Dave Haynes

This news is a little late but I only just noticed. DJDownload recently launched their new Needledrop player for their DJDownload.com and Ministry Of Sound Download sites. Using the new player:

1) You get an accurate waveform of the whole track

2) You can playlist a multitude (that’s a lot) of tracks and cue them all up in the player

3) The preview clip starts off with a 2 minute section, which you can just leave alone and simply carry on about your business casually adding tracks to your cart directly from the player if they catch your ear

4) BUT, if you want, you can drop the needle on the record anywhere in the track and listen to a 30 sec clip from there

This is a neat feature (though DJDownload aren’t the first to do this) and one that will definitely please DJDownload’s existing customers (although unlikely to win a huge number of new customers). It manages to allow listeners to preview full length tracks without it becoming a proper ’stream’ that would require additional licenses. A great addition to the functionality of the site and I’m sure we’ll see some of their competitors move quickly to follow suit. But isn’t it great that shopping for music is about 10 times as good as it was 10 years ago. Keep the innovation coming!

Read more over at DJDownload’s blog space Earworm.

I received a note yesterday indicating that Medianet (the back-end provider of download stores for the likes of HMV, Samsung and iMesh) would be throttling the number of tracks received from its content suppliers per year. They state:

“We are making some changes to our content ingestion and processing procedures effective immediately”.

Citing that this will:

“Assist in load balancing across the label partners we work with and allow us to will allow us to manage content more efficiently.”

I blogged recently about Beatport also limiting the number of labels it carries on its stores. Is this another example of the bigger stores trimming their long tail?

As a footnote, the message also mentions that they won’t be carrying classical labels. I don’t know if this is because they have exclusive deals with certain partners to deliver classical only or whether they have simply decided not to carry this genre as its not core to their business?

There’s me, spending my evenings reading up on the future of music and the way forward for digital music packaging, when it all blows up in my face. Almost literally. This is just about the best argument for keeping good old physical formats for their packaging that I’ve seen so far…

Without beautiful vinyl artwork we would be completely without the concept of Sleeveface.

Try doing that with your iPod touch held up over your face! Check out more here. Below is the hilarious video from www.sleeveface.com

Superb.

Read on TechCrunch over lunch today about Xobni (inbox backwards) which is a new plug-in tool that claims to make Outlook actually quite nice to use. This I have to see, and am in the queue for my beta-invite. You can help me, by signing up yourself via the below link.

It has been reported on Resident Advisor that Beatport are to cut back on the number of labels it offers on its store to labels who gross over $300 per quarter. It’s not clear to me whether this is an official line or whether it’s more of a statement to fall back on if they don’t want to take a label on.

There’s three reasons why Beatport would put this into place:

1) I’ve heard some music fans complain that they have to wade through hundreds of random releases from hobbyist digital labels each week and Beatport will want to be seen as a quality store, not just one based on quantity.

2) It’s an administrative and costly nightmare to have to account to a large number of individual parties (Beatport currently has 7596 labels). Even when statements and sales reporting are as automated as possible, it’s still a massive headache doing each quarter’s accounting run (I know, I’ve been there, done that!)

3) It’s a drain on human resources just to have to deal with these labels on a day to day basis regarding new releases, banner request, sales notes submissions, ammendment requests etc. And I know from experience that rightly or wrongly it’s often the smaller and lower-end of labels that can demand the most time and attention.

So what does all this mean?

I think it emphasises the role that aggregators and distributors (the oft misunderstood middlemen) have to play in this market where selling direct to consumers/stores is very easy, but not always the best or the only solution. If you’re a label you need someone in the middle providing one point of contact for technical / billing / relations. That certainly solves problems 2) and 3) above.

Perhaps a more difficult question for a smaller label is how to solve problem 1). Beatport certainly are imposing a strict policy of approving new labels before content is sent to them and have been for some months. So if you’re a small label it’s is important to have a game-plan and be able to present it properly. The essentials are a strong identity (logo, niche, web presence, back-story), an idea of your upcoming releases, at least one or two known artists and/or remixers. And this must all be communicated. It still surprises me how many labels think that they can simply sign up to a store, deliver their music and just expect some money to come in.

There can be no doubt that it’s easier than ever to start your own record label. Which is absolutely superb but remember, without a strong gameplan you should really think about sticking to the many other ways of making your music heard, even if that’s just for free, to your mates, on your Myspace or blog.

It would be easy to make a simple case that stores like Beatport should carry everything and then let the user decide what they want to buy. But whether you think Beatport is good or bad, let’s not forget the value an intermediary can have in the market place by filtering out what they think is good and what they think is bad. In this case, I think at 7500+ labels Beatport’s long tail reaches about as far as it should. And it would be interesting to see the effect were it actively trimmed.

Well I’m pretty much back and settled in the UK after two weeks in sunny France. I was lucky enough to enjoy a week in Cannes for my 8th Midem followed by a week in the French alps for my first ski-holiday in quite some time. Plenty of blog posts in the pipeline to catch up but here are some highlights from both weeks that I want to share with you all. You’ll notice several are food and drink related

 Midem Highlights

• meeting up with the rather large contingency from imeem, and in particular sharing a drink (or three) with Jeff and Shane at the Martinez. Two of the nicest guys I met during the conference.
• sharing several bottles of champagne with Miriam and Ryan from iTunes whilst discussing the merits of social networking possiblities on the train to/from Luxembourg.
• eating the most delicious Chocolate Fondant at Tantra (that’s two years in a row now).
• hooking up face to face for the first time with Dalmar from our New York office. He packs some mean ‘lids’.
• getting an opporunity to catch up with Ethan and Rob from Songbird.

 Ski Highlights

• a week of beautiful weather and perfect snow
• supping a hot chocolate (or three) half way down the slopes.
• not falling over all week (despite 12 years since my last ski).
• learning a new drinking game with new friends.
• eating lots of fromage (et jambon) and discovering the ultimate cheese dish ‘Raclette‘.