Guns N’ Roses – Chinese Democracy MP3 for 79p

The wait is over, you can now download the first track from the up and coming album for 79p.

G N’ R – Chinese Democracy

Let down and hanging around…Why Radiohead lack quality

Discussing the release of Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” five days after it was released and two weeks after it was announced seems a bit like holding another inquest into Diana’s death ten years on: it’s rendered pointless since everybody’s made up their mind and anything worth saying has been said. But there is another inquest, so I’ll carry on regardless.

So let’s start with the disclaimers: I like Radiohead and at times I’ve loved their music and their release of In Rainbows is radical in numerous ways: not least the set-your-own-price policy, the eschewing of established labels at this stage and the very democratic gesture of eliminating the tastemakers, pluggers etc by making everything available to everybody at the same point in time.

But why are these downloads distributed at 160kbps MP3? Maybe with no guaranteed revenue, they were keen to keep their bandwidth costs down by reducing the size of the MP3 files. Seems fair enough in that case. But with the secondary story that In Rainbows would emerge next year on a conventional CD format, the whole project takes on a different hue, seemingly confirmed by the following quote from the band’s management, or more precisely Bryce Edge,:

“You can’t listen to a Radiohead record on MP3 and hear the detail; it’s impossible… We don’t understand why record companies don’t go on the offensive and say what a great piece of kit CDs are. CDs re undervalued and sold in too cheaply.” (Music Week [subscription required], 13/10/07)

The downloads, Edge implies in a discussion of the physical release, are not the end in delivering the album to the fans, but the means to promote the CD release next year and the download quality is deliberately low to achieve this.

Of course, many will pay little, be happy enough with their downloads and not consider buying the CD. But making the CD available seems not to be about ensuring the album is made available to fifty quid man who prefers walking to surfing, nor satisfying those who want something to put next to “Hail To The Thief” on their shelves. Instead the CD seems still to be the only route of access to The Full Radiohead Experience.

For me, this compromises the idea that this a substantial challenge to the status quo. It doesn’t represent a qualitative shift towards self-distribution, but sits in a spectrum of marketing strategies aimed at making you part with a fixed amount of money at some stage. It’s more generous than the standard “here’s a free download, you might like the album”, but it’s still “have some cheap-and-nasty downloads now, and if you can sense the quality, come back next year with a crisp tenner.”

Of course, it’s disingenuous not to make 7digital’s perspective on the quality debate clear here. Since its inception three years ago, 7digital has been offering downloads at a minimum of 192kbps, and with progress in broadband penetration, download speeds and an increase in download-based music consumption in the home – we’ve stepped this up to offer 320kbps files, too. Recently we trumpeted the availability of the Radiohead back catalogue at 320kbps, and more and more files will be available.

You’ll find lossless files available for purchase in some of the dance boutique stores to meet the needs of the DJ market and club connoisseurs, and it’s something we’re preparing for, albeit in the knowledge that there is a law of diminishing returns involved, i.e. each jump delivers less discernable improvement in quality than the last.

Those in the industry know about the balance between file size and quality and the irresistible increase in the latter. Messrs Edge, Yorke et al have every right to offer the files at 160kbps – which is of course higher than the standard 128kbps that Apple hoped to hoodwink their customers with for as long as possible. But they are doing the download industry an enormous disservice in asserting that 160kbps is as good as it gets, when this is blatantly untrue.

Plenty think the recording industry in its entirety is doomed – and its ability to shoot itself in the foot is well-documented – but curiously Edge seems keener on trying save a physical format that is, sadly, fading from view at the expense of a downloading industry that is striving against formidable odds to prop up the balance sheet. Hopefully his perspective will remain unchallenged only in the trade papers, rather than misinforming the public at large, who might prefer to download Let Down at 320kbps rather than simply feel let down.

Ian Bell – Operations Manager
ian dot bell (at) 7digital dot com
7digital

Digg: The Bastille Of The Digital World?

May 1st saw one of the best-known “Web 2.0″ institutions being had by the mob. As a Mashable story of said date purports, Digg’s millions of users effectively wrestled control over the site’s content out of the site-management’s hands. Why? Because an editor tried to abide by the law, do the right thing and remove the posting of a story that conveyed information on how to bypass the protection of a physical content-carrier. The Crowd picked up on the deletion and almost immediately spun into irate action, which quickly had Digg drowning in replications of the offensive post, even rendering the service unavailable for periods of time. Eventually, Founder Kevin Rose stated on Digg’s own blog that he’d gotten the message sent to him by his user base and called off all further counter-action. As a consequence, one of The New Web’s flagships may just face termination.

This certainly qualifies as an upheaval. What totally throws me is the relative smallness of the event instigating such an outbreak of rebellion. Like the literal match lit in a dehydrated forest. I mean, really; this wasn’t the first crack ever published on The Net and it wasn’t the first bit of user-contributed content that has been taken off a service for exactly the same reason: containing information in conflict with applicable law. I have no way of telling what made this one occurrence different enough from all the myriads of violations that (must have) happened since the dawn of DarpaNet to flare up like this; but I do think the hint is very much worth taking. Apart from examining whether or not such behaviour – as put on display by The Digg Users – is irresponsible or rather irreverent towards the legitimate interest of content creators and owners, one could ask what it is that makes people react in such fashion.

Reading the banners flying over the turmoil one might feel tempted to believe the masses jumped to the defence of liberty in general and the free exchange of information in particular. Wonderful merits to have, and certainly worth fighting for with all fierceness; but are they really at the bottom of May Day’s riots? Hardly, as iconic German blogger Johnny Häusler of Spreeblick surmises, if I read him right: His dedicated post sees revolutionary tendencies sprout in distinctive abundance wherever something available at low or no cost is about to become less so.

Profit-maximizing thinking he detects, hardly any different from what drives the actions of the ailing economy so often demonised for just that. And yet, while Häusler muses at what future the Internet might face with a new level of confrontation forcing the content lobby to bring in the legal and financial equivalent of heavy motorized artillery in order to pacify that freshly frenzied multi-headed beast, I have difficulties accepting that mere avarice should be enough to kindle something like The Digg Incident.

Then what? The one thing sure to get people rebellious sooner or later is dissatisfaction. The strongest cause psychology knows for dissatisfaction is lack of control. Take away control over material circumstances from any individual to create a dis satisfactory situation of real or perceived penury. Limit access to information – licit or illicit – and you’re likely to create a dis satisfactory situation of real or perceived lack of liberty looming. Create dis satisfactory experiences with products to frustrate paying customers. Frustrate customers to dissolve loyalty. And so on.

Rumour (well, Wikipedia) has it that it was such a dis satisfactory experience which got a customer annoyed enough to whip up the criminal energy and engineer the bit of code that started the chain of events ultimately leading to what happened at Digg recently.

So, to me, the May Day Riots aren’t really about censorship. To me they illustrate how much of a tidal wave of excrement can come leaping at you out of the blue if you manage to peeve off just ONE customer (bad enough). One is sufficient to cause a catastrophe in this day and age. Enough to break any protection, enough to initiate the propagation of related information, enough to effectively foil any attempt at copyright control. Just one. A scenario fit to frighten even the most seasoned marketeers. Or one to inspire thinking. If you can’t hope to contain a movement, what can you do? Looking for ways to re-establish a mode of satisfaction in all honesty might be a good start. That may require dropping a lot of what’s thought to be common knowledge about selling entertainment. It may require another Digital Revolution. In the heads. To prevent Digg from becoming some sort of digital Bastille. You know; the kind of place that future generations will relate to as where the obliteration of the obsolete began.

Alexander Maiwald 7digital.de Marketing
Contact me: alexander.maiwald (at) 7digital (dot) com

One small DRM free step for man

Over at Techcrunch the word was that April 2nd would be the day to remember for music industry, this day bears comparisons to the day Google opened the cheque book for Youtube and changed the face of online video.

EMI are going DRM-free, it is a lovely thought and we at 7digital have a smile from ear to ear.

From the announcement (and most news press stories) you were lead to believe the deal was an exclusive between Apple & EMI – not true. As soon as EMI CEO Eric Nicoli made the announcement 7digital went live with the first high quality 320kbps MP3 music from The Good, the Bad & the Queen.

The other revelation was that the world leading iTunes music store would sell EMI music in their AAC format which did not do much for the interoperability debate. On the positive side, the announcement meant that competing download stores could finally sell EMI content in MP3 which meant music files are now be compatible with all of the 100 million iPods out there.

The giant quality leap from iTunes current 128kbps DRM tracks to unprotected 256kbps is very average but great news for other download stores, at 7digital we can now sell these unprotected files in 320kbps – a much higher quality.

Pricing was the other hot topic, should consumers pay a higher price for a premium quality track? Does the artist see any extra from this increased cost? These questions will be debated for some time. There is no time to dwell over this dilemma, it is time to move forward and encourage the other major labels to join the DRM free party.

Not only has EMI has taken the bold move to save the spiralling music industry, they have also broken the iTunes fixed pricing model, a feat that major labels have forever tried to do. Winning the battle of iTunes fixed pricing should make the other labels lick their lips at the thought of generating more revenue for zero cost.

The talk now is for iTunes to become a subscription model. I personally am not a sucker for subscription models and I am yet to be convinced subscription is the way forward.

It has taken five years for iTunes to ooze a little flexibility, could it be that iTunes are cracking under the pressure from labels and governments throughout the world?

Peter Davias Marketing Manager
Contact me: peter.davias (at) 7digital (dot) com

Widget! Widget! Widget! Oi Oi Oi

Myspace are always in the news, a year ago most of the news was positive, and the last few months they have been receiving a backlash of bad press. The recent decision from Myspace to block certain ‘widgets’ (Revver, Imeem, Hoopa) are not doing them any favors for the future of Myspace.

Apparently working for Myspace is like musical chairs, it will not be too long before the co-founders Tom & ‘the other guy’ packs up & leaves once their contracts are complete later this year.

I think Myspace/News Corp need to sit back a moment to look at who & what made it what is it today – the users. Myspace arguably is the face of UGC (User Generated Content) well they helped make the term became ‘cool’. Being able to mold a webpage & fill it with goodies was all the rage until Myspace turned sour and realised this type of behaviour can not be good for their revenue model.

To make the widget-sphere work under Myspace’s new controlled environment I would put forward the following:

- Companies with a widget must contact Myspace for widget approval

- Each vendor agrees to a set of Myspace (fair use) terms & conditions for inclusion

- Myspace review the widget & approve for distribution

- After approval Myspace can monitor the widget to ensure it does not break the T&C’s.

If a vendors breaks the contract, then ban them.

I think Myspace needs to look at the positive effect of this current widget-madness we live in. Myspace traffic has flattened over the last 6 months compared to other high profile sites. While new comers like Bebo are rising rapidly, you will notice on the Alexa graph that Bebo traffic has pointed north since they announced Bebo Widgets (an approved set of widgets to appear within Bebo page guidelines).

Social networking is about keeping in touch and having some fun while doing so (or fooling around behind your girlfriends’ back if thats your thing!). The ying must go with the yang or else people will move to another site that offers all they need without restrictions.

Peter Davias Marketing Manager

Contact me: peter.davias (at) 7digital (dot) com

Who does a download store really serve?

According to a recent article, Lily Allen is complaining about being bullied. Apparently, iTunes are twisting her arm into releasing a remix early, exclusively to them, in exchange for promoting her on their front page

The first thought to enter your head is, “Lily Allen? Complaining? Surely not!” – followed by a flash of horror that the music business should work in such a dastardly, mercenary fashion.

After all, ‘twas ever thus. This mutual back-scratching or ahem, “exchange of values” is a fundamental tenet of business. So what is she complaining about, and who cares? Well, we all should, actually.

Let’s look at what she actually said: “iTunes [is] kind of bullying people into corners by making sure they have extra, you know, extra songs so they can put them on the front page. And they won’t [advertise] your album unless you kind of give them extra material and so on. And we’ve kind of been backed into a corner. We want to do this remix, but the remix isn’t ready, but they need it delivered by today and blah blah blah. So I said, ‘Okay, fine, give iTunes the rubbish remix, and then what I’ll do I’ll get the people remixing it to do a good remix and then we’ll give it away for free on MySpace.”

You can hear the interview here

It is not the trade-off between promotion and content that niggles. It’s that bullying allegation that makes leaves a sour taste. Rushing an artist to release material before they are happy with it because you can is just wrong. And you’ve only got to look at recent events on a UK TV show industry to see how much we hate bullies. Oh yes.

But with my commercial hat on, what would we do if she came to 7digital, with a secret little exclusive in her handbag? Would we put it on the home-page? Well, yes, there’s a good chance we would. But, conversely, would we give her a deadline, and threaten her with expulsion if she handed it in late? Erm, no.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not writing this with a view to playing pointy-finger, name-calling games with iTunes. This is after all only Lily Allen’s account, and let’s face it, pop-stars don’t make for the most reliable witnesses. The broader question is of balance. Whom should a digital store serve? Should it be:

a) the consumer?

b) the artist/label?

c) the shopkeeper?

d) all of the above?

It should be d) shouldn’t it? And while that might be slightly Utopian, it is a better goal than allowing one of the players in this game to become super-dominant & slap the others about for their own ends.

Stephen Somerville Commercial Director

Contact me: stephen.somerville (at) 7digital.com

indiestore launch

The traditional music business model has always been broken. Run from the top down, inefficient, undemocratic and pegged against the content creators (the artist). So when digital music revolutionized the business model and the consumption model of music, the industry experienced a re-birth. But this time around, it was run from the bottom up, with efficient distribution and driven by the artist and their fans. Music in the digital age is now democratic and as vibrant as it has ever been.

indiestore exemplifies this re-birth of music. The digital download service built by 7digital empowers artists to gain control of their own product and allows their fans to define their success while giving them a chance to actually make money. Using the same platform built for Coldplay, Gorillaz and The White Stripes, 7digital levelled the playing field by bringing a cost-effective download solution by way of distribution, marketing and consumption to every artist – signed, unsigned, independent and major.

We launched indiestore in late February after initially releasing the service in beta. The idea behind releasing a beta version was to allow the service to build around the needs of the artists who would be using the download platform. We had open forums to talk to independent and unsigned artists about tools that they wanted to help sell their music online, features they would like included on their download store and ways they could communicate with their fans. In response we introduced a widget for artists to sell anywhere on the web, increased payment accessibility with SMS payments, created a ratings and comments tool, counted sales towards the charts in 20+ countries and offered artists to submit their tracks to music licensing guru’s who choose music for synchronisation opportunities.

The democratic nature of indiestore and the control that artists have in using the service defines the new business model for the music industry. No longer can the music industry have a monopoly of someone else’s product. The digital music revolution is here, and we can finally hear what the world has to offer.

Tejas Mistry indiestore Product Manager

Contact me: tejas.mistry (at) 7digital (dot) com

Thoughts on music, DRM and Steve Jobs

On Feb 6th, Steve Jobs published an open letter to the world (see http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic) with his thoughts on digital music and specifically the digital rights management (DRM) technology used by Apple and others to “protect” the music from piracy.It certainly seems like Jobs has employed his “Reality Distortion Field” (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality_distortion_field) to its full effect on this one. His ability to gain column inches on a subject (DRM) normally considered dull by the mass media is impressive in itself. But Steve is just jumping on the bandwagon – companies like 7digital, Yahoo, emusic etc have been calling for consumer choice and unprotected music for ages. It does seem disingenuous of Steve Jobs to suddenly become the greatest advocate of non-DRM music given that for the last few years, Apple has trumpeted its ironically named “FairPlay” DRM system (only “Fair” for Apple!).

For my mind this is a slightly cynical attempt to take the moral high ground as Apple is under increasing pressure from European consumer groups to open up its platform. And maybe Apple are realizing that consumers are getting fed up with the fact that downloads purchased on the iTunes music store simply don’t work on any device other than the iPod.

Saying all of that, we certainly support his conclusion – consumer choice drives free markets and for legitimate digital music and media to take the next big step consumers need to be able to buy digital media that works on any device. We’ve always supported multiple formats (including MP3) that are optimized for multiple devices including the iPod, Sony PSP, Creative Zen, Windows Media Centers etc. The idea of consumers having to transcode files so they work on different devices is insane.

For digital music to fulfill its potential, consumers should be able to play their purchased music on any device and be able to buy from any store secure in the knowledge that it will just work. Then we will have real competition.

Ben Drury CEO 7digital

Contact me: ben.drury (at) 7digital.com