Library’s local music collection is a huge hit your's is next

This article, Newton library’s 
local music collection is a huge hit  by Boston Herald's Jed Gottlieb and it's about an emerging trend of libraries and local music meeting up at the last place most would think to look --  Public Libraries. However it's so new that many Cities are unaware that their own libraries even could be host to the local musician and I believe this is about to change.

For one,  I happen to know quite a bit about this since my company AltavozEntmt has been partnering with two companies for the last three years to do just this and this channel has now been formalized into our our CityMusicDeal (TM)  and very soon a new deal that will reach into each and every community in the US and bring full circle the  the artists, communities and libraries.

I've always believed that where you buy or consume music is not as important as the fact that consumers and fans are still very interested in music and every TechDork that has ever been shot down in a band and thought that they would via Technology have the upper hand just doesn't understand the love affair that we have with music and it's perhaps the deepest connection we as humans share with the universe and mother nature.  

Now for any Artists Bands or Labels that are wondering how they can get into their local librarians then look no further than Altavoz's DigitalDistributionDeal.com or PhysicalDistributionDeal.com

PS Digital is still below Physical in sales for those that keep count.

Digital sill below 50% CityMusicDeals and MUSICAct

Let's be clear Physical Music Sales are 55%, if not more* of music sales and the only people that don't get it are the sales reps for digital distribution companies and Indie Musicians.  Just look, the numbers don't add up and investors are realizing that having a PhysicalDistribuitonDeal.com is vital to any companies, artists, band or labels success hence the drop in Digital Only companies stocks.

Who competes in only 45 percent of a market place, again -- Indie Musicans that's who does. And it's because they are lied to or to stupid to understand that 45 percent of a market (that is really dominated by one company) is not a success strategy. Meanwhile the Majors --you know the model that is the "WORSE BUSINESS IN THE WORLD" proclamation made by every CEO of a Digital Music play and most of their recording artists --

Yet! they are still making billions of dollars and they ain't doing it selling downloads or streams 

Now what is the end goal, clearly the multinational companies are not only interested in profits there has to be something else playing out; Because, there is more then money involved and at stake when it comes to music and it's not a good story for US Music; however, that's another blog post called Entertaining our Economy to Death.

I've been really thinking about how we frame the success of some artists when in fact their success is really from the music that came for the city or town that they happened to have been born or moved into and the City's music became part of their DNA as much if not more then they made the City's.  Since it's the City's music that is what frames the larger narrative Chicago Blues, DC's GoGO Seattle Rock, 

Looking at the simple economics of music over a few decades and the new push for US Mayors to export products nicly comes together with a project USMadeMusic.org that seeks promote the export of American made music, the idea dawned upon me to launch a City by City music deal, now called CityMusicDeal(TM) in the top USA Music Cities and (one by one) CityMusicDeal.com will turn into AustinMusicDeal.com, DCMusicDeal.com,  NashvilleMusicDeal.com and etc. connecting the local chambers of commerce, music and arts advocates and any artists band and label that wants a distribution deal. Read more on the website.

Having recently, talked with many of our US Music City Mayor's during the recent Winter Meeting 2015 they heard very clearly that getting exports out was key and most insticlly knew or have come to find out that local music is a priority; However in Washington, DC  music is an after thought other then talks of Cultural Diplomacy which it cannot do if we don't export it.

Really you say an after thought and I say yes! So much so that the only piece of legislation or trade actives I've seen carried out to help US Made Music the M.U.S.I.C. ACT has been in the waiting room for legislation and no one really talks about it.   What is this act?  It would give millions of dollars to local music makes to do just that and export it out of the USA.

Here's the quote from the intro to the legislation

“Our small, independent music labels are finding it increasingly difficult to sell their goods in the global marketplace,” said Nadler.  “This bill would help promote U. S. exports in an extremely competitive industry whose talents cannot be outsourced.  Helping these businesses access foreign markets is also an important part of President Obama’s goal to double U. S. exports in five years – an effort in which New York, home to many independent music labels and artists, continues to take the lead.”  
http://nadler.house.gov/press-release/nadler-seeks-bolster-global-market-american-independent-music

Now I'm not sure why Congress and the Administration aren't supporting this however I've stated a Change.org petition urging Congress to take this up NOW and get support to the one set of Small - large business need and that is working capital and exporting help and that is just what the MUSICAct delivers. Please sign the petition and let folks know about the CityMusicDeal.com it really make an impact on our economy and the lives of some many American's and who can't support that in the USA?

*Vinyl sales is something that I've been involved with for decades and know that what is reported in sales is not reflective of the true volume of vinyl sales.  One of the main reasons being that much of it is sold at shows by indie bands. However the upsurge is just the natural lift that comes from Majors jumping back into it which now means that all of the plants are occupied.   Kinda funny dontcha think.  Majors Occupied the Record Plants that they tried to kill.  

PS get ready for Major back titles on Vinyl to be at $45-55 dollars. 

Co op + iteration is key to release success 2015

Co op,
noun informal

1.  a cooperative society, business, or enterprise.

Iteration,
noun

1. the repetition of a process or utterance.
2. repetition of a mathematical or computational procedure applied to the result of a previous application, typically as a means of obtaining successively closer approximations to the solution of a problem.
3. a new version of a piece of computer hardware or software.

plural noun: iterations

C      Coopiterations,
         noun informal

1.  a co op creating new versions of entertainment, 
2. Creators of entertainment working with business partners to maximize sell through distribution, means if it's not sold to end user it will come back to supplier of it at a cost. 

Therefore if you have a release coming out your -- already doing it!

Carrying this to the next level,  Your release presumably has a marketing and promotion plan and inside of each of these plans need to be a cooperative marketing and advertisements plans for each phase of the release after manufacturing.

Planning > Recording > Mastering > Manufacturing > Distribution > Retail > Fans 

Check out the Steps outlined in making one commercial song. 

Welcome to the Year of the local and Musicnomics 101

If you didn't know. 2015 is the year of the local and there is nothing more local then music and a surf spot.  That said what how and when this local trend gears up was not something I wanted to sit on the sidelines of so starting last year I join a local DC group DC Advocates for the Arts and started something called DCMadeMusic.com which is an effort to get DC made music out of DC since that is my local music scene.

However once I really started thinking about our city's music and having read just about every economic paper on what cities have done to bring music into their development and export plans the idea struck to go about this city by city enabling the existing networks to connect to national and global distribution. This way it get to boats, planes and trains for distribution instead of the bands van or car trunk.

So Altavoz and it's partners took some time to review what was happening and also looked at the data coming from the National Endowment for Arts on artistic impacts on the economy my own back ground in music and economics I've come up with a new word to describe what is needed to be taken into consideration

.  Musicnomics an online education in the business of music. 

It's on this new crazy way to secure a music deal   www.CityMusicDeal.com 

Forget about 20what ever... it's 2015 and what does it mean

So things don't always turnout the way the so called experts say they will.  Remember when the CEO of MP3 said that there would be ZERO CD sales in 2015.  Well I bought a CD release yesterday and know that he's full of it. As is anyone telling you to now release you next EP or LP in Physical formats. I also hope that my slide into the beating of all things digital vs physicals can now be tamed by me and we can get on to discussion the economic of what is happening in the music biz today.

Safe to say have the release in Digital and Physical formats across a wide range of formats, ACC, CD, Cass, Flac, WAV, or Vinyl is and asking the fans how and where they're BuyingThis (TM) needs to be your core activity for 2015 and any releases that are planned.

Knowing where to plan based upon where the fans are willing to pay....what if you had two choices in a market place trying to do a tour. One of the markets has more fans willing to be BuyingThis(TM) in physical format over digital formats. Wouldn't this market intelligence be a great piece of information when everyone is planning on supporting a release?

This willingness to pay extends down the whole eco system of the entertainment business.  The Creators and Distributors are now able to talk to the retail channels physical and online and prepare them and include them in an on going dialogue about an individual release in a way never before possible.

When you and your distributor, Distribution is King, are talking about the 16 weeks that you want to spending getting each release ready for it's street date and now having BuyThis(TM) and other technologies are extracting from the waves of chaos that is social media collective intelligence on what a fans whats where when and how.

And since we know that 35% of all social media post involve entertainment it's safe to say that's fishing where the fish are.... Social@Olgvey  - recent survey

Look the magic is the music not the tech and if you have the next big hit there exist, because I helped to create them any kind of deal for your next release and every single pevayor of entertainment on the planet can be a partner.

1. DigitalDistributionDeal.com
2. PhysicalDistributionDeal.com
3. DigitalPhysicalDistributionDeal.com

There now no excuse that you can't get you're music into the system.  The system today is better geared for the independent than ever before. With the majority of this years Grammy nominations going to Independent Artists, the advent of Cities getting behind their music sense and realize beside the sound of it's culture the exporting it is good business.

The Buy Indie Support Local movement is going to be the economy revitalization that non-creatives could never plan for and hopefully would kill it by trying to over bureaucratize it on the way to taking credit for it too.  The music business is not just our culture is part of our economic future and we have work together in a way that most are used to in today Network economies that are more Cities making up Metropolitan areas than State or the Federal Gov. I've been reading a great book called "The Metropolitan Revolution" by Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley and I highly recommend it to readers of this blog because I'm going to be on it like Denver.....

Finally while I don't want to talk about 2014 I do want to say that without Anthony Dunn most of the great artwork that Altavoz has become know for, well Ant is very sick and I've started a GoFundMe campaign to help him. http://www.gofundme.com/helpanthonydunn

Merry Holidays for those of you with Physical Releases

So here's the years top numbers total units sold

BUSINESS CONDITIONS
Album(000)				YTD
Total:				247,143
Digital:				102,982

A bit of simple math shows that of the majority sold it wasn't digital it was ????? Physical Goods at 14,416,1000 items sold (often in Brick and mortar stores) with a lot of Amazon, which is opening it's 1st  music store in NYC. 

I will say that we have one more week left and Digital Music can really turn it around and make all those tech founders rich........ Cuz it sure ain't doing anything for the artists. 

For any city planners that have happened to have stumbled upon this blog if the plan for you cities music doesn't include getting it made physically, closer to home the better, and distributed out of the boundaries of your wonderful town then you're missing the biggest opportunity and IMHO the current failing of our economy -- We're entertaining our economy to death. 

In the words of Jeffery Immelt, CEO General Electric "The United Sates should have 3 priorities; Become a country that is good at manufacturing and exports"* does the 3rd matter?

Detroit Economic Club June, 2nd 2009. 

Now in order to export it you have to make it physical and that means CDs, Cassettes, Vinyl records the old fashion stuff, that was going to go away.  Well it didn't and that really a good thing

So this Holiday I hope the you BuyIndieSupportLocals.org and get ready for more of this in 2015 cuz it's the newest fad and getting a City Music Deal will be part of it.

Physical music is almost 70% of sales last week and it's #WhatWorks

Not sure how many times I have to keep posting this information; However, it seems that way to many people still think that digital music is the dominate way music is consumed and yet each week over the last several months the numbers show that the total opposite is happening.   I'm reminded of meeting the head of Start Up America, Scott Case, at a DC Tech Cocktail event and after talking to him about the music business he bluntly stated that he and Startup American would be working with any Carbon based business.

Now here we are about a year later and the bottom is digital is finding new lows and physical is growing.  And, I have to ask what and where would the US Economy be today and startups in general if we didn't have such myopic ideas about one of American most important industries, US Made Music?


How much longer can America so called leaders ignore something simply based up their personal taste, I say this because all too often my friends say I don't buy music and ergo the rest of the world must be the same - even when direct evidence is presented to them (i.e.  every Starbucks in the USA has CD's right next the cash register or the fact that the largest manufacture of CD's last year made more CD's than any other prior year.

If we're going to try to figure out what works we'll need to listen to someone that actually knows what they are talking about - Right!