News Corp Gives MySpace Just Months To Improve

Just as the new MySpace logo dropped the word "space,  MySpace execs saw their own space to improve the social network evaporate yesterday as News Corp executives put them on notice during an investors call.  MySpace was given less than a year to turn the newly redesigned ship around as Chase Carey, News Corp's president, declared  MySpace "a problem". "The current losses are not acceptable or sustainable. Our current management did not create these losses but they know we have to address them," he stated. Quarterly losses at MySpace have jumped by $30 million  to $156 million.

"Traffic numbers are still not going in the right direction", continued Carey and "we judge (performance) in quarters, not in years". He said that last week's redesign of  "has been generally well received by the opinion makers in the business but we recognize the critical issue is building interest with consumers".
If stats don't improve at MysSpace in the next few quarters, a sale rather than a shut down is expected.

Make Attractive Physical Objects Fans Want To Buy

Over at Pirate Verbatim, a new blog that chronicles artists' thoughts on file-sharing, a great quote went up from Phil Elverum. He's the man behind Mount Eerie and The Microphones. Phil doesn't have strong opinions on music piracy, but argues that it's pointless to try and stop. Rather than worry about the behavior and how it affects his music, he makes "physically attractive objects that seem worthy of purchase." He says that he probably owes 80% of his success to the fact that fans can hear his music for free to see if they like it.

"My approach to the question of making a living off this “work” has been to make physically attractive objects that seem worthy of purchase. Of course there will be people who don’t care about owning an object, or maybe don’t have any money, or maybe who live in Siberia, and so they can just find a way to hear it for free if they want to. I don’t think there’s an inherent moral duty for the listener to support the singer. In the broad historical perspective music is frivolous non-work and we are lucky to have time to make it at all.

There is a new way taking shape that no one knows yet. Trying to impose the old model of lucrative systems of parasitic labels, managers, agents, distributors, etc., on the new reality is a little blind. For me, the simplest is best, so I am putting out my own records, mostly ignoring the internet, and doing as much as possible myself. It’s working."

GATE 718 !! Brooklyn stand up!! on Twitpic

GATE 718 !! Brooklyn stand up!! on Twitpic

Browser Audio Recording Gives the Web a Voice

BY: Eliot Van Buskirk | Print Article | Post a Comment |

This post originally appeared on Evolver.fm. Eliot Van Buskirk is Editor in Chief at Evolver.fm, Lead Analyst at The Echo Nest.
The Rainbow Add-On for FireFox lets web pages record and play back audio and video easily within a browser, with big implications for music, communications, and comments sections.
Mozilla, which makes the FireFox browser you might be reading this with, has a way to let regular webpages record audio and video and play them back with only a few lines of simple code rather than the more complicated Flash technology usually required for in-browser recording today.
This might sound like a wonky technical detail, but ultimately, it has big implications for people in general and music fans in particular.
Once web browsers can literally hear what you’re listening to (and see you, assuming you’ve given them permission, of course), they’ll be able to identify music playing in other programs or in the cafe where you’re sitting; record karaoke or more advanced audio projects directly onto the web; let you hear what your favorite artists are recording; and other fun stuff developers have yet to dream up.
For now, we must surrender the fantasy of ranting, finally, with our own actual voices, into the comments sections of columns with which we disagree — if only due to the early stage of this technology. Mozilla released an early, Mac-only, FireFox 3.5-only version of the Add-On on Thursday, which it’s calling Rainbow on Thursday, apparently so-named because it pairs so nicely with the term “cloud computing.”
And the name is fitting. Music increasingly lives in the cloud (accessible on the web or in internet-connected mobile apps), so an easy recording/playback standard like this will create a new connection with that cloud that lets us record and play back audio in more places on the web. As with many early ideas, this one will likely spread, and Mozilla’s simple <audio> tags could become a web standard. (For geeks: Mozilla Rainbow uses the open source audio codec Ogg Vorbis so developers don’t have to pay MP3 royalties in order to use it.)

News Corp Gives MySpace Just Months To Improve

Just as the new MySpace logo dropped the word "space,  MySpace execs saw their own space to improve the social network evaporate yesterday as News Corp executives put them on notice during an investors call.  MySpace was given less than a year to turn the newly redesigned ship around as Chase Carey, News Corp's president, declared  MySpace "a problem". "The current losses are not acceptable or sustainable. Our current management did not create these losses but they know we have to address them," he stated. Quarterly losses at MySpace have jumped by $30 million  to $156 million.

"Traffic numbers are still not going in the right direction", continued Carey and "we judge (performance) in quarters, not in years". He said that last week's redesign of  "has been generally well received by the opinion makers in the business but we recognize the critical issue is building interest with consumers".
If stats don't improve at MysSpace in the next few quarters, a sale rather than a shut down is expected.

What Is A Brand?

Artists today are constantly told to promote their brand, but do you know what a brand is exactly? Brands help fans identify artists and can range from your sound to the clothes you wear.  To maintain your brand, artists should be consistent in persona and sound. Bobby cites Madonna and The Beatles as good brands. It’s very important to know yourself and be consistent in your brand.

“A brand is a promise of quality and consistency....Regardless of what genre of music the artist delves into, the feel is the same and you can tell it’s the artist at first listen.”

Jean Renard said...

The danger in creating a brand is how one defines consistency, increasingly rather than being consistently innovative or changing, consistency means "identical" with sound alike tracks and homogeneous production. Innovation is frowned upon and any divergence from the sound is also seen as bad.
Nothing is more terrifying to an artist than having a hit, then having to repeat that hit.
It is amusing that the names we remember most are the innovators yet we fund the safe bets.

New Facebook Friendship Pages Offer Opportunity For Social Savvy Musicians

Facebook launched Frendship Pages to allow users to follow interactions between two other Facebok friends. Friendship pages include public Wall posts and comments between the two, photos in which both are tagged, events they RSVP'd for together and more. Users can see a friendship page if they are friends with one of the people and have permission to view both people's profiles.  Imagine what a social savvy musicians and their fans can do with Facebook Friendship Pages:

• A musician could friend a fan and their fan community could follow the interactions.
• Interactions between two band members can be shared publicly.
• A fan could follow the interactions of just their two favorite band members.
• Two fans could build excitement for an upcoming show or release together.
• Imagine a scavenger hunt with clues shared between two friends...

How might you use Facebook's new Friendship Pages?