Would you click this?

Most people who visit music blogs are music fans looking for downloads. Which makes me think there is very little chance that anyone has ever ( and I do mean ever) clicked on this banner ad that's been appearing on the music blogs that I visit.

Digital Cash

The iTunes Store registered its 10 Billionth song download last week.

That's a lot of songs. Especially when you consider that the music industry is supposed to be in decline.

So what was the 10 Billionth song you're wondering?

Well it wasn't a hip-hop track. Or even a dance tune. And it wasn't anything that had appeared in the top ten in recent times.

In fact it was a song that I would never associate with digital downloading by an artist who is no longer with us.

It was Guess Things Happen That Way - a song recorded in 1959 by the late Johnny Cash.

Doubt anyone saw that coming!

Music television

There has been much written about the ailing music industry and the strategies musicians need to adopt to build a career in the digital age.

The best money earner these days surely has to be getting your music used in a TV ad or show.

One show that features a lot of music is the popular teen comedy Glee. In fact songs from Glee have been huge sellers of late.

In 2009 'Don't stop believing' by Journey became the first song to achieve 2 million downloads. Most of which can be atributed to the song being used for high rotation promos for the launch of Glee.

The song was also performed in the show and the cast version has recently gone gold with around half a million download sales.

Another 24 songs from Glee also made the US charts in 2009. That's amazing.

Of course the downside to the Glee success story is that we're very probably going to be inundated by numerous crap musical teen comedy shows that are nowhere near as good (or original) as Glee.

But at least some hard up musicians might make a few dollars from them.

Blank generation

There's nothing I love more than someone sticking it to The Man.

Jello Biafra has been doing it for longer than I care to remember.

Take a close look at the cassette above and you'll see what I mean.

Side one of cassette version of the Dead Kennedys' In God we trust EP was the EP itself.

Side two was intentionally left blank so that people could record whatever they wanted on it.

Back in the 80s when this was released the industry was claiming that home taping was killing music.

Of course we now know it was the industry that killed it not taping.

Which is why Jello's comment printed onto side two of the cassette is so interesting.

Anything but soft

August 14th is the 33rd birthday of maverick record label Stiff Records.

As I kid I collected pretty much everything Stiff produced. Not just music but their ads and slogans too.

Thinking about it now as a guy sliding into middle age I can't help but noticing how much of an influence Stiff and there modus operandi has had on my career.

Just take a look at these great Stiff slogans and marvel at how good many of them still are after all these years.


But wait...there's more!

Visual mixology

Brian Eno has been playing with the idea of generative music for many years.

This is a wonderful example of it using YouTube videos.

It was created by Darren Solomon.

Click here to give it a try. You will not be disappointed.

The personal approach

Radiohead introduced a whole new way of retailing music with their album In Rainbows.

In addition to the pay what you want online release they also offered a very pricey special edition boxed set.

Now Nine Inch Nails have taken the Radiohead model a step further.

They offered a $300 deluxe version of their new album. It sold out in 2 days! Grossing them somewhere in the region of $750,000.

The album was released under a Creative Commons license, yet it managed to gross sales of $1.6 million.

Goes to show that if you have something worth buying people will pay for it.

So maybe the future is not, as many experts will tell you, all about free.

Maybe, just maybe, it's about offering something a little more personal.

Bubblegum rocks

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will know that music is important to me. So I think you can appreciate just how excited I was when I came across this collection of rockin' bubblegum cards. Brings back memories of the graduation invite that the RMIT advertising kids did a couple of years ago.

Music you can wear

Now here's a fresh idea. An idea so obvious you wonder why it hasn't been done before.

As we all know CD sales are in decline. Downloads are the way to go for the kids of today.

To capitalise on this Mos Def has just released his new album as a t-shirt.

Yes a t-shirt.

It features a print of the cover art on the front and the tracklisting on the back.

Attached to the t-shirt is a swingtag with a download code. How clever is that!

I suspect we'll be seeing a lot more of this kind of marketing idea in the future.

Rocking books

This week's email from The Word magazine tipped me off to a very clever and quite lovely Flickr set.

It's basically classic albums re-imagined as Pelican books.

This one for Joy Division's debut is my favourite.

Suffice to say there's sure to be one that you'll love too.

Click here to go browse through the racks.

C30 60 90 Go!

I'll always have a place in my heart for my very first cassette recorder. A Sanyo portable that I got for my 12th birthday.

I used to spend many an hour with the radio on and my fingers poised over the record button waiting to capture my favourite songs.

Which is why a felt a touch of nostalgia for a time long gone when I came across this link to a fantastic Flickr set of cassette inserts and labels.

Well worth a look for anyone who loves music.

Product placement by The Boss

Music fans across the globe are talking about the performance of Bruce Springsteen at the Super Bowl the other day.

I was listening to The Word podcast on my way home tonite and they described it as the best half time Super Bowl entertainment ever.

Let's face it - It wouldn't be hard to top Janet Jackson's boob incident. Now would it?

The guys from The Word said Bruce hit the ground running without a let up in energy for the full 4 song performance.

Given the nature of the Super Bowl audience, I'd have thought it would have been a greatest hits set. It wasn't.

It was however a cleverly put together collection of classics with one new song squeezed in. A song from the just released Springsteen album Working for a dream.

The day after the Super Bowl that album was top of the Amazon and iTunes charts.

When asked to comment about his performance Bruce said that he'd done it to promote his new album.

With the chart success it appears to have worked.

Chalk one up for The Boss I say.

Actually let's chalk up two. One for promotional innovation in an industry in decline.

And another for racking up sales much higher than even he would have anticipated.