Pribek

One of the reasons that I decided to screw with MySpace earlier this year was this; MySpace was floating around a future promise that indie musicians would eventually get paid.

See, the majors all signed deals with MySpace Music. Since music is a big part of social networking and drives a lot of traffic to MySpace it looked like a good idea. The details were fuzzy but, the pitch went something like; artists would get paid when their song was played, including plays on other users playlists. And, artists would also share in the ad revenue.

But…only the major label affiliated artists.

But…at some point indie artists would get the same opportunity. You know…big things around the corner type jive.

And really, it would only be right because there is so much of an indie presence on MySpace.

Anyway, MySpace Music has now, finally, started to fulfill that promise and guess what? They found an easy, sleazy, cheesy way to do it.

They are working in partner with TuneCore. Now, as far as I know, this only goes for the ad revenue part of it not the spins. In short, in order to ever have a ghost of a chance to see any dough, an artist has to have a TuneCore account and every song has to be distributed through TuneCore. Doesn’t matter if you’ve had your stuff up for years driving traffic to and filling MySpace’s pockets; you would need to re-upload them and distribute through TuneCore.

From Digital Music News…

Typical MySpace ads are low-CPM, and for smaller artists with niche or developing audiences, the payouts are likely to be paltry.

That introduces the question of whether artists will make substantially more than the TuneCore setup costs. Unfortunately, ad-based payouts are often so anemic that the question must be asked. In conversations Monday, neither MySpace nor TuneCore would offer Digital Music News any estimate of what an artist could expect to receive, or even percentage or CPM specifics.

But the TuneCore costs are easy to determine, depending on the number of songs. Starting fees are $19.98 (renewed annually) for any album, and each distribution point (iTunes, MySpace Music) requires a 99-cent, one-time fee per song.

One thing you don’t hear much about is how indie musicians get nickled and dimed to death in order to use the Internet to build revenue. I will flat guarantee you this; there is far more money being made by people who “offer services” to indie musicians than there is money being made by musicians.

How many plays on MySpace do you think it will take an indie to make $20.00 in ad money?

1. I guarantee you’ll never get an estimated number.
2. If you could, the number would blow your mind (100,000 plays=$20.00…1,000,000=$20.00? My guess…probably somewhere in between).
3. I GUARANTEE it’s no where close to the deal the majors are getting.

And here’s the thing, internet advertising efficiency isn’t determined by CPM. All advertising efficiency depends on the number of impressions…the number of times an ad is seen.

Here’s an example; a couple of people have told me they went to see the movie “Pirate Radio” after seeing the ad hundreds of times on my site. They didn’t click on the ad but, they put their dollars down after being saturated for a while. So, it isn’t easy math for the advertiser. They can’t judge success by any one source of impressions. They look at the number of total impressions and how many people went to see the film and then they do some ciphering and guesswork and theorize on what worked and what didn’t.

So, at a place like MySpace…they got zillions of users, zillions of bands and zillions of impressions. When they get the check from the people finder people or the cheesy dating service people, they cut a check to the labels for a disproportionate amount of the impressions, ’cause they have to have them on board.

The indies, aren’t going to be viewed on a basis of how many impressions they produce and, they will get a disproportionately low amount after they paid a fee to get their horse in the race (with no doubt, a kick back going back to MySpace) because, even if they garner the same amount of business, the proletariat is too spread out and lemming like.

That’s how the long tail gets screwed.

Bottom line is:

It’s House Odds…

…and…

MySpace Sucks Even More Than You Think!!!

In the latter part of ‘08, I was hearing that MySpace was on the verge of pulling off some moves that would change the music landscape.

They were negotiating deals with the major labels that would allow users to freely add songs to their personal, profile playlists. Also, labels and label artists would be compensated when those songs were played on user profiles.

That right there is a big deal. Conceivably, any MySpace account could become a micro version of an internet radio station.

Right off the bat, the independent musicians were getting the short end. While label songs were allowed on user playlists, indies weren’t. But, that soon changed. Users were able to add indie songs but, unlike the labels, the indies would not see any royalties for those spins on user profiles.

Now, the promise was (and is) that, at some point, indies would get paid for their spins as well as the label artists. Which, seems only fair if the music is being used to drive overall traffic to MySpace and traffic to individual profiles.

As an independent musician/producer, I thought; “This could be the real leveling of the playing field. It is the opportunity to find listeners, build an audience, have direct contact with them and…access the same venue for spins as label artists.”

So, in April I started the MySpace Experiment.

Jack’s MySpace Experiment

First off, I had an existing MySpace Music profile that I started in 2006. I had under 100 friends and, I didn’t do much with it. I checked it every week or two to see if I had any correspondence.

The experiment was simple in concept; I was going to get pro-active with MySpace and promote my music. I set up some parameters…

1. I would not use any friend finding or spin generating software or devices.
2. I would approach people with friend requests but, I would treat those that accepted with the same respect and courtesy as traditional friends.

One thing I noticed right off from looking at other profiles of musicians/bands that I knew was, their friends were mostly other musicians and chicks in various stages of undress.

I have nothing against other musicians or chicks in various stages of undress but, the object here was to find music fans. I was looking for regular people that enjoy music.

After a bit of experimentation, I figured out a sort of system. I would pick an artist or band with whom I felt I had some common musical ground. I would simply look at their friends and find ones that looked like music fans and invite them to be my friend. I didn’t invite bands or obvious “model with portfolio” looking types. If a band or the like found me and invited me to be their friend, I always accepted but, I wasn’t seeking them.

When people accepted my invite, I always left a personalized comment on their profile. When people sent me messages, I replied and conversed…simple stuff.

I came up with a couple of tricks to encourage folks to return to my profile. I changed my “Influences” daily. I would just write a stream of consciousness thing every morning and my profile would show as being “Updated” every day. Also, in my status bar, I would write a daily question…”Are you a dog person or a cat person?”…something like that. People would leave comments and start a dialog sometimes, all good clean fun.

Here are the rough numbers after almost three months.

3,500 Friends
21,000 Profile Visits
18,000 Plays

Here’s the part that, for some reason, I didn’t expect; I met a lot of great people. I mean GREAT people. I met witty, intelligent, Spiritual, inspirational and down to earth people. I met people I would have never met otherwise that are and will continue to be real deal friends.

It didn’t last. It came to my attention that all of my emails sent through the MySpace system and all of my friend requests were being marked as spam. Why? I wondered…excerpt from an email from the MySpace team…

Our system detected that a significant number of users marked your friend requests and/or messages as spam. As a result, all of your correspondence has been routed to junk folders.

Fair enough…I was, after all, contacting complete strangers and, in essence, trying to get them to take a listen to my music. And even though many just don’t accept friend invitations from bands, some flag them as spam.

So, what do I do to get off of this double secret probation?

Your account will be unflagged if several messages that have been sent to users’ spam folders are specifically marked as ‘not spam’. Your messages will no longer show up in recipients’ inboxes until your account is unflagged, so users will have to go into their spam folders to mark the messages as ‘not spam’. This can be done with one user, or many, so long as enough messages are marked as ‘not spam’.

Amazing! MySpace is saying I could get one user to mark a bunch of my messages as “not spam” and I would be off the hook. MySpace is giving me tips on how to game the system to my advantage after I’ve been accused of gaming the system!

So, I started my experiment to see if MySpace was actually a viable way to reach out to people and build on a fan base. What I’ve learned is that it does have that potential; more so than Facebook or YouTube exactly because it is easier to approach people that you don’t already know. That and the fact that MySpace has at least promised to cut indies in on some future revenue are the most appealing features to an indie musician.

But, it isn’t viable if you have to game the system in order to keep on good standing. And, thus ends the MySpace experiment.

Hopefully the friends that I’ve met will follow me back to my own little corner of the web here, where I’m not being monitored by a “metric”. They will always be welcome.

So, I had this meeting with Bill Dees yesterday. The idea was to come up with some sort of plan regarding the release and promotion of his new record. Step by step stuff, some things need to be put in place, like a website and the artwork blah, blah blah.

Part of the reason I keep up with all of these guys that profess wisdom about music 2.0 is that, from time to time, I am involved in this indie music circus on a real level and, it’s always a situation where you need to maximize resources. What’s the best way to go about this, eh?

Bill, by the way, is sort of detached from the goings on in the music industry. You can be that way if you wrote one of the top 5 airplay songs of all time. So, I’m talking about how vastly the landscape has changed since Bill’s last record (“Castin’ My Spell” ‘06) and I realize, I’m trying to explain how Radiohead parlayed giving the album away into a successful venture, to a guy that played the Ed Sullivan show the year I was born; to a guy that toured with the Beatles and the Stones in the early days of mania for both. Bill just kind of rolls with the punches and, I think he came away with a sort of, let’s not put expectations too high, let’s have some fun with it, hey, I think we got a good record here attitude.

Anyway, Bill had his fill of the talk and said; “Let’s go get something to eat”. He’s like that, a meeting isn’t a meeting, a social situation isn’t official until we break bread. I said; “Well, I’m going to have to follow you because, I don’t know my way around these boondocks”. So, Bill knows a Mexican place, I am going to follow him there and then we’ll part ways after dining.
Bill is 69 years old a survivor of life, the music industry, quadruple bypass surgery and he is now a man at peace walking in the Spirit. Mild mannered and jovial.

He gets in his Jeep and takes off down the two lane black top like his ass is on fire. I’m having trouble even keeping him in my sights. We get to this crossroads and there is traffic coming. I know we have to turn left to get to Forsyth which, is like 4-5 miles, and that’s the part where I really need to follow him; when we get towards town.

Bill hesitates for a second and then, he just can’t stand it, I know he knows that I need to follow but, he just can’t do it-he pulled out in front of the traffic. Now, his move wasn’t all that risky but, if I would have pulled out behind him well, it wasn’t worth finding out. So, he’s just flying down the road and I’m sitting there waiting for nine cars to pass before I can go.

And, I had to laugh because, I realize that no matter what has happened, deep down this guy is still the crazy, red assed, roughneck, teenager from the windswept plains of Borger that was digging Elvis and rock and roll when it really happened. That spirit is still in him, you can’t get it out of him. And, that’s why he still wants to sing and make records.

As, I pulled through town, I spotted the Mexican place, the Jeep and Bill Dees grinning from ear to ear and, I pulled in.

“Sorry, about that Jack, those cars seemed like they sped up after I pulled out in front of ‘em. I thought you were going to give it shot anyway. I think you could’ve made it”.