On Monday evening I went to First Monday, a music industry networking night run by Sybill Bell, who manages the rather excellent Post War Years.

Much of the talk was not about doing label deals, but how to raise money for the artists to do it themselves.

Recording and distribution seemed not to much of an issue for them (one manger had an act who have already made £4K from selling their demos on iTunes), but the big problem was finding money needed to pay for marketing.

With VC funds all but dried up, managers are looking for other ways to raise funds. One manager was investigating whether to sell shares in the band to friends, family and fans, but was worried that they could end up owning nothing if they had to sell too much of the bands equity. A pretty scary option when you consider the success rates of the majority of bands and artists.

My suggestion was rather than selling equity in his band that he looked at other ways of getting friends, family and fans to invest. Playing for your fans in their own homes can offer something really different, and this personal approach is more likely to generate money than playing endless unsigned nights at local pubs and clubs. However, some fans are happy pay for even greater access to their favourite band or artist. Former Nine Inch Nails drummer Josh Freese got one fan to pay $20,000 dollars to spend some quality time with the drummer and his rock star pals! However, he also offered up a whole range of other special packages to his fans at a range of price points (in this case from a $7 CD to a $75,000 package that includes Freese writing, recording and releasing a 5-song EP about you and your life story), a strategy that can be adopted by any artist.

It looks like I spoke too soon about the benefits of emusic’s deal with Sony Music for the users. What wasn’t immediately clear was the impact on the price that users would have to pay for their downloads. Some of the most loyal users have seen a 40-50%  increase in the price they are paying. And the response from the users have been staggering. emusic has received well over 1000 complaints in the last four days on their blog and message boards. And for Sony it seems that many of emusic’s most loyal users aren’t that interested in their back catalogue, at least not if it means doubling the cost of their music.

Since launch emusic has played a delicate balancing act between price and choice. They have kept  their prices low, so encouraging users to try lots of new music. This has been great for some artists and labels, but sadly it doesn’t seem to have provided adequate compensation for some of the independent labels who aren’t prepared to sell their music quite so cheaply.

However, it seems that the model simply wasn’t working for either emusic or the labels, and now the users are also up in arms. This whole episode brings up the age old question, what is the value of music, and to whom? Sadly the gap between the fans and the labels seems to be increasing, not getting closer.

Yesterday’s New York Times announced that Sony Music will be making some of their back catalogue available via download store emusic in the US, which up till now has only carried music from independent labels.

Although the major labels have never been keen on emusic’s pricing policy (an average 40 cents per track), the site’s ability to ‘long tail’ music via it’s extensive community has finally proved a big enough attraction for one of the major’s to finally cut a deal.

Although Chris Anderson’s ‘Long Tail’ effect has been criticised in some quarters, emusic is a rare example of a download store where the users are as interested in the so-called ‘misses’ as they are in the ‘hits’.

Sony like every other major label has some real treasures hidden away in their back-catalogue, and emusic’s community is one that will delight in discovering these fantastic hidden classics, in a way that iTunes users may not.

What emusic ably demonstrates is the importance that both community and recommendation play in driving music purchase.

The sun is shining and it’s looking like it’s going to a lovely weekend. So what better than a bit of fun to make the rest of the working day go just a little bit quicker…

This weeks Fripperies On Friday is powered by some of the new technology that is being developed in the US by Echo Nest, who will be powering Spotify’s new music recommendation service when it launches later this year.

mycowbell.dj allows you to add both a cowbell AND Christopher Walken to any MP3 you have on your computer! The idea was inspired by a legendary Saturday Night Live sketch that featured Walken and a rather hairy Will Ferrell who adds rather too much cowbell to Blue Oyster Cult’s classic ‘Don’t Fear The Reaper’.

You can check out how it coped with Pilooski’s remix of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons ‘The Night’ by clicking here, then have a crack at making your own track

Have a good weekend…

Artists are increasingly embracing Twitter as a great way to connect with their fans. But its not just its simplicity as a communication tool that is attracting ‘celebrity’ users, it can also be a useful tool in helping you grow your fanbase.

US indie band Jimmy Eat World accumulated some 200,000 new Twitter followers in just over 30 days around their recent US tour, by encouraging their fans to use a specially built Twitter site that allows them to chat to other concert-goers at the gig they are attending. To use the system fans simply send a tweet to @jimmyeatworld, followed by the date of the concert they are attending, allowing them to be part of the twittering for that specific show. The band have also recorded one of the recent gigs and are selling it as a souvenir of the tour to its fanbase via it’s twitter site, offering it up as a $8.99 download in a range of formats - MP3, Apple Lossless, FLAC, and WAV.

The band now have almost HALF A MILLION fans following their tweets…

French group Phoenix have made some great pop records for most of this decade, with it seems only the American rock critics taking much notice (Pitchfork love ‘em to death). Well hopefully ‘Lizstomania’ from their fantastic new album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix will change all that, it has summer smash written all over it. This fantastic unofficial video mash-up takes clips from the The Breakfast Club and Pretty In Pink to brilliantly soundtrack Phoenix’s latest single. And don’t you just love Molly Ringwald’s kooky 80’s dance moves….ENJOY

The band have also offered up all the constituent parts of the track for free via their website, which has not only led to a slew of remixes being made in bedrooms and home studios everywhere, but a good deal of them have started appearing on music blogs across the globe (I’ve found 8 so far), making Phoenix the most blogged about artist on Hype Machine today.

Writing regular blog posts for your fans is not up everyone’s street. But who said you had to write?

Kanye West’s blog is a great example of what you can do by developing a visual approach to blogging. Kanye regularly posts up images and videos that have grabbed his interest - be it some arresting architecture, a You Tube clip of a new track he likes, a cool new pair of trainers…or some bootlicious ladies!

A few months ago we posted up a picture of the anatomy of a modern musician/music manager that showed how complex their role has become. Tom Williams (a New York based online marketer and publicist) has tried to map out the complex role that social media plays in a bands overall business strategy. What is interesting is not just the range of social media tools that you need to able to manage these days (and his diagram is by no means complete), but also how many roles each tool plays in delivering the strategy…

Tom states that the SIX goals of a social media campaign should be:

1. reach more people
2. keep the fans informed
3. allow people to sample the music
4. sell their music and merchandise
5. provide content that people can pass-along to their friends
6. engage the fans to keep them coming back for more

Whether you like it or not fans expectations have changed in terms of the type of relationship they expect to have with their favourite acts these days – many of today’s fans expect Access All Areas from their favourite artists, so the need for Artist Generated Content is key in how you communicate with your fans and build loyalty.

But where do you find the time to keep all of your fans informed on what you are up to? Whether your life is made up of endless recording, touring and promotion work, or you’re trying to fit in your musical career in alongside a day job, connecting regularly with your fans can seem like just another task that can wait till tomorrow, or the day after…

Artists, managers and labels generally buy into the concept of Artist Generated Content, but in practice find it hard to deliver. Now this may be down to how you choose to communicate.

Writing a regular blog post is not for everyone, so what other simple methods can you employ to regularly communicate with your fans and make the whole task a little bit easier?

So how do you make FMCG brands interesting in the digital space? What is the reason to go to newtoothpaste.com?

We all buy fizzy drinks, baked beans, toothpaste and washing powder, but they aren’t necessarily the kind of products you’d think about googling to find out more.

Beinggirl.com, which is aimed at a young teen audience, gets around this problem by keeping Proctor and Gamble’s female sanitary products (such as Tampax, Always and Alldays) firmly in the background, but instead provides a forum for teenage girls to find out about and discuss their problems and interests. The site, now available in 21 countries around the world, includes plenty of helpful advice for teenage girls about their bodies, sex and relationships, plus simple beauty tips, fun online games and you guessed it, music.

The music content on the site revolves around providing the latest audio and video clips from the likes of Akon, Lady GaGa, Taylor Swift, Sugababes, Jonas Brothers, Ashlee Simpson and Kate Nash, a pretty good selection of artists for the target audience.

However, there are a number of areas where the site’s music strategy falls down:

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