Monetise your music content: Mixeeba

Mixeeba are a music affiliate system that enables content providers to monetise content by linking to music download stores.  

As they describe below:

Mixeeba originally started life as a website for hosting DJ mixes. DJs uploaded their mix and entered the tracklist in a special format. We monetised the website by displaying the tracklist with an affiliate link to buy each track, making the tracklist interactive. We would search for each track from download stores likeBeatport, Juno Download, Traxsource and iTunes.Others on the web, however, were also tackling DJ mix hosting and websites likeMixcloud, Let's Mix and SoundCloud were, we thought, doing a better job than we were. We decided to focus solely on what we were doing well: finding where to buy the tracks being played. As such we're now able to help other music-related websites successfully monetise their own content.

This basically means that if you advertise DJ mixes or Tunes on your blog that in return for providing a link and promoting a product you receive a share of the sales.  The exact % of the sales return depends on which outlet you advertise. 

The Rates Mixeeba pay are detailed below:

By Jez with 1 comment

Internet Marketing Dirty tricks: Mayor of New York to learn to code

According to the BBC "New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has resolved to take an online computer coding course.

The mayor is joining more than 180,000 people currently taking part in Code Year, a campaign to encourage more people to programme.

"My New Year's resolution is to learn to code with Codeacademy in 2012!" he wrote on Twitter.

- BBC  6th January 2012.

"Participants in the course receive an interactive lesson each week, via email.

The campaign promises that participants will be "building apps and websites before you know it".

It has proved a hit on Twitter with thousands using the hashtag "#codeyear"."

Codeyear is a campaign by the company codeacademy - the company mentioned so prominently in the article.  The whole article reads like a press release for the company, and I would bet my hat that it's wording originated in codeacademy's PR department.

It may be somewhat surprising to learn that companies can manipulate large news organisations into running adverts as news items, but it is a trick used by PR agencies all the time.  Nick Davies in his excellent book "Flat Earth News" exposes how propoganda (government and PR related) is disseminated into the main stream media through the pressures on news organisations to produce a large amount of content quickly.

There are several obvious giveaways when looking for PR planted news stories:

1. A prominent mention of a company, or campaign run by a company / political organisation
2. The article will espouse specific benefits of the product
3. The article will mention research by a grassroots organisation
4. Often the company's product addresses a specific outcome of that research by providing a solution.

Codeacademy's campaign is doubly effective in that they have leveraged a major figure to promote their campaign - Mayor Bloomberg (One wonders what he was offered in return).

As the BBC pointed out in their expose on Internet Marketing here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b018xy2b/The_Internet_Millionaires_Club/

Twitter testimonials are often a valuable tool for internet marketing.

By Jez with 2 comments

Louis CK on Direct Music Sales

Comedian Louis CK has weighed in with a status report on the first four days of his experiment with independent, DRM-free video distribution. CK spent $170,000 recording live performances consisting of previously unaired material ("every new generation of material I create is my income, it's like a farmer's annual crop") and made it available online direct from a site that he spent a further $32,000 on for $5, without any DRM. In four days, CK recouped the $200,000 outlay and made an additional $200,000, and sales are still holding strong (I just bought a copy).

The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we've sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.

I really hope people keep buying it a lot, so I can have shitloads of money, but at this point I think we can safely say that the experiment really worked. If anybody stole it, it wasn't many of you. Pretty much everybody bought it. And so now we all get to know that about people and stuff. I'm really glad I put this out here this way and I'll certainly do it again. If the trend continues with sales on this video, my goal is that i can reach the point where when I sell anything, be it videos, CDs or tickets to my tours, I'll do it here and I'll continue to follow the model of keeping my price as far down as possible, not overmarketing to you, keeping as few people between you and me as possible in the transaction.

From Boing Boing:  http://boingboing.net/2011/12/15/louis-cks-drm-free-direct-sa.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

By Jez with 1 comment

Like us on facebook - follow us on twitter!

If you would like to connect with us on Facebook - please like us on our facebook page here:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/We-are-the-Music-Industry/111269045625970

Follow us on twitter:

http://twitter.com/#!/WAMI_Blog

By Jez with 1 comment

SYNC UP- SUCCESS IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS?

Kristin Hersch from throwing muses, George Howard, co-founder of tunecore and Peter Hinberger, manager of Dr John talk about making music from sync-ups - music licensing, why people feel they still  need a major label to make it big and whether it is actually possible to make money from sync-ups - that is music on TV or film.

Sync-ups seem to be the hot topic in music conferences - and the so-called saviour of independant musicians.  But there seems to be some doubt about how these work in practice, for example, some large TV networks now appear to be asking for unsigned musicians to send music in, but will not pay them for it's use - not even PRS royalties.  The excuse they give is "it's promotion for the artist".

When competition is so fierce and young, upcoming artists are happy to be exploited in this way - how can an artist survive?  Interested to know your thoughts below...

By Jez with No comments

Live Dubstep Wobbling using Synapse for Kinect

An Exciting new Kinect hack from Synapse - the ability to manipulate live dubstep basslines by movement:

They explain how it works below:

By Jez with No comments

How much does a hit song cost? $1,078,000

Yup - that's right $1,078,000 - well, according to NPR.  "In this case it was Rhianna's "Man Down" - a big budget, blockbuster-style blowout that remains unproven" - so writes http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/

But is this a surprise?  It's always been somewhat depressing to know that the lowest common denominator "sure-fire hit" has always been prevalent within the pop world.  The fact that marketing budgets command the biggest slice of a song's "manufacture" is pretty much a given - the biggest change is that instead of trying to command a closed market of which they are the gate keepers - now the record labels are up against all of us. 

The marketplace is crowded with lots and lots of upstarts vying for your attention so it's only natural that if a company really wants to push something they have two choices.

Come up with a clever idea and Go Viral:

Or if you can afford it - buy the maximum amount of publicity available.

One of the heartening things to come out of this article is that, despite all the doom and gloom surrounding the music industry - clearly the record companies still think there's enough life left in her to invest that amount of money - it's also heartening to see that musicians and song writers are being paid - even if they have to produce Lowest Common Denominator stuff to do so.

Now i'm not sure whether anyone has done a, er, cost analysis of Viral videos - but i think judging by the views of the OK GO! video above - they're pretty rewarding.  All you need is a video camera (which with the advent of cheap DSLR's with film quality is not beyond hiring at any rate), someone who can edit and a good idea. 

By Jez with 1 comment