Ooooo, you wascally wabbit, thom. Thank you kindly - that one flew. Handy in that numerous selections from Sympathy For The Recording Industry have depleted my reserves this month, several of which were on my SFL's elsewhere.
This is admittedly a stretch but if you had 50% dollars and you got a double disc set for those 50% dollars it would almost qualify as $4 music if you were to cough up $16.99 for the David Bowie A Reality Tour set that the Amie St. e-mail had in it. That would bring it in slightly lower than the 24 credit version here link for some subscribers, unless you're still holding crack cards.
BTW, if this is a new release, as it came up on Amie, and I think Amazon too, and it's on Columbia, how did it get released on eMu if they only get 2 year old stuff supposedly?
eMu has been getting things in less than two years from time to time. Some I can think of off hand are the latest from Gossip, Glasvegas, and Chairlift. Granted those were all well after release unlike the Bowie.
I think Sony is realizing if they don't do at least some of that eMu won't be any good to them.
Sony has been selectively releasing newer albums on Amie, presumably for promo reasons. I most cases they are former indie bands just starting off instead of established major labels, so the Bowie is a bit of a surprise. Of course, with a live album they don't have to recoup nearly as much money to break even, so that may be a factor here.
Sony on Amie has been a failure for them - most of the big name albums have close to zero listens. No RECs is understandable, since they won't make any money, but you would expect a lot of listens. I'm sure there is a correspondence between listens and number of units moved - if you look at the albums they initially had on sale for $4.99, they all have at least a few hundred listens. But even the Michael Jackson albums that started at $9.99 have only a handful of listens. If Sony was smart, they would cut the price of their albums at Amie in half.
If Sony was smart, they would cut the price of their albums at Amie in half.
Of course, if they did that, they'd be undercutting themselves since their prices on Amie are generally the same as on Amazon, iTunes, etc. I can't imagine the other retailers would be too happy with that, especially since they undoubtedly make a bigger contribution to Sony's bottom line than does Amie.
Has anyone picked up Analog Rebellion or PlayRadioPlay! (same band, different name)? I picked both up earlier when they were cheap. They sound pretty good - a bit of Radiohead, a bit of Sufjan, and everything else but the kitchen sink.
I checked their myspace page and they have almost 9 million hits and 111,000+ friends.
1. Sony has been releasing the majority of its new releases on Amie Street. I have yet to notice a major Sony release that hasn't been released on the street date.
2. I've bought numerous Sony albums on Amie Street: Avett Brothers, Brandi Carlile, Leona Lewis, Andrew Peterson, MGMT, Beyonce, Sara Groves, and two dozen singles from Glee. With 50% off credit and all I earn from RECs, Amie Street is--by far--the best deal on the internet for Sony music.
3. How is it a failure? What do they lose by selling on Amie Street? For them, it's just another option for buying their music online.
... most of the big name albums have close to zero listens
Are listens even counted anymore? I see a lot of popular albums, like the new Four Tet, that don't register any listens, which seems incredible since I listened to a few tracks after getting it for free last night. Moreover, Amie no longer shows who listened to what album anymore.
It looks they stopped counting a couple of weeks ago. The newest release that I find that has downloads counted is from Jan 12 2010. Anything older than that has plays listed for them, and most of the Sony stuff showed up last summer, and should list number of listens for the first 5-6 months they were here - in most cases the are at or near zero listens - the exception being those albums that were priced at $4.99 the first month.
I don't know how anyone can have any idea what sales on Sony albums have been. Or even who is listening to what.
I can find dozens of Sony albums with hundreds of listens, which is a lot considering most don't get featured in any way, not even the New Releases page.
Additionally, the Avett Brothers have thousands of listens. As does Passion Pit. Which were both featured heavily during various sales. Which makes sense because they both appeal to Amie's demographic.
I don't think Amie ever wanted Sony to take over the site. People come for discovering new (primarily indie) music and spend time listening to and exploring that. Sony is the icing on the cake. Why would you need to listen to Bruce Springsteen or Michael Jackson before purchasing? You know beforehand if you like it. And now you can grab one of their albums while you're at Amie Street.
There is a rough correlation between the number of times an album has been viewed/listened to etc., and the number of times it has been purchased. I will grant you that none of us know the exact relation, but statistically speaking the more people have listened a particular album, the more have bought the album in question. I'm sure you can find outliers, but as a rule this would stick.
Yeah, you'll find hundreds of listens on several Sony albums if you add the total of listens to all tracks - however, that is not a good measure, since every listen isnot a unique visitor. People tend to let the samples play out for the whole album, even if they are not intending to buy. That said, a drop off from track 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 etc, actually tells something about the listener's interest level.
Take your example of the Avett Brothers - while they do have 3000+ listens, that does not mean they have 3000+ unique listeners. Less than 500 listeners listened to the first track, less than 400 to track 2, less than 300 to track 4, etc. when you get to the final track, it's only 136 listens. I would guess that most of these 136 listeners listened to the whole album, or at least let the samples play through, since most people click on the listen all link (or equivalent). If you look at most of the Sony albums, you get a consistent decline track by track.
The Avett Brothers was actually highly hyped, on sale on Amie for a while, and not available on emusic for the first few months it was on Amie Street . Still only around 500 listens on the most listened to track. That does say something about the volume.
I stand by the fact that most of the Sony product on Amie is way overpriced, and that they most likely haven't sold more than a handful of Sony albums, relatively speaking. As I said in an earlier post, I think Sony has an Amie presence primarily to cover the bases.
1. The Avett Brothers' listening numbers are comparable to most of Amie Street's bestsellers, so it doesn't make sense to me to consider it a failure. The last tracks on most bestselling albums always have 100-200 listens, Sony or not. Amie Street doesn't have a huge customer base (yet). A few hundred listeners is a success.
2. They've sold more than a handful of albums to me alone. Three Sony albums were bestsellers for weeks--Avett Brothers, Passion Pit, and Julian Casablancas. Three very successful albums is not bad considering how much less exposure Sony albums (intentionally) get.
3. The Sony albums are not overpriced. They are a fantastic deal for those who understand how to make the most out of Amie Street. Even when I pay full price in credit (9.99), I am only paying $2.75 in real money. That is a much better deal than iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, or anywhere on the internet.
4. There is not enough information to make any real assertions about the success (or lack thereof) of Sony on Amie Street.
The Sony albums are not overpriced. They are a fantastic deal for those who understand how to make the most out of Amie Street. Even when I pay full price in credit (9.99), I am only paying $2.75 in real money. That is a much better deal than iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, or anywhere on the internet.
It's hard to make correlations based upon the most active customers at Amie. For most casual customers, Sony albums are $10. The recs garnered from the purchase may never be used. Besides, it's not clear how recs affect payouts, since Sony seems to have made them irrelevant for their product.
It will be interesting to see how amie launches Warner (no I haven't heard anything but I assume sooner or later) - I wouldn't be surprised if Warner let at least some of their stuff go on flexible pricing - even if it was just a "mistake."
I have no idea how Sony stuff is doing at amie or anywhere, but I do think that if they used flexible pricing - even if not from a zero point - then they would have made a lot of money that they didn't make. If things were rolled out slowly, and I had a chance to get things cheap, I would have bought some. As it was, I didn't, except some things that were accidentally cheap, so Sony could have had more of my money than they do, and probable some other peoples' too.
@frogkopf - I think you're making way too many assumptions, the biggest one being: "People tend to let the samples play out for the whole album, even if they are not intending to buy." I would be shocked if that were true for the majority of music buyers. Personally, I rarely make it to the last song when sampling, whether or not I buy an album. And on a site like Amie Street, where people are trained to purchase fast or lose the deal, I doubt many people make it past the first song or two.
Take a look at the Cymbals Eat Guitars album. Over 1000 listens to the first track. By midway through the album you're down to 25% of that, and only 180 listeners for the final track. And yet it was one of Amie's top selling albums. Clicking through a number of other top sellers shows the same pattern. Hundreds of listens to the first track and less than 200 to the last.
And when it comes to Sony, how many people really need to preview? If someone is going over to Amie Street to pickup some Alicia Keys, they've probably already checked out the album and realize that it would be cheaper with their 25% off credit.
Actually, the point I was making with the number of listens is that the total listed in the left hand side under the album is not unique listeners, but an aggregate of all listens to all tracks. A better rough indication of the number unique listeners is to take the most listened to track and then calculate downwards, since even taking the number of listens of the most listened to track on the album isn't a true measure of the number of unique listeners. If you listen to a song more than once, you are counted more than once in the total for that song (at least that is true if someone else listens to the track between your multiple listens). I know that for a fact, since there are several fairly obscure albums that I streamed 3 or 4 times, and every time I did, the listen count went up by one. Given the price they are at, I may well be the only person who bought the album.
# of listens also doesnt tell you how many people actually bought an album, since many of the hottest albums are bought without preview. I myself often buy many of the anticipated new releases the moment they show up, since taking time to preview them would result in the album being more expensive. Oftentimes, label affiliation is enough for me if the price is right and I need to pull the trigger right away. However, with non-dynamically priced albums at $9.99 this jump on it motivation doesnt exist, so the number of people buying without previewing is probably a lot less.
With dynamically priced albums you can predict roughly how many copies are moved, since Amie Street has clearly stated the relationship between the current price and the number sold in their pricing algorithms. There are various algorithms to choose from, but if you watch an album as the price goes up you can easily determine which one the seller chose. What is very telling is that most of the top 25 albums only go up a few cents a day after they have been out for a week or so. This means they are only selling a couple of copies a day on average. Most of these have way more listens than the most famous Sony albums, so what does that say for how many albums Sony is moving?
If a 6 dollar album with hundreds of listens per track in the last week is only selling one album a day, how many copies of a $10 album that has logged in zero listens in the last six months do you think they are moving or have moved? My guess is close to zero. While thom may have a point that people are already familiar with some of the Sony albums may buy them without previewing them, at least a certain percentage will preview them, either to check the track quality, or because they want to hear some of the songs again before deciding to pull the trigger on an album they can get just as cheaply at Amazon or iTunes (assuming they are not using credit sales). Conversely, there will be a certain percentage that listen to the album even if they are familiar with the album and who will decide not to buy it, given the price. Its impossible to calculate these percentages, but my guess is that the two will largely cancel each other out, resulting in the number of sales being in the same ballpark as the number of listens, if not less.
The drop off in listens as you go down an album's track listing is somewhat ambiguous. With a highly touted, dynamically priced indie album, the drop could be partly due to the fact that some people previewed the first few tracks and then pounced on the album to get it while it is cheap, others were curious and decided they werent all that interested. Ive been in both camps more times than I can count. There are also many times that I stream the samples and end up leaving the room for some reason or another and only hear the first couple of tracks although all the tracks count up a listen.
Lets compare apples to apples. According to both Amazon and eMusic (in terms of both sales ranking and number of reviews), Sly and the Family Stones Theres a Riot Going On is much more popular than their album Stand. However, on Amie Street Stand has over 20x the number of listens that b]Sly and the Family Stones Theres a Riot Going On[/b] has. How do you explain the less popular album has generated such a huge difference interest on only this one site? The answer is simple, if you remember that for the first month Stand was one of those 50 or so albums offer for $4.99. Check any two albums of roughly equal popularity by any artist in the case where one of them was offered for $4.99 the first month and other other one wasnt youll find the exact same results. In the case of Buddy Guy, his album that was on sale for $4.99 generated over 100x as many listens as any of his $9.99 albums.
@KTripper maybe a half dozen Sony albums is a lot to you, but its not even a drop in the bucket in the overall scheme of things barely even a water molecule. And I would guess that you have probably bought more Sony albums at full price than pretty much anyone on Amie Street. Has anyone else bought a $9.99 Sony album there? I havent, and Ive probably dropped more money at Amie Street than anyone. If the price is right for you, then by all means buy, but you are in a very small minority. You are getting a good deal on those albums, but as Bad Thoughts pointed out, for most causal listeners those are $10 albums. There is only a very small amount of users who between street cred and 50% off sales will be getting their Sony for cheap (probably only a few dozen of us who have the system down). Most users are probably not even aware of the 50% off links floating around and only occasionally put money into their accounts and in small increments. In fact, given that a good 90% of the user names that show up have little or no street cred logged, Im guessing that the vast majority of Amie Street users have put little or no money in their accounts and visit solely in the hopes to get freebies.
I doubt that Sony makes enough off Amie to even pay for lunch at the monthly board meeting maybe it covers the delivery boys tip, if theyre lucky.
I don't think Sony defines success the same way that other labels do at Amie. Smaller labels are probably more concerned about the promotional aspect--using the dynamic pricing to cause a buzz about their product and get it on the hard drives of customers. Sony is probably more satisfied by its own methods of promotion through mass media, and define success more in terms of getting the price per unit they expect from their product.
Dynamic pricing probably isn't as straight forward as it seems. Every album seems to be priced on one of several tracks. Some start out free. Others start at a low per-track price (22 cents is about the highest, I think). They prices climb at different rates, and the number of freebies can vary. Moreover, some albums are reduced several dollars below the high price in order to encourage more sale.
Where it gets trickier is with recommendations--who actually pays for them. Albums with more freebies offer the possibility of generating more credit, which I would assume get counted against the label.
There are two many differences that make comparison between Sony and the independents in terms of their relationship with Amie. Because their records don't generate recommendations and they don't dabble in dynamic pricing, I would assume that Sony can take a higher percentage of the profit. Moreover, Sony doesn't need Amie to promote its records.
I picked up the Clogs album yesterday shortly after it dropped. I like them. I bought most of their albums here when I first rejoined a couple of years ago, I think they were around $1 for a long time.
Not bad! For someone whose job is to parse language I'm terrible at describing things. I really hope I'm never called upon to give information on a criminal to a sketch artist, because I probably wouldn't get beyond "he's a white guy with two eyes, a nose, and a mouth."
I missed that rec. I'll have to check it out this evening.
Comments
Basia Bulat - Heart of My Own
BTW, if this is a new release, as it came up on Amie, and I think Amazon too, and it's on Columbia, how did it get released on eMu if they only get 2 year old stuff supposedly?
I think Sony is realizing if they don't do at least some of that eMu won't be any good to them.
Craig
Sony on Amie has been a failure for them - most of the big name albums have close to zero listens. No RECs is understandable, since they won't make any money, but you would expect a lot of listens. I'm sure there is a correspondence between listens and number of units moved - if you look at the albums they initially had on sale for $4.99, they all have at least a few hundred listens. But even the Michael Jackson albums that started at $9.99 have only a handful of listens. If Sony was smart, they would cut the price of their albums at Amie in half.
Of course, if they did that, they'd be undercutting themselves since their prices on Amie are generally the same as on Amazon, iTunes, etc. I can't imagine the other retailers would be too happy with that, especially since they undoubtedly make a bigger contribution to Sony's bottom line than does Amie.
I checked their myspace page and they have almost 9 million hits and 111,000+ friends.
2. I've bought numerous Sony albums on Amie Street: Avett Brothers, Brandi Carlile, Leona Lewis, Andrew Peterson, MGMT, Beyonce, Sara Groves, and two dozen singles from Glee. With 50% off credit and all I earn from RECs, Amie Street is--by far--the best deal on the internet for Sony music.
3. How is it a failure? What do they lose by selling on Amie Street? For them, it's just another option for buying their music online.
I can find dozens of Sony albums with hundreds of listens, which is a lot considering most don't get featured in any way, not even the New Releases page.
Additionally, the Avett Brothers have thousands of listens. As does Passion Pit. Which were both featured heavily during various sales. Which makes sense because they both appeal to Amie's demographic.
I don't think Amie ever wanted Sony to take over the site. People come for discovering new (primarily indie) music and spend time listening to and exploring that. Sony is the icing on the cake. Why would you need to listen to Bruce Springsteen or Michael Jackson before purchasing? You know beforehand if you like it. And now you can grab one of their albums while you're at Amie Street.
Yeah, you'll find hundreds of listens on several Sony albums if you add the total of listens to all tracks - however, that is not a good measure, since every listen isnot a unique visitor. People tend to let the samples play out for the whole album, even if they are not intending to buy. That said, a drop off from track 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 etc, actually tells something about the listener's interest level.
Take your example of the Avett Brothers - while they do have 3000+ listens, that does not mean they have 3000+ unique listeners. Less than 500 listeners listened to the first track, less than 400 to track 2, less than 300 to track 4, etc. when you get to the final track, it's only 136 listens. I would guess that most of these 136 listeners listened to the whole album, or at least let the samples play through, since most people click on the listen all link (or equivalent). If you look at most of the Sony albums, you get a consistent decline track by track.
The Avett Brothers was actually highly hyped, on sale on Amie for a while, and not available on emusic for the first few months it was on Amie Street . Still only around 500 listens on the most listened to track. That does say something about the volume.
I stand by the fact that most of the Sony product on Amie is way overpriced, and that they most likely haven't sold more than a handful of Sony albums, relatively speaking. As I said in an earlier post, I think Sony has an Amie presence primarily to cover the bases.
2. They've sold more than a handful of albums to me alone. Three Sony albums were bestsellers for weeks--Avett Brothers, Passion Pit, and Julian Casablancas. Three very successful albums is not bad considering how much less exposure Sony albums (intentionally) get.
3. The Sony albums are not overpriced. They are a fantastic deal for those who understand how to make the most out of Amie Street. Even when I pay full price in credit (9.99), I am only paying $2.75 in real money. That is a much better deal than iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, or anywhere on the internet.
4. There is not enough information to make any real assertions about the success (or lack thereof) of Sony on Amie Street.
I have no idea how Sony stuff is doing at amie or anywhere, but I do think that if they used flexible pricing - even if not from a zero point - then they would have made a lot of money that they didn't make. If things were rolled out slowly, and I had a chance to get things cheap, I would have bought some. As it was, I didn't, except some things that were accidentally cheap, so Sony could have had more of my money than they do, and probable some other peoples' too.
Take a look at the Cymbals Eat Guitars album. Over 1000 listens to the first track. By midway through the album you're down to 25% of that, and only 180 listeners for the final track. And yet it was one of Amie's top selling albums. Clicking through a number of other top sellers shows the same pattern. Hundreds of listens to the first track and less than 200 to the last.
And when it comes to Sony, how many people really need to preview? If someone is going over to Amie Street to pickup some Alicia Keys, they've probably already checked out the album and realize that it would be cheaper with their 25% off credit.
# of listens also doesnt tell you how many people actually bought an album, since many of the hottest albums are bought without preview. I myself often buy many of the anticipated new releases the moment they show up, since taking time to preview them would result in the album being more expensive. Oftentimes, label affiliation is enough for me if the price is right and I need to pull the trigger right away. However, with non-dynamically priced albums at $9.99 this jump on it motivation doesnt exist, so the number of people buying without previewing is probably a lot less.
With dynamically priced albums you can predict roughly how many copies are moved, since Amie Street has clearly stated the relationship between the current price and the number sold in their pricing algorithms. There are various algorithms to choose from, but if you watch an album as the price goes up you can easily determine which one the seller chose. What is very telling is that most of the top 25 albums only go up a few cents a day after they have been out for a week or so. This means they are only selling a couple of copies a day on average. Most of these have way more listens than the most famous Sony albums, so what does that say for how many albums Sony is moving?
If a 6 dollar album with hundreds of listens per track in the last week is only selling one album a day, how many copies of a $10 album that has logged in zero listens in the last six months do you think they are moving or have moved? My guess is close to zero. While thom may have a point that people are already familiar with some of the Sony albums may buy them without previewing them, at least a certain percentage will preview them, either to check the track quality, or because they want to hear some of the songs again before deciding to pull the trigger on an album they can get just as cheaply at Amazon or iTunes (assuming they are not using credit sales). Conversely, there will be a certain percentage that listen to the album even if they are familiar with the album and who will decide not to buy it, given the price. Its impossible to calculate these percentages, but my guess is that the two will largely cancel each other out, resulting in the number of sales being in the same ballpark as the number of listens, if not less.
The drop off in listens as you go down an album's track listing is somewhat ambiguous. With a highly touted, dynamically priced indie album, the drop could be partly due to the fact that some people previewed the first few tracks and then pounced on the album to get it while it is cheap, others were curious and decided they werent all that interested. Ive been in both camps more times than I can count. There are also many times that I stream the samples and end up leaving the room for some reason or another and only hear the first couple of tracks although all the tracks count up a listen.
Lets compare apples to apples. According to both Amazon and eMusic (in terms of both sales ranking and number of reviews), Sly and the Family Stones Theres a Riot Going On is much more popular than their album Stand. However, on Amie Street Stand has over 20x the number of listens that b]Sly and the Family Stones Theres a Riot Going On[/b] has. How do you explain the less popular album has generated such a huge difference interest on only this one site? The answer is simple, if you remember that for the first month Stand was one of those 50 or so albums offer for $4.99. Check any two albums of roughly equal popularity by any artist in the case where one of them was offered for $4.99 the first month and other other one wasnt youll find the exact same results. In the case of Buddy Guy, his album that was on sale for $4.99 generated over 100x as many listens as any of his $9.99 albums.
@KTripper maybe a half dozen Sony albums is a lot to you, but its not even a drop in the bucket in the overall scheme of things barely even a water molecule. And I would guess that you have probably bought more Sony albums at full price than pretty much anyone on Amie Street. Has anyone else bought a $9.99 Sony album there? I havent, and Ive probably dropped more money at Amie Street than anyone. If the price is right for you, then by all means buy, but you are in a very small minority. You are getting a good deal on those albums, but as Bad Thoughts pointed out, for most causal listeners those are $10 albums. There is only a very small amount of users who between street cred and 50% off sales will be getting their Sony for cheap (probably only a few dozen of us who have the system down). Most users are probably not even aware of the 50% off links floating around and only occasionally put money into their accounts and in small increments. In fact, given that a good 90% of the user names that show up have little or no street cred logged, Im guessing that the vast majority of Amie Street users have put little or no money in their accounts and visit solely in the hopes to get freebies.
I doubt that Sony makes enough off Amie to even pay for lunch at the monthly board meeting maybe it covers the delivery boys tip, if theyre lucky.
Craig
Dynamic pricing probably isn't as straight forward as it seems. Every album seems to be priced on one of several tracks. Some start out free. Others start at a low per-track price (22 cents is about the highest, I think). They prices climb at different rates, and the number of freebies can vary. Moreover, some albums are reduced several dollars below the high price in order to encourage more sale.
Where it gets trickier is with recommendations--who actually pays for them. Albums with more freebies offer the possibility of generating more credit, which I would assume get counted against the label.
There are two many differences that make comparison between Sony and the independents in terms of their relationship with Amie. Because their records don't generate recommendations and they don't dabble in dynamic pricing, I would assume that Sony can take a higher percentage of the profit. Moreover, Sony doesn't need Amie to promote its records.
Craig
Btw, Did you see my Selva de Mar rec. at amclark2's standard lecture on good free stuff ? - Very much Clog'ish.
I missed that rec. I'll have to check it out this evening.
Craig
Craig
Caspian.
They also have another release on eMu that is worth picking up.
In fact the whole Mylene Sheath label is worth checking out, it you like that sort of stuff.
Craig