Technologizer

You know how musicians like to moan about how music games don’t inspire people to play real instruments? I wonder how they’d feel about Inspired Instruments’ You Rock guitar and Gambridge’s Z-1 Hybrid guitar.

Both axes, on display at CES’s gaming showcase, are MIDI guitars that also work as controllers in Guitar Hero and Rock Band. They’ve got actual, strummable strings for your picking hand and plastic frets that respond to the touch. Along several frets, there are also color-coded bars, marking them as buttons for music gaming.

I’m a guitarist and a gamer, so I couldn’t wait to give You Rock’s capable hired musician a rest and to try both guitars on my own. One thing’s for sure: Playing Guitar Hero on these instruments was considerably more fun than using the actual game’s paddle-and-buttons guitar controller. Being able to jam on strings brings the experience closer to real life (but still pretty far off, of course).

Playing the guitar wasn’t half-bad either. You definitely lose some important abilities, like bending strings and full control over muting, and it takes a little getting used to, but I was able to kick out some blues without too many problems. I actually preferred Gambridge’s guitar as a musical instrument, as it felt more responsive to muting and sliding, and its frets have a little give, making them feel more like real strings. But it’s heavier and its design isn’t as sleek.

It’s probably a good thing that there are two companies pursuing this, because it increases the chances that the product will get to market. The $179 You Rock guitar is available for pre-order online with ship date unknown (you’ll also need a $25 Bluetooth dongle for your game console of choice, available in Q1 for Playstation 3 and Wii and Q2 for Xbox 360), and the company is hoping to land retail deals at CES. Gambridge is shooting for a September launch with the $199 Z-1, whose prototype works with the Playstation 3 only (Gambridge eventually wants to support all consoles) via wired USB.

Would I buy one? Maybe, as the ability to use these guitars as instruments in Garage Band sweetens the deal if you’re an actual musician, but if I was looking to teach a Guitar Hero enthusiast how to play, I’d probably opt for a cheap starter electric guitar instead.

Update: I’ve clarified that the You Rock guitar can mute and slide strings, but it felt a little more natural on the Z-1 in my brief time with both.

With the music industry demanding ever-higher royalty rates for online radio, Pandora’s future has been in jeopardy for some time, but now it seems a workable deal has been struck.

The station is “finally on safe ground with a long-term agreement for survivable royalty rates,” Pandora CTO Tom Conrad told TechCrunch today. SoundExchange, which collects royalties for rights holders, agreed to a 40 percent to 50 percent reduction in per-song-per-listener rates in exchange for 25 percent of Pandora’s revenue, through 2015.

Notably, that deal is good for other Internet radio stations, so Last.fm and Slacker could also benefit from the agreement.

Some users will end up paying for this change. Anyone who listens to Pandora for more than 40 hours in a given month — that’s roughly a tenth of the user base, says TechCrunch — will have to pay $0.99 cents to keep listening. The premium Pandora One service won’t be subject to the additional charge.

Given that Pandora can get a little repetitive after extended listening, the 40-hour cap is a small concession to make, and even then, a dollar ain’t much. Besides, my sense from other Pandora users is that they’re so enthralled with the concept that tiny trade-offs don’t bother them. Little reminders to click on the player window and an occasional ad are minor inconveniences, well-traded for a virtual DJ that knows all about your musical preferences.

To all those dismissals of Twitter as a worthless Web site, the music industry might beg to differ.

A new study by The NPD Group found that Twitterers purchase 77 percent more digital music downloads than other Web users. Put another way by NPD analyst Russ Crupnik, “Twitter users are simply worth more to record labels and music retailers than those who are not using Twitter.”

Not that NPD’s research is all great news for the music industry: Only 23 percent of Web users bought a CD in the last three months, and 16 percent said they bought a digital download. At least there’s a silver lining in the habits of Twitter users, 33 percent of whom bought a CD and 34 percent purchased a music download.

Is there something in the atmosphere of the Twitterverse that beckons the sweet sound of music? Perhaps not; correlation doesn’t imply causation, of course, and NPD avoids suggesting that Twitter is breeds more music buyers.

What NPD does suggest is that Twitter is fertile, yet delicate, marketing ground for the music industry.

“There must be a careful balance struck between entertainment and direct conversation on one hand, and marketing on the other,” Crupnick said. “Used properly Twitter has the power to entertain — and to motivate music fans to purchase more new albums, downloads, merchandise, and concert tickets.”

It’s not clear how the music industry can get on the ground floor of such an operation. There are already plenty of options for sharing music through the service, and none of them are discussed in NPD’s press release.

If the music industry knew which external services were helping generate sales, maybe record labels could help those sites flourish. That’s a better strategy than suing everyone, at least.

Sometimes roundabout logic does makes sense. A BBC feature article published today is arguing that illegal file sharing has exposed a generation of artists to a infinity of influences that makes today’s bands better, strengthening the music business.

Robin Pecknold, who is the lead singer of the band “Fleet Foxes,” told the BBC that file sharing helped him discover music that inspired him–music which he may not have otherwise heard. “As much music as musicians can hear, that will only make music richer as an art form,” Pecknold told the BBC.

I can’t argue with him (well, aside from the stealing part). The Internet has revolutionized music discovery. It is shocking that the music industry never envisioned that broader exposure to music through the Web could yield some positive developments. Where were the music lovers in the business when the industry stood opposed to the Web?

Don’t get me wrong, something had to be done about Napster. There was a substantial loss of intellectual property happening, and piracy is not excusable. However, there was another way: The industry could have embraced the medium instead of going to war with grannies.

That tactic has been successful before. DVDs are a good example of copyright holders working in partnership with technology companies. It’s an obvious conclusion, but the music industry has made some major missteps with how it has handled the Web. Maybe the pirate artists will help save it.

For $31 per year (Update: see the breakdown below), musicians both unknown and legendary will soon be able to get their CDs printed and sold through Amazon, no questions asked.

Following in the footsteps of CDBaby, but with a crucial difference, TuneCore and Amazon will launch an on-demand CD printing service, Wired’s Eliot Van Buskirk reports. The musician pays $31 per year for printing, labeling and delivery of a 10-track CD. Amazon sells the CDs for $8.98 each and keeps 60 percent. The rest goes to the musician.

In terms of keeping a low barrier to entry, CDBaby and TuneCore’s services are fairly similar — I could break down the differences in price and process, but I’m sure things will change once the two companies start competing. The real distinction is the muscle TuneCore brings to the table. Buskirk notes that Trent Reznor, Keith Richards and Joan Jett are already clients of TuneCore for other digitial distribution services, and they’ll likely be itching for yet another way to escape the major labels. With TuneCore, they only have to sell nine CDs each to break a profit, and they keep all the rights to their music.

Not that online printing is without drawbacks for consumers: The immediacy of purchasing a CD in a store is absent, and so is the chance to own something with elaborate packaging, as TuneCore’s liner note options are a fairly standard set of sleeves and inserts. Buskirk also raises the issue of selling CDs at a concert, but I don’t see why the band itself couldn’t order a thousand copies and sell them for a premium at the show.

Paramount to all this nitty-gritty is the not-so-novel idea that the music business as a whole is decentralizing. The cleverest musicians, big and small, are finding ways to advertise and sell products without major labels. Meanwhile, entrepreneurs are capitalizing in spaces where the music industry was too big, dumb and slow to venture.

These monoliths will shrink, and companies like TuneCore will be the catalysts.

Update: So we’re all clear, TuneCore’s Peter Wells, who comments below, breaks the pricing down in an e-mail as 19.98 for a year of maintenance and storage of the physical CD, plus 99 cents per song, plus a flat fee of 99 cents to sell the album through Amazon, totalling roughly $31. An extra dollar distributes the song to iTunes as a digital download.

If you’re among the steadily shrinking group of consumers that purchases music CDs, you probably don’t think much about the materials used in packaging, but like any piece of plastic or paperboard, there’s a bit of environmental destruction involved in its production.

Setting out to tackle this problem with a study of sustainable CD packaging, the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Association of Recording Merchandisers offered up an interesting possibility: Buried deep in the 66-page report (PDF), released this week, is a suggestion to sell carbon offsets to individual consumers.

The study notes that Orbitz (and now Expedia and Travelocity) offer a similar option to their customers. The price of the offset is added to the bill, and the money goes to creators of sustainable energy and other eco-friendly causes.

In the music industry’s version, a customer could either buy a credit online or at a retail store when purchasing the CD. For incentive, the report talks of “exclusive access to merchandise or special offers.” Digital downloaders could get in on the act as well, as online music also carries “significant environmental impacts associated with running download servers and maintaining IT infrastructure, in addition to the amortized impacts of CD recording and production,” the study says.

As recently as today, Washington is considering a cap-and-trade program that would likely apply to CD packaging. Loading some of the burden onto the consumer would take pressure off the recording industry, but it runs the risk of guilt-tripping customers. Hopefully the incentives offered by the record labels would make carbon offsets feel more like a partnership than a way for big business to dodge taxes.

Of course, all of this is theoretical at the moment. I’ve called a spokesman at the RIAA to ask where this initiative stands, and I’ll post the response if it comes. Update: Okay, this came in pretty much immediately after I clicked “Publish.” Spokeswoman Cara Duckworth said the study is analysis and advisory. “It’s up to each company to determine what best works with their individual business plan,” she said.

For as little as we know about Apple’s approval process for iPhone apps, I kind of expected the nin:access program — which allows fans of the band Nine Inch Nails to enjoy streaming music and other perks  — to pass with flying colors. Apparently I was wrong, as the latest update to the application was denied.

In a scathing, profane forum post, frontman Trent Reznor said the objectionable content resided in music from NIN’s “The Downward Spiral” album. If you’ve ever heard the tune “Closer,” you can probably imagine what lit up the censor button.

These songs could just as easily corrupt virgin ears through iTunes, except that the iTunes Store has parental controls. It’s high time the App store added similar functionality, if only so adults capable of withstanding the occasional f-bomb won’t be subject to draconian censorship.

Such a feature is on the way with the iPhone’s 3.0 operating system, and rumor has it that apps with explicit content may have a better shot at approval. iLounge reports that one developer, Makayama, heard as much when its Newspaper(s) application was blocked for including The Sun, a British paper notorious for including a naked centerfold in each edition. In a rejection notice, Apple reportedly said it “would be appropriate to resubmit your application for review once this feature is available.” (Makayama instead removed The Sun and successfully resubmitted the program.)

We’re still waiting on an official release date for the 3.0 OS, but it’s losely scheduled for this summer. In the meantime, Reznor has no plans to ditch the iPhone (though he may take nin:access to jailbreakers) because “nobody has an Android phone,” Blackberry has “inconsistent” hardware and “WinMo straight-up” um, does not meet his quality standards. (We have self-imposed parental controls here, Trent.)

Tomorrow, Yahoo will embrace all sorts of third-party widgets at its Yahoo Music pages, allowing visitors to create their own layouts of videos, listening stations and online stores.

The relaunched Yahoo Music intends to become a “starting point for music fans,” according to the press release. The logic goes that curiosity or love for a recording artist will compel you to visit the artist’s page on Yahoo Music, which acts as a content hub. Widgets, or “modules,” can be added, removed or moved around the page for each individual viewer, allowing you to nix iTunes if Amazon is your preference and dump Pandora if you prefer Last.fm. There are modules for YouTube and Rhapsody as well.

Yahoo Music currently hosts 500,000 artist pages, but down the line, the company wants to open artist page creation for any musician or record label. That sounds like an ambitious undertaking, but it could work well for indie bands with enough devotees.  A spokeswoman tells me that other modules will follow, such as online merch shops. CNet says this is all part of the company’s “Open” strategy of adding third-party features to its existing Web services.

I poked around the old Yahoo Music site today, and actually enjoyed its current form. The listening limit on the embedded Rhapsody links are a downer, but otherwise the site was clean and easy to navigate. Hopefully, the addition of extra modules won’t clutter the screen or grind down on my poor little netbook.

My other concern is remembering to visit when my first instinct for any curiosity is to plug a search into Firefox’s Google toolbar. Yahoo searchers will find the stuff easily, but it’d be really great if Yahoo Music could get enough Google juice to land on the front page of those Web searches, above or near Wikipedia. That would probably be too friendly.

Wired has an interesting feature on MySpace Music, which was supposed to be a boon for the music industry when it launched a half year ago. Free streaming music from all four major record labels and support for playlists seemed like a good idea.

Unfortunately, the service had some serious usability issues, such as limits on playlist size and a slow music player, and the song selection wasn’t comprehensive. Courtney Holt, who stepped in to lead MySpace Music in January, three months after launch, is candid about the problems in his chat with Wired, calling the original service “plumbing and a playlist.” He covers similar ground as he did in a New York Times Bits interview from March, when the service started adding new features and improving the interface. Perhaps Holt is trying to get the word out that MySpace Music isn’t all bad anymore.

And for a free service, it could be worse. The ability to search for bands and build playlists directly from the results is nice, and I like the pop-out player. I’m wondering why playlist management is stunted — it can’t be done in real-time and new songs add themselves to the top of the list, rather than the bottom — but as a tool for discovering new music, it’s functional enough. Links to the Amazon MP3 download for each song are enticing, too.

Holt is also looking to “bring back the album,” as Wired puts it. Entire pages will be dedicated to individual albums, packed with bonus features and a forum for fans to discuss the music. With greater support for indie bands, MySpace Music is starting to look pretty robust.

If I were the record labels, I’d be looking to duplicate this service on other social networks. Design-wise, I’ve always found MySpace to be sloppy, and that’s keeping me away more than the content or the way it’s managed. Obviously adding streaming music to my network of choice (Facebook) can’t happen overnight, but I’d much rather get two dozen streaming track recommendations from friends than read 25 of their obscure personal details.

The music industry is notoriously slow on the Internet uptake. To drive that point home even further, EMI Australia’s new blog, “The In Sound From Way Out,” is apparently the first ever from a major record label. It’s appropriate, then, that the title is borrowed from a 13 year-old Beastie Boys album.

Posts began unceremoniously in late February with a few Pet Shop Boys videos (kudos to Wired for picking up on this now) and continues along at a post or two per day, with sporadic days off. On its face, the blog looks like any other site dedicated to the latest music happenings. There are announcements regarding a variety of groups — the text doesn’t explicitly mention that they’re all EMI bands, but they are — and embedded links to music videos. Today, there’s a post on a really interesting demo package that showed up at the A&R office.

The bloggers seem open to hearing about unsigned bands, too; a box at the top of the screen encourages readers to send tips, and promises to sign groups that the staff really enjoys.

Scanning a couple pages, I quite like the relaxed and open feel of the blog, and that seems to be the point. “As far as we can tell, we are the only major label with this level of openness about who we are and what we do,” the blog’s About page reads. “We hope you respond to that with openness of your own.”

Indeed, the music industry is often stigmatized as a bunch of cold, careless suits. Whether or not music industry blogs such as this can translate into sales is up for debate, but the young, smiling faces of the In Sounds staff are, at minimum, great PR.

Over at CNet, Greg Sandoval has a good story up on subscription music services such as the one that Microsoft offers for its Zune devices. They were supposed to be a big deal, but the idea never spawned any breakout hits. Yahoo and others exited the business, Rhapsody and Napster are niche successes at best, and it wouldn’t be the least bit surprising to see Microsoft say bye-bye to it at some point as well. Meanwhile, Apple has sold billions of non-subscription, buy-it-and-own-it song downloads. Yet Greg’s story says that Microsoft and the music industry are still insisting that subscribing to music is a model that makes sense.

Rationally, subscription music seems like it makes sense: It lets you spend $15 to get access to unlimited music, versus spending the same amount or thereabouts to buy one album. But consumers are simply nowhere near as interested as the industry thinks they should be. Greg mentions one factor in his story: The fact that people appear to want to own their music rather than renting it. I think another big factor is copy protection. It’s neatly mandatory for subscription music (eMusic is the only subscription service that doesn’t lock up its tracks). And even if you can live with the notion of DRM, the technologies that have been used to shackle subscription music have proven to be particularly flaky. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Windows Media.)

Another factor: Subscription music is difficult to explain. Especially the part about it going away if you stop subscribing. Buying music is a notion that we all get.

I still know smart people–including some journalists–who think subscription music will catch on eventually. Maybe it will. Right now, though, I think that its ongoing failure is proof that it doesn’t matter how theoretically logical an idea is if it fails to capture the imagination of consumers.

Podcasting News’s Elisabeth Lewin notes an interesting tidbit in Microsoft’s Form 10-Q SEC filing: Microsoft says that its Zune-related revenue “decreased by $100 or 54% reflecting a decrease in device sales.”

The 10-Q doesn’t seem to say how many Zunes Microsoft sold, and the company has slashed prices. So it’s a little tough to tell whether the plummeting revenue stems from consumers not buying Zunes or from them buying cheaper Zunes. As a frame of reference, Apple reported earlier this week that it sold three percent more iPods in the last quarter than it did a year ago, but made 16 percent less dough doing so.

No matter how you slice it, you can’t turn Microsoft’s Zune revenue number into evidence that the company is making any real inroads on the iPod hegemony. In an era of Microsoft layoffs, cutbacks, and other tough decisions, does that mean that Zune is toast? Tough to say. If you consider Zune to be an MP3 player, it appears to be a disappointing seller that’s in decline, and doing away with it might make sense. But I’m assuming that Microsoft sees Zune as a platform–involving devices, services, and software–and that there’s a good chance it sees it as being strategic enough that’ll continue to invest.

Even so, the Zune name feels permanently tarnished. Suggestion: Microsoft has another entertainment-related brand that’s thriving and which overlaps increasingly with the Zune’s domain. That would be Xbox. Might it be time to retire the Zune name and roll the platform into the Xbox universe?

It might or might be announced this morning at Macworld Expo, but it seems inevitable: CNET is reporting that Apple has hammered out a deal to sell DRM-free music from Sony BMG, Universal, and Warner, joining EMI’s iTunes Plus DRM-less music in the iTunes Store. The agreement would finally give Apple DRM-free music from all the major labels–something it really needs given that Amazon.com and most other major purveyors of music downloads have lost the copy protection.

Amazon.com also undercuts Apple’s pricing on many tracks; CNET reports that Apple’s deal with the labels will force it to drop its flat 99-cent fee in favor of variable pricing, with hot new stuff sometimes costing more, and back-catalog songs going for 79 cents. Seems like a reasonable concession to me (and complete albums already go for varying prices at the iTunes Store).

I don’t recommend buying DRM-hobbled music, which means that don’t recommend buying the protected songs that still comprise the majority of Apple’s offerings. It’ll feel good if I can stop warning folks about the iTunes Store–and I’ll bet Apple is looking forward to losing the DRM as much as anybody at this point.

One has to wonder if RIAA’s decision to stop suing file sharers may have anything to do with the fact that digital music is quickly becoming the format of choice among consumers. A survey released by Nielsen indicates that digital music continues to become a larger portion of the overall music pie.

A record number of both digital albums and tracks were sold during 2008, sporting increases of 32 and 27 percent respectively. 1.07 billion digital tracks were purchased, while 65.8 million albums were downloaded.

Overall, albums seem to be falling out of favor, with a 8.5 percent decrease in sales to 535.4 million units. Interesting factoid? Vinyl is back in style apparently: 1.8 milion LPs were sold during the year, nearly double that from last year.

In the digital realm, Leona Lews “Bleeding Love” took top honors in the singles category, followed by Flo Rida’s “Low” and Rhianna’s “Disturbia.” In albums, Coldplay’s Viva La Vida was the best selling album, followed by Jack Johnson’s Sleep Through The Static and the soundtrack to the 2007 film Juno.

Universal Music Group continues to be the largest purveyor of digital albums and tracks, garnering market shares of 27.8 and 31.8 percent respectively.

Last week, for reasons too complicated to explain here, I wandered into a “liquidation sale” near my home. I didn’t find what I was looking for. But I encountered a bevy of bizarre music players that tried, with varying levels of energy and success, to look like Apple iPods. I snapped photos, and bought a freaky “iPlay.” If you’ve got a strong stomach, check out my report on all this, which I’m calling “iFrauds.”

View iFrauds slideshow