Ahhh…much better. Music applications are more fun than advertising. The Internet, especially social networking sites, have been a great way for independent musicians to get their music out and appreciated. And consumers seem to really want this stuff.
It’s interesting how Facebook has affected the Internet music business. iLike launched with the launch of the Facebook platform, and has been an application for sharing music. It lets you add music to your profile and find your favorite concerts. Somewhat differently, MOG is a platform for music bloggers (there are currently about 600 music blogs). Although it also launched with Facebook, it had to cut off the spigot and re-tune its back end to handle the traffic. It’s more of a trusted source. People meet people through MOG; it allows them to find out who’s most like them musically. But for making money? It’s an advertising-based model.
ReverbNation is different; it is focussed on the artists. Because the economics of the music business have changed, a band has to get rid of its record label. The new model is to go direct. But then how do you market? Radio has gone as a means of marketing music, so ReverbNation helps artists push their content out and collect, manage, and talk to fans.
Behind this model is the assumption that every band has a hundred fans, many of whom are rabid and will spread the word. ReverbNation aggregates and extends the fans of the band. But more interesting: the founder is one of the sellers of DoubleClick, and this is his third venture-backed company.
Last company: SpliceMedia.com, the place for finding, making, and sharing free music on the web. They have the only real time sequencer and audio engine on the web. It corrects for the latency that’s built into flash, which lets them do real time synthesizing and virtual effects.
The music business consists of a small number of highly driven core creators who create an inventory of new sounds. Then there’s a larger group of casual creators who do a lot of remixing. This creates an inventory that can be used by people who use music in presentations and slide shows.
There are 26,000 people on their beta site. The top .2% have created an inventory of 14 songs a month. The next 20% of splicers and consumers create 25,000 songs a year. There have been 460,000 songs downloaded.
All the songs are community policed right now and adhere to a Creative Commons License.
I love what’s happening to the music business, and I loved hearing that there were parallels to the iStockphoto concept. This seems to me a much better way to monetize than the video people were sharing in the last panel.
