CDM is a presenting sponsor of the IMSTA FESTA in New York on Saturday. It’s a completely free event, but registration is required. What’s notable about this sort of event is that it tends to be more directly musician-focused than big conferences like AES or the truly trade-only NAMM. Some of the highlights of which we’re taking note:

• Vendor presentations by Native Instruments, Steinberg, Celemony, Propellerhead, Image Line, Waves, and Cakewalk should all be interesting as they all have new products, and say they’ll be showing some of them off. (Also present: McDSP, Pianoteq, SSL, and others.)
• Legendary producer Hank Shocklee’s Shocklee “Innertainment” is involed, including talented chief Jo-Ann Nina.
• Web music is front and central, including a look at the future of music platforms with our friend Oliver Chesler of the blog Wire to the Ear (with whom I’ve panelized a couple of times now), and Evolver.fm’s Eliot Van Buskirk. The CEO of Tunecore is on-hand, as is new cloud backup and sharing service for musicians Gobbler.
• Production is there, too – think Hank moderating a panel with industry heavies on mixing pop, and teaching his own master class, plus drum programming.

http://www.imsta.org/imsta_festa.php

Here’s the catch: normally, covering New York events is easy because I’ve been based in New York. But I’m currently on the road and based in Berlin for most of the remainder of 2011. So, if anyone wants to go and do some investigative research, take some video or the like, let me know!

Read last year’s write-up by Oliver on the panel I moderated:
imsta festa panel review [wiretotheear]

One other question, for the whole world and not just New York: what would your dream event look like? Where would it be? Would it be a mix of workshops and events? With so many events (Music Hack Days, trade shows, and the like), what aren’t you getting from present events? (Asia, Pacific, South America, Africa, interested in hearing from you, too, if you’re out there… not just Europe and North America.)

No specific context, but I do find the question comes up a lot.

Jeff Price, writing for TuneCore, has a different take on Apple’s iCloud. He thinks it will both transform the industry and shift consumer listening from downloaded files to streams. That would mean I’d have to substantially revise my knee-jerk take following Apple’s announcement – and his line of thinking would raise questions about whether dividing up a $25-a-year fee will leave much of a revenue stream for artists.

Updated: Apple responded to NPR’s request for clarification. iCloud is not a streaming service. That invalidates a lot of the arguments on the TuneCore blog. My analysis earlier was based on the assumption that Apple was making iCloud music and iTunes match download-only.)

iCloud: A Music Industry Game-Changing Product

You can read Apple’s description of the product on their site. Correction: while TuneCore claims iCloud’s music functionality is streaming, Apple has only confirmed file sync capability – you play music from local storage. Indeed, Apple touts the ability to download and to listen to music matched on iTunes Match as 256k AAC files.
http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/

There are several observations in his piece worth highlighting:

• Apple’s library sync, once you pay the fee, is automatic, says Price. (This much is correct.)
• It’s a legal coup for Apple. Price notes that the same concept on MP3.com, back in 2000, earned RIAA lawsuits that shuttered the service in 2008. (This is also likely accurate, though we don’t know yet the terms of Apple’s negotiations. Removing streaming would simplify licensing greatly, but since iTunes Match can associate content that isn’t purchased with a file download, it’s safe to assume some sort of revenue sharing for that media. If that’s the case, it’s a huge step forward.)
• Re-downloading uploaded files is possible only with Apple — and yes, that includes files you pirated. Price believes that this “provides the feeling of owning what you are streaming.” But that could be bad news for artists who depend on the “ownership” feeling coming from buying from stores like Bandcamp. Confirmed: Price is at least partially mistaken. Amazon allows re-downloading files, though it’s worth noting those are files you’ve purchased from the Amazon MP3 store — Apple’s functionality is indeed different. What’s entirely incorrect, based on the service in its present state, is the assumption that you stream files. While that’s true of Google and Amazon stores – and while those services might assist the kind of streaming preferences Price describes – Apple isn’t streaming, or at least isn’t doing so yet.
• Price suggests that licensing fees could be a “pot of gold at the end of the digital music rainbow,” by creating revenue streams for plays of music, regardless of source. (That’s an interesting theory, but without specifics of how revenue sharing takes place, it’s unclear how big that pot is.)

Why would this transform the landscape? Two things: one being increased lock-in to Apple’s products, Price argues. While there’s no new DRM, the automatic download as AAC renders files incompatible with some non-Apple players. (I disagree here – AAC compatibility could simply become more widespread, and even now, it’s not limited to Apple.) I think sheer iCloud compatibility could increase Apple dependency, however – and to the iTunes store, too, which is essential to TuneCore’s business as a gatekeeper for unsigned artists.

The other half of the argument is more interesting an interesting description of a hypothetical service that is not iCloud in the state described by Apple:

Just as the original Napster trained people to download music and listen to it on their computers, Apple, due to its vast hardware proliferation (iPhones in particular) is in a position to shift consumer behavior yet again–this time from downloading music to listening to it via streams. And with this consumer shift, the music industry will reset itself once again until the next revolution…

The bottom line here is whether consumers buy in and adjust their listening habits. If they do, Price could be right – we could see a shift from downloads to streams, an income shift from purchases to royalties, and even greater dominance of Apple over how people consume music. Notably, because of the lack of licensing deals, Apple might be without competition. My big fear: those shifts could ultimately mean that only artists with lots of plays get revenues, which again would tilt the scales to big artists. The charts would simply be on your iTunes players, not on the radio. We’ll have to wait and see; stay tuned as I hear from more people close to the iCloud deals and product.

Updated – one last thought for the day. If you’re wondering how you can split up a $25-a-year fee and provide streaming, a simple answer may be, you can’t. It’s possible TuneCore is simply dead wrong, because it doesn’t seem that the math for licensing fees would add up. Apple, for their part, never mentions streaming.

But I am at least partly comforted in my fears about streaming becoming the norm at this absurdly-low price by the evidence that this isn’t a streaming service to begin with. Ahem.

Again, confirmed: Price is making an argument that appears to be divorced from the present facts, though it certainly remains possible a future version of the service will stream. (Given the service isn’t due out until the fall, it’s even possible the final version will ship with that functionality.) In his defense, the question of whether Apple’s service provided streaming seemed to confuse everyone. While it was the single most-anticipated portion of the WWDC keynote, Apple left demos and description to the end of a marathon set of demos of Mac OS and iOS features, and then showed a service that wasn’t complete. That has surprised some onlookers (see our comments), given that many people expect Apple to keep functionality under wraps until it’s fully baked. (Contrast: Google, who regularly release experimental and “beta” products.) Since Apple never specifically debunked rumors their service streamed, some people conflated rumors (and features of rival services) with what Apple showed. While TuneCore hasn’t posted an update to their blog, we’re blessed with the ability to post updates online. For now, the iCloud doesn’t stream. Price’s arguments remain a perspective worth considering because a future iteration might stream, and rival services make it a cornerstone feature.

Indies, don’t fear the Apple. The world with Apple’s iCloud doesn’t appear to be that radically different than the one we had before. And that’s a good thing: the Web, not any one cloud sync service, is still the most revolutionary technology for connecting music to listeners.

Updated: commenters online read this as complaining, so let me clarify: cloud sync has already had unfair expectations placed on it. It remains a no-brainer for Apple to implement. The question is, from an artist’s standpoint, what expectations should you have about the impact of the technology on what you’re doing. In the short term, some of those prove to be more limited, and now that there are some details, it’s worth analyzing those details.

I expect developers granted an early test version of iCloud and music will be breaking their NDAs shortly so we hear more details, but here’s what we know.

The Service: Useful, Maybe, Just Not Earth-Shaking

I think Apple’s value proposition is stronger than Google’s or Amazon’s. It looks far more complete, far better-designed, and genuinely usable.

On the other hand, like those other services, what it actually does remains relatively conservative:

Automatic sync – if you buy from iTunes. iTunes’ cloud service will work with files manually synced to iCloud, or with purchases from iTunes.

Benefit from being in iTunes’ store catalog, even if your listeners don’t buy there. For US$24.99 a year, Apple will “match” your music from other sources to entries in their iTunes Library – and “upgrade” them to 256 kbps AAC (though for people buying in FLAC format and the like, that’s not really an upgrade).

Sync files locally. Reportedly, Apple will offer streams and downloads alike. That means at least downloads are an option for people wanting higher-quality files. Just how this works is a bit unclear while we wait to test it. It’s not entirely clear why some reports (like TuneCore) suggested Apple had streaming capability; they have confirmed that instead they synchronize files locally prior to playback.

Sync anywhere you want, as long as it’s made by Apple. iTunes for Mac, iTunes for Windows, iPod, iPhone, iPad. Actually, in fairness, that’s relevant even to players other than iTunes – even the recently-released, open source Miro can talk to your iTunes library.

Don’t get me wrong: it looks like Apple is unveiling the first really viable cloud music service. That shows some serious ongoing leadership from the company that popularized the desktop player that’s still #1 today (iTunes), popularized online music buying with an online store that’s still #1 today (iTunes Music Store), popularized the mobile player that’s still #1 today (iPod), and maintains a nice, healthy chunk of the mobile market (especially if you look at all iOS devices together).

As of today, Apple’s still setting the bar for everyone else. It’s just that, in contrast to the revolution unleashed by iTunes and iPod, the results may not be as seismic this time.

Outlook Cloudy

Let’s review: we’ve waited a long time for online sync. And here’s what we’ve got:

Different services for different devices and different stores. Buy your music from Amazon, Google, and Apple? Own an Android smartphone, an iPad, and a Windows PC with Winamp? You can look forward to beautifully-integrated solutions for … each of those. Separately. Great.

No clear benefit for music makers. Digital Music News points to the folks at Beyond Oblivion. They note this service will simply sync people’s pirated music:
But Wait: Isn’t the iCloud Just Reinforcing Bad Habits?

Because even if rights owners are properly licensed, this is merely making billions of stolen music files more accessible. And that’s supposed to be a solution? “We can’t enrich the music industry, we can’t enrich artists, we can’t enrich life, society and culture by continually going to the same 5% who already pay for the music,” Beyond Oblivion CEO Adam Kidron said this morning. “We have to go to a new market.”

I’m not the sort of person who is kept awake at night by thoughts of piracy, but look at this the other way – in contrast to Apple’s initial unveiling of the iTunes Music Store, I don’t see any clear evidence that this will encourage people to buy more music. Not yet, anyway. Your best hope is that somehow this fairly modest sync ability will encourage people to buy more music, likely from iTunes (or Google Music for their Android, or Amazon for their likely-upcoming Amazon tablet). But that’s a stretch, and likely to be a drop in the bucket compared to the ongoing slump of the CD.

Hello? Anyone? I’m the Web? Did you forget me? Although it’s not as mind-bogglingly inexplicable as it was with Google, Apple seems to have forgotten the Web. Apple themselves pointed to the growing popularity of the camera on the iPhone, but ignored in the keynote the reason for that popularity – the ability to spread your photos with Twitter, Facebook, Web apps, Instragram, and the like.

For a service that takes music online, there’s really no ability to use that online information to share what you’re listening to, or get recommendations from other people. Nor is there any kind of API that would allow artists, labels, and creative developers to help build an ecosystem – even though such an ecosystem would potentially benefit music.

In fact, looking to rival Google, YouTube is far more relevant to getting your music out and actually generating new listeners and fans there than this cloud service is.

From a purely business perspective, the cloud so far looks surprisingly barren. It’s a huge gamble that some modest sync features – themselves designed to remove obvious, counter-intuitive annoyances – will make online music listening any more popular, or help musicians earn more from their work.

Winners, Losers, and Vinyl

I’m awaiting a response from Merlin, the folks who represent a huge share of independent labels, and who have protested their treatment in the licensing process.

I’m also hoping to hear more from services like TuneCore, who, for an annual fee, allow unsigned artists to get their work on iTunes. (I’m testing this as an artist and as a journalist myself.)

My bet: the one winner here is TuneCore. Artists may now have to pay the $50-a-year “tax” (erm, make that “service fee”) to TuneCore just to ensure their music will work with iTunes Match – and that people eager to buy cloud-ready music can. Don’t get me wrong: TuneCore provides some valuable services, but irrespective of what they offer, we’ll see whether this winds up being something that brightens independent artists’ day — or is just a pain in the … uh … cloud.

And all of this…

I…

I’m, sorry, I feel a blasphamous, snarky comment coming on. Oh, screw it. Turn to your blogger side. Filters off.

Vinyl records right now are more relevant to independent musicians than cloud sync.

There, I said it. I’m not even sure if I agree with it, but I might, and at least it sounds damned good.

The Good News

Maybe it’s time to stop looking to big companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google to chart the future course of music. Maybe the biggest platform doesn’t come from any one company, or any one, shiny device.

Maybe it’s just the Web. After all, it was the Cloud before anyone thought of calling things the Cloud.

I’ll believe in it, until I go to — borrowing Jobs’ words — that great, big hard drive in the sky.

Whether or not the ability to use TuneCore as a way to get an iTunes Ping page piqued your interest, if you’re generally interested in selling your music online, here’s some more interesting news. SoundCloud has teamed up with TuneCore to allow you to sell singles and albums in a variety of online stores, including Nokia phones, Amazon MP3, Zune, Emusic, and of course iTunes.

TuneCore’s approach is pretty simple: accounts are free, and you play a flat fee ($9.99 per single, $49.99 per album) to distribute music online in all the stores. You keep all of the royalties; once TuneCore gets their flat fee, they’re out of the picture fee-wise.

Another interesting angle to me of all of this is what it may mean for Creative Commons-licensed music. There’s nothing stopping you from self-releasing an entire album under a permissive CC license, sharing it with communities of samplers and remixers on Creative Commons, but also generating revenue by selling it online.

The SoundCloud angle here isn’t complicated; it’s just some nice integration of the two accounts to save you some time. Given the rabid following SoundCloud has started to generate, though, that’s significant. “Fatigue” is really the largest problem facing social music, as a huge array of competitors try to get the attention of artists – most of them, quite frankly, fairly useless. TuneCore is very much in the non-useless category from where I sit, and getting them and SoundCloud in front of artists could be really valuable (indeed, maybe far more valuable than iTunes Ping).

Here’s the full explanation from the SoundCloud blog:
SoundCloud + TuneCore: Getting your music sold just got easier

If you’re curious who’s using TuneCore, this compilation could give you some idea. In a promotion, Yamaha (yes, the music gear and instrument makers) have worked with Amazon MP3 and TuneCore to put out a free album of TuneCore artists:
26 Free Songs. 26 TuneCore Artists.

Updated – I should note, I do hope this is the first step. The killer feature here would be “buy” links right on SoundCloud, but that doesn’t appear to be implemented yet. Edit: David from SoundCloud observes in comments that you can manually insert buy links, which gives you the freedom to choose whatever store you like. Whether automating that makes sense is another question, but you definitely have options.

And as noted by Steve of sighup in comments, part of the reason you don’t hear more about TuneCore from folks in this community is because, while it covers big-bucket distributors well, it doesn’t cover the kind of niches a lot of readers here want covered. And, indeed, focused retailers – whether direct sales or places like Beatport, Other, 7Digital, and Bleep – often generate more sales within a lot of genres, based on conversations I’ve had with artists. I’ll talk to TuneCore about what their plans may be there. On the other hand, what it illustrates is that there isn’t any one solution that works for everyone – cool as TuneCore is, part of what makes those smaller stores work is the relationships they build directly with labels and artists. And they may not be open to working with a TuneCore. The landscape is complex, but if you’re willing to invest some time, that can allow you to best fit something to your audience. More discussion in comments…

Anyway, enough shilling for TuneCore – let’s hear what you think. Are you currently using TuneCore, or an alternative outlet? What’s your experience been? Or are you leaving this to your label?

What’s a social network for music discovery if there aren’t any artists? As covered previously, Apple’s Ping on launch was a pretty big flop. With no custom artist pages, artists felt left out of the party – and would-be users found themselves scratching their heads as iTunes mindlessly recommended U2 and Lady Gaga to everyone.

At the very least, as expected, we should start to see artists appear on Ping – and now there’s a way for you to be one of those artists, if you desire.

Ping’s reliance on the iTunes client and exclusively music purchased from the iTunes store remains worrisome, but if you’re an artist whose music is on iTunes and want to get in front of some extra eyeballs, we’ve got good news. TuneCore is a service designed to help artists distribute their music by managing the complexities of the various digital storefronts out there. That makes them a natural choice for helping get artists onto Ping – even if your music is in other places, too (like eMusic, Amazon, and Amie Street).

TuneCore was apparently on the phone with Apple the day Ping launched. And they now have Artist Ping accounts live. Here’s the full story, with some additional thoughts from TuneCore for CDM.

TuneCore posted an update at the beginning of this week announcing that they had set up Ping artist pages for their TuneCore artists:
Artist Ping Accounts [TuneCore blog]

Excerpt:

First an artist, or their representative, is verified as the authorized person to control the Artist Ping account (i.e. no, you cannot pretend to be Iggy Pop). This is done via TuneCore coordinating with TuneCore Artists and then relaying information to Apple.

Once this info is received by Apple, Apple emails out a unique url link specific to the artist, this link is then clicked on, when its clicked on the iTunes software opens in your browser and says “Ping Aritst Account” – it will ask you to log in with your iTunes user name/password or you can create a new iTunes account just for your Ping Artist account.

Whatever account you use to log in will be part of your Ping Artist Account. One of the things the Ping Artist and People account will do is display what you bought via that account on your Ping page.

So, if you are Motorhead and you buy the Strawberry shortcake “Rockaberry Roll” album (and yes, that is the name of a real album, I just looked it up) – this will appear on your Ping Artist Page.

Once in your Ping account you will be able to upload assets, etc. There may be a slight delay before they appear as Apple will check to assure the movies/images are not pornographic.

So, the bad news here to me is that there’s not really a whole lot of interaction on the page – for now, at least, a lot of this is just you buying music from iTunes. But if you’re willing to put in the time, and you have a lot of fans or listeners on iTunes, at least you now have a pretty easy avenue to get there. (Many readers’ response to Ping was, in part, social network fatigue, so I think it’s really in Apple’s court to provide more compelling reasons for artists to bother. Then again, you know your iTunes sales, and that may be the deciding factor.)

For their part, TuneCore defends the added work for the verification process:

There are literally millions of bands on iTunes. Apple has to come up with a way to authenticate that the entity that lays claim to the Radiohead etc Ping Artist page is actually authorized to do so.

To control this, there has to be a manual process (at least at inception) where Apple literally reaches out to an artist via the entity that provided iTunes the music so they can assure the control for that Artist’s Ping page is actually the person/entity that has the right to do so.

This would be consistent with the high quality experience that Apple provides. It’s an Apple process that many others do not do.

That makes some sense – see also the verified accounts on Twitter. On the other hand, to me the real challenge on Ping isn’t only opening up artist accounts, but providing a reason for artists to go there, and that remains to be seen.

Jeff Prince from TuneCore provided some additional information on how this works, including some best-guess attempts outside TuneCore.

CDM: Can you tell me – obviously there are advantages to going through TuneCore, but how would an artist work directly with Apple if they don’t work with TuneCore?

Jeff: Whatever entity the artist used to get their music into iTunes would be the default go to – there are exceptions (i.e. a huge multi-national act signed to a major may have its own pre-existing relationship with Apple where the management company has previously been verified).

As for TuneCore’s part, can any TuneCore artist go through your process — assuming their music is on iTunes?

Yes.

Any indication yet whether this will start to correct the current follower suggestions from Apple (i.e., the fact that everyone is supposed to be a Lady Gaga fan)?

My guess is that the algorithm’s need information/data to get more accurate. As more people sign up and use Ping, there is more data which allows the suggestions to get more accurate/interesting. But to me the real value is in the curated suggestions by People/Artists, not so much the automated recommendations.

Thanks, Chris. Well, so, folks, if you do hop on there and like what you see, feel free to share your experiences and Ping artist pages. And if you’re still unimpressed, well, of course, we’ll continue to look at other options for social music online, of which Ping is just one.

While talk of notation is in the air, it’s worth noting that sheet music has a chance to make a comeback in the digital age. After all, passive musical consumption seems to have already peaked some time in the now-past 20th Century. The desire for fans to be able to play the music they love is strong as ever, evidenced by the popularity of the Rock Band and Guitar Hero phenomenon. If you really wanted to be optimistic, you could interpret the downturn in recorded music as a positive trend back to live music and personal performance – the very musical trends that had been eclipsed by recording in the first place.

As with digital music downloads, the hope in digital sheet music is, naturally, being able to connect fans with the growing variety of music they might want to play. Brick and mortar stores where you can buy sheet music have already largely gone the way of the dodo. Here in New York, the big victim this spring is the storied classical music supply around the corner from Carnegie Hall: Joseph Patelson Music House has gone online-only. Music recording can count on some sort of transition to new formats; music publishing has to find a way to rise from the ashes of a business that’s had to deal with the invention of the Internet and records.

Selling MP3s? Try Sheet Music, Too, Says TuneCore

Last week, the latest announcement on this frontier was a partnership between TuneCore and Musicnotes.com. That brings together two real success stories in this arena. TuneCore is an affordable, flat-fee service that distributes music across different online stores (iTunes, eMusic, Amazon MP3); they’ve worked with everyone from indie artists to Areha Franklin, Beck, Bjork, and Cirque du Soleil (among others). Talk long tail: they release more music per day than any single major does in a year.

Musicnotes is interesting in that their catalog of on-demand online sheet music, topping about 100,000 titles, has been accelerating in sales – even as the economic recession takes its toll on the rest of the industry. They also boast 100,000 daily visitors to their site, thanks in part to partnerships with big-name publishers like Alfred, Faber, Disney, and Universal.

So, how do you bridge downloadable tracks with scores?

To start out with, TuneCore is skimming the top of their long tail and turning their work into scores. That means any artist starting this month with more than 25,000 track sales in the last 90 days will get at least one of those songs scored by a pro and available for download, adding score royalties to track royalties. Artists eligible include various artists who might not get sheet music published by a traditional publisher – especially given the overhead conventionally associated with that. (Names as varied as Ziggy Marley, Boxer Rebellion, and MGMT count as “eligible,” though it’s not clear who will take them up on the offer.)

At the time of the announcement last week, Gavin Mikhail, William Fitzsimmons and Ingrid Michaelson had signed up. Michaelson’s pop singer-songwriter hit “The Way I Am” is one you may have already heard; as pictured here, that hit will be among the first offerings via the partnership. (The fact that you may have heard this tune via radio play – even if it’s via a college station – suggests that the old model may transition more gradually to a new model than hyped-up Internet pundits may suggest.)

The Online Notation Frontier

Notation has managed to survive centuries, so I suspect this could be just the beginning of a convergence in digital scoring. Since Sibelius announced a new release this morning, it’s worth noting that the company has long pushed online music with its Sibelius Scorch platform, which allows you to view and play scores as if you had a copy of the software used to create it. You can publish online directly from Sibelius’ software, and the platform is even used in sales. SheetMusicDirect (US site | worldwide) combines Scorch with a huge catalog of tunes. The company’s own Sibelius Music site, which can publish scores produced in Finale as well as Sibelius, just got a big update and has an active community. Some scores are free, but some are for sale – and anyone can open their own store.

In fact, given that, one question I have about the other stores is whether a dedicated sheet music score can have the success and brand loyalty an iTunes or even Amazon MP3 might, but we’ll see. (The other big question: will your Kindle soon display sheet music?)

For its part, musicnotes.com is happy to sell you tunes for Memorial Day or graduation, plus a free copy of Old Macdonald. (Yes, that’s the guy with the farm – that Old Macdonald.) Of course, Apple for their part seem to have dropped the ball on the whole idea; there’s been a lot of discussion about the fact that their GarageBand Lessons have been too few to make any real impact. But that shouldn’t stop other outlets from getting in on the act – and musicnotes.com sells lessons alongside sheet music, a key ingredient for selling sheet music being the ability to read it.

All this change is not without some wrinkles, as noted by Iowa City New Musical Resources blogger Peter GiIlette:

Sheet Music on the Web: Trends and Trials

He notes, for instance, the irony of the Web Library of 17th Century Music forbidding commercial performance of their online scores – you know, they just want a cut of all the money you’re making on … um … 17th Century musical performance.

At the same time, it’s telling that even G. Schirmer is getting in on its own on-demand delivery system.

So, my question to you is not to debate this in theory, but ask:

Have you found useful ways to sell or freely disseminate your own scores?

Have you bought a score online?

Is there a score you would buy online if an artist made it available, or if there were better stores available?

I’m curious what practical implications there may be.

And incidentally, these lead sheets and such are great, but I would absolutely buy alternative and strange experimental notation from electronic artists if they chose to deliver it.

TuneCore Free Album

The only bad news: DRM-equipped tracks, so get ready for the burn and re-rip trick if you want them to be truly free. (Odd that you’d want DRM on a free track, huh? Hopefully this is a trend whose end is near…)

In other news, TuneCore is also doing music video sales. It’s just one step, but it’s clear that artists will have ever-expanding options as far as promoting themselves and adding direct revenue streams. We cover that over on Create Digital Motion (which is back up on a shiny, new server!):
iTunes, Video Marketplace? TuneCore Does Music Videos

Note that this is unfortunately US-only. Why is free so hard?