Case Study: Band Embraces Grooveshark And Catapults Its Career

from the well,-look-at-that dept

One of the things that we've found odd about the decade and a half history of the legacy entertainment industry seeking (often successfully) to shut down a variety of new platforms, is that if you actually looked at the artists who didn't completely freak out at these new services and who recognized what the new services were (better platforms for distribution and promotion, rather than the end of all civilization and culture as we know it), you quickly find that, if done right, the platforms could be used to those artists' advantage. We saw artists use the original Napster to their advantage, only to see it shut down. Ditto for MP3.com, Grokster, Kazaa, Limewire, Megaupload and more. Plenty of artists have discussed how incredibly useful The Pirate Bay has been as a platform for distribution and promotion.

Now, admittedly, many of these companies and services were shut down for some form of copyright infringement or inducement to infringement. So, you can argue that they were illegal. But if we went back even further, we saw the same complaints against many other platforms including the radio, cable TV, the VCR, the DVR, the MP3 player and online video services like YouTube. And yet, every one of those has survived, and they have turned out to be very important parts of the market. In fact, you can look and see how each of those helped expand and grow markets, even as they were decried as being tools of infringement when they first came on the scene.

This is why I'm so fascinated by the artists who are the early adopters -- who jump onto these platforms in the early days and show how they can be used to the artist's own advantage. Because it's through those people that we learn how these platforms, be they tools of infringement or not, can quite possibly help artists much more than hurt them -- if those artists learn to use the tools correctly.

All of that is prelude to this case study, concerning a band called Quiet Company that teamed up to take part in Grooveshark's new Artist Development project, in which Grooveshark would see if it could help "break a band" via the internet. Grooveshark, of course, is a company that is currently being sued by a large chunk of the recording industry for its music player. In talking to various artists about it-- even those who often are more willing to experiment with new platforms -- I've seen many artists really dislike Grooveshark. But, clearly, it has built up a giant, loyal and engaged user-base. And, as always, it seems that, if done right, artists could embrace that to a positive effect, which is appears to be what happened with Quiet Company. First up, if you'd like to hear some of their music, you can click the widget below: I spoke to Quiet Company's manager, who told me that the band was being courted by various record labels, but they quickly realized that they were getting offered deals that weren't the most "artist friendly," and that they had no desire to work with a record label unless they knew that the band was the one with the leverage. So, when Grooveshark approached them, noting that Quiet Company seemed to be doing quite well on Grooveshark, and that they wanted to try to help "break" the band online, the band thought it was a great idea. In terms of what Grooveshark did for the band, it included promoting the band more heavily within Grooveshark and in other places, promoting YouTube videos (more on that below), promoting tours with "tour skins" in locations where the band was heading, highlighting releases, doing promos, contests and the like. They also did some more traditional promotions work, including pushing college radio and festivals, while also finding brand sponsors.

There are a number of interesting tidbits in the case study looking at an entire year or so in which Grooveshark worked to help Quiet Company. One thing that's important to note, of course, is that the band didn't just rely on Grooveshark, but worked to use Grooveshark in combination with other platforms to get attention. Grooveshark seemed to drive steady growth in part by using its own tools to help drive growth elsewhere, such as YouTube. Take a look, for example, at the following timeline: You can see that there's a massive spike coming when YouTube engagement ads ran. Those ads are something that Grooveshark launched last year, to help promote artists, and it looks like that clearly had a pretty big impact. The "ads" ask Grooveshark users to view a portion of a music video to get to use the rest of the site ad free for a period of time, and that massively increased the YouTube views for the band. The timing did also coincide with last year's SXSW Music, where the band played (and got significant press attention -- Time, NPR Music, Billboard -- which certainly helped), but the band says that Grooveshark was instrumental in getting the necessary exposure.

Furthermore, a closer look at Grooveshark promotions, shows that they also impacted things like visits to the website and Facebook likes. But, perhaps more importantly, the end result of this experiment was that the band started making more money with a much broader, international fanbase. The band had a popular following, locally in Texas, where it was from, but had much less support as they got further from home. On Facebook and YouTube, the "top cities" were all in Texas. However, that changed drastically, leading to the ability to tour more widely. After the partnership, rather than just cities in Texas, they had big followings (via Facebook) in Bogota, Sao Paulo and Barcelona, among many other places. The top countries for followers if you looked at YouTube and Facebook included not just the US, but the UK, Canada, Germany, Brazil and Spain. The band is getting ready to perform outside the US for the first time. And, not surprisingly, with a broader fan base, their touring revenue shot up as well. All in all, it's an interesting case study of a band that had a loyal local following, but hadn't "broken." Then it embraced a platform like Grooveshark and to see if it helped or hurt the band. It certainly seems like the band is in a much better position after working with Grooveshark than before. Even if you make the case that their success had nothing to do with Grooveshark, but was due to other factors, it certainly doesn't look like working with Grooveshark harmed the band, as some would imply.

In talking to the band's manager, he repeatedly pointed out that the exposure from Grooveshark made all the difference in the world, and took the band from having a loyal and devoted local following to a band that really had a big following in many places around the globe. He pointed out that the key, in his mind, was that this was a promotional platform, with the focus being on building up a fanbase who loved the music, and to then tour to make money to support that. When asked if there were any "lessons learned" or regrets, the one thing he noted is that they should have been better prepared to go out on tour as soon as things started to break. He felt that they could have done a bit more if they were ready to tour more widely earlier last year.

Something else really interesting came out of the case study and the discussion: after all of this, Quiet Company actually got a private investment from a group of fans to continue what they're doing. That is, rather than signing with a record label, a huge fan actually approached the band and asked them about investing in them, and set up a deal (with a few other fans) that is better than a record deal in that it's very artist friendly. Quiet Company's manager told me that this fan has been a big supporter of the band for a long time -- often buying a bunch of tickets to their shows and just giving them out to a bunch of her friends, and they were pleasantly surprised when that turned into her investing directly in the band.

Separately, he notes that the band believes strongly that this kind of thing was a result of the band really working hard to connect closely with their fans, and that with this greater exposure, it lets them try to do that on a larger scale.

This isn't, of course, to say that every artist should automatically jump on board with Grooveshark. It's just yet another case study in a growing list that shows that where artists carefully and smartly construct a broad strategy that leverages various tools to help promote and distribute their works, combined with connecting with the fans, they can have really compelling success stories. Even as some decry those platforms for claimed copyright infringement, it seems like these platforms can be helpful in doing the most important thing: building a fanbase. And, from there, the band needs to work to connect with that fanbase, and give them ways to support the band. It would be great if, rather than attacking such platforms over and over again, we spent more time like this, looking at ways that artists can use various platforms to their own advantage to succeed.

Filed Under: case studies, connecting with fans, exposure, promotion, quiet company
Companies: grooveshark

Amanda Palmer On The True Nature Of Connecting With Fans: It's About Trust

from the helping-each-other-support-each-other dept

There's been so much talk about Amanda Palmer's TED talk this week, that the folks at TED rushed to get the video edited and up on the site within days, rather than the customary months. It is, not surprisingly, quite inspiring: The crux of the message: people are focused on the wrong question. It's not about "how do we make people pay for music" but "how do we let people pay for music," by making it such that people want to support the artists they love. And the way to do that is by building a real connection with a core group of fans. That is, it's not unlike core concepts we've discussed around here for a long time: Connect with Fans & give them a Reason to Buy, combined with the concept of cultivating your "true" fans.

And, as Amanda notes, one thing that she's learned throughout her life, from when she was a "human statue" working for tips to her massive success today, is that the whole thing begins and ends through the uniquely human connection -- and that this connection is not in one direction, but in many directions. It's the artist giving to fans, the fans giving to artists and, beyond that, the fans giving to other fans and artists giving to other artists. Whether it's crowdfunding or crowdsurfing, it's about building up a real relationship, and at the heart of that relationship is trust.

As Amanda notes at one point,

For most of human history musicians and artists have been a part of the community. Connectors and openers. Not untouchable stars. Celebrity is about a lot of people loving you from a distance. But the internet, and the content that we are freely able to share on it, are taking us back. It's about a few people loving you up close. And about those people being enough.

I'd argue, in some ways, it's even more than that. What the internet has enabled is for artists and creators to reach out to wider and different communities than they could in the past -- meaning that that ability to connect and to be both supportive and supported can come about in unique and different ways. That historical context that Amanda discusses, used to be mostly bound by geography. Artists would connect with people nearby. But now, many more artists are able to connect and build a fan base that is "enough" by finding and bringing together that special and unique community that is right for them and them alone.

It's a message that is unquestionably true and incredibly powerful for those who recognize it, rather than fight it.

Filed Under: amanda palmer, asking, community, connecting with fans, connection, true fans, trust

Kickstarter-Funded Movie Wins Oscar For Best Documentary

from the crowdfunding-coming-of-age dept

Earlier this year, in noting just how many movies were getting funded by Kickstarter, we also mentioned that two films that had been funded via the site had been nominated for Oscars in the past -- and that there were quite a few documentaries that were "shortlisted" to be nominated this year, including Inocente. And now it turns out that, not only was Inocente nominated, it won for best documentary, making it the first Kickstarter-funded film to win an Oscar, though I doubt it will be the last. Hopefully this means we can kill off the line we've heard too many times from some industry folks about how Kickstarter isn't for "real" content creators.

Filed Under: crowdfunding, documentary, inocente, oscar
Companies: kickstarter

It's Fine For The Rich & Famous To Use Kickstarter; Bjork's Project Failed Because It Was Lame

from the moving-on... dept

Nearly two years ago, we had a post pointing out that it was silly for people to complain when the "rich and famous" made use of platforms like Kickstarter. That story was about Tom Hanks' son Colin looking for funds to complete a documentary. As we noted, it made perfect sense to use Kickstarter, since it's also a nice marketing platform and a way to connect with fans. I don't understand why this seems to get people up in arms, but it continues to this day. You may have heard about the high profile failure of Bjork's Kickstarter campaign. She sought £375,000 not for a new album, but to make a port of her last album's app, Biophillia, from iOS to Android and Windows 8. The original Biophilia won some rave reviews for pushing the boundaries of what an album was... but also was widely criticized for being platform specific to iOS. When it came out, Bjork said she hoped that those on other platforms would just "pirate" it, but we never understood why she didn't release it on multiple platforms.

Apparently, the answer was that however the app was designed, it would be insanely expensive to port to other platforms. That seems like much more of a design mistake than anything else. It seems likely that her project failed for a few key reasons, including that it was just about porting an app that came out years ago, rather than anything new. Also, the "rewards" were somewhat unimpressive. And, of course, Bjork fans who were iPhone users had little reason to contribute as well. There's also the big one: unlike some other stars, Bjork really hasn't embraced connecting and communicating with her fans. That's her choice, of course. No one says she needs to. But, it's much harder to raise a ton of crowdfunded money that way.

Still, many are saying that the project failed because she's rich and famous and could have just paid for everything herself. But that seems silly. There are plenty of ways that the rich and famous can make use of crowdfunding and plenty of reasons why it makes sense to do so. The project failed because it was a bad project for crowdfunding, and because Bjork isn't necessarily connected with her fans in a way that makes sense for crowdfunding.

Amanda Palmer, who remains an example of "doing Kickstarter right" has weighed in on this issue, making some really good points about why anyone should be able to use Kickstarter, even the rich and famous. Here are a few snippets, but the whole thing is worth reading:

crowdfunding should, by its very nature, be available to EVERYBODY....

here's what i think: THE MARKET IS EFFICIENT.

if ANYBODY wants to give a go at having the community help them with a project, that’s the ARTISTS prerogative. if it fails, then the interest wasn't there.

it should't matter if it's justin bieber, obama, the new kids of the block reunion project, lance armstrong, oprah, or the friendless 18-year old down the street who's been hiding in his bedroom making EDM music.
ANYBODY CAN ASK. that's democracy.

and since crowdfunding is – by definition – in the hands of the community: THE COMMUNITY WILL DETERMINE WHETHER A PROJECT IS SUCCESSFUL.

And yet, people still get upset. To some extent, this feels a bit like "hipsterism." People feel that these platforms are special because the rich and famous haven't necessarily discovered them yet. But why is it so wrong if they do find them and do use them? If people want to support the projects they will, and if they don't, they won't. That's what makes these platforms so useful.

Filed Under: biophillia, bjork, connecting with fans, crowdfunding, rich and famous
Companies: kickstarter

Connecting With Fans In Unique Ways: Band Sets Up Treasure Hunt To Find Fan-Submitted Sounds In New Album

from the going-on-a-treasure-hunt dept

We've written a few times about the band Uniform Motion out of France, which got some fame last year for being incredibly open about how much money they make from various streaming platforms. Since then we've gotten to know Andy from Uniform Motion and posted a few other stories concerning cool things that he and the band have done. They're really open to doing cool experiments and being really transparent about how well they work. In fact, Andy has pointed out that greater transparency has clearly resulted in a "reason to buy" for many of the band's fans.

Anyway, the band is coming out with a new album -- and they've been releasing streaming versions of songs over the past few days leading up to the official release of the album. As in the past, because the band makes it easy to do so, I suggest you listen to some of the songs from the new album, which they're releasing one by one. You can hear them via the widget below. Feel free to hit play before continuing. With the new album coming out, the band has been doing a series of interesting things to connect with its fans. First is that it set up its own crowdfunding site. In an age where everyone is using Kickstarter/IndieGoGo/PledgeMusic or other similar platforms, Uniform Motion decided to set up a similar offering, but directly off its own site. They note that the main goal is to be transparent in seeing if they can make back the €4,311 they spent making the album itself. So, that's the "goal" number that they're hoping to raise. The different tiered "offers" aren't anything out of the ordinary: t-shirts, CDs and vinyl, basically -- though the packaging looks fantastic. Where it gets more interesting, of course, is where they're going beyond what others have done to try to do much more to connect with fans. Last summer, we noted that the band was asking fans to submit sounds, which they promised to work into the album. Not only did the band do exactly that, but it has also created a truly awesome treasure hunt game, in which they've set up a "map" that has all of the songs embedded in the map, along with the various sounds that people submitted. The goal of the treasure hunt is to match the submitted sound with the song that it was in on the map. Here's a screen shot: Some may argue that this is nothing special or -- worse -- they'll pop up with the overused and silly insult that this is just a "gimmick." But it actually fits so well with the band if you're familiar with their style and aesthetic. As we've discussed multiple times in the past, part of what makes various efforts to "connect with fans" and giving them a "reason to buy" isn't to do what everyone else has done, but to figure out what is special or unique about your art and your connection to fans, and to build on that. And that can be different for everyone. When it comes to Uniform Motion, the band has always had a heavy graphics / animation element to it. After all, one member of the band doesn't play a musical instrument, but rather does live sketches with the music as the band performs. So having this kind of effort just totally fits with the band itself, and highlights again the importance of not copying what others are doing, but figuring out what makes the most sense for your art and your fans.

Filed Under: connect with fans, reason to buy, treasure hunt, uniform motion

Just As Many Musicians Say File Sharing Helps Them As Those Who Say It Hurts

from the and-guess-which-way-that's-trending... dept

We've discussed in the past that the Future of Music Coalition was putting together a fantastic artists revenue streams project, in which they sought to look at the myriad ways in which musicians make money today. FMC has been releasing bits of data from the project here and there, but now TorrentFreak has alerted us to a big analysis of the data done by Northwestern Law professor Peter DiCola, entitled Money from Music: Survey Evidence on Musicians' Revenue and Lessons About Copyright Incentives. It's worth reading in its entirety.

TorrentFreak highlights one key point: which is that of the surveyed musicians a mere 6% of revenue comes from the sale of licensed music. We've long argued that music sales make up a minority of the revenue artists make, so it's good to see some support for that. Of course, the report notes that different types of musicians make money in different ways, so this does not mean that the 6% number applies across the board to all musicians. There certainly are some musicians who make a large percentage of their income from sales. But the key point is that those artists are in the minority, and focusing solely on music sales and changes to that market gives you a very distorted picture of how artists are making money, and the impact of things like a decrease in revenue from music sales. There is plenty of interesting data in the report, but one thing that struck me concerned the artists' general attitudes towards technology. It's mixed, to be sure, but some of the often-repeated claims by some maximalists don't appear to be true. For example, we hear stories that part of what's so unfair with the system today is that the artists are "losing control" over their works, but many artists don't agree with that at all, recognizing that technology means they have a lot more control over their works. The difference, of course, is that the complaints about "loss of control" were really more driven by the old gatekeepers -- mainly the major record labels. For them, it's true that they really have been losing control, but much of that control has actually moved back to the artists (and, yes, much of it has also gone to fans). But for artists who were outside of the major label system, it's often meant much more control over their own careers.

The end result is that artist attitudes towards technology and its impact on their careers is really mixed. In many cases, on key questions -- it seems like artists are almost equally divided. You can see that in the chart below: From this chart, you can actually see that just as many artists think that file sharing has helped them as think that it has hurt them. Remember that the next time someone claims to be speaking for all artists' attitudes on these kinds of things. If I had to guess, it seems likely that trends are moving more towards artists recognizing the benefits of such things -- but I could be wrong about that assumption. I guess we'll see the next time they do this survey.

The report also looks closely at how much copyright really impacts an artist's income. To hear some talk about this stuff, without copyright, there would be no way for artists to make money at all. However, as we've argued over and over again, many revenue streams have nothing to do with copyright, and the report bears this out. As noted above, direct sales only account for 6% of income on average, but the report digs in even more and looks artists across different income levels and genres, showing both differences across those different slices, but also confirming that there are many different revenue streams:

Those charts show some differences, including that higher earning musicians do tend to rely on copyright more, but it's still a relatively smaller part of their income than other sources.

Putting it all together, DiCola created this wonderful chart that looks at copyright- vs. non-copyright income across different income levels and genres: Really interesting stuff. Not surprisingly, composers rely on copyright quite a bit, as they tend to get a significant chunk of revenue from licensing efforts. But even they still tend to rely heavily on income that is at best, indirectly related to copyright. All in all a very interesting read, as you begin to realize that the primary story usually told -- that artists all rely on copyright and that infringement is clearly a bad thing -- isn't necessarily true across the board.

Filed Under: copyright, file sharing, revenue streams

Skateboard Legend Stacy Peralta Demonstrates His Latest Trick: Cashing In By Going Direct-To-Fan

from the how-it-all-works dept

Last August, we wrote about an experiment by famous skateboarder and filmmaker Stacy Peralta to self-distribute his latest film, Bones Brigade, about the famous skateboarding crew Peralta himself had put together a few decades ago (the crew included some of the most famous skateboarders ever: Tony Hawk, Lance Mountain, Steve Caballero, Mike McGill and Tommy Guerrero). Peralta had shown the film at Sundance last year, which is where most filmmakers go to try to "sell" their film to a studio/distributor to go make something of it. However, Peralta turned down all such offers (some for significant money), and instead went the "direct to fan" self-distribution path, using tools like TopSpin, and partnering with companies like BitTorrent as well. That's what we wrote about in August.

Now, as the latest Sundance is underway, TopSpin's Bob Moczydlowsky has a post with some details of how it all went, noting that going direct to fan was massively successful for Peralta, allowing him to both make more money and still retain the rights to the film, rather than selling them off to some other entity.

And now, a year after the Sundance premiere and six months from the start of the direct-to-fan release powered by Topspin, Film Sales Company and our partners awe.sm and The Uprising Creative,  Stacy has earned more from direct sales than he would have from the combined total of the domestic and foreign sales offers. And, because a Topspin direct release does not require licensing rights, Stacy and Andrew Herwitz from Film Sales Company were then able to do their own Transactional VOD and Third-party license deals. Stacy and his financing partners quickly recouped the budget of the film, and the copyright remains in their hands for the future.

That really is the key. “I self financed, got the investment back, am now in profit and I own the copyright and will continue to earn all other sales for the next ten years,” says Stacy. “And it is all because I was empowered for the very first time to really do it myself from start to finish. Topspin has done for distribution what the Handycam did for shooting or the Avid did for editing. Topspin put it all in my hands and suddenly everything I needed was within my reach: pure and simple filmmakers democracy.”

They also included a nice little pie chart (to scale), showing how much bigger the pie was with what Peralta ended up doing: This is not to say, of course, that the same thing is true for everyone who tries to go direct to fan. It's right for some people, and not right for others. But the key thing here is that there are more options and many of those options not only leave the actual creators with more control, but also allow them to expand the pie.

One of the more frustrating aspects of discussing these business model issues with some people is their assumption that the "pie" is static (or, worse, shrinking). It's a classic mistake in economics for those who think that everything is a zero sum game. But one of the great things about new technologies and services is how they enable a much broader audience and increase the opportunities, opening up wider possibilities -- especially for creators who really know how to engage with their fans.

Filed Under: alternatives, bittorrent, bones brigade, business models, direct to fan, opportunities, stacy peralta, sundance
Companies: bittorrent, topspin

Wallet Maker Shows Everyone How To Make Their Own Awesome Wallet

from the to-get-us-to-open-our-wallets dept

You know how content and product producers hate when the public recreates what they do on their own? Like when somebody with the copyright on a David Bowie song went all nutso over a fan film? Or when the music industry took a position so ridiculous that it could be compared to the slogan "Home Cooking Is Killing The Restaurant Industry"?

Well, shockingly, it turns out not everyone that produces a product has that mentality. Take, for instance, Matthew Pisarcik & Sebastian Sandersius, the founders of Bison Made, makers of some seriously well-made wallets (story sent in by Markiyan).

However, nothing is more frustrating than purchasing something expensive with your hard-earned dollars and having it fail on you. In this article, we want to address a common problem for men: their wallets don't hold up. It's a source of pride to build something that you can call your own.

Too true, but one wouldn't expect that to result in a blog post by makers of quality wallets to teach everyone how to make their own quality wallets. The rest of the post is a rather detailed, informative set of instructions on how to make a wallet in the same manner that Bison Made makes them. It's essentially an informative version of a patent, minus all the supposedly progress-promoting restrictions. Perhaps you're asking why they would do such a thing. They do not answer that question explicitly, but I would suggest it's a simple matter of confidence. Take the way the post ends.

Bison Made uses these same basic principles when producing quality leather carry goods. Instead of paper patterns and hand cutting, we use high precision cutting dies to create consistent leather components that are hand finished and stitched. We have taken a position that by starting with high-quality raw materials and detailed precision, beautiful and functional works that are designed for life will follow.

In other words: here's how to make what we make, and it's real, but we are really, really good at it. Also we have the materials, machinery, and know-how. So here's our designs. Here's what we do. Feel free to make it if you like. But if this explanation of what we do helps you appreciate all the work that has gone into our business, you could always spend a little money with us to get the real thing.

Filed Under: wallets
Companies: bison made

$274 Million Raised Via Kickstarter In 2012

from the not-bad-at-all dept

You may remember that, at the beginning of 2012, there were some predictions that Kickstarter might possibly help fund over $150 million that year, up from about $80 million in 2011. Turns out that estimate was way low. Kickstarter projects actually brought in $274 million on $319 million in pledges. A lot of folks are focused on that $319 million, but it seems like the $274 million is more interesting. You can see the breakdown of pledges as well, showing how it covers a variety of different areas: It seems notable that some of the areas with the most funding are the ones we're often told are struggling the most with new business models. Kickstarter is clearly not "the" new business model (because there isn't just one), but it shows that there are solutions out there, and likely will be many more on the way, even as Kickstarter itself continues to grow.

Filed Under: business models, crowdfunding
Companies: kickstarter