MixedContent

Just a reminder to everyone in the bay area that the second SF Music Tech Summit, hosted by the talented Brian Zisk is taking place tomorrow, May 8th at the Kabuki Hotel.

I have the pleasure to moderate a “tech talk” panel at 1:00pm on building music related web apps with:

• Tom Conrad - Pandora
• Marc Urbaitel - In Ticketing
• Ethan Kaplan - Warner Bros.
• Jack Moffitt - Chesspark / Xiph
• Jeremy Riney - Playlist.com

Lessons learned from last SF Music Summit: Easy on the soju cocktails…

Should be a blast, and I hope to see you all there.

Posted on: 08.05.07 | no comments

In it’s opening week, Grand Theft Auto has taken in more then $500 million dollars. That’s a lot of loot. To put it in perspective, let’s compare this weekend take to earnings from various films. The top 5 grossing films of all time (based on US sales) are:

• Titanic - $600,788,188 (1997)
• Star Wars - $460,998,007 (1977)
• Shrek 2 - $441,226,247 (2004)
• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial - $435,110,554 (1982)
• Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace - $431,088,301 (1999)

So Grand Theft Auto just grossed more in it’s first week, then Star Wars has (domestically) since it’s release in 1977? Sure that’s some big numbers, but the game probably cost a fortune to make right? Grand Theft Auto is rumored to be the most expensive video game ever produced, with estimates nearing the $100 million mark. But films are not cheap to make either of course. Consider the 5 most costly films:

• Titanic (1997) - $200,000,000
• Waterworld (1995) - $175,000,000
• Armageddon (1998) - $140,000,000
• Lethal Weapon (1998) - $140,000,000
• Godzilla (1998) - $125,000,000

So while Grand Theft Auto still has a ways to go to catch up the highest world grossing film (The Titanic at $1,834,779,000), it also cost half as much to produce, and has only been out for one week.

The moral of the story? Start a video game company now.

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Live Nation just signed a 12 year deal with U2 , as the group walks away from Universal Music. This is hot on the heals of Madonna’s defection from Warner Bros. last year, which saw her sign a 10 year deal with Live Nation, worth $120 million.

As CD’s are on their way (quickly) to cultural irrelevance, Live Nation is on a tear signing up artists for deals linked to merchandising and tour dollars - one of the areas in the music industry that is experiencing growth (live nation revenues grew 12.8% last year).

In even bigger news, top grossing touring act The Rolling Stones are rumored to be in discussions with Live Nation. The Stones contract with EMI comes up for renewal this summer.

Slightly unsettling is the emergence of a new monopolistic gate keeper in the Music Industry. Nothing new, of course…

Update: Jay-Z just signed up with Live Nation too, for $150 million!
Quote:

“I’ve turned into the Rolling Stones of hip hop.”

Nice…

Posted on: 08.03.31 | no comments

GQ has a must read interview with Keith Richards. It’s amazing the man is alive and still (reasonably) coherent.

Standout quote:

Keith: Apparently, I do have an incredible immune system. I had hepatitis C and cured it by myself.
Q: How?
Keith: Just by being me.

Posted on: 08.03.28 | no comments

I ran into this very cool post from Joe Lazarus, in which he describes the steps to link last.fm, Pipes, the Yahoo! Media Player and Tumblr together to make your own music site in 10 minutes.

If you follow the clear and straight forward instructions in his example, what you end up with is an automated way to post mp3s to your music blog, based on what you’re playing on your local computer. With the inclusion of the Yahoo Media player on the page, it’s easy to listen to the whole lot through a browser. Pretty neat, for 10 minutes of work!

It’s genius is how it turns the (mostly) passive activity of listening to music into a content creating endeavor (albeit, an automated endeavor). The newest version of the Yahoo player even has a ‘buy’ button, that lets you link in your own Amazon affiliate code. On the Yahoo! Media Player wiki, Lucas Gonze points out:

What’s interesting about this button is that it automates a crucial but neglected part of the ecosystem for net media. Monetization shouldn’t be a manual operation. Music bloggers, for example, usually have a little blurb in their sidebar encouraging visitors to buy recordings associated with the songs they post. They do this out of a kind of musical environmentalism concerned with ensuring a flow of recordings to discover, keep, love, and post. However, it’s a lot of labor for a blogger to set up a purchase link for every track. An upsell link needs to be part of their infrastructure along with comments, RSS, and other basics. With this feature we’re making purchase flows a standard part of the tools for web media.

So every time someone buys a track after listening to it on my Tumblr blog, I get something like a nice shiny nickle. In theory, this means one could get paid to listen to music - truly my dream job. All I need is more traffic, and better taste in music ;)

Thanks Joe!

Check out the end result (still in desperate need of some themeing)
http://music.mixedcontent.com/

Posted on: 08.03.19 | 2 comments