Mark Elliott is turning his hobby into a career thanks to Generator and Gateshead College.

Amateur North East musicians, managers, promoters and publishers are set to benefit from the second run of a popular music management course.

Taking place at Gateshead College, Managing a Music Business Enterprise (MMBE) is supported by the Newcastle-based music development agency Generator.

The 13-week course will lead into nationally recognised qualification equipping participants with skills and knowledge essential to running a sustainable music business.

New career for local music lover

The MMBE course was a turning point in the career of the local music collector and promoter, Mark Elliot.

The 48-year-old ex taxi driver and oil rig worker from South Shields completed the part-time course after having been asked to manage local band The Watchers.

“MMBE has allowed me to take The Watchers to another level”, he said.

“The course has given me sound knowledge to progress within the music industry and the skills to finally create a sustainable career from something I am extremely passionate about.”

“The course covered almost every aspect of the music industry and brought in some fantastic professionals to share their experiences.”

Application and advice

Since taking the course, Mark has taken The Watchers on tour with the Charlatans and they are now having tracks produced by Coldplay producer, Danton Supple.

Mark Hobrough, Mr Elliott’s tutor at Gateshead College, is delighted about the success Mark is enjoying in managing The Watchers.

“It just goes to show that if you gain the right knowledge and skills and are prepared to put in the effort, you can really make your own luck, and he’s certainly done that”, he said.

“There is no real shortcut to succeeding in the music business, but with some application and advice you can make good career decisions and build a business. Mark is a great example of just that.”

Managing a Music Business Enterprise will be running at Gateshead College from March 2012, visit http://mmbe.co.uk/ for information.

Soundtracking, a free app from Schematic Labs, allows you to combine music, location and a photo acting as a musical postcard and making it easier to share and discover songs.

According to Steve Jang, CEO of Schematic Labs, a musical postcard is much more than just sharing music on social networks.

“Just because you’re listening to something doesn’t mean you like it. It doesn’t mean there’s any sort of emotional or life importance to it. People perk up and listen more when you have that,” he said.

“Music, like photos or paintings or any sort of creative art, has such a wide range of emotions that can be different for different people.”

“This idea of a story through song is what we wanted to share … It really is this expressive musical postcard.”

The app which is available for both iPhone and Android, enables posting on Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare.

Source: Stuff.co.nz

The live music industry is keen to nail that elusive ‘social’ factor to power their business to the next stage and there are a lot of new services out there to help. But, do they deliver?

Topics for discussion:

• How will the live music industry develop?
• For whom is the live industry the great cash-cow?
• Only the top 1% performers?
• How much money do live gigs really make for the artist?
• What are the true economics of a live gig? Niche gigs or sell-out venues?
• Live is the music market place for new talent… Do digital tools mitigate the tour costs?
• How much do the events listings companies influence the market?
• The ticketing dirty market…how strong is its grip on power?
• What are the marketing tactics and tools, social and digital?

Organiser:

2Pears
+44 20 3239 9325
http://www.2pears.com

Posted via Chinwag

spotify hearts facebook 4 eva

Shortly afterward, the service cozied up to Facebook, grabbing even more users and mind share with ubiquitous ticker updates about which songs your cool friends were listening to. Tons more listeners signed up.

Cause for celebration? Perhaps, but the champagne’s is probably still on ice at Spotify headquarters. Not only has the service never been profitable, but the company’s loss is increasing, according to documents Spotify filed with Companies House, part of the U.K. government’s Department for Business (Spotify is based in London), reported by Forbes and others. Whereas in 2009 Spotify lost almost $26 million, those losses ballooned to $41 million in 2010.

The Cash Chasm

The mounting losses aren’t because Spotify is failing to make money. Revenues shot up last year, from $17.5 million to $98.1 million. But so did expenses. In fact, the “cost of sales” line item—which appears to include royalites paid to record labels—was $100.8 million, erasing every last penny of those revenues. So before Spotify even pays its staff, it’s already in the red. 

With cutthroat competition and a bleak financial picture for the next few years, the biggest losers in the whole game will be the artists. Every time someone steams a track, the artist gets paid, but those payments are usually measured in hundredths of a cent. Unless you’re a Madonna or Kanye West, that doesn’t add up to much. The business model will need a couple more years to shake itself out, and by coincidence royalty payments are due for an increase around the same time. Looking at the numbers, Spotify can probably afford to wait that long. But can musicians?

Thanks to PC Mag.

Almost six in ten consumers had watched music videos on their computers in the last three months while less than 2 in 10 had bought a digital download in the same time.

iTunes Store is the biggest payout partner for record labels but the research shows the preference of the listeners is for the music videos posted on YouTube and Vevo.

However, the report by Nielson also showed that music videos are still just behind digital downloads in the list of formats listeners are most willing to pay for.

Read full report here.

Date: Monday 23rd May, 6-8pm

Entry: Free (places are limited)

Event website

Generator is organising a series of music industry panel events, every night between 23rd-26th May. This seminar will examine the past, present and future role of music broadcasting (TV, radio and new technologies), and identify existing and new opportunities for emerging artists to get noticed.

Points for discussion:

• The role of traditional broadcasting (radio & TV)
• New broadcast platforms and modern music consumption (podcasts, online and DAB radio, video-sharing websites, blogs and music streaming)
• Associated revenue models
• How do emerging artists and businesses embrace new technologies and broadcasting platforms?
• The changing face of regional broadcasting and consequences for emerging artists

The panelists will be:

Huw Stephens – BBC Radio 1
Jeff Smith – Head of Programming, Radio 2
Trevor Dann – Amazing Radio
Dave Haynes – Soundcloud

Followed by ‘Huw Stephens presents’ gig at The Other Rooms, Newcastle – 8pm onwards

Places for ‘Transmission’ are free but must be registered in advance

The Carriageworks in Leeds is hosting the Music Futures Conference event on 30th March, organised by Newcastle’s Generator.

The confirmed speakers list looks like their strongest line up yet for the Yorkshire area providing a unique opportunity for the region’s music businesses.

Music Futures is the last event of the current Plugged In Yorkshire Network.

Some of the Guest Speakers confirmed so far:

* Alison Wenham (AIM Chairman CEO)
* Caroline Elleray (Universal Music Publishing – Head Of A&R)
* Aaron Bogucki (Polydor – Head Of Digital)
* Ian Grenfell (SimplyRed.com / Suede Ltd)
* Steve Mayall (Music Ally)
* Scott Cohen (The Orchard )
* Malcolm Dunbar (Pledge Music)
* Gary Downing (Frukt)
* Gary McClarnan (MMF )
* Mark Wood (Radius Music – Manager Imogen Heap)

There will also be a room for networking, with A&R in attendance from Atlantic Records, Warner Chappell Music and Island Records. There’ll be representatives from Leeds based Get-Ctrl, Dance To The Radio, Musicians’ Union, PRS and Ward Hadaway as well as many others.

This is an opportunity to meet and network directly with the regional and national music industry and promote your business one to one.

To register for the event click here.

To view video footage from previous Music Futures events, click on the links below:

Will technology revive the industry? Monday 15 November 2010

Digital Platforms: Broadcast or distribute? Tuesday 16 November 2010

New markets for licensing and brands. Wednesday 17 November 2010

Is online media the industry’s gatekeeper? Thursday 18 November 2010

Founders Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon

Spotify has hit one million subscribers. Not literally, of course – that would be crazy, not to mention an insane amount of effort – but there are now a million people paying to listen to streaming music on Spotify.

Spotify reached a million users almost two years ago to the day, on March 2nd 2009 – that was including those listening to their freebie service, of course. A million paying subscribers is a bigger achievement, certainly in terms of keeping the outfit going.

Spotify wrote on its blog page: “From everyone at Spotify, we’d like to give you all massive thanks. We’ll continue to focus on providing you with the best music service possible, and look forward to adding even more cool new features over the coming months. What’s really exciting is that this is only the beginning.”

In total, Spotify now has 10 million users – well, actually that was last September, so possibly coming on for 11 million now. The total amount of tracks on Spotify is also 10 million, about one for every listener.

Techwatch.co.uk, gracias!

Beyond Oblivion, the online music marketplace partly owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, has secured $77m (£47m) in additional investment ahead of its worldwide launch later this year.

The fledgling company plans to unveil its “liberated music” marketplace in September. Negotiations with the four major record labels – Universal, Warner Music, Sony and EMI – are at a “very advanced stage”, according to the Beyond Oblivion founder and chief executive, Adam Kidron.

Unlike existing digital music services such as Apple’s iTunes and Spotify, Beyond Oblivion is a cloud-based service allowing users to store and share music across multiple devices – MP3 players, mobile phones, and computers. It pays a royalty to rights holders each time their music is played, as opposed to a one-off initial transaction fee.

“This deal really shows that there is a high-value investor [News Corp] prepared to say that there is an alternative business model for music,” Kidron told the Guardian. “For us it’s huge because it gives us the money to go to market and for the major label advances.

“We’re going to launch with $500m revenue guarantees, and we pay a large proportion of that – between 70% and 90% – back to content owners.

“If you compare that to Spotify’s revenues to date it’s much needed and important from the perspective of growing the size of the market and pushing revenues back to content creators – after all, they’re the vital energy of the whole system.”

News Corp and the global charity foundation Wellcome Trust led the latest funding round. News Corp first invested in Beyond Oblivion in April last year as part of $10m second-round funding.

The News Corp chief digital officer, Jon Miller, added: “Our additional investment in this business serves as an endorsement of the progress that Beyond Oblivion has made in bringing this innovative new music product to market.”

Thanks to Guardian.co.uk

We intended to comment on the seemingly pointless Qriocity streaming service recently launched by Sony in the UK but, well, the Guardian has  been kind enough to already do so in their technology blog.

While NMM always tries to remain impartial and write unbiased reviews, we can’t help but agree with the writer. Of course we are always happy to be proved wrong but the Qriocity (pronounced ‘curiosity’ we assume) service appears to be moving the industry backwards, not forwards.

The music industry desperately needs innovators to create new business models and methods of monetising content and that is unlikely to come from any of the Big Four. Anyway, you can decide for yourself. Please leave your comments below as we’d love to hear your views:

Sony’s Qriocity music service leaves Spotify, Pandora, Last.fm and we7 unruffled

Though it was touted as going head-to-head with Apple’s iTunes, Sony today did nothing of the sort. It didn’t even go toe-to-toe with Spotify.

The launch of its Music Unlimited streaming service in the UK and Ireland has all four major record labels on board – but it’s not giving anything away for free. Not a jot. Not even 30 seconds, as Sky’s recently mothballed service offered penniless passers-by.

Sony – with EMI, Universal and Warner breathing down its neck – is launching its cloud-based streaming service, called “Music Unlimited powered by Qriocity” with two subscription plans: “basic” and “premium”. Basic subscribers are charged £3.99 a month for a personalised, ad-free radio station, similar to Last.fm, and “unlimited forward skipping” of songs. (So, basically, just like Last.fm, but without the social aspect, and for more money.) Its premium version – at £9.99 a month, matching Spotify’s premium offers unlimited, ad-free access to more than 6m songs.

There’s no download option – users’ playlists and preferences are based in the cloud – meaning customers can stream songs from their computer to their emporium of shiny Sony hardware (Bravia TVs, PS3s and the like – which already can stream music). You can also sync your new digital catalogue with already-purchased music from iTunes.

Initially sold as Sony’s “direct challenge” to Apple’s dominance with iTunes, executives have been quick to distance Music Unlimited from that theorem. “We realised that if we were playing catch up with the same (iTunes) model, it would be difficult to appeal to users,” said Kazuo Hirai, Sony’s executive vice president and head of the company’s networked products and services division. “But over time, it needs to stand on its own,” he added.

Ultimately, Unlimited Music is an add-on for its home entertainment range – an attempted one-up on Microsoft and Samsung, which respectively have their own range of internet-connected hardware in the living room.

So let’s see, Spotify with ads for free, or Sony MUPBQ for £3.99 every month for ever and ever? So difficult. We asked Sony in what way this wasn’t an Olympic-quality bobsleigh run directly down towards the chequered flag of failure.

Here’s what Rob Lewis, executive chairman of Omnifone – which developed the service for Sony – said would buoy it up, with our thoughts. (The capitals are his.)

“It is much, much larger than Spotify. Sony’s service will be pre-loaded onto HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of devices every year, and automatically available to SIXTY MILLION existing Sony Network platform users. Only TEN MILLION Spotify accounts or so have been created to date, and less than a million subscribers. There is a huge untapped market out there.”

No doubt. Problem is, that untapped market is probably already getting music from somewhere. And it’s probably not paying £3.99 per month for it. And as to “much larger” than Spotify – well, not until you’ve got people signed up it’s not.

Read the full article from the Guardian here.