Band offers mobile app for streaming music (Ars Technica): Music as Software is the next format after the CD!

Read about the Presidents of the United States of America: Bands bypass iTunes by streaming music through iPhone apps - Ars Technica:  "If you're a Presidents of the United States of America fan, you can now listen to the band's entire discography for a mere $3, but not through the iTunes Store. Fire up your iPhone and grab it from the App Store instead; the band has bypassed the record label bureaucracy and released everything on its own..."

This is clearly a very cool idea, and something I have been looking at for quite some time: in the dawning age of rapidly exploding mobile app stores, on 5+ platforms, and with something like 2 Billion always-on smart phone users, we can now start selling music as software packages, i.e. in any UI/UX, multimedia, online/offline format that fits the artists' specific users and locations. Bands and artists, their managers, agents or labels and even publishers can select any combination of audio, video, pictures, texts, news feeds, games, twitter updates and social media 'rivers' to update the bands fans at any time, anywhere in the world.

My hunch is that most artists will probably have basic free versions available, at first, followed by premium apps that offer considerably more value and will cost from a few extra dollars all the way up to even $50 per user - and most importantly, lots of up-selling will be fueled through these apps. Think live concerts webcasts and downloads, premium video footage, remote backstage access, preferred access at concerts, merchandising etc - once I am hooked on the band, using this app, I make the perfect case for pitching something else to me.

 I have said this a few 1000 times in the past, but here it is again: Music as a service (i.e. get / buy / bundle access first, and only then buy products), and now, Music as mobile software packages may well be the next format after the CD. 

Take it a step further and think of how advertisers, brands and other partners could (and will) sponsor or co-present these apps, and therefore align with artists that make a good match with their branding strategy (see Groove Armada & Bacardi, Sting & Jaguar), and pretty soon most mobile music apps will be free or as I like to say, Feels like Free, for the users. Of course, downloading i.e. the ability to keep music must be part of it, as well - especially in the developing countries where easily available wifi/wlan is not that far along quite yet. I would expect that this will be part of many premium mobile music apps very soon. Stay tuned - this is a major trend, for sure.

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Comments

[Jon Randelman]

This is a great post and your insightful commentary is much appreciated. This trend certainly seems very exciting and full of opportunity for artists. For one thing, it offers yet another way of circumventing record labels and providing content directly to the user. If a band like the Presidents of the United States of America can effectively use this sort of tool, I cannot wait to see what a band like Nine Inch Nails or Radiohead can do with it. It looks like there could be a whole new market for web developers who can help big bands that have gone independent create dynamic software interfaces that easily bring content to their fan base wouldn’t you agree?
Additionally, these mobile applications also seem like a much more likely alternative to illegal file sharing than the subscription services because of the extra media that consumers get along with the music. As you said, it is not just music, but concert webcasts, video footage, merchandizing etc. I think it would be a great asset to bands on tour if say they could webcast their concerts and sell them for five dollars to people who want to find out if they are worth going to see, basically a sneak preview of coming attractions. Combined with the fact that mobile apps can support online/offline music listening and most importantly, portability, I think we have a new favorite for the direction the music industry should go in. The only real question I have is do you think that this type of application might cause artists to lose some of their more casual listeners? I ask because I feel that even if the mobile applications for artists are free, at least the basic package anyway, the fact that you would need the app to download music makes it unappealing in large numbers. For example would people want to have one hundred apps for one hundred bands, or would they simply maybe have their top ten or so and leave it at that?

[Gerd Leonhard]

Dear Jon, lots of good thoughts here, thanks for posting. I don't think this would have any negative consequence for any artists as all the free stuff, on the web, would continue anyway - and there will of course be aggregated apps for 1000s of bands (just like there are websites now)... Cheers! Gerd
http://www.gerdtube.net