October 8, 2012
Shipments

Why is it that in the old music business everything was about shipments, and in this new business where we have downloads, streaming as well as traditional physical sales everything is about exclusivity?

How come being less available, means more sales and more revenue?

I am pretty sure that there are a lot marketing and sales strategies from the old days that are still very relevant these days. Availabilty is definetly still important to generate revenue.

Right now 4-5 million people who PAY every month for streaming music are not able to stream Adele - Skyfall, probably because of fear it will cannibalize on downloads. But a lyrical video on Youtube will not?

Tell me how 17 000 000 views on a lyrical video is not consumption!

4:31pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZKtdyvUvm6BQ
(View comments) 
Filed under: Adele exclusivity itunes spotify rdio wimp 
March 11, 2012
Ten reasons why your band should not be on music streaming services

  1.  You will make more money. But you are not in it for the cash. There is no cash in “Drugs sex and rock n’ roll”.
     
  2.   More people will have access to your music. You should be exclusive right? Aim for people who buy downloads, CD’s…. or steal it (95% of music consumption is illegal)
     
  3. There is no evidence that it will cannibalize your download sales. Maybe this is something your manager has told the media. If you license your music to streaming services, it might prove your manager doesn’t have his shit together.
     
  4. You might need a new manager. One who lives in the same century as your fans.
     
  5.  You will reach out to a bigger audience. Maybe this will make you get on the road and tour again.  Who is going to take that discussion with your wife?
     
  6.  People who have never bought a physical CD in their life will listen to your music. Do you really want to encourage these people to continue not buying something they’ve never wanted?
     
  7. You will get paid based on how many times people listen to your music even if they have not paid for it themselves. This shit is scary! How does that even work?! Sure you get paid, but do you understand why?
     
  8. You will say yes to the people who pay €9,99 every month. You really should not encourage this kind of over-consumption of music. Instead you should try to get them to only buy a few records per year, and one of them should be yours. Just say no!
     
  9.  You will be paid in cents. Millions of cents. Wouldn’t you rather be paid in dollars? Well you could actually have both, but lets not be greedy.  Fans hate greedy bands. Lets stick with CD´s, downloads and yeah of course… piracy.
     
  10. You get free publicity in media by refusing these service your content. Brilliant! Sure less people will listen or buy your music but still… Free publicity. Fucking brilliant!!

2:27pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZKtdyvHqEKw1
(View comments) 
Filed under: streaming 
February 27, 2012
Windowing content is like giving exclusivity to piracy

I am a huge movie fan and therefor spend quite a lot of money on watching movies. Since I bought my Apple TV I have spent more than 200 USD in one year just on renting movies. I am sure there are better customers but I would like to think this makes me a pretty profitable customer for the movie industry. Even though I might seem like a good behaving customer I am actually not. I break some terms and conditions while spending these money on the iTunes store. 

The movie industry uses a release process optimized (at least they think so) for them and not for the consumer. In the standard drill, a movie is first released through movie theaters (theatrical window), then, after approximately 16 and a half weeks, it is released to DVD (entering its video window). After an additional number of months it is released to Pay TV and VOD services and approximately two years after its theatrical release date, it is made available for free-to-air TV. In addition to this movies are also made available in different countries at different times, which means that the US gets the good stuff way before we do in Sweden (or the rest of the world as they call us in the industry).

However… The Piratebay does not really care about this. Neither does any other illegal torrent or file sharing site or service. And why should they?

Why would I want to watch an old movie and pay for it when new movies that is available in the US is only available in Sweden on illegal sites and for free. My solution is to buy and rent on the US iTunes store. 

I am pretty sure there are a lot of us doing this, but no way near the amount of people just downloading the content they want on pirate sites instead.

All this makes it more difficult to see a movie in a legal way than it is to do so illegally.  Or put it like this; it’s easier, cheaper and as good (quality) to just steal the movie instead of buying it or renting it online.

To me that seems like a bad business decision…



11:44am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZKtdyvH7ja9F
(View comments) 
February 16, 2012
"When in doubt, start a Tumblr blog."

— Andreas Ahlenius

11:01am  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZKtdyvGVqdU9
(View comments) 
Liked posts on Tumblr: More liked posts »