MP3$$$

[Uh Clem]

In light of the Courtney Love post and the continuing thoughts on new ways to get your music to the masses, I wondered if any one was aware of this:

 

There is a guy posting stuff up on MP3.COM who has made over $17K this month and $75,000 total so far from MP3.COM "airplay" and CD sales. That ain't a bad living for a do-it-yourselfer.

 

I'm not an electronic music buff, but I was not really impressed by his stuff - someone must be though! His fan base is apparently large and his ditribution is worldwide.

 

Maybe a little hope and inspiration for those who feel slighted by major labels.

 

I know the MP3 compression makes most of us cringe, but in a short time, I think that will go away.

 

 

 

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Steve Powell

Bull Moon Digital

Atlanta GA

music is a problem for everyone

you could hear things differently

www.mp3.com/stations/bullmoondigital

[Guest]

Hi Steve. I was wondering if you could tell me who this guy is? I'd like to have a listen to his stuff. I'm curious to hear what $75k is worth nowadays. Thanks loads!

[Anderton]

There was an article in the current issue of Gig magazine about a piano player who makes about $60K a year from MP3. The article, in fact the whole issue, is well worth reading.

[Uh Clem]

Here he is - of course you know that if you go listen, it just adds to his fire, which I guess is what happens when any sensation reaches critical mass - it starts to snowball.

 

I do think it is heartening to know that self-promotion can work to create success on a reasonable scale. You can also follow links back to his site and bio, where he tells how he was blown off by some major labels.

 

Whether you like what he has done or not, his success is based on self-promotion, the promise of the WEB, and the vote of the listening public - not politics of "the music industry machine".

http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/34/303_infinity.html

 

 

 

[This message has been edited by stevepow (edited 07-31-2000).]

[Anderton]

>>Here he is - of course you know that if you go listen, it just adds to his fire, which I guess is what happens when any sensation reaches critical mass - it starts to snowball.<<

 

If this thread doesn't provide the perfect model of how promotion will work in the future, I'd be really surprised. It's really heartening to hear these examples of MP3-oriented artists making a decent living.

 

When the whole web music thing first started happening, my prediction was that it would allow more musicians to make a decent wage...they wouldn't make a killing, but if they were good, they probably wouldn't starve. Maybe this is finally starting to happen and I don't look so wrong any more .

[alphajerk]

unfortunately i have an extremely slow modem so i cant listen to mp3 stuff without having to really wait. plus, im not a fan of what bigmoneyman is describing the music to be. craig, you'd be a good judge of it. is it really any good??? or just another example of the mindlessness of the LCD massively downloading more poop?

[lwilliam]

I'm not Craig (duh!), but I just listened to almost 6 minutes of 3 chords (sounds like a bar each of Am, F, G) with some arpeggios and a few quaint drum machine fills of 64th notes (song: Winter Rain). No melody or vocals. Straight ahead dance/trance.

 

My vote is the 2nd idea: LCD

 

Maybe I should switch styles....IMHO, any decent musician who can operate a sequencer could pump out stuff like that in a few hours.

 

 

 

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Larry W.

[Uh Clem]

That's good to hear Larry, I thought maybe I just didn't get it. Oh well - good market I guess.

[Paul Schubert]

Ahh Yes!

Puts me in mind of the psychodellia days. Listening to Trout Mask Replica, or Larks Tounge In Aspic.

Man that's Groovy, just dig the bridge!

[lwilliam]

Was the bridge the part that stayed on one chord?

 

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Larry W.

[Guest]

Man, that guy is really raking in the money. I just wentto his page and he's up to $80,605.96. Damn.

 

I think the statement "any decent musician who can operate a sequencer could pump out stuff like that in a few hours" is probably an oversimplification. I'm into to techno, and have plenty of arpeggiators, but I couldn't come up with stuff like that, for the same reason that I can't write a country song, or a heavy metal song (it's not my style). Regardless, I wasn't that impressed by his stuff. It's certainly not unique, and seems to use every trick in the trance/house book. I'm curious to know where he's getting all the hits from (and all the sales from), even if you don;t like his music, you have to admire his marketing ability.

[Uh Clem]

Larry and Sub - my sentiments exactly! But that ain't bad $$$. I do think that it shows that a new distribution mechanism does not ensure that we see a lot of what we think is great bubbling to the top.

[Anderton]

So of course, I took the bait...

 

Yup, pretty ordinary stuff. This is your basic "Euromuzak" which you hear all over Europe in airports, stores, etc. My main problems are that it's missing any kind of compelling lead, and the rhythm tracks are quantized to death. That said, in his defense, I'll say that a lot of that type of music is designed to be mixed with other music, so it needs to leave "holes" where other sounds and melody lines can go. Also, it maintains a certain level of competence which allows it to rise above the worst of its kind. I'd give it a C-.

 

Okay, so this shows you can make money from this kind of thing on the net. But it also shows that record companies are really out of step by not taking this type of music more seriously, and developing some talent.

[Uh Clem]

Yes, and my point was not to judge or beat this guy up - he clearly has some understanding of his market and the ability to cater to it quite well.

 

None of the top earners there sound that great to me, but that's just my opinion and it shows that good marketing is one of the main components of success.

 

Personally, I would just as soon see the record companies miss out and avenues like MP3 become stronger - there are some really good artisits up there in genres I like. The idea of of going up and hearing some tunes I like and purchasing a CD is really cool - I just want a real CD with no compression and I believe that will happen soon.

 

The model is much nore fair than a record company - you do the work, own it, market it, and you get 50% of the CD sales and some pay for airtime. Seems very fair.

[Doug Robinson]

<>

 

In the near future, yes. After that, it won't be so novel that a guy is making money from hits on a website. Brilliance in promotion will once again move to the forefront.

[lwilliam]

Although I didn't like his music (I guess I have too many music degrees or something), $80K isn't chump change!!!

 

I REALLY like the idea of direct selling to the public because if he had gone with a "standard" record deal, how far in the hole do you think he'd still be?

 

I'm sure he wouldn't be $80K ahead...

 

 

 

 

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Larry W.

[Anderton]

Come to think of it, it's probably easier to find new things on line than it is in stores...you can type a few words into a search engine. Maybe not just promotion, but factors like how well you can pop your name to the top of a list, will also influence "netplay."

[Guest]

"Maybe not just promotion, but factors like how well you can pop your name to the top of a list, will also influence "netplay.""

 

 

True. The charts on mp3.com seem to have an exponential effect as far as promotion goes: the higher you get in the list, the more likely you are to be on the front page of the various sections that you're in (since they typically put the top 100 charts on the header pages for each section). So since people are probably more likely to check out something that's on the front page of a section (or speciifically in a top whatever list), they go to those top 100 artists and that keeps those artists at the top of the lists for even more people to see.

[Alndln]

I didn't listen to this guy's stuff,It doesn't matter if I'm interested or not,the whole point is the guy's able to get his stuff out there and make a decent living.I'm quite sure I could buy worse at the local Tower records.I think this is definitely the future with peoples attention spans getting shorter all the time,I think they'll be more inclined to download a song or 2 than go through the trouble of actually going to the store and purchase an entire CD.I also see file formats changing especially in light of this and Napster.

[alphajerk]

while this artist is temporarily making it big, mp3.com is SUFFERing. their initial IPO shot their stock to $83 from the initial $24 but is now trading @ $8 with a 52 week range of $6.50 - $64.62. they posted an 18 million dollar loss last quater and probably will post a higher loss this quarter. they really have little way of actually making money. no business can exist in that state and survive. i dont see a bright future at this point for them and their biggest asset right now is their domain name [which as bandwidth increases, mp3 will be a has been format, they own wav.com too but what about aiff.com and sd2.com] their organization is a bunch of shit and wont last.

[Alndln]

I agree that they are a piece of #*#$%for selling unautherized recordings,but plenty of artists are selling their stuff on their own or other web sites,this is the way things are going like it or not.

[Anderton]

Good point, Alphajerk. Which makes me wonder: are ANY of these MP3 oriented sites doing any business? SoundsBig.com just laid off a bunch of people, and they're not alone. Does anyone know of any MP3 site success stories?