working for the music business:

Clearly the ease of making and distributing music does not benefit "breaking" music. Breaking music requires mass exposure which requires luck or money or both. I can say with great authority that less new music is breaking now in America than any other time in history. Technology has not helped more great music rise to the top, it has inhibited it. I know this is a bold statement but it is true.

Certainly bold words, though they did not address my original criticism with the point -- which is that number of albums sold is a poor measure of "obscurity" (or non-obscurity, as the case may be). As I said then: "You don't have to sell albums to become well known, and just because you're well known, it doesn't mean you sell albums. It's not the best proxy for figuring this stuff out." This week, at Midem, musician Hal Ritson of The Young Punx put it much more succinctly: "Sales are not how you measure success any more. You figure out how to get as many people as possible to hear your music, and then you figure out if you're profitable." Also, I still think it's wrong to only count totally independent artists in this list, because many artists signed to labels (both indie and majors) may use new technology to help breakout (with or without massive support from their labels).

Either way, even beyond that, it looks like Silverman's numbers may be suspect. Peter Wells Jeff Price (from Tunecore) followed up Peter Wells' comment on our site with a super detailed post about the problems with Silverman's numbers -- which rely on Nielsen SoundScan data, which Wells Price notes is massively incomplete. He quickly names multiple artists who sold hundreds of thousands of tracks, which aren't measured by SoundScan, and suggests the real issue isn't that new artists can't break, but that the measuring system doesn't take into account how they break these days.

I have to say that Wells' Price's post is quite convincing. It's incredibly well-detailed and provides multiple examples of clearly successful (and hardly obscure) artists that aren't counted by Silverman's method. I still think that the points raised by Silverman about new business models in his original interview were dead on (and even he made the point that sometimes it made sense to release albums totally for free and use other ways of getting money -- which under his own definition would have made them impossible to "break out."). But it seems like there's an awful lot of evidence that our original assertion is still true: there are plenty of artists that are, in fact, breaking out thanks to new technologies -- and many are able to do so without a label. Whether or not it's "harder" to break out today due to increased competition may be another issue, but I'm not yet convinced this is a real problem.

Filed Under: breaking artists, data, long tail, music, peter wells, sales, soundscan, success, tom silverman
Companies: nielsen, tommy boy entertainment, tunecore

PRS-Backed Study On File Sharing At Pains To Deliver The Wanted Conclusions

from the head-scratching dept

A new study on file sharing has been released by the PRS, the British music licensing body -- you know, the one whose "investigators" are actually sales people -- and its conclusions are a little bizarre, to say the least. In general, the conclusion seems to be that the Long Tail theory doesn't hold, because the most popular music on file-sharing networks is also the most popular music in the charts. Maybe we've been misunderstanding this Long Tail thing all along, but a big part of it is acknowledging the hits. You don't ignore them, rather you also pay attention to the long tail of less popular items. It makes sense that the file-sharing download charts parallel music sales charts, since they're largely tracking the same market; this also reinforces the point that the music industry's claims about the impact of piracy on sales are overblown (after all, if so many people are downloading certain tracks, one wouldn't expect them to sell so well).

The study also says the Long Tail fails because "there is too much choice on file-sharing sites" and it's difficult for people to find new music. Again, this reinforces, rather than undermines the Long Tail, which requires a strong recommendation system to succeed. But the file-sharing services themselves aren't recommendation systems, nor are they intended to be. The recommendation systems are blogs, net radio, word of mouth, and other sources; the file-sharing networks are just the distribution network. It sounds like this study actually does more to assert the validity of the Long Tail than refute it, and it also does very little to help make the case that file-sharing is destroying the music business. But that, of course, wouldn't be the message the PRS wants to deliver -- so it sets up the straw man that if the Long Tail is wrong, then file sharing must be bad. Only problem is it doesn't even do that well.

Filed Under: file sharing, long tail, uk
Companies: prs

Long Tail Not Dead Yet: eMusic Says It's Alive And Well

from the premature-death dept

There have been a series of criticisms to Chris Anderson's concept of "The Long Tail" lately. While most don't hold up under scrutiny, a few have made some good points that don't actually go against the long tail concept, but may adjust some of how people understand it. Of course, people love to jump and declare something completely dead, so there have been a few stories making the rounds claiming that the long tail era has been disproved. Somehow, however, when evidence to the contrary shows up, it doesn't get nearly as much attention. eMusic has published a report noting that, indeed, their own sales show a pretty clear long tail distribution, with at least 75% of all of the music they stocked being sold at least once in 2008. Once again, though, it comes down to the filters. eMusic has some good features (they could be better, honestly) to help people find new and obscure music -- and that helps spread interest to new acts. So, once again, it appears that the long tail is still very much alive, but it does still depend on the filters being used.

Filed Under: long tail, music
Companies: emusic

The Long Tail Is Only As Good As The Recommendation System

from the that's-how-it's-supposed-to-work dept

It's been amusing to watch folks like Andrew Orlowski continue to misinterpret Chris Anderson's slight admission that things in "the long tail" aren't exactly they way he'd predicted them to be. Of course, Orlowski entirely misses the point by assuming incorrectly (as many others have done) that the discussion of the long tail meant the death of "the blockbuster." That's not at all true. The idea of the long tail was that it both enabled more content to be produced by opening up more shelf space and then made it easier to find that content.

But, the fact remains that the finding of that content is entirely dependent on the filtering and recommendation systems, which is highlighted in the recent NY Times piece by Clive Thompson about attempts to improve Netflix's recommendation engine (and, yes, this is the second post I've written on that article, but this is discussing an entirely different issue than the first, so it seemed worthwhile). In the article, Thompson notes:

Cinematch has, in fact, become a video-store roboclerk: its suggestions now drive a surprising 60 percent of Netflix’s rentals. It also often steers a customer’s attention away from big-grossing hits toward smaller, independent movies. Traditional video stores depend on hits; just-out-of-the-theaters blockbusters account for 80 percent of what they rent. At Netflix, by contrast, 70 percent of what it sends out is from the backlist — older movies or small, independent ones. A good recommendation system, in other words, does not merely help people find new stuff. As Netflix has discovered, it also spurs them to consume more stuff.

Basically, that entire paragraph explains the issue. A good recommendation system does two things: it gets people to consumer more -- and it introduces them to stuff they might not have heard about otherwise. But, that second part is not necessarily the same as the first part. Many people assumed, incorrectly, that the greatness of such "long tail filters" was that it would drive people to consumer more down the tail -- but as Netflix is seeing, the good recommendation engine drives people to consume more content in both the head and the tail.

And, when you think about it, that makes an awful lot of sense. Popular stuff often is popular for a reason. While some may disagree, things are often popular because they really do appeal to a lot of people, so it should be no surprise that a good recommendation system would increase consumption in the head: it's accurately noting that an awful lot of people will like that content. But that doesn't exclude promoting some of the content from the tail. Since the recommendation system is driving more consumption overall, it's "lifting all boats" as they say, even if (as is likely) it lifts the boats in the head more than in the tail. In the past, that content in the tail wouldn't get any business at all, but these days it can at least make some money, if not a huge amount.

So, no the concept of the long tail is hardly dead or even in trouble (or, as Orlowski notes, downgraded). Instead, it's just being understood better.

Filed Under: big head, long tail, recommendations

Blockbuster CEO Is Still Confused By The Long Tail

from the have-you-taken-a-look-at-your-competitors? dept

In 2004, Chris Anderson wrote his feature article for Wired Magazine in which he coined the term "the long tail" to describe the business possibilities made possible by digital distribution. Four years and one best-selling book later, the CEO of Blockbuster is still confused by the concept that has been utilized by Netflix to wreak havoc on his business model. Yet, in a recent interview, the head of Blockbuster, Jim Reyes, misses the entire point of the long tail.

In response to a question regarding the small catalog of Movielink, Blockbuster's digital download service, Reyes responded, "When was the last time you watched 10,000 movies, you know? I don't care how many movies are available to me. As my personal taste as a customer, I want to watch the new stuff so whether we have 10,000 movies or 200 movies it doesn't matter if I don't want to see any of the movies that we have." The point of the long tail is not to ignore the hits, but to make available more. While Reyes's quixotic opinion may appease viewers with very limited tastes, when distribution and content creation is exceedingly cheap, it makes no sense to limit content. In his original article on the concept, Anderson noted that one-fifth of Netflix rentals are outside the top 3,000 movies. Clearly, a sizable minority of movie-watchers want to see films outside Movielink's inventory that "is heavily weighted toward newer releases and mainstream staple titles."

Filed Under: downloads, long tail, movies, rentals
Companies: blockbuster, movielink

Selling To The Long Tail Doesn't Mean You Ignore The Hits

from the understanding-business-models dept

There's an interesting new article in the Harvard Business Review that looks to challenge Chris Anderson's well-known theory of "the long tail." In it, a Harvard professor, Anita Elberse, talks about how hits still make a lot of money, and the idea that all the money is now over in the long tail doesn't seem supported by reality. Chris himself makes some very good points in response, noting that some of this depends very much on where you "draw the line" between the hits and the tail. Since there's a sort of "fat middle," small changes in where you draw the line of what counts in which category can have a big impact. Chris makes a compelling argument that Elberse chose to draw the line in the wrong spot. He uses the inventory of various brick-and-mortar stores to determine where the line should be drawn, rather than at the somewhat arbitrary 10% and 1% lines that Elberse used.

However, I'd like to argue from a different angle as to why the HBR piece is missing the point. I don't think that anyone ever said that you completely ignore the hits. Perhaps it's a problem of the name "the long tail" but it starts to make people focus all the way at the end of the tail -- the part that is the least profitable. It's the point where only one copy of something is sold every so often. The companies that suddenly announced they were going to focus on the long tail seemed to think that you focus only on that tip at the end. That was not the point at all. You don't ignore the hits -- you just recognize that with infinite shelf space, you can now supply much more beyond the hits -- and that aggregate amount can add up to a substantial sum that no store with limited shelf-space can match. So, Elberse is completely correct in suggesting that companies don't just focus on the tail end of the tail -- but anyone who did so in the first place was misinterpreting the point of the long tail concept.

Even more to the point is that the concept of the long tail changes the shape of the market. When shelf space was limited, it made it that much more difficult to even get a creative work produced at all. You had to be able to convince someone that your work would make it into the "hits" category, and then get them to finance the creation of the work. And, anything that didn't actually become a hit fell off the chart completely. You basically had a bimodal distribution of content: the hits that sold, and the crap that didn't and was no longer available. But there was a hidden third category that most people didn't think of: the stuff that didn't get created at all because it wouldn't sell enough alone to justify it.

Yet, with the combination of cheaper tools for content creation, combined with cheaper distribution tools and infinite shelf space, that third "hidden" category started to exist in the open, where it was invisible before. And, on top of that, many of the works that fell into the "crap" end of the old model, could migrate into the long tail and make enough sales to be decent. But the point remains that it spread out the distribution, made it possible for much more content to both be created and sold -- and there are plenty of companies capitalizing on that. That doesn't mean that the hits go away or that the long tail concept doesn't make sense. It just means that you don't focus on the long tail by only focusing on the crap end of the long tail -- but on the entire distribution.

Filed Under: anita elberse, blockbusters, chris anderson, hits, long tail

Microsoft Apparently Still Confused About The Long Tail Concept

from the there's-no-shelf-space dept

The concept of "The Long Tail" seems so common to be almost a cliche these days. While it used to be a part of nearly every startup's VC pitch, it's long passed the point where VCs now roll their eyes when they hear about a "long tail" company. However, it appears that plenty of folks are still unfamiliar with the concept. For example, Microsoft seems to be killing off Xbox Live games that aren't performing well, even if they have some audience. Microsoft claims that it's because it's too confusing to find games, but as Chris Kohler points out in the link above, that's a problem of Microsoft's Xbox Live interface -- not the fact that there are too many games. Cutting off the games doesn't make much sense. It doesn't "cost" Microsoft much to keep them on the shelves, and these unwanted games can bring in plenty of revenue in the aggregate. The real problem is that Microsoft needs to fix its UI.

Filed Under: bad interface, long tail, shelf space, video games, xbox, xbox live
Companies: microsoft

Is NBC Built For Failure In The Digital Age?

from the can't-retrofit-a-community-model dept

If you haven't yet read John Hockenberry's fascinating piece in the current issue of Technology Review, you ought to. Hockenberry was a longtime correspondent for Dateline NBC and went from there to the MIT Media Lab. It's hard to think of anyone more qualified to assess the news industry's relationship to new technology. And although the article does eventually devolve into (juicy) carping about his former employer, prior to that point Hockenberry's analysis of the media's failure to meaningfully embrace online technology is incisive.

But Hockenberry also makes this more general point:

Networks are built on the assumption that audience size is what matters most. Content is secondary; it exists to attract passive viewers who will sit still for advertisements. For a while, that assumption served the industry well. But the TV news business has been blind to the revolution that made the viewer blink: the digital organization of communities that are anything but passive. Traditional market-driven media always attempt to treat devices, audiences, and content as bulk commodities, while users instead view all three as ways of creating and maintaining smaller-scale communities. As users acquire the means of producing and distributing content, the authority and profit potential of large traditional networks are directly challenged.

By now everyone is familiar with the "Long Tail" concept, which, among other things, points out that information technology makes niche communities and products viable at a much more specialized scale than was previously possible. It's fairly well accepted that this focus on niche products may decrease the profitability of the mainstream hits found to the left of the long tail (see here for a good example).

But Hockenberry's observation makes obvious a point that's often neglected: that the shift in cultural attention that comes with the long tail may be closer to zero sum than we might imagine. It's not just that the network allows niche communities to proliferate; people also value those precisely-targeted communities more than they value media experiences designed for a general audience.

With this in mind it's a little easier to excuse the lame online efforts cited by Hockenberry. A broadcast network like NBC is fundamentally designed to produce at most a handful of signals, each as broadly appealing as possible. There's just no way to retrofit such a system into something that can compete with the endlessly precise intimacy of online communities. Sure, NBC may have missed some opportunities. But it's hard to believe that any of them would have stopped the inevitable diminution of mass media's importance to the average person.

Filed Under: community, john hockenberry, long tail, mass audiences
Companies: nbc

No, The Blockbuster Movie Isn't Dead

from the it's-got-plenty-of-life dept

Cory Doctorow, who can often write and speak quite convincingly concerning copyright issues, has written a new article for The Guardian in the UK that is unfortunately unconvincing. The discussion surrounds the question that has been asked of me in the past when discussing copyrights and movies: if there were no copyrights, how does the $200 million blockbuster movie get made? Cory's answer is that it doesn't get made... and that's okay. His argument is, effectively, that there's a tradeoff. And, instead of a few $300 million blockbusters (inflation, apparently, has driven up the price), we'll get many more smaller, independent films or amateur creators creating their own works. In other words, the long tail takes over and the "short head" disappears. He has some well known company, by the way. As we've mentioned, George Lucas seems to believe the era of the $200 million blockbuster is over. To Cory (and to many others, I'm sure) the idea that there would be more, cheaper indie films and less Hollywood blockbusters, seems like a worthy tradeoff. I have no opinion on whether one scenario is better than the other or if it's a worthwhile tradeoff. I don't think there's really any tradeoff to deal with at all. In fact, from everything I've seen, the blockbusters can still stick around without freakishly worrying about copyright -- and you'll still get more of the quirky independent films. In other words, everyone wins (and yet, I'm quite sure the big movie industry folks who frequent this site will insist what I'm describing means the death of their films).

First of all, it's important to separate out the $200 million (or $300 million) part from the "blockbuster" part. I have a problem with anyone phrasing the question in terms of the requirements on the cost side. First of all, studies have shown that while the biggest costs for most of those blockbuster movies is the fees paid out to the name-brand stars, those stars don't help a movie do any better. In other words, movie makers are overpaying for stars. That shouldn't be a surprise, actually. When you come from a world where "$200 million" is automatically attached to "blockbuster" there's little reason to think about ways to make a movie more efficiently. You just think about driving up the budget so that the movie is considered a blockbuster because of how much is spent. This doesn't mean, by the way, that you don't hire stars. You just figure out ways to pay them more reasonable rates. At the same time, in just about every other part of the creativity world, the cost of making content is decreasing. Better tools and technologies are making it much cheaper to make much higher quality movies every day. So really what we have is a situation where adding a little competition to the market doesn't mean that the blockbuster, super high quality flicks go away -- but that perhaps they get a little more dollar conscious on the spend side, allowing them to make movies more intelligently to save money. We had hoped that with Wall Street's new found interest in investing in films, that perhaps they would force some of this to happen.

At the same time, there are still plenty of ways for big, expensive movies to make a ton of money -- even if the focus isn't on copyright. It just requires a shift in thinking. We've been saying it for years, for example, but the movie industry has never really relied on the sale of its content to make money before. It thinks it has, but it's always been selling a combined service with the theaters. It's been selling the "experience" of going out to the theater and having a good time with dates, friends or family and getting to watch a new flick on a big screen in comfy seats and a great sound system. It's only more recently, with much of the industry being confused about what they're actually selling, that the movie going experience has declined -- which is a hurting the industry much more than a few downloads ever will. So even if you were in a world without any copyright, there would still be demand for people to go out to watch movies in the theaters -- and the movie industry can continue to make an awful lot of money that way. The restaurant business isn't suffering from the fact that people can cook much cheaper food at home. People like to go out and have a good time -- and they're willing to pay for it.

Furthermore, there are a ton of interesting business models that you can start to build on top of this. These include doing things like selling a DVD with a bunch of extras of the movie people just saw as they leave the theater. That's the point at which they're going to be most interested (assuming they liked the movie) and if the DVD comes with a ton of extras in a useful format and a convenient interface, that's going to be worth buying -- even if they could download the content for free online. Or you could start to include other incentives. Since sequels are so popular these days, why not offer a discount on admission to folks who have the movie stub from the first movie in the series? Or offering a contest where a ticketstub or DVD purchase receipt gets you entered into a raffle to be an extra on another film? These are small examples, but it doesn't take long to come up with a hundred more examples, where the focus is on providing additional value that people will pay for -- even if the content itself is available for free. When you start to look at those models, and start to put a few of them together, you begin to realize that there are more ways than ever to make a lot of money in the movie business, even if copyrights are not an issue at all.

Finally, long tail markets don't exist in a vacuum. They follow the power law curve, meaning that there will remain blockbusters -- it's just that the bottom part of the market does open up for many more producers to enter with more niche-focused content. However, demand will still remain for blockbusters, and that's great. With the demand there, smart business people will start to adopt the business models that allow those people to be satisfied with the next big blockbuster flick. And, don't underestimate other sources of funding films as well. BMW realized that it made sense to make short films a few years back, without worrying too much about monetizing those films directly. Don't think they (or others) couldn't do the same for much larger films as well. So, yes, blockbusters will remain -- though the business models to support them may start to look a little different.

Filed Under: blockbusters, long tail, movies