Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Ques
Marques Huntley known as Ques, 29 year old Artist from Harlem, New York. Some of his earliest influences Fabolous, Notorious Big, R.Kelly, Jay Z. He is enjoy drawing and painting. also movie buff; while not in the studio. He is a talented song writer, rapper, and vocalist where he deilivers sawg that can be heard in his vocal tracks like "I Wanna Make Love" and "Passion" which we will leave the ladies wanting more and rapping street anthems like "Facedown Booty Hanging Out", "We Getting MoneY" and "Cooking Up Swag" , keeping the fellows rocking. He has obtained thousands of fans domestcally as well as around the world.
TNT Productions presents Ques in "The Making Of A Star", Harlem's own new RnB Hip Hop, Rap, Vocalist . 12 Swaggy tracks consiting of him rapping, singing, and ripping up Rap tracks with an RnB flavor . Featuring iQuellz , "Up In Here", 'Exotic Eyes"and "Face down, Booty Hanging Out"" bringing his swaggy vereses to the album; LaShay "The Making Of A Star" and 'Keeping You Here" a riffing RnB Queen and Blake Benz, in 'Face down..." hitting you with the new school urban swag. This debut album was produced by Timothy Gould of TNT Productions.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Flame On Radio
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Monday, March 3, 2014
Attention Black Artists: Your Services Are No Longer Needed. Sincerely, The Music Industry
Attention Black Artists: Your Services Are No Longer Needed. Sincerely, The Music Industry.
The following comes from Sebastien Elkouby, a noted hip-hop culture historian, freelance writer, creative consultant, and award-winning educator. Reprinted with permission from RapRehab, where this first appeared.
Dear Black Artists,
We regret to inform you that the need for your services will soon come to an end as we enter a critical restructuring period. Fortunately, after having spent nearly a century meticulously studying your art, language, fashion, and lifestyle, we have learned enough to confidently move forward without your assistance.
We thank you for your contributions but have decided to make some necessary changes as a result of your decreasing value.
Focus groups show that consumers are looking for more relatable images. While 2013 marked the first time in Billboard’s 55 year history that there were no black artists on top of the Hot 100 chart, this was a great year for us with Justin Timberlake, Robin Thicke, and Macklemore claiming the #1 spot on the R&B/Hip-Hop chart, proving that market demands are shifting. Consequently, in the next few months, we will be gradually phasing out your positions as we finalize this reorganization. In the meantime, we ask you to continue with business as usual, training your replacements Miley Cyrus and Justin Bieber until instructed otherwise.
Your severance package includes a lifetime supply of Air Jordans, unlimited access to reruns of “Love and Hip Hop”, a new 30-piece Tom Ford wardrobe, and the latest iPhone. Your medical coverage will be provided through ObamaCare.
We want you to know that your termination is in no way a statement about the quality of your work with us. As such, we would like to acknowledge your outstanding contributions to the industry over the past decades.
In music, we’d like to thank Kendrick Lamar’s thought-provoking body of work which has opened the door for Macklemore, a shining example of what intelligent rap looks like.
In business, Jay Z’s partnership with Samsung was historical as the Korean mobile company paid the rapper a mere $5 million and his company Roc Nation, another $15 million, a bargain deal relative to their standard annual $4 billion marketing budget and $220 billion net worth.
In fashion, while Kanye West may be experiencing difficulties launching his own brand, his loyalty to European designers continues to add value to an already thriving industry that other entertainers like Migos seem to enjoy promoting for free.
In cinema, “The Butler” and “12 Years a Slave” were Oscar-worthy gems, showcasing the strength and pride of a resilient people. We understand that this year, you will continue this tradition of inspiring historical films with the May release of “Belle” and the History Channel’s forthcoming reboot of the groundbreaking 70′s televised series, “Roots”. Your work did not go unnoticed as it has inspired us to produce new historical movies of our own, depicting our rich cultural heritage.
Upcoming releases include:
- “Son of God” produced by reality TV pioneer Mark Burnett and starring Diogo Morgado
- “Noah” starring Russell Crowe
- “Exodus” starring Christian Bale as Moses
- “Mary, Mother of Christ” starring 16 year old Odeya Rush
Just as your movies depict the struggles and achievements of your best and brightest, these powerful films are meant to inspire and remind us of our glorious past and divine lineage.
In an attempt to capitalize on the recent trend in movies that focus on triumphs of the African-American experience, we have recently begun developing films with similar themes. Channing Tatum has just been cast as the lead in The Nat Turner Story while Scarlett Johansson is reported to have accepted the role of Harriet Tubman in a forthcoming biopic. Like Quentin Tarentino’s Django Unchained, both movies promise to offer the perfect balance between shoot-em-up style action and social commentary while boasting two smash-hit soundtracks featuring Eminem, Katy Perry, and Ke$ha.
Again, none of this could have been accomplished without your unwavering commitment and dedication to our mission. We trust that your transition will be smooth and wish you continued success with your new journey into Electronic Dance Music.
Sincerely,
The Industry
__________________
Warning: this is a satire.
Check out Sebastien’s educational program, Global Awareness Through Hip Hop Culture and his blog, SebIsHipHop.wordpress.com. For more info about his creative consulting services, contact him at sebastienelkouby@gmail.com.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Monday, February 24, 2014
Comcast’s deal with Netflix makes network neutrality obsolete
Comcast’s deal with Netflix makes network neutrality obsolete
For the past two decades, the Internet has operated as an unregulated, competitive free market. Given the tendency of networked industries to lapse into monopoly—think of AT&T's 70-year hold over telephone service, for example—that's a minor miracle. But recent developments are putting the Internet's decentralized architecture in danger.
In recent months, the nation's largest residential Internet service providers have been demanding payment to deliver Netflix traffic to their own customers. On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Netflix has agreed to the demands of the nation's largest broadband provider, Comcast. The change represents a fundamental shift in power in the Internet economy that threatens to undermine the competitive market structure that have served Internet users so well for the past two decades.
The deal will also transform the debate over network neutrality regulation. Officially, Comcast's deal with Netflix is about interconnection, not traffic discrimination. But it's hard to see a practical difference between this deal and the kind of tiered access that network neutrality advocates have long feared. Network neutrality advocates are going to have to go back to the drawing board.
The classic Internet
To understand what's going on, it's helpful to review the structure of the "classic" Internet.
This diagram is an idealized depiction of how the "classic" Internet
of the late 1990s worked. Backbone Provider B provides Internet service
to Yahoo, carrying traffic to users around the world. Provider B
connects with other companies, such as Backbone Provider A. The
residential ISP on the right is a customer of Backbone provider A, and
it, in turn, offers Internet access to individual households. The red
arrows indicate who pays whom for service. Because the two backbone
providers are roughly the same size, they engage in what's called
"settlement-free peering": They exchange traffic with each other with no
money changing hands.
A big advantage of this industry structure is that the backbone market is competitive. If Backbone Provider B overcharges Yahoo for connectivity, Yahoo can switch to another backbone provider. I've only drawn two backbone companies, but in the real world there were a number of them competing with one another. The fact that the largest backbone providers engage in settlement-free peering ensures that every computer on the Internet can reach every other computer. Competition among backbone providers helps keep prices down and service quality up.
This industry structure has another virtue, too: Network neutrality is protected by default. Traffic from Yahoo comes to the residential ISP in a big bundle along with traffic from lots of other Web sites. As I argued in a 2008 paper for the Cato Institute, that makes non-discrimination the default and gives residential ISPs limited leverage over distant Web sites. If the residential ISP wanted to discriminate against Yahoo traffic, it would need to make an explicit decision to block or degrade it, which would likely trigger a customer backlash. That has allowed network neutrality to thrive in the 1990s and 2000s even though there was no formal network neutrality regulations until 2010.
But the Internet is changing. One sign of that change is the just-announced deal between Comcast and Netflix. Another is Ars Technica's recent story about a dispute between the backbone provider Cogent and Verizon. Netflix is a Cogent customer. Surging Netflix traffic has been overwhelming the links between Cogent and Verizon. Cogent has asked for those links to be upgraded, but according to Cogent, Verizon has demanded payment for upgrading the links. (When Ars asked Verizon for comment, a spokesman declined to comment on the specifics of the negotiation.)
We can depict the dispute like this:
In this version of the Internet, two big things have changed. First, Netflix is really big. The video streaming site now accounts for about 30 percent
of all traffic on the Internet. Second, Verizon acquired the formerly
independent backbone provider MCI in 2006, helping to turn itself into a
major backbone provider in its own right.
Those changes matter for Cogent's negotiations with Verizon. In the first chart, Backbone Provider A's leverage was limited by the fact that Backbone Provider B could always connect directly to the residential ISP, potentially costing A a customer. That gave A a strong incentive to keep its network fast and its interconnection terms reasonable.
The negotiation between Cogent and Verizon is different. Verizon plays the role of both backbone provider and residential ISP. That puts Verizon in a much stronger negotiating position, because Cogent doesn't have any practical way to route around Verizon. If Cogent wants to reach Verizon's customers, it needs to cut a deal with Verizon.
The FCC's dilemma
The fact that Netflix agreed to pay Comcast suggests that Cogent will likely lose its fight with Verizon as well. And as Cogent's chief executive Dave Schaeffer told Ars, "once you pay it's like blackmail, they've got you, there's nowhere else to go. They'll just keep raising the price in a market where prices [for transit] are falling."
Indeed, in the long run, this development threatens the survival of independent backbone companies like Cogent. If it becomes industry practice for backbone providers to pay residential ISPs, companies like Cogent will become mere resellers of access to the networks of large broadband companies. Or they may be cut out of the loop altogether, as large customers such as Netflix cut deals directly with broadband providers such as Comcast.
Cutting out the middleman might make the Internet more efficient, but it will also make it less competitive. Cogent has many competitors. Verizon's FiOS service does not. If companies like Cogent are squeezed out of business, it will make these already powerful network owners even more powerful.
It would also transform the network neutrality debate. As I mentioned before, the conventional network neutrality debate implicitly assumes that residential ISPs receive Internet traffic from one big pipe. Network neutrality advocates want rules prohibiting ISPs from divvying this pipe up into fast and slow lanes based on business considerations.
But in a world where Netflix and Yahoo connect directly to residential ISPs, every Internet company will have its own separate pipe. And policing whether different pipes are equally good is a much harder problem than requiring that all of the traffic in a single pipe be treated the same. If it wanted to ensure a level playing field, the FCC would be forced to become intimately involved in interconnection disputes, overseeing who Verizon interconnects with, how fast the connections are and how much they can charge to do it.
At this point, the FCC doesn't have any good options. Regulating the terms of interconnection would be a difficult, error-prone process. Trying to reverse the decade-old mergers that allowed America's broadband market to become so concentrated in the first place would be even more so. But the growing power of residential broadband providers will put growing pressure on the FCC to do something to prevent the abuse of that power.
One clear lesson, though, is that further industry consolidation can only make the situation worse. The more concentrated the broadband market becomes, the more leverage broadband providers like Comcast and Verizon will have over backbone providers like Cogent. That gives the FCC a good reason to be skeptical of Comcast's proposed acquisition of its largest rival, Time Warner Cable. Blocking that transaction could save the agency larger headaches in the future.
For the past two decades, the Internet has operated as an unregulated, competitive free market. Given the tendency of networked industries to lapse into monopoly—think of AT&T's 70-year hold over telephone service, for example—that's a minor miracle. But recent developments are putting the Internet's decentralized architecture in danger.
In recent months, the nation's largest residential Internet service providers have been demanding payment to deliver Netflix traffic to their own customers. On Sunday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Netflix has agreed to the demands of the nation's largest broadband provider, Comcast. The change represents a fundamental shift in power in the Internet economy that threatens to undermine the competitive market structure that have served Internet users so well for the past two decades.
The deal will also transform the debate over network neutrality regulation. Officially, Comcast's deal with Netflix is about interconnection, not traffic discrimination. But it's hard to see a practical difference between this deal and the kind of tiered access that network neutrality advocates have long feared. Network neutrality advocates are going to have to go back to the drawing board.
The classic Internet
To understand what's going on, it's helpful to review the structure of the "classic" Internet.
(Washington Post)
A big advantage of this industry structure is that the backbone market is competitive. If Backbone Provider B overcharges Yahoo for connectivity, Yahoo can switch to another backbone provider. I've only drawn two backbone companies, but in the real world there were a number of them competing with one another. The fact that the largest backbone providers engage in settlement-free peering ensures that every computer on the Internet can reach every other computer. Competition among backbone providers helps keep prices down and service quality up.
This industry structure has another virtue, too: Network neutrality is protected by default. Traffic from Yahoo comes to the residential ISP in a big bundle along with traffic from lots of other Web sites. As I argued in a 2008 paper for the Cato Institute, that makes non-discrimination the default and gives residential ISPs limited leverage over distant Web sites. If the residential ISP wanted to discriminate against Yahoo traffic, it would need to make an explicit decision to block or degrade it, which would likely trigger a customer backlash. That has allowed network neutrality to thrive in the 1990s and 2000s even though there was no formal network neutrality regulations until 2010.
But the Internet is changing. One sign of that change is the just-announced deal between Comcast and Netflix. Another is Ars Technica's recent story about a dispute between the backbone provider Cogent and Verizon. Netflix is a Cogent customer. Surging Netflix traffic has been overwhelming the links between Cogent and Verizon. Cogent has asked for those links to be upgraded, but according to Cogent, Verizon has demanded payment for upgrading the links. (When Ars asked Verizon for comment, a spokesman declined to comment on the specifics of the negotiation.)
We can depict the dispute like this:
(Washington Post)
Those changes matter for Cogent's negotiations with Verizon. In the first chart, Backbone Provider A's leverage was limited by the fact that Backbone Provider B could always connect directly to the residential ISP, potentially costing A a customer. That gave A a strong incentive to keep its network fast and its interconnection terms reasonable.
The negotiation between Cogent and Verizon is different. Verizon plays the role of both backbone provider and residential ISP. That puts Verizon in a much stronger negotiating position, because Cogent doesn't have any practical way to route around Verizon. If Cogent wants to reach Verizon's customers, it needs to cut a deal with Verizon.
The FCC's dilemma
The fact that Netflix agreed to pay Comcast suggests that Cogent will likely lose its fight with Verizon as well. And as Cogent's chief executive Dave Schaeffer told Ars, "once you pay it's like blackmail, they've got you, there's nowhere else to go. They'll just keep raising the price in a market where prices [for transit] are falling."
Indeed, in the long run, this development threatens the survival of independent backbone companies like Cogent. If it becomes industry practice for backbone providers to pay residential ISPs, companies like Cogent will become mere resellers of access to the networks of large broadband companies. Or they may be cut out of the loop altogether, as large customers such as Netflix cut deals directly with broadband providers such as Comcast.
Cutting out the middleman might make the Internet more efficient, but it will also make it less competitive. Cogent has many competitors. Verizon's FiOS service does not. If companies like Cogent are squeezed out of business, it will make these already powerful network owners even more powerful.
It would also transform the network neutrality debate. As I mentioned before, the conventional network neutrality debate implicitly assumes that residential ISPs receive Internet traffic from one big pipe. Network neutrality advocates want rules prohibiting ISPs from divvying this pipe up into fast and slow lanes based on business considerations.
But in a world where Netflix and Yahoo connect directly to residential ISPs, every Internet company will have its own separate pipe. And policing whether different pipes are equally good is a much harder problem than requiring that all of the traffic in a single pipe be treated the same. If it wanted to ensure a level playing field, the FCC would be forced to become intimately involved in interconnection disputes, overseeing who Verizon interconnects with, how fast the connections are and how much they can charge to do it.
At this point, the FCC doesn't have any good options. Regulating the terms of interconnection would be a difficult, error-prone process. Trying to reverse the decade-old mergers that allowed America's broadband market to become so concentrated in the first place would be even more so. But the growing power of residential broadband providers will put growing pressure on the FCC to do something to prevent the abuse of that power.
One clear lesson, though, is that further industry consolidation can only make the situation worse. The more concentrated the broadband market becomes, the more leverage broadband providers like Comcast and Verizon will have over backbone providers like Cogent. That gives the FCC a good reason to be skeptical of Comcast's proposed acquisition of its largest rival, Time Warner Cable. Blocking that transaction could save the agency larger headaches in the future.
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Gawker explain why they dredging up old Cosby's sex abuse allegations
Newsweek, Gawker explain why they dredged up Cosby's sex abuse allegations
Feb. 13, 2014, 9:25 AM EST
By James CrugnaleFeb. 13, 2014, 9:25 AM EST
MEMPHIS TN (IFS) -- It must be a slow news day at NewsWeek and Gawker these days. Or is it because Dr. William Cosby has a new NBC Sitcom and they just want to tear it down early, before it gets off the ground and starts running up the Nielsen Rating Charts. Or maybe, they just want to join the 'haters club', for there is nothing else to do. -KHS
TheWrap
As Woody Allen's alleged sex abuse accusations are rehashed this month, several media outlets are also dredging up old allegations made against legendary funnyman Bill Cosby.
Gawker's Tom Scocca recently decided to unearth old claims made against the comedian, who has a brand new NBC sitcom in the works. "Who Wants to Remember Bill Cosby's Multiple Sex-Assault Accusations?" has garnered over 200,000 page views.
Cosby has not been charged with any crimes. He settled a lawsuit in 2006 with a woman who claimed the entertainer drugged and sexually assaulted her at his home outside Philadelphia.
Inspired by the Gawker article, Newsweek reporter Katie Baker decided to follow up with women who were involved in the suit. Baker interviewed Tamara Green on Friday. Tuesday, she published an interview with Barbara Bowman,who offered more graphic details about her allegations.
"I found them from the story — and called them and asked if they wanted to talk," Baker told TheWrap. "I wanted to hear what it was like to accuse Bill Cosby of this and then have it forgotten. I wanted to reach out and see what its like to have your story ignored."
NBC declined comment to TheWrap on the state of Cosby's sitcom, which is in the development stages. A spokesman for Cosby also had no comment.
Scocca told TheWrap he wrote about Cosby because he was surprised the allegations had disappeared down "a memory hole." They were raised before Twitter made it much easier for accusations to spread quickly.
"It seemed weird that the Allen case had become something people were being newly appalled about, when it had been there for people to be appalled by all along, if they'd chosen to remember it," Scocca explained. "That raised the questions of what other terrible allegations against famous people had fallen into a similar memory hole, which made me vaguely recall that there'd been some claims against Bill Cosby. And when I went back to refresh my memory on those Cosby accusations, I realized that they were really grim and well-attested, with multiple people independently claiming to have been victimized by him, all describing the same profoundly predatory m.o. But after he settled that one lawsuit, everybody just forgot about it."
Friday, February 7, 2014
How To Get Your Music On Pandora: Physical CD No Longer Required
« Super Bowl Gave Artists A Lift On Spotify | Main | Former Exec Accused Of Embezzling $1M From Warner Music »
How To Get Your Music On Pandora: Physical CD No Longer Required
Pandora has finally opened its doors to musicians (and comics) who aren't on a label and don't have a physical CD with UPC on Amazon. This is great news for both DIY and digital-only musicians whose presence in the industry has grown stronger with the rise of EDM. Once word spreads there's likely to be a glut of music submitted and extra delays in consideration by Pandora so do submit soon and avoid the rush.
If you're trying to be findable by fans and future fans, Pandora is one of the places you would typically want to have your music available. In the past they required a CD on Amazon with a UPC code which was a barrier to entry for many DIY artists. It may sound weird but it's similar to reviewers requiring CDs. It used to be a valid way of identifying who was getting serious and who wasn't.
But things are changing and Pandora now allows direct digital submission of music that is available via iTunes (US only), Amazon.com/MP3, CD Baby or Bandcamp.
Here are the steps you'll need to take based on Pandora's guidelines:
First you'll need a free Pandora account.
You'll also need:
- Contact information
- Artist/band name
- Name and type of release
- Valid link to at least 1 of your tracks on iTunes (US only), Amazon.com/MP3, CD Baby or Bandcamp
Sign-in at Submit to Pandora using your free account login.
Then follow these steps:
- Provide us with your basic contact information
- Give us details about your submission including your name, release information and links to your tracks
- Ensure that you have legal rights to your work and it is available on iTunes (US only), Amazon.com/MP3, CD Baby or Bandcamp
- Verify your account
Note that you can only have one submission in at a time. You are asked not to submit music until that first track goes live which might be a minute. If the track is not approved, you can start over and try again with a different track.
Also note:
"If you live outside of the US, Australia and New Zealand you can still submit your music or comedy to Pandora for consideration. Please contact us here and we will create an account on your behalf. With that log-in you will be able to access submit.pandora.com."
You can find the above steps and details here but keep in mind that thesubmission form will walk you through it.
Best of luck and see you on Pandora!
Hat tip to the sharp eyes of Ari Herstand.
More:
Hypebot Senior Contributor Clyde Smith (Twitter/Facebook) is currently relaunching All World Dance. To suggest topics about music tech, DIY music biz or music marketing for Hypebot, contact: clyde(at)fluxresearch(dot)com.
Friday, January 24, 2014
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
Monday, January 20, 2014
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Jeff Bell
With his raw, acoustic, often multi layered music and heart tugging songs, London , UK resident Jeff Bell has generated significant consumer interest. Musically leftfield with traditional Roots, Blues and Rock, "Jeff Bell is an intuitive song-writer, captivating vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist (vocalist, guitar, keyboards, piano, harmonica, drums) who combines compelling melodies and lyrics that lay truths uncomfortably bare" Fatea Magazine 2012.
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Beats Music Streaming Service Launching January 21
By Alex Pham, Billboard Magazine
| January 11, 2014 3:56 PM EST
Beats Music Streaming Service Launching January 21 Beats Music, the premium streaming service developed by Trent Reznor, Ian Rogers and the creators of Beats By Dre headphones, is launching on Jan. 21, with AT&T as the exclusive carrier partner, the company said. Santa Monica-based Beats will join a parade of competitors, including Rhapsody, Slacker, Xbox Music, Rdio and Sony Music Unlimited -- all vying to become the dominant subscription service in the U.S., the world's largest market for music.
The stakes are even higher as the market for digital downloads showed signs of waning, declining in 2013 for the first time, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The field is likely to become even more crowded this year, with Google Inc.'s YouTube and France's Deezer expected to launch their U.S. services in the next several months. User's Guide: How Beats Music Works Beats Music, which was built partly from technology acquired in 2012 from the former Mog music service, aims to set itself apart with stylish design and human curation.
The company a year ago hired Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails, as its chief creative officer to design the service's look and feel of the service, with the goal of making it easy and fun to use. It also recruited Rogers, former Chief Executive of Topspin Media who also once ran Yahoo's music service, as CEO of Beats Music. And last summer, Beats tapped Julie Pilat, former Clear Channel veteran, to head up Beats' efforts to distinguish itself from the pack with a heavy emphasis on curation via radio-style programming. Many other companies have tried similar approaches with much success, most notably Sirius XM and Slacker. Sirius, for example, has cultivated dozens of radio personalities with ardent fan followings, the best example of which is Howard Stern.
Its curated approach is partly what makes Sirius XM the country's biggest paid music service, with more than 26 million subscribers. Slacker years ago pioneered the practice of having DJ's program its many genre stations. "Our curated stations perform incredibly well, even when listeners have the ability to choose on-demand music," said Slacker's CEO Jim Cady.
"Our premium subscribers spend more than 80% of their time listening to our curated stations, rather than creating their own playlists or listening to tracks on demand. We’ve also seen that heavily-curated experiences, like deejay hosted countdown stations, keep people listening up to three times longer than genre stations. Even the simple act of adding a deejay to a station can increase average listening time by nearly 20%." With all eyes on streaming music services as a source of future growth for the industry, Beats has ambitious plans to pour on the glamour, as it did with great success for the premium headphones market more than six years ago, leveraging deep relationships cultivated over the years by Beats' co-founder, Jimmy Iovine, the chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M at Universal Music Group. In 2008, Iovine and Dr. Dre launched Beats Electronics.
Its instantly recognizeable headphones were soon spotted on dozens of celebrities and rap artists, who extolled the headsets' ability to reproduce the heavy bass sound prevalent in hip hop music. "We built something that works for us, for me, our friends, Dr. Dre," Iovine said in an interview with Billboard. "We enjoy using it. It’s what we would like to have, and we built it to where we felt it could help others." While Iovine and his executives work to add star power to Beats Music, AT&T Corp. will provide the corporate marketing and distribution muscle.
The carrier has agreed to distribute Beats Music, offering AT&T customers a 7-day free trial of the service. Afterwards, the service would cost $9.99 a month. For customers who opt to sign up for AT&T's family bundle, the service would come with a 90-day free trial. Once the trial period runs out, Beats would charge $14.99 a month, but allow up to 5 people and 10 devices full, on-demand access to the service. Beats would not disclose the terms of its arrangement with AT&T, including how the cost of licensing music during the free trials would be subsidized. For music services, carrier partnerships can be vital. Telecommunications companies such as AT&T have direct billing relationships with millions of subscribers and can tack on the cost of a music service directly on to their customers' cell phone bills.
They also have extensive marketing resources that they can use to help push ancillary services, such as music. For AT&T, the benefit is in offering a product that would draw in users who will pay extra for a data plan to accommodate streaming music. In addition, Beats has partnered with Target Stores for a promotion that would give away 30-day free trials to customer who buys anything from the store's electronics department. The company has also started tucking vouchers for free trials into Beats Electronics' packaged audio gear.
What Beats will not be doing anytime soon, however, is offer a free, slimmed-down version of its service -- something that Spotify, Rdio and services have started to do in order to get listeners to try their products in the hopes that they will convert into paying customers. So-called access models, where listeners pay to access large catalogs of music rather than purchase copies of music, is still a small, but growing portion of the industry's revenue. In 2012, it represented 15% of the revenue for music in the U.S., up from 9% in 2011, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, which is set to update this figure in the coming weeks.
While streaming music is expanding, digital downloads declined on an annual basis for the first time in 2013. Sales of digital tracks fell 5.7% from 1.34 billion units to 1.26 billion units, while digital album sales fell 0.1% to 117.6 million units from 117.7 million a year earlier, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
| January 11, 2014 3:56 PM EST
Beats Music Streaming Service Launching January 21 Beats Music, the premium streaming service developed by Trent Reznor, Ian Rogers and the creators of Beats By Dre headphones, is launching on Jan. 21, with AT&T as the exclusive carrier partner, the company said. Santa Monica-based Beats will join a parade of competitors, including Rhapsody, Slacker, Xbox Music, Rdio and Sony Music Unlimited -- all vying to become the dominant subscription service in the U.S., the world's largest market for music.
The stakes are even higher as the market for digital downloads showed signs of waning, declining in 2013 for the first time, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The field is likely to become even more crowded this year, with Google Inc.'s YouTube and France's Deezer expected to launch their U.S. services in the next several months. User's Guide: How Beats Music Works Beats Music, which was built partly from technology acquired in 2012 from the former Mog music service, aims to set itself apart with stylish design and human curation.
The company a year ago hired Reznor, of Nine Inch Nails, as its chief creative officer to design the service's look and feel of the service, with the goal of making it easy and fun to use. It also recruited Rogers, former Chief Executive of Topspin Media who also once ran Yahoo's music service, as CEO of Beats Music. And last summer, Beats tapped Julie Pilat, former Clear Channel veteran, to head up Beats' efforts to distinguish itself from the pack with a heavy emphasis on curation via radio-style programming. Many other companies have tried similar approaches with much success, most notably Sirius XM and Slacker. Sirius, for example, has cultivated dozens of radio personalities with ardent fan followings, the best example of which is Howard Stern.
Its curated approach is partly what makes Sirius XM the country's biggest paid music service, with more than 26 million subscribers. Slacker years ago pioneered the practice of having DJ's program its many genre stations. "Our curated stations perform incredibly well, even when listeners have the ability to choose on-demand music," said Slacker's CEO Jim Cady.
"Our premium subscribers spend more than 80% of their time listening to our curated stations, rather than creating their own playlists or listening to tracks on demand. We’ve also seen that heavily-curated experiences, like deejay hosted countdown stations, keep people listening up to three times longer than genre stations. Even the simple act of adding a deejay to a station can increase average listening time by nearly 20%." With all eyes on streaming music services as a source of future growth for the industry, Beats has ambitious plans to pour on the glamour, as it did with great success for the premium headphones market more than six years ago, leveraging deep relationships cultivated over the years by Beats' co-founder, Jimmy Iovine, the chairman of Interscope Geffen A&M at Universal Music Group. In 2008, Iovine and Dr. Dre launched Beats Electronics.
Its instantly recognizeable headphones were soon spotted on dozens of celebrities and rap artists, who extolled the headsets' ability to reproduce the heavy bass sound prevalent in hip hop music. "We built something that works for us, for me, our friends, Dr. Dre," Iovine said in an interview with Billboard. "We enjoy using it. It’s what we would like to have, and we built it to where we felt it could help others." While Iovine and his executives work to add star power to Beats Music, AT&T Corp. will provide the corporate marketing and distribution muscle.
The carrier has agreed to distribute Beats Music, offering AT&T customers a 7-day free trial of the service. Afterwards, the service would cost $9.99 a month. For customers who opt to sign up for AT&T's family bundle, the service would come with a 90-day free trial. Once the trial period runs out, Beats would charge $14.99 a month, but allow up to 5 people and 10 devices full, on-demand access to the service. Beats would not disclose the terms of its arrangement with AT&T, including how the cost of licensing music during the free trials would be subsidized. For music services, carrier partnerships can be vital. Telecommunications companies such as AT&T have direct billing relationships with millions of subscribers and can tack on the cost of a music service directly on to their customers' cell phone bills.
They also have extensive marketing resources that they can use to help push ancillary services, such as music. For AT&T, the benefit is in offering a product that would draw in users who will pay extra for a data plan to accommodate streaming music. In addition, Beats has partnered with Target Stores for a promotion that would give away 30-day free trials to customer who buys anything from the store's electronics department. The company has also started tucking vouchers for free trials into Beats Electronics' packaged audio gear.
What Beats will not be doing anytime soon, however, is offer a free, slimmed-down version of its service -- something that Spotify, Rdio and services have started to do in order to get listeners to try their products in the hopes that they will convert into paying customers. So-called access models, where listeners pay to access large catalogs of music rather than purchase copies of music, is still a small, but growing portion of the industry's revenue. In 2012, it represented 15% of the revenue for music in the U.S., up from 9% in 2011, according to the Recording Industry Association of America, which is set to update this figure in the coming weeks.
While streaming music is expanding, digital downloads declined on an annual basis for the first time in 2013. Sales of digital tracks fell 5.7% from 1.34 billion units to 1.26 billion units, while digital album sales fell 0.1% to 117.6 million units from 117.7 million a year earlier, according to Nielsen SoundScan.
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