The New World Order of The Music Business

Peter Malkin has been in the music business for over 20 years, serving as an A&R executive and brand consultant. In a recent spells out the hundreds of music services available to talent agents to find new music and to musicians to promote and sell their music online. Some of his recommendations are horribly outdated (Friendster for band profiles?) and I also think he’s missing a couple great new music services.

Here’s His List and my two cents.

To Find Artists: SellABand, SliceThePie, Bandstocks, Kickstarter, MySpace, YouTube, OurStage; through Internet radio sites like Pandora, LastFM, Slacker and iSound; through online social communities: MOG, Bebo, Buzznet, Babulous. He also mentions Grooveshark (a personal favorite) and Seeqpod (which has since been knocked down) but notes that the two start ups may be running into legal trouble.

Sites for aspiring artists: Boomdizzle, Broadjam, Get Signed, Unsigned and Music Gorilla.

Sites that allow people to share playlists and reccomend music: Spotify (love), Playlist.com, GetPlaylists, 8Tracks, Live365, Jango, and rdio. Also Songtweak and The Hype Machine (love).

To create artist profiles: MySpace, Facebook, Friendster, Tagged; Hi5 and MyYearBook for a younger audience; PureVolume and AbsolutePunk if you’re a rockband; BTR and Beatport if you’re a DJ; PluggedIn if you’re a Christian act; HipHop Avenue, BuzzThis and DopeTracks if you’re a Hip Hop group.

Tools to sell music and grow a fanbase online: ReverbNation, BandCamp, Artistopia, IndabaMusic, TopSpin; WordPress, Tumblr or Posterous to create the artists’ blog sites; RockYou or Tagworld for widgets; Nimbit to sell content through those widgets; Pringo as a tool for managing social networks; ArtistData and Meebo to update profiles; FanBridge provides tools to manage a fan base.

Creating mobile apps: MobileRoadie, Appiction and NetBiscuits.

Creating an online fan club: Artist Arena, SparkArt, All Access Today or Music Today.

Selling music: iTunes, Amazon, CD Universe; or subscription sites like Rhapsody, Napster, EMusic and 7Digital; Distribution through The Orchard, SongCast, CDBaby, TuneCourt, In Grooves, CD Pulse; ArtistFirst; mobile efforts through ThumbPlay and Moses.

Finding gigs: Gigmaven (love), SonicBids and BandMix to find other musicians to tour with.

Marketing and promoting: LinkedIn, YouTube, Vevo, Photobucket, Coding.com, P2P Communities; CurrentTV, MotherboardTV, Funny or Die, Zygna, Crowdstar, Playfish, PopCap, MinglePlay, Crowdfire, Songkick, iLike, Twitter, Foursquare, uStream, JustinTV, BlogTV, Gawker, Pitchfork, Brooklyn Vegan, MTV.com, AOL Music and Spinner.

2cents: I love that he included Kickstarter, which recently made our list of 20 NYC Start Ups You Need To Know About, but please can we stop using MySpace and Friendster (and Tagged, Hi5 and MyYearBook too)?

The point of his video is that there are hundreds of music services out there which is both helpful and annoyingly overwhelming. The list is great because it lets you know all available options, but in the end it’s best for any brand to concentrate marketing efforts through a few really solid channels as opposed to every single one. Bands should be building their presence through market dominators Facebook and Twitter (not MySpace and Friendster), which have 3/4 of a billion users combined and also maintaining a beautiful, simple local site to draw readers in for news, music clips and tour information. Talent seekers and music lovers should also check out Shuffler.FM, which lets users pick channels like “Electronic,” “Lo-Fi,” or “Indie” and then surfs through over 2,600 global music blogs. Soundcloud is another great service he didn’t mention. It’s particularly great for listening to your favorite local Brooklyn DJs. Also, Extension.FM, a Google Chrome extension that pulls all available free MP3s on any web page into a drop down menu in the top right corner of the browser. It is neat.

Going forward Malkin should also include iTunes Ping which linked up with Twitter today so you can literally follow your Twitter friends’ tastes in music on iTunes. Also, watch out for a new Google music service, which should land before Christmas.

His final advice, turn off your computer and get out there and meet people. Agreed.

Watch the video here: