music video – Data Science, Data Analytics and Machine Learning Consulting in Koblenz Germany

Is a music record only worth 40 Cent? About the dragging Crowd founding campaign for the new Mock Unit record

Rene — Tue, 11 Feb 2014 17:03:22 +0000

There is a trend on the web that artists, start ups (and other people) try to do some crowd founding. I really like the concept. Ask your true supporters, fans, customers to realize the next big project which they will like. But sometimes I have the feeling that especially in music crowd founding might not go as good as possible or to say it simple: People unfortunately have just the attitude expect to get music for free. I am not saying that everyone is participating in peer to peer platforms and doing copyright violations but music as a good is nowadays just available in a way as it was never before and most people seem to forget the intrinsic value of music. After I helped to build up the band in Legend and have some experience about music and the cost of creating music I want to share another story that brings me to my sad conclusion:
There is this German Band called Mock Unit. In 2009 they released their first video ready to mock which was followed by is doch kärb (2010) and seid ihr dabei?! (2011). Until now these videos have generated almost half a millions views on youtube. You think that is nothing in comparison to psy’s gangnam style. But consider that the band has a very unique style:

Their lyrics consist almost exclusively of swearwords, there is a lot of sexism in the text and they seem to make a lot of fun of a certain part of our society. Until now I hope that this is satire and a way of expressing disappointment about the existence of problems like sexism in our socity. (Otherwise I would reconsider my positive feelings towards the band)
They sing in a very local dialect which only few Germans would understand right away (I would guess about 1-2 Mio.)
The musical style itself is also not something for everybody and rather speaking to young people.

Yet The band has quite some success in this very small target group.

Their Facebook profile has about 5k fans (I assume most of them living closer than 50 km around Mainz)
Fans start to take own videos in the same style but with other songs
Concerts are sold old. 4 month ago they had a concert in red cat and had to send home people because the venue was completely sold out.
Fans are dressing up in the same “trashy” style and when I did the same and walked through Mainz people on the street would associate me with this band.

All this together I conclude that this band (which obviously is not casted by some label) has a strong fan base in a very small region and also has not really a commercial interest but just wants to continue to create music for their fans. Now the mock unit wants to create a second record and decided to go for a crowd founding campaign on startnext (basically the german kickstarter). They provided a good nice advertising video in their style and also the rewards are fitting the style. Everything is really authentic.
Also the Mock Unit only asks for 6000 Euro. Which according to the number of Facebook fans is an average of only 1.2 Euro per fan. Apparently this seems impossible to achieve. Currently the band has not even collected 2k euro which I really do not understand. I don’t ask you to support this band or become a fan of. I just think it is incredible that a band that has delivered music and videos, that has a solid fan base, that is able to sell out venues is not able to collect 1.2 Euro per Facebookfan for the sake of creating a new record and video.
I think it is really a shame in our society that culture became apparently so worthless. By the way I would have much more faith in a musicians crowdfounding campaign if he would promise to release the record under creative commons share alike by licence. In this way I would know that in return of my support I would not only be able to expect some entertainment but I would also obtain the legal right to use the material which I directly founded.
For those who know the band and like the band I created a video using their style in order to animate other fans to think about if they really do not want to support the band:

Look for love video: Did DJ Sammy steel the video story from jubilees Love Language video? Watch both clips!

Rene — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:51:56 +0000

UPDATE: (Feb. 8th. 2012) the originial love language video is now linked under the official look for love Video from DJ Sammy! Glad to see that and glad to see that protest on the web seems to be heared. Now I can finally completely enjoy DJ sammy’s work without worries!
Record industry as well as many companies that are in the business of publishing are complaining for years that illegal file sharing is killing their market and destroying culture and art. I don’t want to fall into the discussion about how copyleft is superior to copyright. Also not about how wrong all the whining is as there are many reasons that show, that the industry was just not smart enough to listen to the customers and adapt to the new possabilities given by the internet.
But then it is just sad to see how musicians like DJ Sammy (probably together with management and record labels) seemed to take a (viral) video from a charity organization and use the idea and story for their own music clip. That happened without giving public credit to this organization and as far as I know – please proove me wrong – without sharing profit from this song with the jubilee project – the organization that had the original idea. If this is true I am very disapointed since it has no moral at all and the ethics are just not given.
As I was active on the boarder of music industry I know that I should not even talk about this sad event as bad promo is also promo and therefor my blogpost is even supporting DJ Sammy and the people responsible for this video (well maybe they will even adjust their behaviour!). But I hope that this blog article will help even more to promote the good thing and really nice video by the jubilee project! Feel free to watch the original here:

And of course to show the similarity check out the DJ Sammy song look for love! I was thinking about re uploading the video and making a front screen and back screen giving credit to the original video but still link to i tunes and all the shopping possabilities. But I wasn’t couragious enough since I myself would commit a copy right violation and I have no interest in some annoying law suit.

final thoughts

I have to admit that the song is great (though I usually listen to heavy metal) and that the video is really well recorded and produced. I wish they had just officially helped to spread the good idea of the jubilee project. Anyway I hope the user discussion on youtube will last and maybe in this way the jubilee project will receive even more attention.
I can understand that musicians are frustrated and feel betrayed but I can only remind you to act with moral and good ethics on the web. There are so many great opportunities on the web also for musicians. Noone would have objected if DJ Sammy had used the video and worked together with the jubilee project!
If you know more about this topic please tell me in the comments. I’d love to be updated how the story continues!

Youtube Music video – The perfect Band website: part 3

Rene — Wed, 18 May 2011 18:36:37 +0000

Of course your band’s website is not youtube! So you might ask what youtube has to do with my series about the perfect band website. If you are a musician and you want to survive on the Internet you have to have a music video running on youtube. As with all the other online products the online world is very different from the offline world. If you have an open mind you will discover once more that there is a huge amount of potential in the online world.

What do you need for an youtube video

a song
a camera team (and an idea for the video)
someone to cut the video

Well these things where already mandetory in an offline world so I won’t discuss them any further.

What is important while uploading the video?

First of all it is important to understand how your video will spread through the Internet

On webzines if you contact them an tell them about your video
It will pass on from person to person once they find, watch and like it
It appears as a similar video besides other videos
Via search functions (be it google search or the video search of youtube)

The first two points are mainly your responsability. Once your video is great and you contact a lot of magzines and give them a press release the video might appear on a lot of websites. If your song and video are really great people might spread the word. But be warned everyone is talking about becoming viral. If all the music videos out there became viral everyone would be constantly watching music videos. So don’t forget that becoming viral hardly ever happens.
The 3rd and 4th point are your responsability. To some degree youself can decide where your video is supposed to appear. Search and recommendation engines are responsible to battle with these two points. But machines can undersand text documents like websites much better in comparison to rich media content like your video. That is why the algorithms on these machines probably pay a lot of attention to the tags you use while tagging the video, the title you put in and the description text. Of course they will probably also look at the websites on which the video is embedded and analyse what users this video watched an which other videos these users watched.
Anyway: your video should have the following title: “Bandname – Songname on Recordname” because this is what people are most likely to search for.

A short discussion on cover songs and guest musicians

Doing coversongs is by the way a great method to gain publicity. Look at the Van Canto videos. They have covered many bands and have those names in their title. If you search for “wishmaster” in youtube you easily find the van canto cover of wishmaster! Imagine how often people search for music by a famous musician in comparison to your music!
I did the work for you and just looked it up for Wishmaster and Van Canto:
On last.fm 317.207 people listen to the record wishmaster by Nightwish. On the other hand only 49.164 people listen to Van Canto! So you can do the math and decide what kind of songs you want to upload for promo reasons.
here you go with a title for a song with a guest musician: “your band’s name – songname feat. musician’s name from his band’s name”

illegal content on your videos

Most songs are on youtube in some form. Be happy about the fact that people like your music! A lot of artists wish they had so much attention. My article Why open source is the way to go holds perfectly as my contribution on copy rights in music anyway – also compare my article on sharing music. So what can you do to profit from the fact that most songs are on youtube anyway?
Upload them yourself. Use good tags, nice pictures, and provide the lyrics. Promote them! Put them on your search engine optimizied pages and ask people to connect with you and buy the album or donate for your music.
THINK ABOUT IT!
If you are Lady Gaga and your videos are being watched million times and some one else put them on youtube you don’t have as much benefit as they are watched on YOUR youtube channel. Where people could become subscribers or where you are able to embed AND change messages for your tour / album within the videos.!
So do you really want to be angry if someone else puts your videos on youtube. A very nice example is Blind Guardian. About one year ago they uploaded all their videos to their youtube channel. But the videos where already out there and other videos already made rank1 in search for videos. Again algorithms are just not that smart and the user doesn’t care as long as he sees the video!

new forms of marketing

This is the best part of the message. have a look at this great video (thogh it has nothing to do with music!) and realize that you have to act differently on the internet.

Understand?
Well here is a list of things you can do to be interesting and attract people on youtube if you are a musician:

Fans love interviews: make a video interviews. Have your fans ask you questions and answer them in a video
medleys (album introduction)
have a prelistening session of your album. You can tune into every song and discuss the song. What do you need print media or similar for? You can reach your audiance in a much more interesting way
live videos: Ask your fans to tape your show. You will easily get a 20 + cam mix of a song. This will create much more feeling and will be much cheaper than any professional music video
Record short stories,
Interact with the world. Remember what old spice – even though not a band – did? If not have a look at my upcoming blog article on old spice.
Make competitions: Ask your fans to create funny videos using your songs. Don’t be afraid that the quallity might be bad. (if the quality is bad it won’t spread on the web)

Be creative be fun and especially forget about the old business models! On the internet you want to be open!