I often been asked what is the problem with the music industry. There is a lot of factors but the key point is the fact that it is not a music industry crisis but a support crisis. Why should i pay for a format that i dont like ? The only music that i am still buying is Vinyl.

Interesting to know also that artists never had a bigger part of the pie when CD and digital formats took over the Vinyl.

Manufacturing cost for a vinyl is around 4 to 8 $. In comparaison the CD has a manufacturing cost of 0.4 to 0.8 cents and digital files aprox 0 … let you do the math …

Vinyl is an object of desire, it is non dublicable and a perfect collectible object. It is so far the best way to consume artwork around a music object

In 1996 i started a vinyl distribution company called Chronowax. This company was selling close to a million vinyl per year. I remember when Chronowax did for example campain reissues for Dej Jam and sold more than half a million LPs …

Back then the promotion and viral aspect of the vinyl was key to enter the club scene and the dj’s playlists. Digital happened to be way more effective and a less expensive way of promoting music.

But vinyl is still the best music object we had so far.

Selling picture discs and sexy connected devices seems to have a more bright future than selling CD’s and Music files

Modern music marketing is about the artist-fan relationship

In the mid 90’s i had been lucky to be involved with some major rap band releases. 

As radios were very slow to react, we use to manufacture few hundred thousands of promo CDs, stickers etc for street marketing campaigns. Means that we used to pay almost half a million dollar to be able to give away music, just to get our new band heard by the kids …. 

Things done changed, new digital ecosystem is offering services for free that used to be so expensive …

Make sure you are getting the best out of it:

- Get out the traditional album marketing path. Release yourself, Release more music than a traditional label can handle. Remember the mixtape era ?

- Give away music for free, donations, feedbacks, email addresses …Download is the new radio !

- Host your music in one single place and publish it across the internet. Tracking streams and download is the new soundscan.

- Release Objects, Clothes, art, picture discs, books, connected devices, handcraft records… whatever will match your brand and please your fans. CD era might be over but music will never be … digital only …

What can the future do for you? Just came back from one great week in Korea. Main reason for my trip was the Lift Asia Conference which happened on Jeju Island. The conference explored how entertainment technologies are now reaching far beyond simple leisure, offering solutions to fields like education, health or entertainment.

We definitly have to look up for those oriental markets when it comes to understand the near future of our own markets. As china is already in a post piracy mode, we can discover great ways to publish and monetize cultural contents totaly out of the loop of the old media industry  models.

Nice presentation from Bernie Cho explaining the Korean music ecosytem. Itunes is almost M.I.A. Main digital music players are Cyworld, Melon and bugs. Both LG and Samsung are about to operate they own digital stores before “allowing” Apple to launch their own local operation. Keep in mind that Itunes would mean Iphones sales and therefore free wifi access to tons of servicesin a pretty much closed market …

For the record, Bernie is also manager of Tablo who has an awesome new album out now.

Korean Geek scene.

 Giant Hi-top in front of an ABC-MART store in Seoul

Crazy sashimi

And i even found time to surf also this cool korean local spot that ended up to be pretty fun. 

Big shout out at Asiance team (Olivier, Marie, Bosun) Fred @ mixin,Didier @ alpict, The great Ms J, Laurent Haug and Lift team, Benjamin Jeffe, Gold Dragon …

5 tips to not look like a starving artist :

1-Dont spam comments and message boards asking to check ur music

2-Dont spam comments and message boards with Autoplay players

3-Find out who might be interested by your music, create your own network

4- Be interesting, dont be too pushy

5-And first of all, be creative & radical, dont be another copycat. Internet is killing the formated artists in case you dont know.

Awesome Feadz summer mix //DL//

Enjoy!

Speaking of Great DJs, there is a very cool serie that launched Dj Mehdi on his Coolcat blog -Respect the architect-

” This is no exhaustive list. This is just me, paying my own respect to my peers. Some of them are friends. Some are teachers. Some are pioneers.They’re all great DJ’s I somehow feel connected to.”

Check it out HERE.

NARM 2009 State Of The media Industry: Michael Masnick

Mickael Jackson’s music map legacy or the story of a sample. nice work, wish we could play the tracks.

Full size HERE.

My good friend and bmx partner in crime Lotfi “yko” Hammadi just finished the book “Nothing but Letters”,  The project is to offer an understanding of the most unknown graffiti part but even usual: the lettring.

Buy it here

I just watched this cool video interview of Spike Jones. This episode predates the Directors Label DVD collection by about 4 years and contains interviews not available elsewhere. Spotted on Defgrip.

I often argue with some of my friends about dylan so i did a mixtape of some of my favorites bob’s songs. I often hear “he can’t sing etc …” But man, if you are serious about music you must be serious about songwritting and about social and cultural impact of an artist too.
From this perspective, dylan is top 3 with Bob Marley and John Lennon. Period.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dylan
http://www.bobdylan.com/