Snowed Under

The quickest of updates here. I don’t expect any sympathy or commentary, but your humble narrator is snowbound on a ski vacation this week. I’m checking in with the office daily to see if there are any updates to the preview/launch. I will keep you all informed to the best of my ability. I apologize for the silent treatment. Seriously, if there is anything new to report, you’ll all hear about it.

I won’t be replying to all your questions and comments until I’m back next week. Talk among yourselves, we’re still listening.

Cheers!

Qtraxer

Soft Shoe

This music gig doesn’t pay very well, but the fans are all right.
Milkshake n’ Honey – Sleater-Kinney

I’m feeling a little like the emcee who keeps trying to keep the crowd entertained with jokes and witty anecdotes while the main act guzzles Jack Daniels and curses out the stage crew for wrong-colored M&Ms backstage. While the headliner takes their sweet time getting ready, the emcee is thrown out to the hungry masses to do a little soft-shoe. “Did ya hear the one about the lumberjack, rock star and mortgage banker? No? Hey, who threw that?”

OK, here’s an interesting tidbit to keep you occupied (enter big eyeroll here). The year was 1995 and if you were like me, you started your own college entertainment newspaper. The upside of this project was all the free CDs, concert tickets, interviews and listening parties you could handle. The downside? Besides not making a ton of money, you had to weed through the piles and piles of crap to find the good stuff. For every Pablo Honey, you had to listen to fifty not Pablo Honeys.

One day you find yourself bored in the office. You’re waiting for it to stop raining in Seattle (good luck) or a check to come in the mail so you can eat (stupid 30 day billing cycles) and you pop in a CD by a band called Whale. You recall a brief knowledge of a song called Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe getting some MTV spins, but for the most part, you are skeptical. Then you have one of those “holy crap, these guys are good” moments that lasts about a year. You tell as many people as possible about Whale. You go to their shows. You make your friends go to their shows. You play them at parties. You even write how awesome they are, but by the end of it all, it’s you and about 60 other people on the planet (including their native Sweden) who dig Whale. The album is titled, We Care, but in reality, no one seems to care, but you.

The truth is, I have countless bands like this stored in my head. Bands like Schtum, Figdish, 1000 Mona Lisas, and Prose n’ Concepts. Maybe they made a little splash, but there was never much of a ripple. These were bands that got a little love from a label for some studio time, a manager, and a van. Other than that, they were on their own. You never saw wide-eyed enthusiasm change into systematic contempt so fast. This was the era of the listening party and meet and greet. It was sad. Unless the label’s college rep had lots of drink tickets. Then it was awesome. Rock on!

The point is, you’ll be able to download Whale’s We Care on Qtrax very shortly. Then you can decide for yourself. Maybe we’re got a chance right an old wrong and soon Whale will be headlining Lollapalloza this year. Or, are my musical tastes now up for debate. I downloaded it (since I lost that CD years ago) yesterday and gave it a couple of listens. I stand by my first call. This is an awesome band and a great record.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some brown M&Ms to get rid of.

A Quick One

This will be just a real short post.  There is still nothing too new to report on the launch front.  We’re getting closer and closer.  Thanks for hanging in.

I went to an Atmosphere and Brother Ali show a couple of weeks ago.  I don’t know if the rest of the world appreciates the underground hip hop scene that has emerged out of the Rhymesayers label and the Twin Cities, but if you’re not paying attention, you’re totally missing out.   Going beyond Atmosphere and Brother Ali, you must check out P.O.S, Doomtree and Cecil Otter.  In my opinion, this is the most talented music movement happening in the country right now.  Has been for a while.

One item that was really interesting durning the show was a couple of comments made by rappers Slug and Brother Ali.  Sean (aka Slug) of Atmosphere told the crowd that it was cool if they were recording the show on their phone or whatever.  He emplored the audience to not post it up on Youtube.  “Those are your memories.  Show that shit to your girlfriend or little brother or something, but don’t post it up on Youtube.  Make all of them (Youtubers) get their own memories.”

Brother Ali added, “yeah, store this in the SIM card in your head.”

These are also guys who release music for free online from time to time.  They play all ages shows.  They show up at record stores and talk to fans.  They hand out fliers on their own at other hip hop shows.  I’ve been to a few of their shows now, and they have always appreciated their fans.  They are always thanking the fans for letting them do what they do and coming out to support them.  I don’t get this kind of customer service at my bank.  No wonder I’m more loyal to these guys.

Slug and Ali

Just a Little Patience…Yeeeeeeeaaaaaaahhhhhhh.

Inspirational poster or a GN’R song off of GN’R Lies? Apropos for Qtrax? Of course. We want to thank everyone for their continued patience during the move from beta to our V1.0 launch. I know it’s not easy waiting for free music. Hell, I get testy when I have to wait for a free sample of chicken nuggets at the grocery store on Saturdays. We understand that you’re all hungry for free and legal music downloads. Seriously, we get it.

Without trying to over-fill this post with a bunch of cliché song quotes about how waiting is the hardest part, we want you to understand that we’re working on some last minute updates and upgrades.   We realize that we planned on having launched by now. We’ve been a bit quiet about it too.  We know this sucks.  There’s nothing worse than waiting on the runway and not getting any information from the captain, right?

We’re tweaking. Not as in “been-up-for-72 hours-straight-on-meth-tweaking.” I take that back.  Now that I think of it, it actually it is kind of like that, but without the stimulant. We’re staying up tweaking the site/player. It’s a long laundry list of things we want to get right before we launch. Keep in mind, we’re dealing with a massive influx of third party files. We’re double-checking our triple-checking so that we can get it up and go forward. This is a massive undertaking and it’s very important that we get it as close to perfect as a first-of-it’s-kind-tech launch can be. We anticipate big traffic, we anticipate massive consumer interaction and we anticipate unique advertiser participation. We take all of these aspects seriously as do our partners. There is a lot at stake. Launching for the sake of launching to meet some pre-determined deadline isn’t the goal.

How long is it going to take? That’s a tricky question. We hope that it’s just a couple of more days, but we’ve said that before. Sometimes, when you uncover a tech issue, you need to unravel the whole code. This is a little like rebuilding a piñata after finding a piece of bad candy. It’s doesn’t make sense, but you’re glad you caught the issue. We sincerely hope that you’re all knee deep in free and legal music downloads by the end of the month at the very latest. Keep the faith. After all, you waited 13 years for a new GN’R album and all you got for your trouble (besides a pretty good album) was a stinkin’ can of Dr. Pepper. Or not.  We really hope to do better than that.

Power To The People

“Don’t know what I want but I know how to get it.”

Anarchy in the U.K. – Sex Pistols

You’ve got the keys to the magic bus. How does it feel?

The success of bands and popular music clearly rest in the hands of the fans, now more than ever. If you think that this has been the case for a while, you’re fooling yourself. In the early days, it was radio and independent promoters who were the hit makers. Payola was the name of the game. Exposure over the airwaves insured a chance to sell your music and tour and maybe make a little money. Later, as retail and distribution channels increased, the label fronted media and marketing machines started to take over. You (the fan) had some vote, but let’s face it, you were pretty much along for the ride. Music discovery was still done over the radio airwaves, and let’s just say it wasn’t a level playing field. MTV came along and changed the media format, but not the marketing machine. Some great bands emerged out of this machine, but many industry people constantly remind us, it couldn’t have happened with them and their A&R departments.

Digital music distribution, file sharing and the advancement of high speed internet access really messed it all up. We’ve had ten years of stripping away the layers of a machine that controlled us. Now, this machine is almost completely broke, and no one’s going to fix it. This is a good thing. Time for the next phase.

So, what’s it all going to look like? I’ll break it down into a few categories to get a better understanding. I’ll be brief, since you could write a book on each topic. However, what we do know, is that consumer interaction, artist-to-fan (and back) communication and internet exposure will matter more than ever in pretty much each category.

Music Discovery: Radio’s role is almost totally evaporated. Satellite radio may not make it though the year. Sites like Pandora do such a good job of helping people discover music that if radio was gone tomorrow, would we even miss it?

Music Production: The next generation coming up is going to be better than the current one when it comes to do-it-yourself production. Will this put music studios out of business? No, but it will help more and more bands produce quality music with a high production value without needing any label advances to get it going.

Music Sales: This is obviously the white elephant in the room. Problem is, the white elephant has trampled everything and decimated the bottom lines of every label in the land. Content, it’s been determined (by you, the fans), will be free. Paying for music can still exist, but there needs to be more value than just the song itself.

How Bands Make Money: The live music experience has always been the real money maker for most bands. Tickets, merchandise etc. This will continue. Bands need to concentrate on selling more than just music directly to their core fans. Fans will support their favorite bands financially, we know this much is true.

Building A Brand: Bands and their managers will have to learn how to market themselves beyond their music, merchandise and concert tickets. Back in the day, this was called selling out. Nowadays, it’s called good business.

I know that I’ve broken down the demise of a $40 billion-a-year industry into a few sound bytes. That’s probably a little unfair. There are a number of very important factors that will go into the success of the artists. What’s become more important than any marketing machine or unique distribution deal is the music. Great music will be any band’s first line to success. This wasn’t always the case. Right now, word of mouth, social networking and rapid communication (email, IM, Twitter etc.) are going to be as vital as the music video was in the 80s. We have the unique ability to get our music whenever and wherever we want, all the while tuning out the marketing noise which used to dominate our music experience. More than ever, it’s the music that matters. It’ll be up to you, the fans, to decide on what’s good or not.

The Art of the Album

Obviously, downloading digital music encourages musical cherry picking. Back in PDD (Pre-Digital Downloading), your music purchases had more at stake. Even if you were one of the eight people buying CD singles in 1996, there were fixed costs associated with marketing and distribution which pushed the price of your music higher. The best artists were adept at two things a) putting out music which was worth the $15.99 for a CD; b) rinse, tour, repeat. However, in order for fans to pay a high price for music, it was pretty damn important to know you were going to get your money’s worth. Same with concert tickets. Your favorite bands didn’t dare leave you hanging with one single and a bunch of crap. If they did? You dumped them like that psycho girlfriend in college that kept stealing your hats (totally another story).

In the ADD (After Digital Downloading and double entendre alert!) world, the reaction has been to select and buy the one or two must-have songs off of each album. In fact, digital downloads account for nearly 50% of all music purchased, of which, less than 5% are album purchases. This doesn’t even count illegal downloading, which not only blows away these figures in terms of volume, but also supports the notion of single-song acquisition. Even when it’s stolen, people tend to nab only the one song they want. Think of how much good music is being missed or overlooked. Crazy, right? However, things could be changing as free and legal takes over the music downloading world. I’m predicting that we see an album renaissance.

Why so, you ask? Well, gone is the day of cranking out one hit and a bunch of mediocre songs music with an expectation that you can turn a profit. For people to go out and buy a CD nowadays, it better contain a body of quality music worthy of all that hard-earned cash. Sadly, the opposite was an over-used model by labels and their marketing machines.  Until a few years ago, there were still enough people out there buying CDs and all it took was the momentum of one hit to sell an album. Money was made at high margins, but people got burned. Things are different now.

I like the direction that certain artists are going to promote their whole albums. A lot has been written about Radiohead and NIN giving away their albums online. Kid Rock felt that he’d make a kick-ass album and wanted his fans to invest more of their time and money in it. He opted to not allow single songs to be purchased on iTunes and subsequently he ended up selling a lot of CDs. In a quote from Rolling Stone last year:

“Rock points out a particularly ironic twist to his logic in holding out from iTunes. “It’s funny, I have a shitload of stock in Apple — I think it’s one of the greatest companies in America,” he says. “But it’s just not very American to me when Apple tells you how they want to sell your product and tell you what it’s worth.” [From Rolling Stone, Issue 1059 — August 21, 2008].”

Artists are really starting to take album making seriously again. This plays well into the hand of a free and legal music download site. You might as well grab the album and enjoy the whole thing, especially since it’s free. I’m glad there there are a number of new artists who get it.  Here’s a quick list of five albums from the past couple of years that really prove my point. Oh yeah, and they are all available on Qtrax (beta users now, 1.0 users very, very soon).

Tha Carter III – Lil’Wayne. The self-professed best rapper alive is also making the best hip hop albums. It has pace, rhythm and a complete-ness unlike most hip hop albums.

Dear Science – TV on the Radio. Brooklyn funk rockers create an album that is eclectic, but bound by a unique sub-text that is honest and soulful.

Hello Hong Kong – The Kicks. Ok, this stretches us all the way back to 2004, but rarely has a pop-punk outfit delivered consistency like these Little Rockers have on this album.

The Crane Wife – The Decemberists. British folk meets 70s Prog rock with a story. What’s scary is that there is still massive upside to their potential.  That’s them and their story-telling ways in the picture.

Third – Portishead. Crazy good and to be enjoyed in its entirety regardless of what else is on the agenda.

Qtrax DRM, Michael Jackson and The Ebola Virus.

In 1983, Michael Jackson had a helluva year. He spent 15 weeks atop the charts with 3 #1 hits. Other songs making it to the top of the charts that year were “Come on Eileen” by the Dexy’s Midnight Runners, “Let’s Dance” by David Bowie, “Flashdance…What a Feeling” by Irene Cara, “Every Breath You Take” by The Police and “Maniac” by Michael Sembello (I hope you’re picturing Chris Farley in Tommy Boy every time you hear this song like I do). Man, those were the days. I can practically smell the hairspray. The era was equal parts mega-stars, one-hit wonders and MTV-fueled video bands. To download nearly all of these classic hits, just go to Qtrax and search by keyword “80s”. You’ll be knee deep in these hits, Pat Benetar and Lionel Richie before you know it.

The same year, but with much less hype, The Replacements released Hootenanny, Hüsker Dü was recording Zen Arcade, and The Clash were finishing up Combat Rock. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. That God for that.

What’s this got to do with anything besides the usual “available music on Qtrax” and some glorious self-promotion. Well, I’ll tell you. According to my extensive, web-based research, the same year (1983) a Japanese software engineer, Ryoichi Mori developed Software Service System (SSS) which is one of the earliest implementations of DRM (Digital Rights Management). Similar to the DRM today, SSS specialized hardware that controlled decryption and also enabled payments to be sent to the copyright holder. DRM is one of the hot-button issues in digital music. In a future world, all music may be stripped of DRM, but for now, it’s here and part of pretty much every music fans digital experience–like it or not. For most music sites, DRM encrypted music was there to limit the redistribution of copyright protected music. This is why you had such a difficult time uploading music from CDs from certain labels or sending that cool tune to a friend of yours that you just downloaded from iTunes. However, from a copyright protection issue, many “for pay” download services are removing DRM. This has created a buzz around the acronym and subsequesnt media hysteria has turned DRM into the digital equivalent of the Ebola virus.

So, if the future of music is free and legal, why do Qtrax songs come loaded with DRM? If you’re giving the music away, what’s the big deal? It’s pretty simple, really. We’re counting plays. That’s it. We’re not culling information (Facebook). We’re not infecting your computer with spyware (Limewire). And we’re certainly not giving you the Ebola virus (bat-bitten African monkies and mice). Naturally, we would love to have all of our music on Qtrax be DRM-free and able to be played on anyone’s portable device (that even includes you, Mr. iPod). In fact, we’re working hard with everyone to develop innovative software and systems to see that this becomes a reality in the near future. However, we pay  the artists and publishers based on the amount of plays each song receives. Our DRM is used to do one thing only, count plays. Our agreements with all the major labels and artists gives us rights to distribute their music freely, provided we share in the advertising revenues. We base these payments based on exactly which music is being downloaded and played via Qtrax. It’s a true reflection of the popularity of each song and the most fair way to compensate the artists and publishers of the music. This is why we need to count plays. We encourage users to download as much music as they want and tell their friends to do the same. Play it as much as you like on your computer, for now.  Soon, we’ll have the portability aspect nailed (you will hear something on this topic very soon) and all you’ll need to do is synch up your device once a month so we can, you guessed it, count plays. It’s quick and easy. The beauty is you get to keep the music. Just try and avoid getting bitten by a bat or crazed monkey in the Ebola River valley and you should be OK.

A brief history of time

That's me, in the tie-dye. No, the other tie-dye.

“And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?”

–Talking Heads

Back in the day, I enjoyed going to a Grateful Dead concert or two. Not because I was a big fan of their music–it was OK, but similar to most casual Dead fans, it was the scene that was captivating. My favorite spot attend a show was Las Vegas. A city built on excess which was powered and watered by draining natural resources meeting up with a traveling band of kine rainbow brothers and sisters seemed like a disaster waiting to happen. Not so. Vegas was the favorite pit stop for many Dead Heads. Surprisingly, the city of Las Vegas loved the Dead Heads as well. I liked it for many reasons, but mainly Vegas and The Dead were just such a glorious clash of cultures. Blinking lights, buffets, air conditioning and free drinks are all good when you’ve been indulging in the excesses of a Dead show in 100 + degree heat. Plus, I always had a thing for hippie chicks.

The Dead were pioneers in the world of file sharing. Instead of mounting a massive legal fight against their fans for recording, distributing and profiting from the re-sale of their music—they embraced it. In fact, the redistribution of their live music helped them, a) become one of the most financially successful bands ever; b) build a huge base of ultra-loyal fans with one of the smallest studio music libraries; c) continue to remain relevant and popular through almost 3 generations of music fans. Back in 2000, when the entire music industry was finding the appropriate public square to hang a 19-year old Northeastern drop-out who created a file sharing service, only a few musicians spoke on his defense. Grateful Dead lyricist, John Perry Barlow, who became co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, actually went as far to describe Shawn Fanning (Napster) as a revolutionary akin to the patriots who dumped British tea into Boston Harbor. Most artists didn’t see it the same way. Ain’t that right, Metallica?

All this seems like a lifetime ago. However, the digital music revolution is less than 10 years old. Hell, my car still has a tape player (for Dead bootlegs and old girlfriend mixtapes, I assume) and is much less than 10 years old. If you’re under the age of 25, ask someone older than you to explain what cassette tapes are or look it up online. Worse than the dinosaurs, cassette tapes are gone and almost totally forgotten. Now we’re in an era where digital downloading is the norm. Consumers have decided that, and like the revolution of the patriots and early digital pioneers—it could not be stopped.

Fast forward through thousands of lawsuits and billions of downloads to today. A new era of digital downloads is beginning. This is the world of Qtrax. Free and legal music downloads has finally arrived. We’re not going to bore you with every detail of our history (which is truly in the eye of the beholder). This journey began nearly 10 years ago for us as well. The road has been bumpy, winding, treacherous, dangerous and costly. Around each corner has been seemingly insurmountable road-blocks that we have somehow managed to get through. Are we all the way there yet? Not quite, but stay tuned during the next few weeks. Are we close? So close. Will things continue to get better? Definitely.

So, for now, install the Qtrax player/browser and start downloading the millions of songs from all the major labels and our huge library of independent music. It’s ad-supported, so feel free to engage with the sponsors who are literally giving you access to the most free and legal music on the planet. Tell your friends about it and let the next music revolution begin.

90 Seconds

U2 has been playing on Letterman all week. New York City named a street after them. They are everywhere. What a machine. When a band is this big—you just have to admire how it all unfolds.

I noticed their new album, No Line on the Horizon featured on the Qtrax homepage a few days ago. I also noticed that their first single, “Get on Your Boots” was one of the top downloaded songs on Qtrax. So, here we are. The biggest band in the world is knee deep in a massive media push to promote their new album. You practially can’t turn on the TV or computer and not see them. You can’t turn on the radio without hearing them. Hell, I saw Bono floating in my Fruit Loops this morning. And you’re telling me that I can download the entire album on Qtrax for free? What’s the catch?

Well, it did take nearly one and a half minutes (two minutes less than the top 10 list), and who the hell has that kind of time?

ahem…

“And if I say to you tomorrow. Take my hand, child, come with me.
It’s to a castle I will take you, where what’s to be, they say will be.”

What is and What Should Never Be–Led Zeppelin

They never had a number one hit. Initial reaction to their forming and their music led to their self-depreciating name (given to them by skeptical members of The Who). Everyone doubted that they would be successful with an unknown singer and drummer. Initial reviews called them blues rip-offs. No one wanted to believe in Led Zeppelin

The same can be said about Qtrax. Except for the number one hits. Qtrax has lots of number one hits. Check it out, you’ll see.  This ambitious music download project, which aims to revolutionize how music fans obtain and keep their music, has been fighting the good fight since the early days of file sharing. The arduous task of trying to legitimize file sharing and prove that you need to embrace consumer demand has taken a long time, and was certainly not easy. We’ve got more than our share of doubters and haters. I’m not trying to say that Qtrax is exactly like Led Zeppelin, I’m just saying that sometimes first impressions are not always correct. We hope you’ll give us a chance.

Let’s step back for a moment. I mean, you can put your own spin on recent digital music history, but the fact is, Qtrax exists for a reason. It’s a pretty simple reason, really. It’s the absolute will of the people. It has been for quite some time. It wasn’t necessarily the will of the labels. If it were up to them, you’d still be buying CDs at ridiculously high margins. In addition, only a few select artists actually embraced file sharing (which we’ll discuss later). The fact remains, however, that every day for the past 10 years, more and more music is transferred illegally through unregulated, virus-laden and doomed file sharing services. The numbers are staggering. The record industry legally sold $3.7 billion worth of digital music in 2008. The conservative estimates are that this accounts for less than 5% of all music downloaded last year. This has been going on for years, all the while CD sales have pretty much evaporated. I still see them in the stores, but I don’t know who’s buying them. Apple says that there are plenty of people out there who want to pay for digital music. True, but the numbers don’t lie. The people have spoken. Qtrax has listened. Free and legal is where the future is.

So what’s so unique about Qtrax? Why will it succeed where others have failed? Those are good questions which we hope to answer in a creative, funny and musically relevant way on a daily basis. We’re not going to try and beat you to death with Qtrax propaganda, and we hope you find this blog informative and enjoyable to read. To briefly answer the question, Qtrax is unique because for the first time a company spent the time, money and effort to clear licenses with all the major label groups to bring the largest catalog of music available directly to the people. Pay attention now, Qtrax is the worlds only free music download service with licenses and publishing rights from all the major label groups.  We spent years convincing the artists and labels that an ad-supported model was the way to help make up for lost revenue that occurs from illegal music downloading and file sharing. Even more, we built a fast, easy-to-use interface which comes complete with a browser, so you never have to stop downloading or listening to your tunes while surfing the web.  We’ll talk about more of this in future posts.

Who’s paying for all this? Advertisers. So if you like the music on Qtrax, feel free to thank the advertisers by visiting their sites and buying their stuff when it makes sense. After all, this needs to work for everyone (fans, bands and brands) in order to survive. It’s up to you.

“So if you wake up with the sunrise, and all your dreams are still as new,
And happiness is what you need so bad, girl, the answer lies with you.”

What is and What Should Never Be–Led Zeppelin