Jul 14

The Value of Music + Data

Music Products, New Music Media, Party Line 1 Comment »

Topspin has a great concept: Drive all traffic and sales through the artist’s own website, not iTunes, Amazon or some label’s portal, and use music to create direct connections with fans.  That last part is half of the New Music Business Model; “Connect with Fans” and provide a “Reason to Buy” to generate sales.  Topspin’s great at connecting with fans.  It’s up to the artist to Connect with their own fans.

Topspin’s own business model is a bit wonky.  They take a cut of sales, so they’re selective about who gets in – they rely on a network of “partners” who serve as gate keepers, and they complicate engagement so it’s nearly impossible for individual bands to get in the front door.  So unless you’re already a star, you need a middleman, a pile of cash, or great determination to work with them.  What’s more, bands who make the least pay the most.  The terms are essentially punitive to slow sellers and true indies.  Trent Reznor and Radiohead get a way better deal than anyone you know.  But really, what else is new?  Topspin’s simply chosen a “pay to play” model with incentives for stars to help them pay the bills as they find their niche.

Topspin and CEO Ian Rogers get the new music business.   In this video he explains the intersection of music and data as they relate to selling songs.  And while Roger’s pimps Topspin as the tool of choice for obvious reasons, ordinary mortals can find the same tools on more open platforms, like ReverbNation and Bandcamp.

Still confused?  No worries.  Drop us a line, The All Night Party can help you get up and running in this new era.

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Nov 12

It’s The Merch, Stooopid!

Music Products No Comments »

Bill Clinton delivered an electoral beat-down Pappy Bush after realizing that in a recession, the economy was the most important thing on voters minds.  In this recession merchandise sales are the path to “jobdom” for today’s musical artist (“stardom” is ever-elusive).  But there’s a lot of competition for fan’s dollars.  Touring headliners have to sell alongside opening acts with less-expensive goods, and inside clubs selling their own swag across the bar.

The All Night Party takes this problem seriously, and studied the situation.  Starting with our “SceneStore” at the Midpoint Music Festival, and continuing to shows by our affiliated artists, including mallory’s slammin’ release party, we put our market research and conclusions to the test.  Here’s what we learned:

  • When it comes to merch, more is more.  All other things being equal, the band with merch covering the most different price points earns more than the band with less.  In other words: you need items to sell for $1-9, not just $10 and $15.
  • A strong merch table can generate more revenue for artists than cover charges or guarantees.  This shocked us, but after loading merch tables with a wider range of choices at different prices, it was not unusual for touring bands to earn more at the merch table than the door!
  • Fans prefer tangible things to intangible items.  A download delivered on a throw-away card (like Starbucks Tune of the Week) is less desireable (thus worth less) than something unique, cool and/or collectable.
  • Downloadable music is easily attached to anything – it’s easy to print codes directly on the merch, as well as disposable tags.
  • The real strengths of downloads are tied to the low cost of music delivery.  They’re lighter (read: cheaper) to haul than CDs, they separate the music so it’s only transferred if/when the fan requests it (read: cheaper) and environmentally more friendly and sustainable (read: cheaper) to boot.
  • Pure music downloadables, like Sundresses Motel and mallory’s the first one hundred years reissue are essentually pure profit vehicles.  After set up charges, the only remaining expenses are design and printing.  Printing paper or card stock is much cheaper than pressing or duplicating CDs (which also require printed paper and card stock for packaging!).

We could write an essay on each of the bullet points above, but you get the picture: Musicating merch is great tool to generate more income from current and future fans.

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Nov 09

New Media Cuts Through The Noise

Music Products No Comments »

Today, artists enjoy the benefits of  affordable recordings and releases, but face a much bigger challenge than earlier generations when it comes to breaking through the noise to reach new fans.  In a more limited media landscape, the paths to attention were well-mapped roads.  Whether you were selling cereal or rock and roll, you relied on the same radio, tv and newspapers, working with simple ad-based models.  For a known, fixed sum, anyone’s work could be put before the public, who would either rally or ignore it entirely.  Those days are gone.  Anyone with an internet connection can put their work on a blog or YouTube, and anyone with a credit card can make public bets on their careers with Google AdWords.  While everyone can play, the net effect is a noisy marketplace, crowded not only with thousands of competing artists, but literally hundreds of microniches all vying for the same eyes and ears.  This places a premium on true originality, which is one of the only sure ways to get attention.

Fortunately companies like The All Night Party are springing up to meet this challenge.  We help indie artists leverage new media to create and expand their visibility and opportunities to engage fans.  New media-based music products are in our DNA:

  • ANP Chief Dave Davis authored the first Enhanced CDs featuring regional artists (from his own band Sex Device to Ditchweed), way back in the mid 90s when he formed UltraInteractive with partners Michelle and John Curley
  • Davis chaired the Mastering workshop of the 113th AES Convention, focusing on New Media for Music with colleagues including Bob Ludwig, Bobby Owsinski, Mike Sokol and Bill McQuay.
  • The DVD-Music format provided a platform for Davis’ work through the 2000s, including Bridges, his Grammy-Nominated recording of clarinetist Eddie Daniels, Skillet’s Alien Youth, a reissue of a classic Soft Machine performance for DVD and countless others.

The All Night Party was created to push things much farther for regional indie artists.

sundresses fuckyeah tallOut of the box we released The Sundresses’ Motel and F*ck Yeah I’m With the Sundresses (pictured at left)… These download cards are fun and affordable, not to mention collectible and buzz-worthy.  If you attended Midpoint Music Festival in 2009 you probably saw people walking around town wearing I’m With the Sundresses.

The Big Idea: Create products at more and different price points so fans can engage with the band, and reward artists for memorable performance.

When everything on your merch table costs $10, fans with $1-9 are cut out of the fun.  Dollars they might prefer to spend on something memorable and tangible get left as tips or spent at the bar.  If you’re on Ohio band playing in NYC and counting on fans mentioning your name at the door, this can be crucial – merch sales might represent the majority of your pay for that show!  By adding 2 items for $2 and $5, The Sundresses began making as much for merch as they previously earned at the door on some nights.

Cools as these products are, we knew we could do better.  We reinvented the back-end and download mechanisms, and built the next redeemable download card from scratch, hosting from our own website.  This led to three new products for mallory: a reissue of the band’s sold out debut, the first one hundred years, a download version of their brand new ANP release, …before it grows, and a digisingle featuring the songs  kopvriet and gratis.

With mallory we began our push towards “musicated merch.”  Admittedly, $2 buttons are a modest introduction, but you’ve gotta start somewhere, right?  Besides: the “product” is the music, not the button!

mallory 100years wideUltimately the difference between our musicated merch and competing redeemable download cards is the music itself.  Whether delivered on buttons, stickers, name-tags, posters or key-cards, the look, feel and form reflect the ideas and sounds contained in the music in collectible wrappers.  There are many companies who can bang out attractive cards in every shape, color or size.  The All Night Party creates vehicles that reflect your music and attitude.

People go to shows because music and performance touch them emotionally.  There’s a social aspect too – a shared experience with friends is often richer than the same experience alone.  Souvenirs evoke strong memories long after the event, but music, like smell, touches our emotional core.  So getting your music into a fan’s ears is much more important than getting a t-shirt on her back!  The real power of new media is it’s ability to attach songs to any and everything.

Creative digital design is The All Night Party’s niche.  And we’re just getting started: We’re already working on the first regional iTunes LPs and other cutting edge products, including iApps for iPhones and iPods.  A new middle class is springing up in music – artists able to make a living doing what they love, minus a label deal.  If you’re serious about your music, you should call us.  Seriously!

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Nov 02

“Musicate” Your Merch!

Music Products 4 Comments »

sundresses motel - 06In the age of iTunes, artists can’t afford to wait until they’ve completed a full length album to release their latest material.  New songs are crowd-tested at shows, making composition and the recording process more interactive — fan reactions are one part of a process we call “continuous creation.”  So we took on the challenge of getting music into the hands of fans more quickly, without relying on traditional download services.  After all, on your merch table it’s all you, but on Amazon and iTunes you’re competing with Radiohead and U2.  Musicated Merch levels that playing field.

The Big Idea here: We want to fill the void below $10 on the merch table.  Bands have no trouble selling $10 CDs and panties, $15 tees, $20 hoodies and whatnot.  But making cool products for $1, $2 or $5 is a real challenge.  Download cards get that done.  And you can hang them from tee’s, panties or random chochkis… whatever it takes to make the sale.

Before we bothered to reinvent this particular wheel we researched the best existing providers.  We dug into Fizzkicks, Dropcards, Nimbit and CDBaby’s download card/code offerings, and asked bands we know how well they worked.  To make sure we truly “got it”, we used the leading vendor’s services for The Sundresses first new release since Album of the Year, Barkinghaus, Sundresses Motel.

Sundresses Motel is printed on a plastic keycard and delivered on a “Do Not Disturb”-style door-hanger.  The print and packaging is cool and merch-worthy, and the downloadable music unique: Larry Nixon, a brand new track leads off, while a rare demo of To The States closes the set.  In between you’ll find just one previously released mix (The Most Evil Thing You Can Do fromTourist), and 3 freshly remixed or finally released tracks.  At $5 it’s a bargain, but it’s really just the tip of the iceberg.

The Sundresses are committed to a path of Continuous Creation, incrementally recording, mixing and releasing their next album, with fans participating through feedback and response.  It’s possible the “official version” of Larry Nixon will sound nothing like the Motel version, but equally possible that the Asbury Park,NJ performance will be the basis of a later release.  In a real sense, fan’s response to the song shaped the process!  The mix and entire project was conceived and created in real time: The club ftp’d the tracks to Brian Niesz, who mixed them, for the band’s approval upon return.  By then it had gotten great response on the road, which got everyone’s attention.  So here it is!

sundresses fuckyeah - 09Fuck Yeah I’m With The Sundresses was another, more modest release, based on the cheesy nametags you often get at conventions and festivals.  Built around tracks from Thedresses albums and EPs, the idea was to make an affordable sampler to hook casual fans… complete with a clear tag frame, this one sells for just $2.  But $2 is still more than $1, and the plastic card is hardly environmentally friendly.  We had to do better.

So we did it ourselves!  We built our own download platform, specifically to enable bands to do more with their music, and support products and ideas we’ve not yet thought of.  We tried out the new system with mallory’s catalog.  In addition to their latest, “…Before It Grows“, their debut “the first one hundred years” was sold out, so we added it to the queue.

mallory buttons cd - 05

Finally we built a single out of the songKopvriet (backed with Gratis) to hit that $1 price point in the real world.  Want more?  For $2 you get buttons, like those for the album on the left!  mallory t-shirts can be bought with songs attached! etc. etc.

Feature-wise, our cards work just like the competition’s.  Visit a URL, enter a code, download tracks.  But in terms of engagement with your fans, our cards do much more:

  • Our cards land on custom-built pages that look however you want them to look, not based on a template.
  • You set the terms of the deal for your fans… one download or 100 per code.
  • You can create your own codes, on the fly! In our world, “I love you” is as valid as “xd40gya77″ for a code.
  • Attach them to any merch — you can even embedd codes and URLs in physical products
  • Use them on your website, and for promotions (give away codes to visitors etc).

Cool, eh?  It doesn’t cost a fortune or require a big, open ended commitment.  For a flat rate of $50 we’ll set you up to print your own cards for up to 300 downloads (you decide how to break it down – one per-card/code or 100 card/codes with 3 downloads each).  If you supply press-ready art, we’ll print them for you on recyclable cardstock – cards start at $0.20/each.  Got a lot of titles?  Talk to us and we’ll work out a deal.

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