I made a post a while back expressing my frustration with the hoards of people in Hollywood who attempt to peddle their rap albums to innocent passersby, often aggressively, and generally unsuccessfully. Not only is it just not a great way to sell your album, but it’s a horribly saturated market. I have never once been to that part of Hollywood without seeing tons of people doing so.

Anyways, the other day I was back in that area, once again being bombarded by the same.

Except for one guy.

This was a very nice guy, an immigrant who would very kindly tell his story to anyone who would listen. He was selling not a rap album, but a book of his poetry. They were actually quite good, and he was selling them for a mere $2. Furthermore, he would let anyone interested read several pages before deciding whether or not they wanted it. It was totally refreshing.

I bought the book. So did a lot of other people around me. I’m not even into poetry, but his story was so captivating and his approach so good-natured that I felt compelled to support him and his work. Is he just a damn good salesman? Maybe. Is his work any better than anyone else’s? Maybe not. But that’s the point. We’re talking about marketing.

And that’s when I got to thinking — by changing just a few simple things, this man was able to transform a market that I hate and generally avoid, into a successful sale, for not only me, but for the others I saw around me who did the same. Instead of having to create your own market somewhere, it is still quite possible to form your own niche within an existing market, so long as you have something new to offer.

This is also interesting and related to new media because the methods he used were the same methods often being used by web startups and indie record labels. Try before you buy. Sell something with a story rather than aggression. Oh, and lower prices don’t hurt either.

In the age of donationware, “pay what you want” capitalism, and in a world where you can profit while helping developing nations at the same time, it is increasingly making more and more sense to not just carve out a whole new market, but just change your approach. Focus on the customer rather than your wallet, because in the end, your wallet will end up happier too anyway.

One little change. It costs a lot of money to change target markets, change distribution avenues, or change how you build your products. But it won’t cost much at all to start listening to your customers instead of yelling at them; to give your product a story and a face rather than just a price tag. And more and more, while much of it is subconscious, the masses are choosing to go where they get the best quality of service rather than just who provides the product they want.

Whether it’s one main selling poetry on Hollywood Boulevard or a production company trying to create content for the 21st century, the same principles apply. Make use of them. You’ll be better off.

TrueAnthem is a relatively new company that believes music should be free to download, artists should still get paid for it, and that advertising is the way to allow both of these things to happen. While I tend to agree with most of that in theory, the way it worked in practice left me wishing I could just pay my $9.99 to get the album on iTunes.

In order to download the Ultraviolet Sound album, I first had to register for an account, which is annoying all by itself. (Take a lesson from Radiohead: Because it’s free doesn’t mean people will come running.) Once I did this and logged into their somewhat-buggy MySpace widget, I attempted to download the album. It was hardly seamless. You are forced to download every single track separately, and it asks you for the download destination each and every time. It took several minutes to actually acquire the entire album.

They also weren’t kidding about bringing in advertisers.

Each MP3 on the album begins with an advertisement for Adidas Originals, with the exception of one track on the album, which isn’t a song at all, but a giant ad in MP3 form. Annoying? Yes.

Furthermore, the MP3’s themselves are encoded in low-quality 128kbit, and also lack album art or complete metadata. I don’t get that part. It’s super easy to encode music in a higher-quality format. If TrueAnthem really wants to compete with paid music by providing a similar experience at less cost, they need to at least give us decent-quality music.

Perhaps the worst part about working with TrueAnthem is that you need to sign an exclusive contract with them. For a period of about a year, you cannot sell or distribute your music in any other fashion than through TrueAnthem. No CD’s, no Amazon, no iTunes. Regardless of how forward-thinking TrueAnthem thinks they are being by providing music totally free of charge, exclusivity undermines the spirit of music distribution on the internet, which is about choice. Consumers of music have the option right now to buy music on CD in stores, or from whatever online music store they prefer.

In fact, the whole reason why the music business is in the mess that they are is because of exclusivity. Rather than giving consumers the power to choose how they wanted their music, the business forced it upon them until the consumers revolted. It’s 2008, and this does not fly.

While I have to applaud TrueAnthem for finding a way to get paid while giving music away for free, listening to an album of low-quality MP3’s with an ad at the beginning of each one is annoying, and I would much rather have paid $10 for the same album with no ads and higher quality.

Would most people? Perhaps not the majority, but many people would — which is why you shouldn’t be forcing the artists into exclusive contracts.

TrueAnthem is attempting to infuse traditional label business practices into a new distribution method, rather than recognizing that this is a whole new ball game. The rules have changed — not just the players. They also are providing a record label experience without providing their bands with much marketing assistance, which is the one thing that traditional labels still excel at. In addition, there are various technical hurdles with their MySpace widget and the resulting files that make it even harder to use their distribution system. They are a record label in sheep’s clothing, and while I admire their intentions, I hope to see them change their ways.

If not, then I await the day their contract with Ultraviolet Sound expires so I can pick up their album elsewhere.

The Bleinstein Company, no stranger to disappointing revenue, now plumbs its reputation as a champion of independent cinema and the voices behind them in press releases for their DVD distributions banner, Third Rail Releasing (not an offending party). That reputation, however, was earned back when the Bleinsteins ran Bliramax. Now, with their chips relatively down and no Oscar prospects on the foreseeable horizon, they’re quick to regard their straight-to-DVD acquisitions as mere cash grabs, and Third Rail’s work as “a good way of differentiating between what we really believe in, and what has been for ancillary value.”

I am quick to respond.

Look, I get it. Every burgeoning outlet for struggling independent filmmakers gets laughed at, almost as a point of necessity. Most people who watch movies on their iPhone aren’t necessarily quick to admit it. A Craigslist post looking for editors on a “dramedic web series set in high school circa 1980” is like the professional kiss of death to smug freelancers. We remain in love with the thought of a theatrical premiere. You won’t find searchlights and red carpets at Mooviez4Phree.com, or near the monitors of an upscale Starbucks. You’ll just find eyeballs, watching your work for what it is. And who wants that, since everyone’s a comment box critic these days, and meaner too? I’ll take Michael Rosenbaum, Jan Stuart and J. Hoberman, thank you.

Those who are opposed to their life’s work beaming out of unvarnished digital screens to a crowd of disinterested Chipotle victims (and one or two attentive young viewers in the back) have taken to self-distribution, a method so fantastically rebellious and astonishingly ill-advised that it just might work…that is, if you have a cast that includes Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman and Eliza Dushku. Not to slight the makers of Bottle Shock, the film which I reference and haven’t even seen, but casting Severus Snape and the president from Independence Day can’t help but grease the wheels at a few LA art houses here and there. If director Randall Miller settled for faceless, summer stock mannequins instead, I would think it hard just to finance a living room screening in Des Moines.

But that’s another rant devoted to the commercialization of indie film. It must be said: the accomplishment involved in designing, approving, and financing the rollout of your own film is genuinely impressive.

However, it seems the drive to do that stems from the disgust indie filmmakers nurture by falling in love with their art, to the point that they can’t stomach releasing their baby through DVD outlets or streaming it for ad space pennies. The way I see it, if you have a property so genuine, exciting and fresh, there’s no harm in opening the source and letting Netflix vultures eat it up like so much carrion. I’m not suggesting one has to devise the killer business model and direct the best movie they can at the same time, but even if it just means piggybacking your way into Old Media, the first person to approach new methods of distribution with confidence and swagger is going to make a killing. My worry is I won’t get the script for my violent barbarian action flick ready in time to be at the frontline.

Third Rail, you know my name.

According to statistics from BigChampagne, In Rainbows was traded via torrents over 2.3 million times within one month of the album’s internet release. While the actual number of legal downloads of the album from Radiohead’s website are not public, it is still generally believed that in the end, the album was still pirated more times than it was legally acquired.

Especially interesting is the fact that these numbers — 400,000 downloads on the first day and 2.3 million over the first month — completely dwarf illegal downloads of albums by huge artists such as Gnarls Barkley and Panic at the Disco, even though they weren’t giving away their music and thus piracy was to be expected.

Believe it or not, though, this all makes sense, and I will break this down for you now.

When something is free, more people hear it, and more people share it. Giving away your music is generally accepted as a way to get it out to more people, even if that means you can’t profit directly off the sale. We must remember that when something shows up on the torrent trackers, it had to start from somewhere. Someone, somewhere had to buy, steal, or leak the original CD in order to digitize it and get it onto the torrent trackers. In this case, since anyone could go download it, essentially anyone could also be the “seeder.” Thousands of people were downloading and creating their own torrents of it, resulting in not only the most blazingly fast download ever, but also the fact that you couldn’t go onto any torrent tracker without seeing it. It was everywhere.

The bigger issue at hand here, though, is that the torrent platform has done for piracy what iTunes has done for music sales — created a well-known and respected brand that is also incredibly easy to use. It’s pretty easy to download files from the torrent trackers. You just go somewhere like The Pirate Bay, search for what you want, and click a single button. Done. It’s easy. In order to legally get the album from Radiohead, you were required to give them your email address, navigate an overloaded server, etc. It could take several minutes and required too many steps.

This is exactly why iTunes is so successful. Even though you can get the exact same music with better quality and no copy protection at lower prices at Amazon, iTunes still wins. It’s easy, it’s a brand, it’s respected.

It is also comparable to a band trying to run their own website rather than use MySpace. While you have more control, the sad fact is that in order to sell things to the masses, you must now to go where the masses congregate — they will no longer come to you, in most cases even if the content is compelling. And right now, those masses congregate on MySpace, iTunes, and The Pirate Bay. It is therefore interesting, but not surprising to me, that Radiohead’s album was pirated more than it was legally acquired despite being free.

But in the end, the band still wins. They still made a good amount of money from the pay-what-you-want approach and for the special edition versions of the album. Their concerts will sell out. They won the public opinion, and made themselves a beacon to the rest of the music industry.

The big winners in the music distribution space are always going to be the ones that balance price with ease. And when the price is $0.00, so much the better.

Their selection is not large. They only carry a selection of new releases from the past couple of months. But in some ways, that impresses me even more. Where can you find a new release for $1 anywhere? Even iTunes charges $3.99 for this, and Blockbuster and crew charge even more.

The only issue, perhaps, is time. You only have until 9pm the next day to return the movie. I still think this is fine, as the system is quick and easy enough that you can go grab the movie only when you’re about ready to watch it. Redbox will charge your credit card for the DVD if you do not return it on time, so if you’re bad at remembering to return things, I suppose that is the downside. But if you want to go grab a new release to watch tonight and return tomorrow, this system rocks. The machines are totally automated and totally simple. When I went in to use it, I was in and out in under a minute.

I’m always looking for new ways to get my media. Some say physical media is dead, and it might be someday — if digital downloads ever actually become prevalent enough for that to occur. Most movies I find myself wanting to watch are not available on iTunes. Although at this point, even if new releases were available on iTunes, it’s hard to compete with $1. I think I’ll be using Redbox when I feel like watching a new release.

Despite my relatively positive opinion on eMusic, I have cancelled my membership. It’s not that the service wasn’t good, but rather, it is unnecessary. The biggest problem is that it is not a strong enough store on its own to replace iTunes or Amazon, and at the same time, it does not really complement either of them very well, either.

We already know that eMusic’s library of music is limited. The trouble is that, whereas they used to be known for having all the independent music that iTunes did not carry, this is no longer the case. Very few things are exclusive to eMusic, and so there is really no immediate need to be a subscriber. Although eMusic is much cheaper than iTunes, I find that the frustration of having to check both eMusic and iTunes before I make a purchase is just not worth it. I like having a one-stop shop, what can I say?

An interesting psychological factor I’ve noticed is the price. With a $20/month subscription, I can only download a limited amount of songs. Because of this, I have noticed that I have been more conservative about the songs I choose to download for fear of running out of credits. This way of thinking is totally illogical since I would’ve ended up paying way more on iTunes anyway, but nevertheless this is how the mind works when you have been given a limit.

Lastly, there is the issue of what you’re actually getting. eMusic provides all their songs as MP3’s with no DRM (very cool) but they’re not always in high enough bitrates (not as cool). Many of their songs are in 256kbit but many others I’ve seen as low as 180kbit. And the worst part… you don’t know until you’ve purchased and downloaded the song.

In addition, there is no cover art included, but luckily iTunes goes and grabs that on its own. Yet another reason why eMusic does not stand by itself. I am pleased with the music I have gotten from eMusic, but in the end, I missed iTunes’ quality, catalog, and ease of use. Buying music online should be a simple and enjoyable process. Or at least that is what Apple has brainwashed me to believe. I’ll take it.

Supply and demand. Yeah, it’s that simple. Let me explain.

In the past, entertainment companies have always stuck by one format per medium at a time. For example, music was distributed on vinyl until cassettes came out, stayed there until CD’s, etc. Very seldom was there a release that came out on tons of formats at the same time. It’s easier for the entertainment industry to adopt one thing and stick to it. But in this era of long tail economics, where niche markets are being served regardless of how small they are, entertainment companies can no longer get away with such a one-dimensional distribution model.

There is a certain segment of the population that likes vinyl. It’s not massive, and therefore the entertainment companies would’ve never thought to support it until now. But it is big enough to turn a profit on top of whatever it would cost to cater to that market, and therefore it is worth doing. In order to saturate the market these days, you need to provide your media in ways that people want it in rather than a singular “industry standard” that makes most people happy but provides no outlet at all for the rest of us. Adding a select few popular albums on vinyl is a way to make that market happy. It will never replace CD’s or online distribution, but it will make a very high-margin group of customers happy. Did I mention that the vinyl crowd is willing to shell out major bucks for this stuff? Yeah. My guess is that EMI will see extremely high margins in this sector.

Lastly, this is an incentive for hardcore fans to buy more product, even if they already own the CD. This is exactly how Nine Inch Nails earned money on their last couple albums despite giving them away as free downloads. They offered “premium” versions of the products (which included the album on vinyl) that cost a lot of money. And it worked. NIN sold out of these premium products, and ended up with a sum of money comparable to the amount they would’ve gotten from a traditional record contract.

So is vinyl the next big thing? No. But the concept of alternate distribution is.

I’m not going to go crazy with this entry, so I will just tell you what you need to know. eMusic’s catalog is pretty large. If you like independent music, you will love eMusic. If you intend on buying music from any of the major record labels, go elsewhere. This part hasn’t really changed over the years. Their catalog is growing, but only as other independent labels get onboard.

With their most basic subscription, songs only cost $0.35 each, and they are DRM-free MP3’s at ~200kbit VBR. Definitely awesome. For whatever reason, though, they do not offer album art still. However, if you have an account on the iTunes Music Store, you can just use iTunes’ album art grabbing feature to fix this.

And I think that little detail kind of summarizes the whole service — you should use italongside a service like iTunes; the catalog is not good enough to be your only source of music unless you don’t like anything by any of the big labels at all. But if you consume a lot of independent music, eMusic is still a great service, and will save you a lot of money for the songs they offer that you want.