The Let it Burn Blog

Today the world’s leading audio streaming service Spotify launched in Germany. Regarding the fact that Germany is one of the biggest music markets in the world it was about time. Make a good guess who fucked it up…

Most of you are already familiar with this new way of music consumption through other services such as Simfy, Deezer or Rdio. 16.000.000 Songs available all at once, all for free (oh well, nothing ever REALLY is for free. See below.) satisfying the wildest music appetite from acid jazz to djent metal.

When registering to Spotify you will quickly find out about their (unholy) alliance with Facebook. If you want to use Spotify you have to be part of the social web kraken (well, who isn’t already?). Facebook and Spotify have agreed upon a close partnership when it comes down to the social aspect of listening to music. It’s easier than ever before to share your band music taste with all your friends and force them to your haunting tunes. Yippee-ki-yay!

So this is all for free? Well, almost. There’s some banner ads and after 6 months your listening pleasure is restricted to 10 hours a month and a total of 5 plays per song. That’s not much. My count for “Still” by Jupiter Jones is currently around 65 plays for example. Fortunatelly I have bought this song on iTunes, it’s all mine, so I can continue my languor. As an alternative to the free version of Spotify described above, they offer the following plans:

• UNLIMITED: No ads: 4.99 / month
• PREMIUM: No ads, unlimited plays, offline music: 9.99 / month

So here’s the dilemma: Even if you chose the premium plan which even allows you to download your music to listen to the songs offline, you still don’t OWN them. If this is what you are looking for you should move back to iTunes. Spotify claims that of their 10.000.000 users about 1/3 are paying customers using either the unlimited or the premium plan.

And what about the labels and bands? Spotify has (almost) signed an agreement with the Gema (that’s the music rights organisation which is in charge for a whole number of YouTube videos that are “not available in your country”, a.k.a. “the enemy” for most music lovers) to guarantee a percentage for every download and stream is being paid to the rightsholders or their agents (bands, labels, publisher). That should be something like 0,006 Euro per song stream. Doesn’t sound much but just imagine how often Lady Gaga or Dj Ötzi are being streamed every day. Well, these negotiations are taking forever which is the reason why Germany is among the last countries to launch Spotify.

Bottom Line? Since Spotify offers a free plan, too, I encourage everyone to at least check it out. Streaming music instead of carrying it around on your old fashioned harddisks is the undenieable future. However I would be cautious about buying a plan. Without a ubiquitous and solid internet connection using Spotify can be really annoying and if you decide one day to move on to another service all your music (even if you have downloaded it) will be gone. With iTunes’ revised audio preview of 90 seconds per song, there’s no need to use Simfy if you just want to “check out” an album or track.

Talking about Facebook… You might have taken notice that the new timeline feature (well, it’s more of a general redesign than just a feature) has been finally rolled out for “facebook pages” as well. What does this mean for your beloved band-page?

1.) The Header is back
Remember Myspace? Now you can integrate a giant header graphic showing off all your band’s amazing corporate design… or just show your ugly faces. Still, one of the biggest let-downs when moving from myspace to facebook, not being able anymore to personalize your band-page, is now gone and forgotten. Skoal!

2.) Apps are gone
Well, not really. But they have moved from the left navigation panel (which is gone entirely) to the upper right. They’re actually still in an ok position, however they forfeith importance. You can still add as many facebook apps to your band-page as you wish but only four (!) of them will be shown at first sight and they compete with standard facebook page features such as “Likes”, “Photos” or “Notes”. Chose wisely. Bandpage, Reverbnation, Bandsintown, etc. are in serious trouble now.

3.) Landingpage is gone
This one’s even tougher for 3rd party facebook app developers. Before the relaunch it was possible to define which page would be the first one to be shown if you don’t like a band yet. Not anymore. From now on every facebook page has the timeline as “homepage”. However there’s some cool features to adjust your timeline, just keep on reading…

4.) Pinning but not Pinterest-ing
You now got the possibility to “pin” on post to the top of your page. This feature is still very limited not comparable to the social web’s latest hype Pinterest but still a good thing. As for bands I suggest having one posting with your current shows, latest video or upcoming release pinned on top of your page. Furthermore you can “highlight” certain posts which will be enlarged over the whole width of the content area. Looks nice and is very effective, too.

5.) The idea of a “timeline” in general
Being treated in a smart way, the timeline can be the ultimate interactive band-history. If you use it to highlight the most important steps in your career (you must not post meaningless things anyway), work with consisten wording and strong visual elements, it will be the greatest pleasure for your fans to grub in your past and get an idea where you’re coming from.

6.) Messages
Yes, another thing that we all missed very much since myspace’s demise: messaging. You’re finally able to send messages directly to a band. It’s gonna be a bit of an overkill for people like me who run 3 facebook pages and more but from a user’s point of view (just imagine the dozens of promoters who want to book your band!) it’s a very good thing.

7.) Admin panel
Last but not least Facebook has redesigned its admin panel. It got a lot more usable and it’s way easier to have a real-time overview of likes, messages, events and so on. Neat and functional.

Oh, by the way, if you happen to see a whole bunch of very old, meaningless postings on the very top of your page, don’t worry. If you visit a facebook page being logged in with your private profile (even if you’re an admin) the timeline of your band will be shown differently to every user, depending on who you’re friends with and what they posted in the past. No chance to control that but keeping you timeline clean and informational, none embarassing outdated posts will ever rise to the surface.

It’s good to see that facebook hasn’t forgotten about all the bands (and brands) in their network. However I am very disappointed that they did not solve the “music player” problem yet. There’s been shitloads of rumor about music integration in facebook but nothing spectacular has happened so far.

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I guess I am something like a “heavy user” when it comes down to Facebook. Not that I post extensively myself but with over 700 “friends” and equally as many pages that I follow, I am obviously using this tool a lot and most of the times I really enjoy myself doing it.

However it is quite obvious that bands (also businesses, brands and other page-owners, but they’re not even half as desparate as most bands) tend to extensively abuse our beloved Social Media stronghold for a new weird kind of “self-marketing”. It reminds me a a lot of the friend-collecting-virus that Myspace infested once. The result was that bands connected with bands and 15.000 friends on Myspace basically just meant that you either used a friend-adder-tool or that you basically had no life and spent nights after nights to add all those pages yourself.

Oh yeah, I’m off the point. The social web and facebook in particular is a complex matter. Most people don’t understand the various technical, social and emotional processes that persuade people to “like” your band, not even most self-proclaimed Social Media Managers. However bands invest a considerable amount of time to promote themselves on Facebook. Most of them with one predominant result: comprehensive annoyance.

Here’s a little subjective How-To-Guide for Bands on Facebook:

• If you haven’t got anything to say, shut the f*** up.
  I’m dead serious. If you’re a boring person your band postings will be boring, too. That might be because your band itself is boring. Maybe you should find a new hobby but in the meantime stay away from Facebook.

• (More than) One posting a day keeps the Likers away
  I love to find out about band-news on Facebook. However most bands tend to post basically every unrelevant piece of information. Dr. Social says that’s what Twitter is for. People want to read REAL news. Announcing a new tour? Got signed to a label? Have a new video on YouTube? Albumstream? Lineup change? You got it.

• “Give us a like and you can hear our songs” - Eeeehm… no.
  There’s a mean logic error in this strategy. How can you ask for someone to like your band/music before getting the chance to listen to it?! If you’re only hunting a figure to boost your ego instead of attracting real fans you should install a visitor-counter on your website and press F5 all day.

• If you have “big news coming tomorrow” then don’t post about it today
  Tease me, please me… Announcing news that are most likely going to happen in the near future is very odd. I know your plan is to thrill people and fill them with excitement but in reality no one gives a “F”. Save your breath until something is actually happening.

• What’s that stupid question again?
  Yes, you’re right, the social web is about interaction but who would ever be interested in the answers to “What did you guys have for breakfast?” or “coke or pepsi?”? Just try to avoid empty buzz and in so make people believe your are doing something meaningful like writing songs or practising.

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I just recently found a quite good blog entry with loads of hints for bands how to “act” on Facebook. Most of these are not big secrets, however 90% of bands I know fail on Facebook. Read this and be enlightened: http://mashable.com/2011/07/11/bands-facebook/

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It feels kinda weird that my “real life job” finally made me dive into web 2.0. I attended an internet-congress in Berlin this week, basically all about web 2.0, social communities, etc. I had to face the fact that the internet is not what is used to be a couple of years ago (not even months…), a lot of things had changed and I felt quite outdated on a lot of things. This news blended perfectly with my desire to share some of the millions of thoughts on music I spend every day. Things with the music biz are pretty weird right now and the internet seems to be the perfect place to meet people who are equally affected from this. So here I am, typing the first article for the LET IT BURN BLOG. I really hope this generates a certain value and in the end of all is good reading. I heavily encourage everyone to participate this project and make www.blog.letitburn.de an interesting and vivid platform for all kinds of underground music people. Let’s do it.

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