How did you feel when you heard your music in The Last Song?

TRACEY: It was unbelievable!  This is true — about 10 years ago we were at Disneyland watching the Main Street Parade.  The song “When You Wish Upon A Star” was played, and I said to Vance, “Wow!  That would be so cool to have a song in a Disney movie someday.  That’s my wish.”  It really was a dream come true.

VANCE: We didn’t know about the placement ahead of time.  Ironically, a friend of ours was the piano coach for Greg Kinnear, who plays the dad in the movie.  She sent an email telling everyone she got a credit. Tracey sent an email back congratulating her.  The next morning, our friend sent an email saying “Congratulations to both of YOU for getting ‘Carnival Lights’ in the film.  I saw your names in the credits.”  We thought she was joking!

TRACEY: So, we literally ran down to the movie theatre as fast as we could for the next screening to see if she was correct.  The movie had just opened the night before.  Within the first five minutes, the song came on as Miley Cyrus‘ character “Ronnie” and her friend are shopping for sunglasses at an amusement park.  It was so soft, but we recognized it.  We could hardly contain ourselves!  I think I saw a tear in Vance’s eye.  It was absolutely amazing.  We stayed until the end, and sure enough, there were our names, along with Music Supervisor, Inc.  At that point, we just lost it — we started jumping up and down and screaming.  Thankfully, by then the place was cleared out so no one witnessed our craziness!

VANCE:  We went out to the lobby and I asked the theatre’s assistant manager if he could take a photo of us by the movie poster…

TRACEY:  …even though we looked like we just rolled out of bed, which we practically did!

VANCE:  The guy looked all over the theatre but couldn’t find any posters.  They had just changed them out to make room for some of the summer movies coming up.  Then, he went into the manager’s office and came out several minutes later.  He found it!  He took some photos of us, but then said, “Hey, why don’t you just take it.  Congratulations!”

How did you ever decide to compose “Carnival Lights?”

TRACEY:  We originally wrote the piece for a cable TV sports show, but it didn’t make the cut.  I think they wanted something faster in a 4/4 tempo at the time.  We wrote “Carnival Lights” in a fast waltz tempo.  So, we put it on the Music Supervisor website and there it found a nice home.

VANCE:  That was about 2 1/2 years ago, and we’ve licensed that song dozens and dozens of times for theatrical shows, commercials, kids’ video games, you name it.  It’s even the theme song on this website for a “Toothpick Carnival.”  The guy’s grandfather made these incredible miniature ferris wheels, roller coasters, carnivals,    etc., all out of toothpicks while serving time in Folsom Prison back in the 1920s!  Even the prison wardens would bring visitors to see his creations.  It’s so funny hearing the song on the website.  You just never know where your music will go.

What is your background, how did you get into music?

TRACEY:  When I was little, my mom would bring me to movies like “Doctor Zhivago” and “Mary Poppins.”  I would come home and play the themes and most of the score on the piano.  She would also read books to me and I would go over to the piano and write a little song about the story.  When I was 4, she read a book called “The Five Chinese Brothers.”   She says I went over to the piano and wrote a song about it using all of the black keys, or the pentatonic scale.  I still remember that song.  So, she signed me up for classical piano lessons.  My teacher was a composer and had two grand pianos in his studio.  He would play Bach inventions his piano, then have me play them back all by ear on the other piano.  I didn’t learn how to read music until I was a junior in high school.  It was a real struggle.  I’m still not great at sightreading complicated rhythms, but if I hear it, I can play it.

VANCE:  I grew up in Hawaii and went to Kamehameha School on the island of Oahu.  They had an excellent music program, so I learned how to play all kinds of instruments in the band and I sang in the choir.  I also took guitar lessons and learned to play ukulele.  I started singing and playing bass and guitar in rock, country, and blues bands when I was 16.  The bands played at all of the military bases, which was great experience.  I always wanted to be a professional musician, but I never thought it would lead to doing what we’re doing.  It’s funny how all of the years of playing, arranging for my bands, finding gigs, dealing with contracts, learning music theory, have all lead to composing and songwriting.

How did you two become a producing-songwriting team?

TRACEY:  We met in a popular bar/concert venue in San Diego known as the Belly Up Tavern in 1995.  Both of our dates stood us up that night and I didn’t want to sit alone.  So I found Vance and sat behind him to look like I was with him.  I think he began to feel a little paranoid, so he turned around and we started talking.  He was there to see Pete Anderson and I was there to see the warm-up band that a few of my friends were in.  When the warm-up band took a break, it turned out Vance knew some of the members, too.  At first, he thought I was this “prissy pianist…”

VANCE:  …and Tracey said she thought I was this “scummy rock musician,” but the more we talked, the more we realized we had a lot in common.  We started playing at each other’s gigs.  Then, we started writing songs together and performing them in singer-songwriter showcases for things like NSAI (Nashville Songwriters Association International), then we took the dive and bought a ProTools studio and started composing and producing music together.

TRACEY:  It wasn’t easy at first.  In fact, it was quite frustrating!  I’d come up with an idea and Vance would start editing it right away.  That drove me crazy.  But after a few years — we can be a little slow sometimes — we found that it worked best when I came up with a theme, melody, riff, groove, etc., then Vance finished it.  Now, we’ve gotten to where we can both start and finish a song, but it’s so great to have instant, honest feedback.

VANCE:  Like Lennon & McCartney but without the bank accounts!  Feedback really helps.  Together, we eventually figure it out and get it right.

TRACEY:  We meet each other half way, which is funny, because I’m originally from Boston, MA.  We figured out it’s about 2,500 miles as the crow flies from San Diego.  Vance is originally from Oahu, HI, which is about 2,500 miles from San Diego as the plane flies.  So we continue to meet “half way” to this day!

VANCE:  But we can be relentless perfectionists, which gets in the way sometimes.  We’ve had to learn to sometimes “dummy it down” and not “overwrite” as one publisher told us.  That was not easy to do!

How do you get your music out there into the world?

VANCE:  Our passion, we discovered, is writing a variety of music for production music libraries.  We really love all genres of music, so it works for us.  One way to find music libraries is to Google “Production Music Libraries,” or check out Music Library Report, or ask other composer friends.

TRACEY:  Or watch the credits at the end of a film!

VANCE:  Also, over the years we’ve joined helpful songwriting and composer organizations like the SCL (Society of Composers and Lyricists), NSAI, AIMP, CCC; we’ve gone to countless conventions like the ASCAP Expo, THR Billboard Film & TV Conference, the TAXI Rally, MIMICON; we take composing classes at UCLA Extension; and we attend concerts like at the new Grammy Museum on a regular basis.

TRACEY:  You can never learn too much in this business!  We’ve also found that networking is essential to getting your music out there in the world.  There’s nothing like meeting someone face-to-face.

How has MusicSupervisor.com helped you?

VANCE:  Music Supervisor is great because we’ve gotten emails asking for special songs needed immediately.  When we have time, we try to fill that request.  It’s so easy to upload new songs onto the website and describe them.  It saves a lot of time.

TRACEY:  Honestly, we’ve never heard anyone say anything but great things about Music Supervisor.com.  In fact, at the recent ASCAP Expo, one our friends had a one-on-one mentor from Disney Music Publishing.  She told him about our placement in the film and he said that he loves working with Music Supervisor.com!

What are you goals for the future?

TRACEY:  I always dreamed of writing a song with the Bergmans.  Two married couples writing a classic, timeless song together — that would be really cool!  We’ve met them several times, and I appreciate their sense of humor and the way they are able to dig so deep to find just the right lyrics.

VANCE:  The Bergmans are funny!  Regarding a future goal…we just started composing for a company that provides music for Harpo Productions, so I’m hoping to get some music into as many upcoming shows as possible.

TRACEY:  And it would be great to have some of our orchestral pieces performed by a live orchestra.  We saw John Williams conduct the LA Phil in October at the Walt Disney Concert Hall — another dream come true — and I can’t imagine what a great feeling that must be.

VANCE:  But as far as the future goes, one thing we’ve learned is if you just hang in there, keep improving your craft, and accept constructive criticism, you should see results.

TRACEY:  My dad always says, “Even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then.”  I’m not exactly sure what that means, but I think it’s that “persistence and patience will eventually pay off!”

Interview by Julius Robinson

The numbers on Bieber are remarkably strong. In 2010, My World has been consistently clocking US-based weekly album sales of around 30,000, according to Nielsen Soundscan. The album entered in November of 2009 at 137,000 units and has since sold platinum, though its staying power is the more interesting story. Over the past ten weeks, the EP has averaged 29,798 units, with variations of just a few thousand weekly. Even more impressive is that Bieber is just now releasing My World 2.0, a tricky dovetail that is rarely achieved.

Albums – both digital and physical – are nice revenue-generators, but generally a laggard behind various online formats. On that note, Bieber is showing rare chart-topping saturation across both physical and digital platforms, and dialing back to 2007, his initial traction came from YouTube.

In the here-and-now, Bieber owns ceiling-clinging spots for the 2.0 single “Baby” (featuring Ludacris) across iTunes, P2P, and MySpace Music, according to data tracked by BigChampagne. “Baby” started hyper-reacting across those platforms within the late-January, early-February timeframe, and has remained a chart-topper since.

This is part of a broader pattern. Earlier, singles “One Time,” “One Less Lonely Girl,” “Favorite Girl” and “Love Me” reacted before My World struck, and every track from that album has since charted. The question now is whether Bieber can augment his current position towards the star-power of something like Lady Gaga, at least in terms of sales and multi-platform saturation. That is the challenge now faced by the Bieber team and label Island Def Jam (UMG)

But the real contention surrounds contractual agreements. Fusari is waving a contract in the air, though Gaga lawyers are now pointing to an illegal agreement. “The above described arrangement was structured in such a way as to mask its true purpose – to provide to the Defendants unlawful compensation for their services as unlicensed employment agents,” Germanotta attorneys noted.

The legal volleys are producing a cloud of questions. Is Fusari simply a fuming ex-boyfriend, and the legal filings a mere War of the Roses? Or, is Gaga really stepping on her early shapers, and bilking a deserving Fusari? The stakes are high for Fusari: an award would catapult the producer, while a defeat would cast Fusari as a money-grubber worth avoiding.

This is the real thing, and most of the discussion online now surrounds quality. Actually, the band itself has now recognized the leak, and pre-emptively posted a stream on their website, whoismgmt.com.

The move allows the band to offer a higher-quality version, and solicit pre-orders. “Hey everybody, the album leaked, and we wanted you to be able to hear it from us,” a message from the band reads. “We wanted to offer it as a free download but that didn’t make sense to anyone but us.”

But of course, those wanting a download can simply click over to a number of alternatives, including the Pirate Bay.

Apps will most likely also beat paid song downloads, a format whose growth prospects remain uncertain. In 2009, the dominant iTunes Store scored 4 billion song downloads, though label groups are witnessing slowing revenue growth on the format.

Commissioned research relationships always raise some thorny questions, though the takeaway – particularly as it relates to CDs – seems plausible enough. Aspects of the rest also make sense, including predictions of a far broader app ecosystem, and a far broader range of participating smartphones and otherwise ‘feature rich’ handhelds. “Mobile app downloads across all types of handsets are also expected to increase from over 7 billion downloads in 2009 to almost 50 billion in 2012 – a year-on-year growth rate of 92 percent,” the group shared.

Earlier this month, Billboard (as syndicated through Reuters) pointed to near-zero payouts on recordings for non-interactive streams in the US, even for superstar artists. “The results show that of the more than 100 artists examined to compile the Money Makers list, only 10 made more than $2,000 from non-interactive streams in 2009, with Beyonce topping the list with an underwhelming $5,000,” the report asserted, while also showing paltry results on the interactive side as well (a separate discussion entirely). Publishing royalties were not part of the calculation.

But is it really that bad? In subsequent discussions with Digital Music News, SoundExchange executive director John Simson outlined a much different level of compensation. “These numbers are quite a bit off,” Simson relayed.

How off? According to SoundExchange tallies, a total of 1,602 artists were paid more than $2,000 in 2009, with 500 of those receiving more than $9,000. Then, 4 cleared $100,000 last year, and more than 60 artists earned more than $50,000. The amounts pertain specifically to royalties on recordings for non-interactive (ie, radio) streams in the US.

The reasons for the discrepancies are unclear. Billboard told Digital Music News that Nielsen Soundscan was sourced for the data, suggesting more current releases and artists. SoundExchange also engaged the publication, and was unable to determine a methodological explanation for the differences.

Even stripping out legacy performances does little to explain. “There is a very robust mix of current artists and legacy artists in our numbers. Webcasting is more current; satellite … has a larger legacy component; by removing satellite, we’ve removed that influence.”

SoundExchange is currently on-the-ground at SXSW, attempting to match an estimated $1 million in royalties to performing artists.

But how bad? According to details disclosed by Nielsen Soundscan at Canadian Music Week on Thursday, album sales slid 2.2 percent last year to 35.1 million units, part of a broader slide over the past few years. Nielsen Company senior vice president of Analytics & Client Relations David Bakula noted that album sales have been “down about 20 percent over the last four or five years.”

But the real number is probably worse. The calculation relied on ‘TEAs,’ or track-equivalent albums. Instead of a straight-ahead album count, the TEA aggregates ten individually-sold songs and treats them as an album unit, a debatable approach.

On the digital front, Canada also has a familiar problem. According to the stats, a ‘record’ 56 million digital tracks were purchased in 2009, an increase of nearly 40 percent. Additionally, digital album sales accounted for 13.6 percent of total album sales. That is up from 9 percent during the previous year, though digital formats are failing to compensate for broader physical declines. By comparison, the digital album percentage in the US was 20.6 percent last year.

And vinyl? Different country, same story. “Vinyl sales were huge in percentage terms, but really less than a quarter percent of all sales were vinyl,” noted Vanessa Thomas, SVP of Sales at Nielsen Music.

But just how much investment is happening today?  The IFPI just released a report pegging current label investment at $5 billion annually, worldwide.  That is roughly 30 percent of broader revenues, a serious reinvestment on early-stage artist development and marketing.  On top of that, the IFPI estimates that labels commit more than $1 million to break artists into newer markets.  Money for advances, recordings, marketing and promotional activities are the largest expenses, often tipping hundreds-of-thousands of dollars, according to the group.

The findings are part of the just-published Investing in Music report.  The broader agenda is to promote anti-piracy measures, reaffirm the importance of labels to artists, and convince lawmakers that labels play an important role in the economy and culture.  “No other party comes close to the levels of investment committed by record companies to developing, nurturing and promoting talent,” said IFPI chief John Kennedy. 

But other parties are also starting to fill that role.  As the hype surrounding ‘DIY’ dies down, artists are realizing that teams and financial support are important for growth, though the partner itself can vary. Indeed, labels are not the only ones capable of bankrolling talent, and artists have more sidekick options than ever before.

For its investment, Power Amp gets 50% of gross revenue from Church’s recordings, publishing, merchandise and touring for an undisclosed period.

“[The deal] provides me with a financial commitment equivalent to that of a major record company but with a much greater degree of control and ownership over my career,” Church told FT.com.

Church parted ways with her former label Sony Music in 2006, after selling 10.5 million albums worldwide.

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on March 10, 2010 – 8:16am.

- What is the FanBridge story?

First, I want to say that we really believe we are just in the beginning of the full story of FanBridge. There are so many things we want to do, we can’t move fast enough (and we move really really fast). But okay…the story of FanBridge begins a few years ago when my Co-Founder Spencer Richardson and I were graduating from college. We met about halfway through our senior year, and quickly realized we both had entrepreneural genes in our DNA. As we were heading towards graduation, we already had day jobs, but we decided it would be fun to get together and work on a project in our spare time.

We talked a lot about what we wanted to do, and looked at a bunch of different ideas. One area that was very interesting to us was the music industry, because it was going through a huge amount of chaos…and with chaos breeds opportunity. Technology was breaking down barriers to entry, and more people were creating music than ever before. At the same time, more music was being consumed than ever before. It was really the middle where established companies, procedures, and ways of doing business were crumbling. We looked at what was going on, and both of us agreed that the most important piece of the music business is the relationship between the artist and the fan. Artists that had long and sustainable careers more often than not had been the ones that had built the relationships with their fans, rather than trying to win the ‘hit song lottery.’ To us, this relationship is the hub of the wheel, and everything else spokes out from there. As we researched, there really was nobody enabling a direct relationship between the artist and the fan, and infact, a lot of people were getting in the way, preventing that relationship from happening (on several levels).

I knew from my experience as an artist manager that a fan email list was incredibly valuable, yet artists were often horrible at collecting the list, managing it, and communicating with their fans via email. They practically would beg for someone else to do this for them. And remember, this was back in the day when the first words out of any artist’s mouth were, “I have a million/billion/trillion friends on MySpace, what do I need their email addresses for?” We knew email was a very valuable channel for communication and commerce, so we decided to build an email list manager for bands. We talked with musicians to learn what they would really want from something like this (such as key features like geo-targeting by zip code and radius), and then each put in a few hundred dollars and built v1 of FanBridge. We didn’t have Google size aspirations for this, it was a hobby on the side and we had no idea where it would go.

Fast forward a few years and we are here today with a platform that makes it really easy for artists to get more fans, manage their fans, and then communicate with their fans. Artists can communicate via email, mobile, and social networks, and we collect a massive amount of data around all of that to make the platform more intelligent and help the artists make those fan relationships more valuable. We obviously are doing this full time now (alongside a rockstar team of people), and work with a huge number of artists ranging from tiny developing musicians to international superstars. We are growing in every key metric and having a great time doing it.

- What is unique about FanBridge compared to its competitors? What do you think your competitors are doing well?

There are a bunch of things that make FanBridge unique compared to other companies in the same space. The first is we are very intouch with what musicians are actually looking for, and we satisfy a core need. There are a bunch of companies out there that I would put more into the category of “cool things, but you don’t really need this” rather than something that is core to a musician’s career. We’re not a bunch of technology guys who started a company because we thought it would be cool to work with musicians. We constantly talk with our clients and conduct surveys to learn what they like, don’t like, and what would they like us to build. This client focus allows us to have a very strong value proposition, high utilization rates, and a truly easy to use platform.

Another differentiator is our awesome client service. We use Zappos as our example of super premium, over the top client service, and strive to be like that every day. Everyone who signs up with us gets a personal account manager, whom they can email at any time. We have a phone number you can call, we don’t hide it (it’s on every page of the site). If you have a problem, question, or want advice, we are happy to help. We try to be very proactive in helping out, and not just reacting to inbound questions. Search Twitter for FanBridge. Clients rave about our service, unsolicited. I think there are very very few companies in this space whose clients will shout from the mountaintops how great the company is, and we are proud to be one of them. This personal touch also means we have tremendous client loyalty, and happy clients are the absolute best marketing we can have. We don’t just say this like most companies do, we live it every day. We spend $15 a month on paid marketing, and that is spent buying misspellings of the word FanBridge on Google Adwords. That’s it. The majority of our new clients are referred by existing clients, and we are growing at a pretty healthy pace against other companies that are spending thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars a month on marketing.

In terms of what our competitors are doing well, it really depends which one you are talking about. Some are great at getting press, others are great at widgets, and others are great at acquiring huge numbers of signups. We wish them all the best because there is still a lot of education that needs to go on in the industry around the fan relationship management area, and we all are fighting that battle together everyday. The more that musicians understand the importance of their fan relationships, the more we all win.

- What surprised you most about starting this business and what continues to surprise you?

I think one of the initial surprises for both Spencer and I was the sheer number of people our platform touches. In addition to a huge number of musicians (large and small), we have well over 50 million fans under management, which is an insane number when you think about it. There are very few other services on the internet with more than that number of people in one place, and that number is growing large amounts every day.

I am still often surprised at how well we are doing against other companies that have millions, if not tens of millions of dollars more than us. Pretty much everyone gets more press than us, spends more on marketing than us, yet we continue to grow in a big way each month. This isn’t something I think about every day, but every now and then the thought comes across my mind and it makes me smile.

One other thing that was surprising was how long it took many other people in this world to catch on to the importance of the artist-fan relaitonship. Years ago, we went around trying to partner with people saying “hey! this fan list stuff is really important, we should partner” and a lot of people didn’t really care because they were focused on whatever their company did. Sure we were a lot smaller back then, but I think it was a combination of both our size and the fact that they didn’t really see much value in what we were doing. I’d say in the last 12-18 months, a bunch of companies have woken up to this piece of the puzzle, and are now scrambling for some sort of solution (which puts us in a great position).

- What are new features you intend to offer?

You will see a lot of iteration from us around existing features. We are always trying to get more feedback to make our existing features more effective and easier to use. In terms of new features, I won’t go into anything specific right now, but our tagline (Powering Valuable Fan Relationships) should provide some insight. We are all about making fan relationships more valuable…which is a combination of value from data, revenue, and other sources.

– How do you measure the value of a fan, an email address or of a mobile number?

First, the industry is still in the very early stages of general awareness of the concept of Fan Lifetime Value (FLV). This pretty much didn’t exist in music until very recently, and it still is just starting to gain a little bit of traction. Once more people start to understand the concept of FLV, we think many new types of marketing will come into place.

In terms of the value of a fan, value can come in a few different ways. The most obvious is dollars…basically how much did this fan spend on me. Another type of value is viral value…does this fan tell all their friends about your music, or is this a trusted person for music recommendations. Both provide value to an artist, and neither is easy to measure (as things stand today).

You will start to see more from us in this area this year, because understanding the value of each of your fans is the key that unlocks a lot of doors.

– What role does a manager play these days? What about a publisher, label or a distributor?

Here is how I see these roles:

Manager: Managers create the plan to grow an artist’s career. I believe managers are in the best position of all these players, because they sit directly in front of an artist. The whole world can change, but as long as you are right in front of an artist, you will always have a role. Because of this position, they also participate in all the income streams of an artist, and are in the best position to do creative deals to further the common goal of building an artist’s career (and income). That said, I think we will see some creativity in the way managers are compensated, as it isn’t easy to make a living making 20% of the income of developing artists. The other side of this is managers with access to a pool of capital will be in a great position as they will be first on the scene to invest in opportunities (around their artists) quicker than anyone else.

Publisher: Publishers are also in a relatively good position, largely because of the legal protections around their IP (copyright) ownership. It is already happening, and I think we will see more publishers play a more active role in developing talent (through investment of both time and dollars).

Label: Large labels are becoming banks, and their problem is the one income stream they have traditionally participated in (sales of recorded music) is steadily decreasing. They’ve tried to compensate with 360 deals, but the issue is they don’t have competencies in all the other areas of an artist’s career. I think labels need to move more to the model that financing has gone, with many little labels (angel investors), fewer mid size labels (VCs), and a few large labels (late stage VCs/private equity).

Labels have proven they can’t predict what artist is going to be a hit, so I think the solution is to setup essentially a farm-team/feeder system where a ton of little bets are spread out over a large number of artists, and then as those artists show strong key metrics, they move up the ladder. Once an artist reaches a major label, the label is just throwing a ton of gas (dollars) on the fire to make it a massive success. The financial reward will be less (because they had to pay more to get the artist), but this tiered system also means the risk will be far less than it is now. It is really about coordinating the risk/reward ratio.

The problem here is a few things. First, major labels believe they can identify a diamond in the rough and build something from the very bottom up. Not only has history proven this to be untrue, it is also a really expensive (read: unprofitable) game to play. Second, nobody has figured out what the key metrics to look at are yet. It will take a lot of data mining and research, but I do believe the data is there to find the correlation that will tell you what are the right early indicators of success. I don’t believe it is sales, plays, pageviews, or any of the other things that people have been looking at. I will posit that the # of engaged fans (and at which levels of engagement) is the best metric I can think of, which is another reason why I believe FanBridge is in a really good place given that we have this data.

Distributors: I think distributors are in a very tough place. They are becoming a commodity, and unless they can turn into a highly automated, efficient, and scalable solution, there really isnt a good future ahead.

- What advice can you offer other music entrepreneurs?

I am by no means the expert in this area, but if I were to pick a few things, they would be:

- Talk to your core users, whether they are musicians or fans. Find out what they NEED, not just what would be nice to have. This is an industry with plenty of areas that need fixing, and spending some time with musicians (or fans) will open your eyes to many opportunities.

- Try to avoid needing big content deals for your business to succeed. There are many accounts (from all sides) of the issues/difficulties in dealing with large content holders (major labels, publishers, etc). While they are doing deals with startups and things are changing, you will likely be facing an uphill battle from the start, and things may not move at the speed which you had hoped.

- Understand the music industry. This industry has many intracacies that most ‘outsiders’ don’t understand, and you will be at a great advantage if you can understand who does what, what their motivations are, and why irrational things are the way they are.

- What role does a social network play in music today and in the future?

It really depends which social network we are talking about, but today they are great because they are large destination websites with huge numbers of people who can all find out about your music. Whether they find your music because you were featured, their friend shared a song with them, or they were browsing the charts, they give you an opportunity to be reached by a huge number of people. Our view now is that social networks are great for finding fans, and then you should use a sign-up form or link to get the fans to sign-up for your direct fan list. Essentially the social network is a feeder to a list that you own and control.

In the future, it is really hard to say, because social networks are changing. With Facebook Connect, Facebook is getting woven into the fabric of the internet outside of facebook.com proper. This brings social features to sites that were never ’social’ to begin with. Similarly, email is a ’social network’ that has more penetration than any other, has been around longer than any other, and continues to evolve with technology. Many are quick to dismiss email as a thing of the past, but we would disagree. I don’t think ’social networks’ in the future are going to be what we think they are today.

- What new models might appear?

I don’t think anyone knows the answer to this question. Everyone continues to debate a la carte vs subscription vs cloud vs ISP licensing vs free vs bundled vs ad supported vs 12 other ideas, and I don’t even think I’m set on which one I think will win (if one even ‘wins’). One thing regarding business models I do believe is that there is a tremendous amount of data around music, and only very recently are people starting to release this data and use it in interesting ways. I think we will see a lot more of this in the future, and this could drive some new business models that we haven’t even thought of yet today.

By Angel Gambino on Mar 09, 2010