Study Offers Insight Into Music Consumer Behavior – Guest Blog

Insight Into Music consumer Behavior

By Glenn Peoples

A new study by the Pew/Internet & American Life Project titled “The Internet and Consumer Choice: Online Americans Use Different Search and Purchase Strategies for Different Goods” (main page, 42-page PDF of study) examines how Americans use the Internet to buy music and search for information. It offers great insight into the importance of pre-Internet mass media like TV and radio as well as traditional word of mouth, and it shows how different age groups have different preferences for formats and pre- and post-purchase behaviors.

Motown’s Secrets of Success: DIY Style – Guest Blog

Motown's Secrets of Success: DIY Style

By Carla Lynne Hall

Berry Gordy, the founder and CEO of legendary Motown Records developed a simple plan in the early days of his record company:

“I broke down my whole operation into three functions: Create, Make, Sell. I felt any business had to do that. Create something, Make something and then Sell it. Using this phrase as a slogan kept my thinking in focus.”

Solving the Digital Music Distribution Dilemma – Guest Blog

Solving the Digital Music Distribution Dilemma

By Chris Terschluse

The paid-download world of digital music is a tricky beast to tame.   Artists continue to struggle to generate revenue even though they can easily establish a distribution network via iTunes, eMusic, Amazon, CDbaby.com, and so on.

Here lies the problem. Digital distribution is fragmented among only a few big players. Consumers continue to remain loyal to their chosen distribution networks whether it be iTunes or a bitorrent site like Mininova.  When a person hears a new band or song, it is almost instinctual that they Google the name and stumble onto either a MySpace page or an artist website.   Discovery is not the issue.  The issue arises when someone hopes to buy the music, but is forced to search through iTunes, see if the band is available on eMusic, or scour the web for torrent files.   From a user experience perspective, this deters a good amount of the target audience away from seeking out actual copies of the music in exchange for the ability to stream music.

Everything You Need To Know About Careers In Audio Branding – Guest Blog

Careers In Audio Branding

via careersthatdontsuck.com

Ever wonder who came up with the N-B-C chime or the “ker-chung” sound for Law & Order: SVU?  How about the music for those Starbuck’s and Pottery Barn CDs?  Bet you thought the music playing in hotel lobbies was just Muzak.  Wrong.  There’s actually a whole career field devoted to composing and selecting the right sounds–notes, chords, sound effects, music–for businesses and their products.  That field is Audio Branding, and we’re profiling it in today’s post.

What kinds of jobs exist in the Audio Branding field?

The Music Product Manifesto – Guest Blog

Refe Tuma

By Refe Tuma

The latest music business report from the Forrester Research Group hasn’t produced the kind of buzz that the last one did. That’s likely because while the previous report did have some solid ideas, it wasn’t the answer people were looking for.

The report is called Music Product Manifesto: The Product Features That Will Save Recorded Music. (I know – I hate titles like that too.) This time around researcher Mark Mulligan focus on music product innovation. “In 2009, the album celebrates it’s 100th birthday and yet remains the centerpiece of the recorded music product portfolio,” Mulligan writes. “The time has come for a radical overhaul of the recorded music product range.”

Working With Music Libraries – Guest Blog

Working With Music Libraries

By Ed Teja

If you are trying to break into the world of writing for film and television, one important marketing resource is music libraries. In general, these are nothing more or less than clearing houses for music.

Rules Untangling the Music Library Dilemma – Guest Blog

Rules For Untangling the Music Library Dilemma

By Ed Teja

In response to my blog A Songwriter’s Marketing Strategy, Muhammed Babajide commented that he had written a number of songs, and then asked: “are these songs good enough, and if they are who would my contact be at the library? What do libraries use them for and when do I get paid?”

Global Digital Music Market Will Grow to $13.74 Billion by 2013 – Guest Blog

Global Digital Music Market Will Grow to $13.74 Billion by 2013

via Reuters.com

DUBLIN--(Business Wire)--
Research and
Markets(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/f49fd2/the_digital_music) has
announced the addition of the "The Digital Music Market Outlook: Evolving
Business Models, Key Players, New Challenges and the Future Outlook" report to
their offering. 

The increasing adoption of broadband and mobile technologies and the widespread
adoption of smartphones and portable music playing devices continue to drive the
digital music market. The music industry landscape is undergoing major
structural changes as companies from other industries become integrated into
music distribution, and business models transform to adapt to changing market
demands. Piracy remains a major concern in the industry, with losses from
illegal downloads running into billions of dollars.