Music:Tech Daily Wrap – Monday, May 14

SoundCtrl May 14, 2012

What happened in music:tech today?

The FlashFWD Awards and Internet Week New York’s Music:Tech Day are tomorrow.

DJ Shadow Adds Discography To Facebook Timeline & Engagement Explodes – via hypebot
Distro.fm Could Revolutionize Music with Artist Subscriptions – via evolver.fm
Facebook Plays a Relatively Minor Role In Music Discovery – via Digital Music News
Music labels force pioneering MP3tunes into bankruptcy – via Ars Technica
How Jermaine Dupri Is Connecting With Fans Online 24/7 – via Huffington Post
The world’s hottest digital markets: a music map – via paidContent

What did we miss?

turntable.fm at FlashFWD

SoundCtrl May 14, 2012

SoundCtrl’s annual FlashFWD Awards are tomorrow, May 15, at New York’s Gramercy Theatre. At the event, there will be a turntable.fm IRL room featuring Maura Johnston (Music Editor, Village Voice), Christopher R. Weingarten (Senior Editor, SPIN Magazine), and Qbertplaya (DR, turntable.fm Super User) on the decks.

To RSVP to the event, visit our Eventbrite page. Even if you can’t make it, you can still partake in the turntable.fm portion of the event by visiting our official tunrtable.fm room tomorrow (May 15) at 7pm Eastern.

Submit your own questions to Bob Lefsetz

SoundCtrl May 14, 2012

On May 15, SoundCtrl will sit down with legendary music blogger, executive, and author Bob Lefsetz, in a keynote interview at Internet Week New York’s first-ever Music:Tech Day in partnership with SoundCtrl.

Bob Lefsetz, known for his candid and controversial writing style, is the author of the Lefsetz Letter, the widely circulated essays about the state of the music industry. We’d like to open the floor to the SoundCtrl community to ask questions to Bob Lefsetz. If you have a question for Bob, submit it at soundctrl@gmail.com, or tweet us your questions to @SoundCtrl and use the hashtag #Lefsetz. We’ll do our best to ask as many as we can.

If you’re in New York and would like to attend, visit Internet Week New York’s website for registration information.

GigFunder: The Crowd-Funded Tour Site

SoundCtrl May 14, 2012

by Jason Epstein

GigFunder is a brand new, just-launched service that aims to help bands get on tour regardless of their financial situation. Theirs is a mission that strives to achieve both success and altruism in the support of both the musicians who want to play and the fans who want to see them play.

GigFunder currently works with a host of indie and singer-songwriter artists with a sprinkling of Christian, rock, and metal as well. They also seek to offer the service to DJs, comedians, speakers, dance squads, and just about anyone else that can put on a performance. The service only charges artists a “success fee” of 7% for each successful campaign, (that reaches the right dollar amount within the right amount of time). Fans that pledge money, but don’t succeed at getting their artist to their town aren’t charged a dime.

SoundCtrl exchanged emails with founder and CEO Matt Pearson to talk about the challenges artists face in today’s touring climate and the solutions that GigFunder offers.

SoundCtrl - What is GigFunder’s main objective and how does the service work?

Matt Pearson - The main objective for GigFunder is to offer a way to help artists and fans more deeply connect. By giving artists a platform to let fans have a say in where they tour, artists can avoid saving up money or getting tour support upfront from a label and fans are actively promoting the artist in cities all across the country.

The site works by allowing artists to enter in all of their touring expenses and then putting the tour out for fans to create campaigns for those artists. The funding goal is based on the artist’s touring expenses and the distance between the artist’s city and the fan’s city. If enough fans pledge enough money to bring out an artist, the show is on. Artists get the money to book the show upfront. Fans get tickets, merch, or other pledge awards like the ability to pick the set list or play on stage with the band for a song. If the campaign doesn’t reach its funding goal, nobody is charged anything and the artist doesn’t play there. So fans and artists have a huge incentive to work together to get the money for a show.

Better Know a FlashFWD Honoree: Spotify – “It was all a stream…”

SoundCtrl May 14, 2012

by Keith Nelson, Jr.

Music streaming phenomena Spotify has transformed the desire for an all-inclusive music experience into an entity valued at $1 billion on the precipice of a revolution in music consumption. Spotify’s recent success and intuitive service is the result of early invitation beta testing, competition with other music streaming services, and a gradual global expansion, (remember, Spotify became available in the U.S. 2 and ½ years after it’s launch). With recent deals with Coca-Cola and Facebook, over 10 million active users, as well as Spotify co-founder Daniel EK projecting $889 million in revenue for 2012, Spotify is poised to become a juggernaut in the music streaming arena.

By sheer numbers, (over 15 million licensed songs are available), Spotify could realistically garner impressive usage even if it was simply offering basic streaming services. Spotify has consciously avoided that business model. When you click on “What is Spotify?” on the music giant’s homepage, the first phrase you see is “All the music, all the time.” Spotify’s free and premium accounts that give on-demand access to millions of licensed music from laptops, iPhones, iPads and Android smartphones fully realize Spotify’s lofty “all the time” claim, particualrly when one factors in that premium accounts can stream thousands of songs offline. The deep Facebook integration allows people to share music tastes with others by posting songs as statuses, further broadening the possibilities of new music discovery for millions and more to come.