Magnatune blog

February Magnatune Progress Report

The past 10 days have been taken up by a UK press tour, and before that was a New York City press tour. Here's a summary of the past 10 days at Magnatune.

- radio interview with IT conversations (online radio show),

- interview with Bits and Bytes (IT Magazine in Portugal & Spain)

- interview with International Herald Tribune

- wrote an article about Creative Commons for Five-Eight Magazine, an UK music industry magazine

- interview with Music Ally wihch resulted in an article this week (they are UK music biz analysts and have an industry magazine),

- wrote a short "Viewpoints" article for Music Week (an industry magazine) about the Creative Commons, in response to an article this wrote recently

- radio interview with BBC 5 radio, to be aired in the next few weeks

- wrote an article for the Audio Engineering Society, UK spring conference, where I'll also be presenting.

- spent 3 days recording Bach's flute works on recorder, with Magnatune artist Emma Murphy, and a harpsichord and cello player.

- preparing release of CDs by 9 artists, 13 CDs total.

- preparing release of TunePlug mp3 flash drive release, for the first week of March.

The New York press tour went so-so. I had good interviews with Fast Company, Fortune Small Business Magazine, and Global Rhythm Magazine, and may get stories from them. Other magazines were very clear on the "pay to play" system they operate by: you purchase at least 3 months of full page ads at $4200 per issue, and they review your CDs.

Sales are still around the same number of albums per month, though after a slight decline at the end of 2004 we're back to our average high from the beginning of 2004. This may be a seasonal cycle.

CD sales continue to be at about 30% of total sales.

I'm working with Paypal to be a press reference for them, and have an interview for that this week. Paypal accounts for 30% of our sales, which is about double the typical average Paypal sees, and is part of our international success.

We're now the #1 hit for "music licensing" on Google, and this has caused an upsurge in licensing interest, which is really exciting, as that could be a long-term foundation for Magnatune's future success. FYI there have been 14 music licenses in February, 10 in January, 18 in December, 23 in November, 18 in October.

-john

Magnatune signs digital distribution deal with CDBABY

Magnatune has signed a digital distribution deal with CDBABY, who will be sending all of Magnatune's music to all the music stores listed below. I've been working with Apple since June (and MSN since September), and because they're so overwhelmed with their success, the music is still not up on their store. Since CDBABY has an existing relationship with all these distributors, I'm told the music will get up there fairly fast.

Perhaps more importantly, we at Magnatune greatly admire CDBABY, and they have a great reputation in the indie-industry for treating people well and actually paying their bills (a rare trait). We're really happy to be working with them.

Here is a complete list of sites Magnatune's music will appear on:

AliveAudio
Apple iTunes
AudioLunchbox
Bitmunk
Bold Soul
Brainshield
BuyMusic
CatchMusic
DigiPie
Digital Kiosk Technologies
Digizaar
DiscLogic
EMEPE3
Emusic
Etherstream
GraniteRocks
iSound
iTunes-Canada
iTunes-Europe
iTunes-UK
Lindows
LoudEye
Mperia
MPFlea
MSN Music
Music4Cents
MusicIsHere
MusicMatch
MusicNet
MusicNow
Napster
Napster-Canada
Napster-UK
NetMusic
NewViews Music
On-line Promo
Play Indies
Puretracks
QTRnote
Rhapsody
Ruckus Network
RuleRadio
Sony Connect
True Independent
Viztas
Weed
WeedICP - ShareNewYork
WeedICP - WeedFiles

Keep in mind that some like LoudEye and MusicNet are actually sub-distributors that power MTV.com VirginRadio.com AT&T music store, and more like that.

Music Week Blasts CC and Magnatune

Music Week, a music-industry magazine based in the UK, ran a very negative story today about the Creative Commons. Magnatune is briefly referred to in it:

It is feared by some in the music business that some musicians and songwriters will unwittingly turn to CC when it is launched here: a web-based record label, Magnatune, has already been set up based on CC principles and David Byrne and The Beastie Boys have already been featured on a CC compilation album.

It seems that this article is in response to a seminar at MIDEM, a music industry trade show in Cannes, France that Magnatune exhibited at last year (we didn't exhibit there this year). The article seems to confuse a Creative Commons license with "public domain", which are very different things, but is interesting to read as a knee-jerk reaction.

Needless to say, I received a very different reaction during a panel discussion I participated in today at Stanford University, with Lessig, two lawyers and the CC's Glenn Otis Brown. http://www.stanford.edu/group/SESLA/

Below is the complete article text:

CC creates industry concern The Music business is casting a wary eye over over the imminent arrival in the UK of a new license scheme for creators.

The Creative Commons (CC) license, which has roots in the US philanthropic and academic community, is designed to enable artists, film makers, writers,programmers and others gain maximum exposure for their work without users having to obtain the time-consuming permissions that normal copyright requires.

CC, which was the subject of a seminar at Midem, eminates from the US's prestigious Stanford Law School, which issued it first licenses in the US in 2002; a draft license has been drawn up by the University of Oxford's media and law department ready for it to be launched in the UK.

It is feared by some in the music business that some musicians and songwriters will unwittingly turn to CC when it is launched here: a web-based record label, Magnatune, has already been set up based on CC principles and David Byrne and The Beastie Boys have already been featured on a CC compilation album.

MPA chief executive Sarah Faulder voices concern that young acts could 'give up everything for no money and irrevocably' in their keenness to be heard. Patrick Rackow, barrister at Steeles Law, believes that the CC license is totally unnecessary . 'This is not an alternative to copyright,' he says. 'If people want to give their work away they have always been able to do that.'

Once a work has been passed into CC it an never be retrieved, which Faulder and others believe would be disastrous if a new group signed its first single away to the public domain with a CC license and then discovered it had the potential to become a worldwide hit.

British Academy of Composers and Songwriters chairman David Ferguson says that the CC model may work in the US, but European copyright law operates for the creators as much as big business.

'In certain areas like academia I think it is fine,but not in music or the audio visual world,' he says.

Worldwide music licensing breakdown

I looked up the countries for the 100 most recent music licenses on Magnatune, looking at where in the world the license-buyer was.

The USA is responsible for 64% of our music licenses.

In the USA, the east coast is the majority, which likely represents our success at selling anywhere-but-Hollywood, where it seems that most music licensing occurs through personal connnections.

• East coast: 34% of total (53% of USA licenses)
• Central: 14% (22% of USA licenses)
• West coast: 16% (25% of USA licenses)

36% of our music licensing is outside the USA, with the UK being the largest:

• UK: 11% of total licensing (31% of non-USA licensing)
• Australia: 5% of total licensing (14% of non-USA licensing)
• Denmark & Canada & Japan: 4% each of total licensing (11% each of non-USA licensing)
• Spain & Switzerland & Taiwan & Africa: 2% each of total licensing (5% each of non-USA licensing)

The trend...

All our numbers are generally aligning along 60% USA / 40% non-USA, specifically:

• Licensing: 64% USA/36% non-USA
• Album sales: 63% USA/37% non-USA
• Artist's citizenship: 59% USA/41% non-USA

Worldwide distribution of Magnatune Musicians

My UK PR agency wanted to know how many of my musicians are in the USA, vs outside.

I did a quick count of our 185 artists, and found that 41% of our artists are from outside the USA. Also interesting is how many of our USA artists are from the central portion of the USA. Here are the numbers below.

Worldwide distribution of Magnatune Musicians:

• 59% USA
• 13% UK
• 6% Canada
• 4% Sweden
• 18% other

USA Distribution of Magnatune Musicians:

• 48% west coast
• 28% central
• 24% east coast