this IS future of music

This seems to me to be the future of music. DRM-free, easy plug into other sites, very viral distribution, sharing revenues with fans, creating long term relationships between fans/artists, simultaneous releases across all platforms and territories. The revenue sharing piece is especially important to make sure that DRM-Free is profitable for artists. This is also worth a quick caveat, that caveat being that sales of actual tracks will no longer be the most profitable piece of an artist's body of work.


"As part of Universal's growing DRM-free experiment, Musicane has created a will.i.am widget to coincide with the Interscope release of the Black Eyed Pea founder's solo single "I Got It from My Mama" on August 28th. The Musicane widget acts as a media player on websites, blogs and social networks selling both digital and physical product and can be added with a single line of code.

"Interscope In a somewhat revolutionary move from a major artist, will.i.am is sharing the monies earned from Musicane product sales with fans that embed the store onto their blogs and social network profiles. Fans who pre-order the album will get a free download of the new single, as well as exclusive remixes. All of the downloads will be DRM-free mp3's.

"Universal will.i.am will also be one of the first releases on The Universal Music Group roster to be simultaneously released digitally without DRM to all digital business partners worldwide within the same album cycle as its physical release."

bye bye drm. . .

what did i say? way back . . . and not just me, but everyone else. DRM is doomed. Universal is actually doing some real work on sorting out what the future will be, and doing so outside of iTunes, since real experimentation is impossible there. . .

Universal to Test Sale of DRM-Free Tracks Everywhere but iTunes
Submitted by Mark Hefflinger on August 10, 2007 - 10:59am.

New York - Universal Music Group announced on Friday that it plans to experiment with selling a portion of its catalog free of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions from a number of online retailers, including Amazon.com, RealNetworks' Rhapsody, Best Buy and Walmart -- with the notable exception of Apple's iTunes Store.

The songs will be available in 256K MP3 format for the same price as DRM-wrapped tunes -- 99 cents per song -- and be available from later this month through at least January.

Universal Music told the Los Angeles Times the test is being conducted partly to see how sales and piracy rates will be affected if songs are offered without DRM, adding that Apple was excluded so "iTunes could serve as a 'control group' to make sales comparisons easier."

Analysts said the exclusion of Apple by Universal was also aimed at curtailing Steve Jobs' growing influence on its business.

Universal will help drive traffic to the DRM-free downloads using Google ads that link directly to digital retailer gBox; the songs will also be offered from some artist and label websites.

The only other major label to experiment with DRM-free songs thus far has been EMI, which sells high-quality MP3s at a premium price of $1.29 each at iTunes and other retailers.

the power of music, part 2

and now from my own country -

According to the band's web site, Pearl Jam's Lollapalooza webcast was censored by sponsor/webcaster AT&T:

When asked about the missing performance, AT&T informed Lollapalooza that portions of the show were in fact missing from the webcast, and that their content monitor had made a mistake in cutting them.

During the performance of "Daughter" the following lyrics were sung to the tune of Pink Floyd's "Another Brick in the Wall" but were cut from the webcast:

• "George Bush, leave this world alone." (the second time it was sung); and
• "George Bush find yourself another home."

so who let anyone at at&t decide what was good for any of us to hear? and mind you - this is in a webcast!!, not just traditional TV broadcasting, where i'd assume to have everything censored.

the power of music

the title of the linked article says it all:

"Music is too subversive for the new South Africa, says apartheid hero"

the article continues:

"One of South Africa’s greatest musicians — a hero of the struggle against apartheid — believes that he is no longer welcome as a performer in his own country.

The virtuoso trumpeter Hugh Masekela claims that many of the talented musicians whose voices became symbols of protest against white domination are finding it hard to get bookings in South Africa because the ruling ANC is “terrified” of music as an agent of change."

and is worth reading the entire thing. hugh is a visionary, and continues to really be involved in social change as well as music. some of the guys i hung with in soweto who are doing hip-hop have told me about hugh meeting with them, passing them music, and giving them free rein to remix, sample, cut it up and more. i think hugh's comments are probably too true for much of the world. certainly us politicians don't love political music, and as you may have seen in our documentary "African Underground: Democracy in Dakar", the politicians in Senegal are actively involved in oppressing musicians that don't tow the line.

micropayments are a lie

i've been meaning to write this post for a long time. waaay back, when i worked for SEIU, a co-worker and i were talking about this issue, even before i really got into digital media and payment issues.

anyway, it turns out that one of the puzzles we've been trying to solve with calabash is that of pricing. how to price an mp3. how do we bring the price down from the $0.99 arbitrary price that apple established to a real price point? how do we let the market act on the price of a music track, and really find the "true" market value of an mp3? well, obviously, the scientist in me just wants to run a lot of tests. set the price of tracks at a wide variety of prices, and let the market act. let artists set their own prices for tracks, and step back, watch, and learn.

however, one impediment to that pricing plan is this - the merchant fees associated with transactions done by credit card or paypal. credit card transactions have fairly large fees ($0.05 - $0.50 depending on transaction size), and paypal is even worse. paypal has some nice interest rates for consumers, and some nice features, but merchants pay for it all. paypal fees are close to double that on credit cards.

a proposed answer to this dilemma has been micropayments. these unicorn-like payments are described as allowing all sorts of price point transactions, allowing new pricing models, blah blah blah. anyway, all the schemes i have seen from vendors who we have thought about dealing with at calabash always involve some variation on the following: users buy some "Credit" or don't get charged on initial transactions. they then get charged at the end of the month, or use the credit piece by piece on small transactions on the site. which isn't really micropayment now is it? basically, it is the same thing - one charge for $5 instead of 50 charges for $0.10. meaning that customers still have to put in $5 or the merchant has to pay a huge % fee on a very small transaction.

anyway, i have a lot to read, as i'm really starting to take this idea from my head onto paper. i've put a couple links below, which i need to read as well, but here's hoping for some good conversation on this issue. i'll be back for more posts on this same subject.

to read:
wikipedia entry on micropayments
misunderstanding micropayments
the case against micropayments
paypal micropayment press release
another bloggers take on micropayments

allofmp3.com are crooks!

i have posted on other blogs about this as well, but you know i got to talk about it here on my own blog. the site allofmp3.com was a site based in russia that supposedly was "legal" under russian law (according to the site and its defenders). however, as the article in the header link details, "Russian prosecutors are targeting Denis Kvasov, former owner of controversial MP3 store AllofMP3.com, with copyright infringement charges that would include jail time, according to published reports."

now, allofmp3.com was an amazing site from the perspective of a consumer, but awful from the artist perspective. as a consumer, you could get cheap music delivered quickly to you in your choice of format, all without DRM or copy protection. brilliant. however, they didn't pay any artist anything, so forget about it from the artist perspective. the challenge in my mind is how a company can deliver something like the service of allofmp3 while paying out to artists and labels. apple ain't doin' it now, nor is emusic, nor anyone else. calabash is trying to develop a download manager, and we are spec'ing the project of encoding everything in a variety of formats, or writing some scripts to dumb down lossless files on the server on demand. amie.st is doing some good stuff with delivery, and if you get stuff early, you get it cheap there. so a reputable answer will arise sooner or later.

Boston Herald Article on the GU Tour

Hip-hop hits Hub
By Chris Faraone
Friday, July 20, 2007

Ben Herson went quite a bit out of his way to organize the Global Underground hip-hop tour that marches through the Middle East nightclub in Cambridge Sunday night.
The founder of world-music label Nomadic Wax, Herson, a Newton native and Hampshire College alum, traveled as far as Tanzania and Senegal to scout hip-hop talent.
“I went to Senegal in 1998 with a friend just to visit,” Herson said from New York. “In the marketplace there I discovered the hip-hop section. I couldn’t believe how many original artists there were in that country alone.”
Since his first African outing, Herson’s interest in world hip-hop expanded. Through Nomadic Wax, he connected with the artists featured on the Global Underground tour, who include Chosan (from Sierra Leone), MC Eli Efi (or LF, from Brazil) and rapper Laylo (Dominican Republic), Zuluboy (South Africa) and DJ Boo (Philippines).
“In the beginning, we focused on African hip-hop, but now were looking at it as a global label,” Herson said. “World hip-hop has a unique flavor, the flavor of whatever country or culture these guys are coming from.”
Chosan, who was born in West Africa, raised in London and now lives in the Bronx, received American exposure when he appeared in Kanye West’s “Diamonds of Sierra Leone” video. He said his tour mates might come from different backgrounds, but they share a common sensibility.
“We’re all representing the same kind of spirit,” Chosan said from New York. “We’re all poets and performers by nature.”
While it’s impossible to squeeze all international rappers into one category, there are some themes that show up across the globe - themes, one could argue, that have driven hip-hop since its conception in the United States 30 years ago.
“Hip-hop in Brazil is its own political party,” Eli Efi said in an e-mail interview. “Hip-hop in Brazil is the outcry of the excluded.”
According to Boston-based music consultant Erich Ludwig, who regularly collaborates with Nomadic Wax, a universal spirit shines through the language barrier.
“When I listen to these guys,” Ludwig said, “especially when I can’t understand the lyrics, it’s all about the music surrounding the rhymes and the flow behind the rhymes.”
Not every rapper on Sunday’s bill will be twisting foreign tongues. In order to properly represent planet hip-hop from Jamaica to Jamaica Plain, promoters asked globe-trotting Boston duo Foundation Movement to join the tour.
“This tour is about style and world perspective and Foundation was the natural fit for Boston,” said Ludwig, who recently was a presenter at the United Nations-Habitat Global Hip-Hop Summit in South Africa.
Having witnessed firsthand the contributions international MCs have made to rap music, Global Underground organizers hope their tour will dispel some myths about foreign hip-hop.
“These guys aren’t just copying 50 Cent and Ja Rule,” Herson said. “They have their own unique styles.”
“Some people think that because I’m from Africa I’m going to come on stage in a sheepskin,” Chosan added. “But I’m a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy. I always have been and I always will be.”
Nomadic Wax Global Underground Summer Tour, with Foundation Movement, Chosan, Eli Efi and Laylo, Zuluboy, DJ Boo and others, at the Middle East, Cambridge, Sunday at 8 p.m. Tickets: $10 in advance, $12 day of show; 617-864-EAST.

DJ BOO!!

DJ Boo on the 1s and 2s on tour with Global Underground

Global Underground Percussion

Chauncey rippin it up on djembe.

Rebel Diaz - Global Underground @ Middle East

Lah from Rebel Diaz _killin_ it on tour with Global Underground.