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Comment by paulsutter | Hacker News Reader

Pandora and Spotify can do a lot more for bands by helping them plan tours, sell tickets to shows, and connect with fans. They could also help venues book and promote acts with known local followings.

There are hundreds of thousands of people who heard that song, like that type of music, and would consider attending a show and spending real money to get in. They might buy a tshirt too. Pandora could notify listeners when the shows come up, and help bands plan their tours to towns with more fans.

It could be real revenue for the bands, and for Pandora.

EDIT: Doesn't even mean a UI change, could be done with ad retargeting, or any performance marketing mechanism.

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It's a real problem. There is no viable funnel through which to convert Pandora streams into transactions except the "Buy" dropdown (which I'd guess very few people click on - Pandora is often playing in the background in another tab).

Daisy (Beats by Dre's "Spotify") is trying to do this by partnering with Topspin and we shall see what happens - I'm excited to check it out.

The fact is, all-you-can-eat streaming platforms will never scale to the amount where payouts for plays are significant if they continue with the freemium model. Artists need the ability to sell other products and experiences to those listeners. I'm, admittedly, biased towards the idea that artists need to seek new direct-to-fan revenue streams.

Here's a piece I wrote on Hypebot about this: http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2013/01/music-subscription-se...

As a music fan, I would take anything associated with "Beats By Dre" as the exact opposite of credible and useful.

I'd agree with you except the project is helmed by Ian Rogers whose involvement is what makes it even remotely interesting to me.

http://www.crunchbase.com/person/ian-rogers

I know the headphones that Dr. Dre puts out are among the worst available on the market. I've also heard that the mobile audio they provide affords a barely noticeable difference.

Yep, hate to say it, but you and me are in the minority here. For the average consumer, headphones are a social object. They want something that sounds decent (remember they are playing lofi files from their phones) but looks really cool (to them, and the people they are trying to appeal to, at least). Also, vast numbers of people buy Apple earbuds even though they don't own Apple devices!

That's all neither here nor there though, because Ian Rogers was never involved with the headphones - he was CEO of Topspin and is now running the development of the Beats music streaming platform.

I agree tying into the Beats by Dre brand is a negative for people like us, but for the demographic they are going after it will probably be better than building a brand from the ground up.

They are the worst, unless you're comparing them to the 5$ throw-away earphones you upgraded from. Unfortunately, this is the story for most of the owners of those ridiculously-priced headphones. Every time I see someone wearing those, I have to fight against this urge to explain them how terrible their headphones are.

This is idiotic. I have owned a pair of Beats. They were ok. Far from the best headphones I've had, but ok. I replaced them with 300 GBP's worth of headphones from Amazon that had a super-high rating. They're a bit better than ok, but I forget them at home recently, and had to use my old Beats. The world didn't end.

To talk about Beats being terrible - what planet are you on? Take your hipster snark elsewhere. Yes, they're primarily a fashion item. But are they dreadful headphones? No, the price just factors in their fashion status.

It's not about being hipster. I've spent years combining different headphones with different DACs and amps, to get a good sound, tried tens of devices with different use cases. Those use cases include being a fashion item as well. I respect that, though it doesn't matter for me unless it looks really bad. I also think the beats headphones don't even look that good. Add to that the terrible sound quality[1], it becomes a no-go. I mean it. It really is bad. Maybe your ears are not very sensitive (it's a possibility) or your source is bad but I find it impossible for someone not to notice at least the loss of detail when they compare beats to a proper pair of headphones.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=et_PWifUd1w

The #1 feature of Beats is letting the other kids know you aren't poor.

My smart phone has a "Beats" option to enable when headphones are plugged in, (and oddly enough bluetooth) as far as I can tell it's simply acting as a pre-amp and upping the voltage.

That's pretty much correct. All the "Beats" setting does is adjust the equalizer in the phone, to emphasize base and treble more. It's the same thing that old stereos did with the "Loudness" button.

The sneaky thing is that when the Beats feature is turned off, the default equalizer is tuned so that bass and treble are deemphasized, to make the difference between the two even greater.

I follow someone on YouTube that did a really good review about Beats Audio. Here's the link if you're interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdbn_pmxFic

That was more of an acquihire because Topspin was going nowhere and Beats by Dre has a lot of money.

I also think that there's a really huge opportunity here for Big Data to make a Big Impact (excuse me for being cliche). See http://beluga.grooveshark.com for a good example. Imagine the possibilities of linking music consumption data with demographics/sales/tours/etc data to optimize A&R, tour routing, merchandise design, etc. AFAIK there aren't really any strong players in this space, and it presents a fantastic opportunity for someone to make a ton of money.

Incidentally, I'd imagine the same technology, methodologies, and infrastructure used for planning and optimizing shipping routes (first by UPS/FedEx, now Amazon) would be very applicable in this arena.

except a good portion of bands and venues are under the boot of ticketmaster/livenation who will never participate in any sort of profit sharing like this.

Exactly. If you want innovation to be a real force in music, you have to kill Ticketmaster/Livenation. As I've said before, that will be close to impossible for a startup to do, and the next real opportunity will be 2015 (when a lot of contracts wear out). Regardless, an entrepreneur would have to hit a grand slam to even have a chance against TM/LN.

Why is this? I've heard that TM basically has a monopoly on venue ticketing, but what are the barriers to entry for a startup?

Is it exclusivity contracts with all the big venues, or something similar for labels?

I would think a startup in this space would target smaller venues that aren't under contract, and independent artists to build traction, and if the product is truly superior they would have a good chance against the incumbents.

how about Google Hangouts for a venue for weekly live jams for paying fans?

I don't think you can compare a live stream to a live show.

it's better than show, if you can talk to the guys

It's not just exclusivity contracts for the venues. LN literally owns those rooms. You can't get your ticketing solution in until you can afford to buy the venues!

And if LiveNation doesn't own the venue, they're probably your tour manager.

You can use Songkick[1] for that or Last.fm's Events section. On the other hand, I've see Rdio promoting shows and pre-releases on their Twitter account.

[1] http://www.songkick.com/

Even the relatively simple app that I installed on top of Spotify that emails me when an artist I listen to regularly is playing near me has increased my live show attendance by a factor of 4-5.

Which app is that? I used Last.fm to notify me at the moment, but it's not perfect.

songkick

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