About two weeks ago, Facebook introduced a new terms of service. These new terms were quite severe. Many consumers were furious with the creators of Facebook for this slap in the face.
The terms of service stated once you have closed your account with their network, any rights they had claimed to your original uploaded content would expire. However, they pulled a switch on the general public. Two weeks ago they made their terms of service to state that anything and everything you uploaded that was originally your own would be owned by Facebook! They claimed:

“You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings or (ii) enable a user to Post, including by offering a Share Link on your website and (b) to use your name, likeness and image for any purpose, including commercial or advertising, each of (a) and (b) on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof.”

Basically what this says is “We own whatever you put on facebook, sorry.” Naturally, people already using Facebook for years were furious! Livid even, and there they went on a rampage. Facebook received hundreds, upon thousands of complaints from user saying how poorly they were being treated.
Within a few days, the Facebook personnel recanted their new Terms of Service and replaced it with the old version due to complaints.

Facebook representatives are still in the process of making the site more user friendly, and making the consumer pleased with what they are using so they continue to use it.

Jonathan Coulton makes a full time living as a music 2.0 internet musician.

Now that Jonathan Coulton is something of a household name in some segments of the online community, has anyone approached him with a deal with the devil and a pen dripping money? “I’ve had a couple of conversations… I’m not anti-label in concept,” he tells me. “I have people I pay to do things like a label would; I can’t do everything myself. That’s always been what a label is for. That’s still true. It’s just that the deals that have been proposed to me never made a great deal of sense; they always involve giving up a piece of what I already have, as a gamble to increase the fan base even more.”

It makes sense, and even for popular bands the economics of signing with a major label rarely work out. The band 30 Seconds to Mars found this out the hard way. After scoring a couple of catchy and popular radio hits and doing some touring, they found themselves on the wrong side of a lawsuit after their label decided it wanted more music from the group. Singer Jared Leto described the business of going platinum in an open letter to the fans. “If you think the fact that we have sold in excess of 2 million records and have never been paid a penny is pretty unbelievable, well, so do we. And the fact that EMI informed us that not only aren’t they going to pay us AT ALL but that we are still 1.4 million dollars in debt to them is even crazier,” Leto wrote, sounding exasperated. “That the next record we make will be used to pay off that old supposed debt just makes you start wondering what is going on. Shouldn’t a record company be able to turn a profit from selling that many records? Or, at the very least, break even?” He goes on to describe other aspects of the label he found intolerable, including the firing of the people who helped his band, EMI pressuring the band to place ads on its official website, and the fact that they will never own their masters.

Says Jonathan: “There is going to be some company that comes along that’s like a full-service label and has the scalability that a guy like me can do this sort of thing.”

So in Coulton’s world, the label doesn’t come to you and take control of things. Rather, you build your following, and then you hire a company that operates like a label. The most dramatic change in all of this is that the artist is the boss, every step of the way… Very much our philosophy at Pro Soul Alliance!

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/09/jonathan-coulton-interview.ars

More and more artists are finding new ways to get in touch with their fans.
The first major artists to actually really listen to their fans, and not demand attention from them, was NIN’s Trent Reznor, and Radiohead. These two bands showed the world what is to come in the music industry: connecting with your fans as a way to earn income with music.

Over and over again, you hear industry leaders saying “Connect with your fans, connect with your fans!” and for good reason. Trent Reznor and Radiohead practically gave their most recent CD’s away for free and generated significant income, and now there are many artists doing much the same with success.

Gaining the respect of ones fans is now the only way to go. Who wants to have a fan’s friendship and loyalty for one hit single, or even one CD? What is that worth in the long term? Not much. The more an artists connects with their fans, the more likely a fan is willing to pay for that artist’s music, and support and promote anything the artist does for a long time to come.

Not to say that earning income from what one has created is not important. Downloads and ringtones, donations, as well as earnings from YouTube and imeem can provide some of the income to fuel the new music business. But only by serving fans and adding value to that relationship can music begin to move from pennies to dollars again.
After much effort, many indie artists are now earning a full time income using these techniques. Examples coming in the next post…

www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/01/analog-dollars-vs-digital-dimes.html#more

We’re happy to announce the latest release from Pro Soul artist Elika Mahony!

On valentines day, Elika launched a book and CD gift set on her new website, both designed in partnership with Pro Soul Alliance. Birds of Love is a treasury of uplifting words and inspiring songs specially created for weddings, anniversaries, and loved ones.

Each book is hand made with a slightly different pattern of gold silk fabric. There are lots of options available for this unique package to meet the needs of everyone: A book and CD gift set, A limited edition gift set with a choice of two different fabric covers, autographed, with a beautiful hand-made gift card with gold envelope, or the CD by itself, and of course digital download from Elika’s website, or online stores.
Elika’s unique vision for the product was produced overseas in order to create a high quality, expensive product that maximizes earnings for the artist.

You can hear samples and see photos of the product on Elika’s new website which was developed by Pro Soul, who is also assisting in the promotion and release of the product.

Soon Elika will be giving away free downloads from this album for those who have signed up for her mailing list, which you will notice is the first thing you see when you visit her website. She’s a great example of a niche artist who with the assitance of Pro Soul is doing the kinds of things artists need to do to have a successful and sustaining career in music.

We’ve been working for some time now on a new video that explains what’s been happening in the music industry and what Pro Soul Alliance is doing for artists.

This video attempts to look at what is happening in the music business, how we got to this point, and where things are going. It looks at how all this affects artists, and what artists need to do to become successful, while still keeping control of their career, and all their profits. It looks at how Pro Soul Alliance is one solution in assisting artists in this process. You can view it on our home page:
www.prosoul.com

Many large companies these days seem to be fine with releasing videos using south park style animation, and voice overs from the developer using a $5 headset mic… We tried to do something a little better than that, putting some time and effort into it. Hopefully we achieved that.
That being said, this is still an early beta version of the video, and we’re working to improve it over time, so we would love your feedback and criticisms. Let us know if it helps explain where things are going and what we do clearly.

Thanks to Gerd Leonard for some visuals, and Ken Joonyer for the voice over. Music composed by yours truly.

- Jarome

Experts now confirm that the top method we will all use to communicate within the next 3-4 years will be through mobile devices. That means it’s never too early to start implementing them into your promotional strategy.

In their efforts to analyze who their audience is and how to build it, artists must be aware that young audiences heavily use this technology and thrive on instant gratification, phone, laptop, iPod, game system, and whatever else emerges.

Mobile Marketing guru Helen Keegan of Beep Marketing says that Artists should be using their mobile phones to not only create and capture content themselves, but to help the audience get to the real essence of the artist, beyond branding and a manufactured image.

Pro Soul assists our artists acheive this by using Twitter and Wordpress and such applications that can update social networking profiles from their phones, as well as integrating cutting edge software technology in their website design that ensures their site will look good and load quickly on almost every mobile browser available.