But the key to the long-term future of Lastfm may lie in a generation of emerging musicians who will share in advertising revenue and receive a tiny royalty each time the song is played.
In the online world there’s a misconception that music downloaded over the Internet is somehow ‘free’. The problem however is that ‘free’ music means songwriters and artists don’t get paid.
New technologies such as the internet and mobile phone applications are opening up new distribution avenues for songwriters. These new avenues include: digital downloads as full length songs; mobile phone ring-tones; web casting (i.e. online radio stations); and on-demand streaming (i.e. services which permit users to access and experience music over the net at a time and place convenient to the user).
But how do musicians learn the skills to utilize each of these new technologies?
“When my record deal with Sony collapsed, I suddenly realized I was not a marketer and that I needed to learn how to become one so I could promote my own music. It’s taken me 6 to 7 years of trial and error trying to figure it out how to navigate on-line on my own. I just wish I had access to this information year ago”, said Rachel Bell, London-based musician.
Musicians can no longer afford a singular focus on their art and over-reliance upon a recording contract in order to progress their career. The industry now demands from them, entrepreneurial and technical expertise.
About Simpleology
Mark is widely recognized as one of the early pioneers of Internet Marketing and is responsible for introducing many of the technologies and tactics you see used on the Internet today (most notably e-books, remotely hosted ad-tracking, and integration marketing). Mark has also been the driving force behind many Top 100 web properties (one of them having shot to #36 out of billions within 6 weeks of its release), wrote an e-book that was downloaded over 1,000,000 times (when he stopped counting in 1998), and turned his fledgling one-man operation into a multi-million dollar international corporation with customers in every Internet-connected country on the planet.
"Mark Joyner is the Tiger Woods of Internet Marketing. He is singularly skilled in demystifying online marketing through the use of his unconventional tactics that work.”
-- Mike Litman, host of the international radio show, Business Breakthroughs
