Free Music

Love it or love it not? Good relationship with it or bad?

I recently flipped through a magazine article on music and wrote down an entire list of artists/bands it mentioned that I thought I would like to sample. After categorizing them and crossing off the ones I was already familiar with, I got onto Amazon's MP3 downloads site and started a search that lasted me a couple of hours more than I had planned. I love spending an afternoon in the fantastical tangled web of music sampling. Unfortunately, for me it's too easy to download the free music Amazon offers and not purchase anything (and purchased music is generally the better music, since you get what you pay for).

You might not be able to relate--some people's music habits cost them thousands of dollars a year and others, like me, are just plain cheap about it. Theoretically and on principle, I have great respect for musicians and the time and work they put into their craft. Especially because I consider myself a musician. It's not cheap to make an album, so it shouldn't be cheap for me to listen.

So is free music good for me and the general public, or bad? For the artist, it's a useful marketing tool. But the question is, do we use it as the "appetizer" it should be that encourages us to buy more songs, or do we treat it how we treat other things we don't invest in: without the value it and the artist deserves?

Do you download free music? Is it good or bad for your music searches?

Groove Armada and Bacardi Pyramid Scheme

I recently read that Bacardi and Groove Armada (GA) partnered in a social networking experiment to, "embrace free music while giving it value", according to a GA band member. Music Ally, a blog I try to follow, is fond of the experiment.
Here's the dirt: one may download Track One of GA's new album entirely free. In order to download subsequent tracks, one must pass Track One on to other people via any number of methods including widgets on Facebook. To get Track Two reach must be 20 people. Track Three requires reach from Track One to be 200. Track Four is 2,000; presumably track five is 20,000. Oh, and there is a time limit - forty days - after which I presume you can just buy the entire album (but I don't know). Music Ally loves the idea and is working hard to build up its reach (see update).

Let's do some math:
I have a lot of friends on Facebook with friend densities of 35-100. I also have a few friends who are in the 300-5,000 density range. Let's be generous and say that the average is about 200 Friends. Let's also assume that one in every four friends likes GA or Bacardi rum and thus wants to try to get some tracks off the new album. Then these 50 people send it to their network, which consists of 200 people. Let's assume that everyone that receives track one tries it (big assumption). Let's also assume that the networks do not overlap (also a big assumption).
10,000 people get Track One free.
50 people get Track Two and Track Three free.
Then, if each of those 10,000 send Track One to 50 friends who try it, we're at 500,000 free downloads of Track One.
10,000 friends get to try Track Two.
All in forty days...like Lent.

If this is going to work, Track One and Track Two better be spectacular! There is a big difference between getting something for free and choosing to buy it without a sample - even if it is less than a dollar.
I bet this is the longest forty days of Bacardi's and GA's life!

There are a few reasons I like this:

• It's a new approach to giving value to free downloads; it's sort of creative and it's a start.
• If done properly (partnered with sponsors (Baccardi) holding lots of cash) it can really build a buzz.
• This could work really well with an entire catalogue - either artist's catalogue or label catalogue, but that would require a music search engine that bases searches on something relevant, like...music (like Hounds to the Music is creating).
  

And more reasons that I don't:

• Pyramid Scheme. GA is the Amway of music.
  
• If you're going to have a timeline for such a promotion, you've got to have a lot of launch momentum to get the word out - the first fans to download Track One are key and there better be a lot of them. This is tough for budget-conscious independent, emerging musicians trying to make a buzz.
• What if you don't like Track One or Track Two? If you don't you won't spend much time trying to get Track Three for free.
• A better idea is to have your choice of next tracks to download after track one, provided you meet the "reach goals". I'm not sure why this was not an option - maybe it was too challenging logistically.
  
• GA can put all the great tracks at the top of the album and leave the let's-just-finish-quickly-songs after track four. Did they do that?
  
• Is coaxing your 2,000 best friends to download music so that you can benefit with another track really the best use of your time? Or would you rather spend the $3 for the first four tracks? If you really dig GA, you'll probably spend much more than that to get your choice of songs from the album.

And your thoughts?

Developing Taste

I'm a new blogger on Hounds to the Music. If you're like me, you appreciate knowing where writers are coming from before you subject yourself to their strong opinions (musicians always have strong opinions). So it's only fair to share a little about my music interests before I dive into things.

I grew up playing piano and french horn (my mom was a piano teacher and my dad a band director) so I have a classical background. My parents listened to New Age piano music like David Lanz and George Winston, so when I first started writing my own songs on the piano, that's what dripped out of my fingers. It drove me crazy. I didn't venture out and start listening to my own music until junior high and high school, but I still didn't have my bearings. It was a matter of switching on the car radio and playing the top 40 because I was young and didn't know any better. (But let's admit it--the 90's was a pretty decent era, wasn't it? REM? Counting Crows? Blues Traveler? Cranberries? Ah, the memories...)

Luckily by late college I had finally formed a solid list of likes and dislikes. Like most musicians, my list of likes is a lot longer than the dislikes because variety is what makes the world and my ears spin:

Likes
Acoustic
Rock
Alternative rock
Pop
Punk
Hip-hop
R&B and Soul
Electronica
Jazz
Folk
Celtic
Latin
Classical
Musical Theatre (that is, if it can be a genre of its own. I'm a sucker for it)
some Emo (but not the whiny kind. Trust me, non-whiny Emo exists)

Dislikes
Opera
Country
Smooth jazz
Some rap (too much gets old)

Some favorite artists right now:
The Hush Sound: alternative rock/pop
Mates of State: alternative rock/pop
Iglu and Hartly: 80's hip-hop
Ben Folds (will always like him. Love piano rock)
Neil Cowley Trio: jazz
Greg Holden: acoustic/folk

Now I prefer to listen to indie music if I can wade through all the sites online that claim to have it. But it's difficult to find artists who have both good music and lyrics (although like Carl I'm a music person more than a lyrics person). It's difficult to find the kind of music that matches my mood at that particular time of day. It's difficult to find truly talented artists who know anything about music beyond the standard chord progressions, and who aren't just in it for the fame and money. But now, with this website on the horizon, no worries. Hounds will be the one-stop site that will match visitors with the perfect music.

Until then, maybe you have a better story to tell about your musical upbringing. What influenced you? When did you start listening to music you actually liked?

Muffin music discovery

I had recently heard about the new music discovery/recommendation site, Muffin. I finally gave it a shot.
Verdict: unimpressed.
I wasn't really playing fair though, to be entirely honest. I entered in the advanced search that I liked Jethro Tull and the track I wanted Muffin to recommend from was Kelpie. Actually, come to the think of it, considering how diverse Tull's songs can be, I may have been helping Muffin by suggesting a specific style of Tull.

My result:
1) Kelpie (hardly "new")
2) A blues band I've never heard of
3) Johnny Cash

Then when I tried to go to the next page, all went blank and all that was revealed was Kelpie. If you've heard this tune, you'll realize how off this actually is. Really, Johnny Cash?

Joker's Daughter - NPR Second Stage

This time of year NPR's Second Stage puts together their favorite songs of the year. I have always liked that NPR offers the opportunity for independent, unsigned artists to be highlighted in a national manner. I also like that the songs are highlighted, not necessarily the album. In this digital music age where individual songs can be downloaded and the physical packaging of an album is, at best superfluous, and at worst archaic, the definition of an "album" may become "playlist". I know it has been for me since my Sony Walkman cassette player. Just about every weekday during the calendar year there is a new song uploaded to the website to give a taste. The only problem with NPR's Second Stage platform of songs on display is that all the albums are reviewed by an Editor(s). If your music likes, dislikes, motivations, and agendas are identical to that guy (Robin Hilton), then you are golden; otherwise...time to sort (ye same ole story: how do I begin to sort?!).
So, I'm sorting through the songs leading up to the Top 10 Great Unknowns, From Second Stage, and after the seventh song, I found something that I was interested in. The song is called Worm's Head, by Joker's Daughter. It wasn't something I'd really say is "my genre", but it was interesting enough for me to press repeat a few times. I really enjoyed the melody and rhythmic nature as well as the various timbres. Give it a listen.

Problems and solutions (?)

So my previous post discussed the primary problem for listeners and musicians in this age of easy, cheap music recordings and everything internet:

Listeners: finding the right song

Artists: finding the right listeners

I glossed over how companies have approached solving this problem, but will address some of that here. There have been a lot of solutions, far more than I would want to get into on this post. Pandora may be the most logical and elegant so far - use known music to find new. It also lends itself to emerging artists something like 70%, but only 60,000 artists are present in the database and it is internet radio (which I'm not fond of). That said, it certainly has done well - an average of 2.3MM unqiue views per month according to Compete. Last.fm has also done well, albeit by using genre and social networking groups (average of 1.8MM unique visitors). (I'm not sure what percent of music on Last.fm is independent. Anyone know?)

These two sites have really caught people's attention and they should be proud of that (graph to the right), but they are not alone by any means. There are others out there trying to solve these problems too. Owl Multimedia is a really cool idea, but I'm honestly not yet convinced it works - it hasn't worked for me...yet. It also appears that I may not be the only one to think this, because so far it hasn't caught on (3,222 average unique visitors/month) according to Compete.

Then there are the hosting sites for independent artists. Of those that I've looked at Reverbnation does slightly better than Virb according to Compete (220K vs. 169K unique visitors/month average). Fuzz comes in a distant third with 11.7K.

The disparity in these numbers (successful modestly indpendent music search sites (Pandora) vs. mostly independent music hosting sites (Reverbnation, etc.) speaks volumes I think. It indicates that I'm not alone when I become frustrated scouring the sites for songs as a listener. When using Reverbnation, Virb, or Fuzz one resorts to the typical formulas: genre, band location, newness, and that popularity contest that I hated in high school. As an artist, one does all that one can do to get noticed - cool names, cool pics, but ultimately can only hope that the right people find one's tune, and as a former colleague of mine often said, "Hope is not a strategy". Truth be told, I've got original tunes posted on all three of these sites, and I'm really hoping that these tunes get noticed. The odds are against getting noticed by the right people randomly though...and that brings us right back to where we were when we started - we still have the problems.

Needles in haystacks - finding that tune

I must admit I'm pretty intimidated when I cruise over to a music hosting site like Reverbnation or Virb and try to find a tune I like. After the first few tunes I've spent time hunting for by genre I'm pretty impatient and irritated by the whole process. I'm impatient because of the time it takes to find something if, for example, I'm looking for Celtic music and find everything under the sun with "celtic" in the keyword, and I'm irritated because I ultimately decide on listening to a song because of the image or name associated with the artist, album or song. I've judged a book by its cover! I may miss the coolest tune, but alas have no "cue" to look for it. Perhaps this applies to me more than others simply because my music tastes tend to be on the outer rim of mainstream (there are some exceptions: loved early-career R.E.M, early Sting (solo), dig U2), but I'm sure everyone struggles with this to some degree. If there is someone out there who does not, I'd love to hear how you deal with tihs problem!


There are organizations that have brought in Web2.0 - I can think of many - to help sort through this problem by social networking, but there is always that someone that was the first to find a band/song/album. How did he/she do it? He or she must have some cue from somewhere. Moreover, is popularity really solving the problem? Just because "Roll out the Barrel" is well known doesn't make it interesting to listen to as discovery! It does make it easy to find, however.


The problem for listeners is finding something new and appropriate and the problem for emerging artists is getting listened to by the right group of listeners.

Hounds to the Music