We hear plenty of hype about the Web’s power for artists, but what happens in the real world? That question is doubly interesting now that Topspin, already influential in its early test run, is available to everyone. Atlanta-based artist Tricil joins us for a special guest post to answer just that. It’s a chance to peer in the head of a Topspin power user. (If anyone wants to rebut this with the Bandcamp perspective, go for it.)

Tricil, aka Johnny Jacobus, answers all this for us. His answers are glowing; he even worried that this might seem a little too Topspin “fanboyish” to post. But no worries here: if people are loving a tool, I want to hear about it. Johnny, take it away. (And readers, have a listen to his music, too – another reason to involve him in this question!)

To compare Topspin to Bandcamp seems a little unfair to me, for the former has a multitude of tools that go beyond streaming and commerce. Both are used by musicians like you and I to “get our stuff out there.” Tim O’Reilly said that “Piracy is not the enemy [of the artist], obscurity is” and I think that’s true. Ed.: Actually, it seems that Seth Godin said that, and Tim O’Reilly didn’t. But Tricil just said it, and someone else might, too. -PK

Be it Topspin, Bandcamp, or even SoundCloud, there are a plethora of ways to get your music out to your fans ears in much more intelligent ways than having a myspace with some tracks or hosting downloads on your own site.

Bandcamp’s charm when they came out in the post myspace-era was an embeddable, music-centric streaming site that had built in social-sharing, almost like SoundCloud with a commerce function. With Bandcamp, you can set up “In Rainbows”-style pricing of pay what you want and even do a free in exchange for an email much like Topspin. The downsides to Bandcamp are a sandboxed site with little to no css customization, so it’s harder to create a more “branded” presence going the all Bandcamp route.

Topspin is different. They seem to be the pioneers of the “email for download” thing, which to me is your first price point. You could host them on SoundCloud, Last.fm or your own site and get 1000s of downloads, but wouldn’t it be nice to tell those 1000 people about your new album with an exclusive offer to download another new track? Anonymous hot-linking downloading is great, but having permission to go Direct to Fan is even better. This is the strength of Topspin’s email platform. Additionally, you can segment your fans so I can holler at my three fans in Peoria, IL about my next show there (TBA). Geo-tagging is done by clicking on a link in a confirmation email, COPPA-compliant. No spam here.

Bandcamp’s real appeal came from the universally embeddable streaming players that work via HTML5 and within Facebook as well. As you can see from a recent Topspin blog post that bizarrely features me, these are coming to the Topspin world as well.

Bandcamp has added email for download functionality as well, but I don’t think its email backend is as robust as Topspin’s. I believe it’s through FanBridge and that’s on a separate site, whereas in Topspin, it’s all self-contained in the same app, along with stats on plays, emails, geodata, and NextBigSound integration. (NBS is amazing, it’s like Google Analytics for musicians). Ed.: Finding the exact answer to this question on the Bandcamp side is difficult, and I think best left to a story that covers Bandcamp specifically. Bandcamp added this functionality in 2008, according to a site blog post, and continues to evolve, too.

Real case scenario: I put up One Day Soon for free download as part of an upcoming Atlanta show promotion on my site. [Ed.: See link above.] I emailed the Atlanta people on my list (about 15%) a link to download the sampler from all three bands and told them where to buy tickets and asked them to share the show info with their friends. I didn’t want to tell the other 85% about a show in Atlanta they can’t go to, so for them I gave them a link to my new song and made up a contest to make the cover art for One Day Soon (right now, the cover art is the flyer for the aforementioned show, and from May 15th on, that’s a little silly). The contest is cool, I think: you post your art on my Facebook wall, and whichever one has the most “Likes” and “TRICIL-ness” wins. One email campaign for one new song, split across the country in two presentable formats.

Speaking of Facebook, Topspin has an upcoming Facebook store that’s going to look a lot like their “spinshops” (which is something they offer for every artist, self-serve or not that works like a splash page for downloaded media, a sort of “while you’re here, maybe buy a T-Shirt?”). Commerce on Facebook, without leaving Facebook. Additionally, you have the option of sharing media for a Facebook Like or a Tweet. You can connect with your fans and grow your networks too, not just via email.

Speaking of T-Shirts, one thing that Topspin does in spades is physical media and merchandise. I know Bandcamp has that BCWax thing, which seems cool. [Ed.: It's a vinyl label, though with only two releases so far, it looks pretty tightly curated!]

Topspin lets you bundle, say, a T-Shirt with an artist’s entire discography in any format from MP3 to 24-bit wav and lifetime VIP access and iPhone ringtones, if you wanted to. This is exactly what I have setup, and it’s my highest selling item, outselling $2-$4 digital downloads. People still like tangibility and the music experience really is being re-bundled. VIP access is cool, you connect with a network like Google, OpenID, FB, Twitter, AOL, and you’re given access to download specific packages. A way to cater to superfans.

Finally, one last thing that Topspin has in the tangible realm is Ticketing. You print (or save the PDF on your iPhone) and bring out your ticket to a show, and you can use the Topspin iPhone scanner (no love for the Droid or BB folk, sorry) to check in your fans. Sell a bundle with a CD, an instant download, and some tickets and you just bypassed both Ticketmaster and a record label.

So, there you have it. Here’s a bit more reading on the latest from Topspin, and a nice live release to grab. I expect this will cause us to hear from Bandcamp (and others), and hopefully even better, real-world users of those services.

I’d like to hear what you think of the alternatives out there, what’s available and what’s missing, and even if you’ve found ways of working across sites. And I hope in the process, we get to discover some new music, too. Let us know. -PK

Topspin blog:
Major Updates to Streaming Player Coming Soon, Embeddable Store Offers

The Unbundling (and Re-Bundling) of Music – interesting business analysis, including some discussion of SONOIO, the artist who recently won recognition from Topspin and whose DIY synthesizer presents a very different vision of the technology of music distribution! (More on SONOIO soon!)

http://tricil.net/ – Tricil’s own Topspin-powered site

Trent sez: “Buy all these music formats from meeeeeeeeeee!” Photo: Jenna Foxton.

Artists are known to mouth off a bit about the Future of Music and Digital Distribution and whatnot, but Trent Reznor is putting his money — and not money — where his mouth is.

Nine Inch Nails Menu of Ordering Options for Ghosts I-IV

via Mashable: Practice What You Preach: Nine Inch Nails Gives Away New Album

And they certainly have their bases covered with their new album “Ghosts”:

• Get the first volume of the album free on torrent sites (or via the NIN site)
• Pay US$5 for a download of all 36 tracks (take that, Radiohead!)
• Get a 2 CD box set for US$10 (which also includes immediate full download of the tracks)
• US$75 gets you the 2 CDs, a data DVD with the digital tracks, and a Blu-Ray disc with 96/24 stereo and accompanying slideshow
• US$300 Adds four LPs on vinyl, two prints, and Trent’s John Hancock — limited-run 2500 pieces

I think they should have just kept going. You know, $800 gets you cassette tapes, Pro Tools session files, 8-tracks, surround sound. $50,000 adds an IMAX film (projector not included) and one of those little plastic mini records. $500,000 adds a DIY planetarium show, plus a special Buddha Box edition and a low-power FM radio transmitter so you can self-broadcast the album. $1 million and you get a Jaguar pre-loaded with a specially-signed sound system that plays the album, plus reel-to-reel multitracks. $500 million and Trent comes to your house, brings his studio rig and console, and re-records the album for you in your living room.

Before you assume the downloads are worthless, though, even the torrent file includes PDF “liner notes” and 320 kbps MP3 files. Buy the download and you have an option of either FLAC lossless or Apple Lossless audio — something I know readers here have complained about.

There’s only one problem. The fact that musical superstars are experimenting with various formats amounts to great research into what people may want. But if you’re not a Nine Inch Nails junkie, this is all awfully … well, complicated. For lesser-known artists, it seems like finding just one or two solutions that make most people happy is a better route, and it’s not clear what those are yet.

I’m personally most interested to see how the torrent thing works. Then again, with bandwidth costs plummeting, serving up your own audio — even lossless audio — becomes a viable option for artists and small labels. And so far, the torrent doesn’t seem to be cannibalizing the for-fee options, as NIN’s site says they’re experience high volume of traffic and orders. If enough people spring for the higher-cost options, the free versions may pay for themselves.

So, how do artists get paid? That’s the interesting bit:

• Artists (or whomever the writer / publisher is) continue to collect royalties via collection societies like ASCAP and BMI, as with other services.
• Artists and labels get an additional cut of Last.fm’s ad revenues.
• Last.fm does an excellent job of referring people to digital downloads, via band websites and services like Amazon and iTunes. Those services are increasingly DRM-free (Amazon has the largest DRM-free catalog currently). And you can even go buy a CD if you like.

Beginning to get the picture? The digital age has brought a shift in consumption, but it’s possible it can still bring big revenue opportunities for artists. Connections to live music and merchandise of course can also help, and unlike a service like iTunes, Last.fm’s collections are curated largely by the community of people listening to them — which is good news for artists trying to get discovered.

I’m looking for a catch, but I think the only real catch is seeing whether this will translate into real checks for anyone but the biggest artists. And for that, we’ll just have to see how these services evolve. But by opening the door to full-length plays on Last.fm, that service clears the path for other services to get similar deals, or to connect to Last.fm’s listener data and community for their own service. The business model continues to get better. And for listeners, it’s a dream.

Free the Music [Last.hq, the Last.fm blog]

Television itself (well, American TV — BBC is doing just fine) has ground to a halt over online revenues for writers. How are musicians doing? Not so well, say Radiohead. Ars Technica notes that Thom Yorke has been going around pointing out many labels screw artists out of digital download income in contracts. The solution isn’t rocket science: get a better contract, get a different label, or go it alone. Radiohead chose the “go it your own” approach, of course. But whatever benefits they got from, erm, being Radiohead, the one thing you have in common with them is that if you do the same, you can also get 100% or revenue instead of 0%. And you’d have to be pretty unpopular for that to be a bad deal.

So much of the discussion of digital distribution issues is in broad terms, though, that last point could be missed. You have a choice: get screwed, or not.

TuneCore, a service by which artists can be distributed on sites like iTunes Music Store, Amazon, and Rhapsody, recently reported that its customers have earned some $4 million through download sales alone. TuneCore charges only a flat fee for its service, and artists are biting, from Queens of the Stone Age to Public Enemy to Keith Richards. That’s not meant to be an ad for TuneCore; I think other services will step up to the plate, too, and TuneCore’s own revenues seem like only the tip of the iceberg.

One concern in all of this is that, as long as iTunes Music Store is the primary outlet, Apple can fix prices (and its cut) in a way that benefits Apple, rather than anyone actually selling music. But even that concern may be fading, as services like Amazon’s excellent online store and niche-focused outlets gain traction.

And niche stores are hitting at just the right time, as musical tastes are diverging from the “top of the pops” mentality of yesteryear. I laughed out loud watching Dick Clark’s Rocking New Years’ Eve as a parade of pop artists no one cares about led up to the ball drop, and the host fumbled to describe what a chart even was. (He said something like, “this guy’s been charting all over those … chart things.” American Bandstand, no more.)

If you do want to go it on your own, there’s no reason you have to give away your music away, or call your album “In Rainbows”, or change your name to Tom Yorke.

Our friend Brad Sucks has built a cool, open-source online store for musicians. It supports Amazon’s S3 storage solution to make hosting your downloads cheap, and processing money via PayPal. It’s free and easy:

Brad Sucks Digital Downloads

We’re also big fans of the WP e-Commerce plug-in. But, of course, that’s not to say having a label has to be a bad thing; quite the contrary, as a few indie label owners have noted in CDM comments before, a smart label often knows better than the band. (That was supposed to be the point.) You just want a contract that doesn’t suck. Cough. EMI. (Hey, I’m just quoting Thom.)

Got online distribution experiences you want to share? Let us know.

Now, some of this makes some sense. Yottamusic itself was a creation of Rhapsody. In fact, the logical next step would be to ditch Rhapsody’s clunky, obnoxious interface with animated album covers and whatnot, and learn from Yottamusic’s cooler social features and sleeker interface. Let’s see, did th– nope. Why kill bad ideas and maintain the good ones when you can do the reverse?

It’s hard not to feel like subscription-based music in general is not long for this world. MTV’s Urge, ironically the service that had been touted for having the best interface, was folded into Rhapsody last year. With the loss of Yottamusic, choices in general are poor. Yahoo Music has poor editorial content and selection and a painfully-clunky music player. Microsoft’s Zune subscription service is tied to that player; you can’t even download the software without a Zune of your own. And even Microsoft is pushing DRM-free downloads for Zune more than subscriptions these days. Rhapsody has Web compatibility, TiVo integration, better editorial, and better selection. But its Web interface is painful and sometimes unstable, and its music player has an overdesigned UI coupled with only bare-bones features. (It’s also still unsupported on Vista.) Napster, like Rhapsody, works in a Web browser, but has some interface and selection issues of its own. I’ve used these off and on, but to be honest, Yottamusic was the only site that really gave me a reason to keep up a Rhapsody subscription, the interfaces on these tools is so bad.

At least the good news is, DRM-free music is rolling along. Amazon.com’s MP3 store now has a whopping 2.9 million tracks, and niche stores like Beatport, Dance Tracks Digital, and the new Deutsche Grammaphon store will give you still more selection within a genre. (Apple has also been adding DRM content, but I can’t recommend the iTunes Music Store because it’s so hard to find that content.)

But I have to say, I’m at least a little sad to see subscription music services in such poor shape. Yes, the native players have worked only on Windows, and yes, people have complained about the DRM portable files from these sites employ. But I think when these services worked, it was as a self-programmed “radio station”, or as a way of sampling tracks and albums before buying without having to listen to short samples or downgraded audio. In either of those cases, you don’t really care about DRM because you don’t need to move the file, or even download it at all — streaming and Web interfaces have plenty of potential. The big difference, and the reason these services require the fee, is that they offered true, on-demand music. I still buy lots of music, but supplementing that with unlimited on-demand tunes is a good thing. Yottamusic proved that it was the implementation, not the concept, that needed to be revisited. For that, I’m sorry to see it go — and I really hope someone aside from me noticed how good it was.

Must-read, as far as the history of this stuff:

Interview with Yottamusic’s Luke Matkins [Getcha Info!]