sidewinder.fm

This is the preface for Divergent Streams, a collection of essays edited by Kyle Bylin (@sidewinderfm) and written by influential executives, startup founders, and thinkers in the music industry. Download a free copy of the e-book here.

I wanted something to read. Something that challenged me. Something that engaged me. Something that forced me to sit down and consider the writer’s perspective. What I found instead were news stories about trivial developments, blog posts with big headlines but small insights, and numbered lists lacking intellectual substance.

As someone who cares deeply about music and technology, I found this disheartening. I wanted someone to show me the bigger picture and help me see things from a different view. I wanted someone to visualize the future and inspire me to imagine what’s to come. Certainly, I thought, there must be analysts out there identifying emerging trends and writing about them in a way that would encourage me to grow as a reader.

But I couldn’t find anyone who did that on a regular basis. Although there are writers I admire and publications I love, I still wanted more.

Happily, this frustration presented an opportunity: Other people in music and technology may also feel the need for deeper analysis, I reasoned. So I set out on a mission to develop and curate the type of content I wanted to read.

I started out by taking on several younger writers and publishing their essays through Hypebot. Once this effort gained momentum, I started my publication, sidewinder.fm. I asked dozens of my friends, colleagues, and heroes if they would like to write guest posts. I told them my vision for a new conversation, but gave little direction about how it should begin. I wanted them to tell me what they had been thinking about lately and how they saw important issues developing. I wanted them to take on topics that they cared about.

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By Benji Rogers | @BenjiKRogers | Founder and CEO of the direct-to-fan company PledgeMusic.

Direct-to-fan tools can — when used to maximum effect — become the thinnest skin between the artist and fan. The full potential is possible and exists; but only a fraction of the artists and labels out there use it.

There are no real problems of scale because each release campaign can and should be as unique and original as the music that drives it. The main challenges are simply that the platforms are being used generally to minimal effect. They’re being used solely as sales engines and not as experience engines. And so the bottlenecks are with the creators of the campaigns. Gimmicks and competitions aside, what is the artist and label really doing for the fans? Or to put it another way, what are the artists and labels giving their fans to do?

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By Kyle Bylin | @sidewinderfm

So far we have explored the music blog landscape and how it has has changed in recent years, as well as whether music blogs have reached a mainstream audience. In this final interview panel on music blogs, David Greenwald and Nicole Cifani, two influential thinkers and tastemakers in the music industry, weigh in on how the way in which music blogs tell stories has evolved and whether they think music blogs have turned into record labels.

Sidewinder.fm: Are linear narrative and story telling are integral to music as a culture? How are the narratives and stories music blogs construct for their audience evolving to engage new generations of music fans?

David Greenwald | @daverawkblog
Contributing editor for Billboard.com. Founder and editor of Rawkblog and Uncool

This is a good question. As a writer, it’s hard to gauge if the public cares so much about angles and backstory over music or if we just keep pretending they do so we can keep our jobs. Artists from Daft Punk to Bon Iver do show how much image and history remain part of the context and mythology of musicians, even as Twitter and Instagram make it possible for bands to humanize themselves or even oversaturate us with their everyday lives.

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By Kyle Bylin | @sidewinderfm

Direct-to-fan marketing tools and services continue to hold a lot of promise. They enable artists to connect with their fan base and sell their products directly to them. But has the full potential of these tools and services been realized? Who is realizing it? What part of this potential has yet to be fulfilled? In this interview panel on direct-to-fan marketing, four influential executives in the music and tech industry weigh in on the potential of direct-to-fan.

Direct-To-Fan Still an Afterthought to Many Artists

Jason Spitz | Independent online marketing consultant at The Spitz Agency.

The “full potential” of D2F is currently being realized by a few — very few — bands. I spent years running the online store for the Grateful Dead, and I can tell you their direct-to-fan business is quite healthy. In general, jam bands do D2F well. Smarter indie/rock acts make noble attempts, and some succeed, but many run sub-optimal campaigns. They often leave money on the table. Other genres hold promise, but aside from a few shining examples, direct-to-fan is still an afterthought to many artists.

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By Kyle Bylin | @sidewinderfm

Music blogs are a huge part of how avid listeners discover music. Many of them check the same sites every day in hopes of finding new songs and artists. But how broad is the appeal of music blogs? Music blogs have certainly grown in readership, but have they surpassed a niche audience? If so, how? What cultural trends, heroic efforts, or music products have most helped music blogs reach a larger audience? In this interview panel on music blogs, four influential thinkers in the music and tech sector weigh in on whether they think music blogs have reached the mainstream market and what that might mean.

Good Music Blogs Do Not Surpass Niche Audience

Nicole Cifani | @cifanic | Executive producer, writer, and DJ. Interactive at Guggenheim Museum.

My personal opinion is that a good music blog does not surpass a niche audience. It stays within an area of specialized interest and remains utterly dedicated to its followers. These blogs know their audience, are typically members of said audience, and rally a respective community around them whether it be through snarky editorial, reviews of dance remixes or recommendations of what kind of music to cook to.

Blogs that have grown to become larger sites engage the opportunity early on to take on more writers, update often, engage live events, and convey as much relevant information as possible. These sites are also able to break out from a corner by establishing a blueprint for becoming a go-to resource rather than a place to pop in once or twice.

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By Kyle Bylin | @sidewinderfm

Royalty payouts and the burden they impose have always been a strongly debated issue when it comes to Pandora. The company has pursued numerous routes to lower the cost of music streaming from listening caps to government lobbying — some of which have been more successful than others. In this interview panel on Pandora, four influential executives in the music and tech industry weigh in on whether they think Pandora can find a sustainable, profitable business model.

Pandora Must Look Beyond Discovery In Order To Grow

Max Engel | Director of Product at the web publisher SpinMedia, formerly BuzzMedia.

Pandora’s fundamental problem is that it is a victim of its own success. This is the endemic problem of the space: that success is expensive. For Pandora to find a sustainable path to sustaining profitability for the foreseeable future, they’ll need to innovate and diversify their revenue stream.

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By Kyle Bylin | @sidewinderfm

I’ve always been skeptical of how music startups view music listeners. There have been many times where I’ve read a press release or heard an elevator pitch and narrowed my eyes. The suspension of reality can be astounding at times. Music startups seem to think that people have an infinite capacity to discover music and spread their love for artists.

I understand that people are only trying to market their music services. Sometimes, they say things that (I hope) aren’t meant to be taken seriously — they’re simply “selling” the vision behind their product and why they decided to create it. But I always get stuck on how they talk about music listeners — what they think music listeners are willing to do and how much effort they are willing to put in to get whatever value is being created for them. Oftentimes, it sounds like music listeners will run through any maze to find cheese.

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By David Hahn | @davidjhahn | Founder and editor of the blog Musician Wages.

Recording music was a stupid idea. I sometimes daydream about what would need to happen in order for all recorded music playback devices to all stop functioning at once. And then, if people wanted to hear music, someone would have to actually play it.

But I’m not a luddite. While I often look to the music industry’s past — it’s only so that I might get a glimpse of what might happen in the future. I’m much more interested in what will happen to music in my lifetime than what Gustav Mahler did during his.

So, first: yes. There is far to much recorded music in the world. I wish that I could go at least one day without hearing any music at all. But I’d have to lock myself in a cave. There is no escape from the constant barrage of music in our modern world.

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By Frank Woodworth | @GlacialConcepts | Director of Business Development at Thrillcall, a concert discovery and ticketing platform for web and mobile applications.

A major label is going to buy a DIY distributor, such as TuneCore or CD Baby. This is the next logical step in the roll up of distributors. In the past five years the independent distributors have been merged in much the same way that labels were merged over the past 20 years.

IODA and The Orchard merged under Sony and it is only a matter of time until they are folded into Red or vice versa. INgrooves has been added to Fontana under Universal, and the EMI Merger will kill any remnants of Caroline. The reason this occurred is that the indie distributors provide a pipeline of A&R, which has been offloaded to the independent labels. It casts a wider net for potential hits for the parent company.

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By Kyle Bylin | @sidewinderfm

I’ve never taken a strong interest in Pandora’s performance on the stock market, because I mainly write about music products and behavioral trends. What I’ve noticed, though, is how the company’s IPO changed how media outlets talk about digital music services.

Rather than talk about the product features or listener trends, people often talk solely about the viability of the business model and debate whether the company can survive in an increasingly competitive landscape. The stock market appears to dislike any moment that a new music service debuts, because it raises doubt that Pandora can succeed. Once news that Twitter planned to enter the digital music sector broke, shares took a plunge.

As I prepared questions about Pandora for this interview panel, I knew that I wanted to ask about the company’s IPO. I wanted to learn how technology executives and startup founders viewed the performance of Pandora in the stock market. I wanted to ask them if they believed other streaming music services might attempt to go public. Given that the perception of Pandora and Facebook’s stock performance seems to be fairly negative, it could’ve dashed (or at the very least delayed) the hopes of Spotify taking a similar path.

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By Kyle Bylin | @sidewinderfm

Music blogs are an interesting sector, one that continues to evolve with the artists that they cover. I have several friends and colleagues who know a lot about where music blogs came from and where they might be going. So I asked them this question: How has the music blogging and curation landscape changed in recent years? Talk about some of these changes and then bring us into present day. What does that landscape look like right now?

Major Label Embrace of Online Music Gave Blogs Power

David Greenwald | @daverawkblog | Contributing editor for Billboard.com. Founder and editor of Rawkblog and Uncool.

There have been too many changes to list, but I think we can point to a few things — the major labels’ embrace of the Internet and music sharing via SoundCloud and YouTube, which makes blogs both more powerful (in terms of what can be shared) and more indebted to labels and publicists, for one. Blogs have gone in a few interesting directions: growing their staff and building themselves into Pitchfork-style Voltrons with reviews, news, photography, features and so on, or taking to Tumblr and heading deeper into the wordless taste-making direction. Old-school one-person blogs centered on writing about a song a day, the de facto mode in the mid-2000s, seem to have vanished. Curation has become more of a team effort for less news-centric sites, with blogs banding together to form collective sites such as Portals and Ad Hoc, with a focus on digging up experimental or avant-garde music. I can’t say I love every band they uncover, but I’m glad they’re there, shovels in hand.

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David Dufresne of Bandzoogle | sidewinder.fm

By Virginie Berger | @virberg | Founder and general manager of the creative and development agency DBTH.

To cut to the chase and get at the heart of the matter, the biggest apparent challenge that I can identify for direct-to-fan is that the music industry is broken and no one has yet discovered a practical model that will allow the typical independent, DIY musician to make money.

But let’s not forget either that artists without a label and who are well-surrounded, and know how to integrate an entrepreneurial aspect into their approach to sell their production, can succeed. It can also be a question of entourage: if the artist works with a label, a manager or a team who are able to smartly consider the evolution of their job, it can also work very well. Artistic entrepreneurs and their professional entourage should really have the choice to develop their project the way they like. And direct-to-fan tools and services can really help them.

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By Kyle Bylin | @sidewinderfm

Question

Sidewinder.fm: Do you think that direct-to-fan marketing tools and services can reach their full-potential? What challenges or bottlenecks may have prevented these companies and their clients from getting there?

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By Kyle Bylin | @sidewinderfm

Question

Sidewinder.fm: What is a major event that you believe will transpire in the coming months?  Why does this specific event hold significance to you? How do you think this event might impact the larger music industry?

Answer

David Dufresne (@DavidDufresne) is CEO of Bandzoogle, a website builder and marketing platform for independent music artists.

I think when Apple and Google finally launch subscription music services (or partner up with an existing one), and bundle them with each iOS and Android device sold, this will be a huge game-changer. It will definitely be the tipping point towards massive adoption of on-demand music access, and it will accelerate the downfall of music ownership.

It will obviously impact the current providers (Spotify, Rdio, Deezer, etc.), but as soon as streaming becomes the leading way people consume music, it will highlight the issues surrounding revenue and business models for everyone involved (artists, labels, tech companies) and really pave the way to a new era — for both good and bad.

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