Future Of Music

Wired.com has reported that Google plans to launch a music service rumored to be called “Google Music,” “Google Audio,” or “OneBox,” launching sometime next week.

The company will not become a music retailer, but will offer enhanced music search with a streaming function — first of possibly several vertical search offerings. Searching for an artist or song will apparently bring up a box (thus Google’s working title: “OneBox”) with a streaming link randomly assigned to stream from either Lala or iLike. After this music search product launches, we understand that Google plans to launch other search verticals, possibly including a travel booking service.

Major labels artists will be involved with the launch in some capacity, and the labels are in the process of gathering assets for Google to use for the service, including videos.

Google is also building the back-end for the majors’ upcoming Vevo music video service, and operates a free download service in China that TechCrunch says will not resemble whatever Google launches here in the U.S. and possibly elsewhere as well.

Stay tuned for more…

Ian Rogers and his team at Topspin are on in.  Listen to what he has to say in this brief interview from Wired and think how it can apply to your situation.

The more you know, the better decisions you can make and the further you can go.  Simple as that. Topspin is generating data, as are Nimbit, Reverbnation and others.

Berklee College of Music has been creating rock stars for over 65 years. Now, Berklee have teamed up with Rock Band to create Rock School and a collection of online guitar, bass, voice, production and music business courses designed to get people rocking for real!

From the Rockband site – “The time to matriculate at Rock School has arrived! Pick up your axe—the real one, that is—and start acquiring your skills. Join RockBand here every week for the latest video presented courtesy of Berkleemusic, the online arm of Boston’s world-renowned Berklee College of Music.”

You can also listen to an NPR interview with Alex Rigopulos, cofounder and CEO of Harmonix Music Systems, developers of “The Beatles: Rock Band.” Harmonix developed the first Guitar Hero game in 2005, and in 2006 the company was acquired by MTV Games for $175 million. Harmonix now makes the Rock Band games, the first of which came out in 2007.

Does selling records have anything to do with the music business anymore?  What do you think?

115,000 new albums were released in the U.S. in 2008.   Of those, only 110 sold more than 250,000 copies.

Only 1,500 titles cracked the 10,000 mark.

Read more from CNN here.

Patronage of the arts is a time honored practice that is still alive and well in the music business.  Many examples of fan financing from Ellis Paul, to Jill Sobule and many others have been reported and detailed recently in this blog and others.  Now a group of musicians from California have put together a very interesting program to raise money for commissioning projects that I hope catches on.  We need more thinking like this in the music industry today.  Effective and creative methods of connecting music fans to artists, writers, composers and producers will help propel the next generation of music making.

Symphony of a Million

“Symphony of a Million” is a 6-month campaign, a commissioning project that brings together composers, performers, and the general public.

The goal is to sell 1 million notes. Purchased notes will be used in not just one single million note work, but rather many new works. Composers will work with performers and compose pieces of varying lengths. The first work to be written will be a 1000 note work for solo marimba composed by Music Academy Online founder, Dave Schwartz, and written for percussionist Nobue Matsuoka. The second work will be a 4000 note composition for saxophone and harp and it will be composed by Anthony Lanman who will be working with saxophonist Dr. Noah Getz and harpist Jacqueline Pollauf who perform together as the duo Pictures on Silence.

* Buy a note for $1

* Each note becomes part of a piece of music composed by award winning composers. Throughout the process we will be commissioning composers to write new works of varying lengths using the notes that you purchase.

* A special “Symphony of a Million” concert, sponsored by Music Academy Online and featuring world-class ensembles, will premier all of the works created using the notes you buy. The concert will be held May 18, 2011, the 100th anniversary of the death of Gustav Mahler, the man who composed the “Symphony of a Thousand.”

* Buy as many notes as you wish. Dedicate the notes to someone special. Help to shape entire sections of new music with the notes you select! Your name (and theirs) will forever be part of the final scores.

* Encourage your friends and family to buy notes.

Find out more here.