83% of Musicians Offer Downloads

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Download music. 83% of musicians can’t be wrong.The latest survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project indicates that 83% of artists have provided free samples of their work online, and many say that free downloading has helped them sell CDs and increased the crowds at their concerts (where the artists actually make a buck or two).  Only 5% say that it’s hurt them. As for their own careers, more of these artists say free music downloading online has helped them than hurt them. Fully 83% of those in the survey say they provide free samples or previews of their music online. And strong pluralities say free downloading has a payoff for them. For instance, 35% of them say free downloading has helped their careers and...


Free Music Works for WilcoXeni Jardin writes in Wired about Wilco's "suprising" success. It's becoming a fairly common story -- artist gets shat upon by label, artist says "screw it" and puts out a solid representative sample of their music online, artist finds later commercial releases gobbled up by fans. In this case, they even raised $15K for charity from people who still wanted to pay for the material they released for free. What a concept -- let people hear some of the band's good stuff (not just some not-ready-for-album samples) for free, and they're more willing to buy stuff. Nothing new here, mind you -- it just used to be called "radio play". Except of course that several whole species of moneygrubbers evolved...


The Dawn of Legit Music DownloadsWell, iTunes Music Store on Windows has cost me a bunch of money so far… I like the organization, the samples, the ability to see related artists and everything—it was very easy to end up with a huge laundry list of backlist stuff that I’ve been meaning to acquire and add to my library, and so I broke down and acquired some of it. Not from iTunes Music Store, mind you… iTunes doesn’t share the iPod nicely (to put it mildly) with J. Rivers Music Center, which is by far my favorite piece of music organizing and iPod handling software. That particular pain in the ass, combined with having to deal with the music being in a different format (AAC)...


Automating Downloads from MP3 BlogsSpending too much time downloading all of that tasty music from MP3 blogs?  BoingBoing has a bunch of pointers for automating your MP3 blog downloads using wget. Be sure to follow the various links for more specific information on how to use this with OS X or Windows, tips about other programs that do similar things, and (of course) more MP3 blogs… At this rate, it shouldn’t be long before the RIAA tries to ban web servers… :angry:  -----...


The Way The Music DiedIf you haven't already seen this week's Frontline documentary, "The Way The Music Died", you can stream it directly from their web site. (Thanks Harry for the head's up) It's interesting. They did spend a few minutes beating on the tired old spin of how much sales are down due to downloading (despite recent numbers that show the opposite), but they spent a lot more time on how the industry itself has killed the product, strangling innovation and continuing to try to stuff the channel full of the same old tired, cookie-cutter music. One thing they didn't talk about is how little of the CD sales revenue (if sales occur at all) actually gets into the pocket of the artist....