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Musicians on the Web
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Musicians on the Web An interview with musician and sound engineer Elan Michaels Elan Michaels is a composer, musician and sound engineer from New Hampshire. His music can be found on MP3.com and on his web site at elanmichaels.com. In 1986 he opened his own recording studio to develop sound for studios and musicians throughout the world. When did you decide to use the Internet to promote your music? The Internet has intrigued me for many years as a valuable resource tool for musicians and composers. The earlier years of the Internet were limited musically to MIDI files because of slow modem speeds. Even this was quite horrible in regards to transferring data across phone lines quickly enough to play the files smoothly. As the popularity of 56k modems grew, the ability to play low-quality MPEG files allowed Internet users to listen to near CD-quality music performances. I introduced my music web site in July of 1999. At that time, we introduced MIDI representations of my compositions with the ability to purchase CDs via mail order or faxing. We researched to obtain a secure online ordering system for credit card orders. In our search we found a very reliable and reputable firm, CDStreet.com. The firm's payment schedule is timely and accurate and I would recommend them very highly to anyone in need of such a service (The best part of this service is that it is free of charge to the artist!). Have you been able to sell many CDs on the Internet? Our traffic has been moderate but growing steadily, as have our online CD sales. We currently attract approximately 4,000 visitors per month to our elanmichaels.com web site. Last month we sold over 50 CDs and this month we have sold 30. Definitely not the volume to allow you to quit your day job, but we are continually working on promoting the site to attract more visitors. "Build it and they will come" just does not happen on the Internet. We have spent a hundred-fold more man-hours in promoting the site than in building and maintaining it. What do you have to do to make music available on a web site such as MP3.com? Most major Internet musicians creating MP3 files agree that MP3.com is the most successful venue in getting their music heard on the Internet. One major drawback of this is that most artists tend to get lost in the shuffle. A majority of the artists on MP3.com make no income at all. MP3.com requires a minimum of 15 unique listens before the artist begins to earn any income. A minority of artists are making substantial incomes and a small percentage are getting signed through the venue. The MP3.com web site offers a new artist signup form that is quite painless. They require either a tax ID or social security number for compliance with federal tax laws. The artists must upload their MP3 files to the MP3.com server or they can send MP3.com their audio CD, which the company will convert to MP3 files and make available on the artist's MP3.com web site. Artwork can be uploaded to the artist's account or MP3.com will place their own logo on the CD if no artwork is submitted by the artist. One of the most successful artists on MP3.com has sold more that 6,000 CDs since August 1999. MP3.com offers DAM CDs (these contain both standard audio and MP3 files as well as an interactive player). This deal is pretty sweet for musicians because MP3.com handles manufacturing and shipping, yet pays the artist 50% of the selling price. The artist sets the retail price of the CDs, the minimum price being $5.99. The artist can choose which songs can be downloaded for free by the public and which are only available on their DAM CDs. Is the Internet changing the way music is presented to the public? Slowly. Some major artists, such as Prince, have marketed their music on the Internet without the backing of a major label. A majority of the artists that are publishing on the Internet are publishing to vanity labels. There are also a number of small labels publishing and marketing strictly through the Internet. For the majority of the music community, it is business as usual through conventional methods. Major labels are utilizing the Internet as just one more avenue in marketing their artists. Before the Internet, the independent artist had little chance of getting heard. Now, the public can hear even the small home studio production. Are you worried that you won't get compensated for your work if listeners use Napster and other software to exchange MP3 files? What did you think of MP3.com's Beam-It service? This has always been a problem, long before the Internet. The people that utilize Napster to obtain illegal copies of artists' material would feel no less guilty copying a CD or other recording of an artist's material. Certain people have always found a way to get something for nothing. So as Internet artists, we are not facing anything different from what we experienced prior to the popularity of the Internet. Honest people remain honest and support us as artists, allowing us to continue to make music. Personally, I do not agree with MP3.com's philosophy regarding the Beam-It service. The low cost of CD players and MP3 players allows listeners ample portability and accessibility to the music they have purchased. The Beam-It service cannot guarantee that the person uploading the files has actually purchased the CD. The CD could be passed around to friends who could Beam-It to MP3.com, allowing them to build a library of music which they have not purchased. Is there more music on the Web today than there was, say, a year ago? How long has MP3 been popular, and why is it so popular? There is definitely much more music available than there was a year ago. This trend will continue to expand as Internet users' connections get faster than the current 56K-modem connection (the most widely used at this time). With the release of 28.8K modems, MPEG compression began to increase in popularity (1996-1997). An MP3 file is approximately 10 percent the size of a standard audio file. This allows the file to be transferred much quicker than a standard audio file. Itıs a CD-quality file, even though it is highly compressed. Without MPEG, listening to music in this manner would be impossible, even via 56K modems. Because the files are so much smaller, one can store many more files on the storage medium. Is music reaching more people because of the Internet? Music is definitely reaching more people because of the Internet. A much wider array of music is available to the Internet listener as well. Radio stations throughout the world are now available with a simple mouse click and software such as Real Audio's Real Player. This provides the Internet user with an extremely diverse selection of music.The future of music on the Internet with faster connections will be an MTV/VH1 type venue allowing video streaming along with the audio streaming. The technology is available today but is not popular yet because the majority of Internet users utilize 56k or slower modems. Describe your music? How long have you been playing? I have been playing since the age of 14. I was trained by a classical pianist and studied music harmony and theory as well as composition in high school and college. I played keyboards in several local bands in New Hampshire, performing live through 1975. At that time my family was growing and the schedule of a touring musician was definitely not compatible with family life. So I turned my musical interests to strictly composing and recording in my home studio environment. As my children got older, I began working in sound development and engineering with sound recording studios in Florida and New Hampshire. This led to the opening of my own studio in 1986, which developed sound for studios and musicians throughout the world. (Elan Michaels: http://www.elanmichaels.com http://www.mp3.com/elan http://www.mp3.com/elanII) |
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