We’ve discussed in the past a favorite talking point of the RIAA, claiming a 40% decline in employment for musicians over the past decade or so, which simply isn’t supported by the numbers. We’ve been seeing a lot of people claiming this again lately, so we decided to take a look at what the numbers actually showed, and can’t seem to figure out where that decline is coming from, because the numbers show a very different story — one that suggests things are actually much better for independent musicians than in the past, just as we would expect. In fact, there’s been an astounding 510% increase in independent musicians making their full time living from music in just the past decade. 

It’s important to note, of course, that very, very, very few people get to make a living as a professional musician. That’s just the unfortunate reality of the market. But understanding where that employment comes from is important. The RIAA, rather bizarrely, relies on the top line numbers for “musician employment” to make their case, but nearly all of those musicians are not musicians who are associated with RIAA member labels at all. Let’s dig into the numbers a bit and see what we find. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics Data is available on their site, though they don’t always present it consistently, and so we see some people cherry picking some numbers (what the RIAA did) to distort things and then, sometimes, they’re just bad at math (again, RIAA is guilty). So, if we look at overall employment of musicians and singers over a 10 year period, we can go back to the numbers from May 2003 and then the numbers from May 2012. Take a look at some of the key data points here. Let’s start with the top line numbers, which is what the RIAA and others have been using.

From May 2003: 

 

From May 2012: 

The top line there does show a decrease in full-time musicians and singers, overall, but it’s a drop of 16.7%, nowhere near the 40% (or, even higher) numbers some claim. Anyone claiming a bigger drop from these numbers is doing something wrong. Because when you compare the same numbers a decade apart that’s the drop you get. 

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Now that Twitter Music is finally out, we know what it is and what it isn’t.

It’s not a music streaming service, and Twitter isn’t (directly) selling music with it. It’s a music discovery service, similar in a way to Pandora, but leveraging the vast Twitter community that, as we all know, often takes to Twitter to discuss music or interact with favorite musicians.

And while it may turn out to be a useful service for users — it’s too early to tell, but I like the look and feel of it — it might turn out to be an even more important service for musicians.

The thing is, Twitter Music is practically making you follow musicians on Twitter. The more you follow, the better Twitter’s musical suggestions for you will be, and then, going through the “Suggested” section, you’ll follow some more.

I don’t follow many musicians on Twitter, but in the first hour of using the service, I followed several dozen new ones. And I reckon most people who will be flocking to the service in the coming days will do the same.

Major Influx of New Followers

If that premise is true, and if Twitter Music turns out to be successful, we’ll see a major rise in the number of people following musicians on Twitter. Those in the “Popular” section will benefit the most (Psy is currently topping it; it’ll be interesting to see how many new followers he’ll gain over the next few days), but even less popular artists will likely get a boost from the “Emerging” section, as well as the “#NowPlaying” section, which shows songs tweeted by your followers.

Will it turn into revenue? It could. Twitter is currently offering only iTunes previews of songs, with a link to buy the song on iTunes. Alternatively, you can listen to entire songs if you have a Spotify or Rdio subscriptions, both of which could ultimately have a positive impact on music sales — though it’s been said several times that musicians don’t make much money off Spotify.

But the simple fact that Twitter buzz about music is now directly tuned into music purchases is good news for artists. Plus, artists make money of concerts, and even if those Spotify or Rdio subscriptions bring pennies, the buzz around a band will bring more people to concerts.

Twitter — A Place for Music?

Most importantly, though, if Twitter Music is successful, it will turn Twitter into a place for music — similar to what MySpace once was, and what it based its plan for resurgence on in early 2013.

That’s a big IF, though. The lack of a visual component remains an issue. YouTube has long been the place for music discovery (even though its discovery engine is rudimentary at best) simply because the music is accompanied by moving images. Twitter Music doesn’t have that, and it might turn into a bore, especially for younger generations.

Source: Mashable (by Stan Schroeder)

Twitter’s new brand pages have custom art headers and give marketers the option of pinning an update, with picture, at the top of the tweet stream.

Twitter has finally joined the modern world of marketing and branding by rolling out support for company brand pages in its redesign today.

Facebook got here first, of course, and Google+ joined in more recently. So if you’re a marketer, you’ve got to be asking, what’s the best platform for you to focus on?

Let’s find the winning services in the important areas.

Reach: Facebook
Facebook wins this one, hands down. With a reported user base of over 800 million, if you want to put your brand on the platform where users are—and where they’re talking to each other—Facebook is the place.

Twitter is likely in second place, probably with about 10 to 12% of Facebook’s user base (depending on which sources you believe) but its social reflection model (retweeting) makes it more powerful than the raw numbers would indicate.

Google+, no matter what the numbers say, is new, is seen as the social network for geeks, and doesn’t have the breakout appeal of the other networks. You can’t say, “Find us on Google+” in an advertisement and expect people to know what you’re talking about.

Facebook puts a lot of control in the hands of brand managers. Some brands (not Best Buy, shown) even actively steer customer to Facebook over the own Web sites.

Flexibility: Facebook
Facebook, again, wins on this front. A brand manager can make a Facebook page that does almost as much as a regular Web page, and with the added bonus of having a “Like” button in a standard position to encourage social sharing.

Facebook also lets managers create nice lists of related Facebook pages in the left-hand navigation.

Neither Twitter nor Google allow you to dump huge blocks of HTML into brand pages. Google+ does, however, have more post types than Twitter. A string of photos or embedded videos can make a Google+ brand page look like a photo album.

Twitter brand pages are, not surprisingly, lists of tweets. Brand managers can pin a single tweet (with an image) to the top of the stream, but the rest is just text and links.

Design: Twitter
While Facebook offers the most flexibility of design, giving managers access to the whole middle of the page (see Best Buy), Twitter allows its brand users to do a far better job of reinforcing their company’s aesthetic.

Twitter gives managers the capability to change the color scheme of the entire brand page, as well as put in their own header art and background image. Check out these early examples of Twitter brand pages: Heineken, Dell, and Pepsi. They all share the same locked-down template, but reflect their corporate designs effectively.

Google+ allows designers to change company logo and header art, actually five little squares of header, but nothing else. The limitation can be used to good effect (Angry Birds) or mitigated through a mostly-white design (Hugo Boss).

Google+ is not the best option for building a custom brand presence, but some companies have used its design limitations to good effect.

Interaction: Facebook/Twitter tie
Facebook is all about the Like. Some brands have millions (Best Buy has 5.5 million). These Likes are valuable, as each represents social network reflection out to, potentially, millions more people.

Facebook also makes it easy for brands to bribe users, by restricting content or features to users who have Liked their pages.

Twitter’s interaction is about two things: The Follow and the @ Reply. While the Follow is the Twitter equivalent of the Like, a personal endorsement of a sort, Twitter’s large and plain inclusion of the reply box on its brand pages encourages users to send public messages to and about brands. The reply box is somewhat misleading, though: It says, “Tweet to…” instead of “Tweet about…” But it looks like an effective way to get users to reinforce brands by posting items with their Twitter handles in them.

Google+ interaction design is a bit of a mess, in comparison. The main interaction points are the +1 and “Share this page” buttons, but I wager that most users don’t know the difference, and they’re right next to each other. Users can also comment on individual items on a Google+ page, but these will not have the same social spread as the stronger overall brand mentions that Facebook and Twitter have engineered into their designs.

Mobile: None of the above
Each of the three services presents a constrained view when called up on a smartphone. Designs are removed, and any HTML elements are stripped out and and replaced with lists of posts. The services look much the same, in fact, on claustrophobic mobile devices. They all become just lists of updates, with easy access to their platforms’ primary social activities: Likes and comments on Facebook, Retweets on Twitter, and Comments on Google+. None of the services offer brands a good, customizable mobile experience.

The winner
Facebook is where the power is, but Twitter’s clean design and interaction model makes it an attractive and necessary secondary platform for marketers to work on.

Google+ doesn’t have the features, reach, or clarity to compete with these two power players yet.

However, the clear and best course of action for a marketer or brand manager is to establish a presence on each platform. They can even reinforce each other to good effect.

Pepsi, for example, lists its Facebook page as the go-to link in its Twitter profile.

Article originally appeared on Cnet (http://www.cnet.com) and was written by Rafe Needleman.

The deluge begins Tuesday when the 31st annual CMJ Music Marathon, which has grown into a five-day overload of musicians, begins with acts who are all hoping for some kind of attention: a record deal, a gig, a blog post, a tweet.

The payoffs of a career in music have grown increasingly uncertain, but there is no shortage of aspirants. This year’s official CMJ schedule lists nearly 1,400 acts: indie-rock, hip-hop, electropop, punk, metal, singer-songwriters, funk, reggae, disc jockeys, blues, even a little jazz. The marathon sprawls across Manhattan and Brooklyn, and across the Hudson to Maxwell’s in Hoboken; it runs past 2 a.m. nightly.

And that’s just the event organized by CMJ, the college-radio newsletter that began the annual showcase in 1980, and that also presents daytime panels on the music business for badge-holding convention-goers. Clustered around the CMJ Music Marathon itself are additional showcases, most of them free, presented by corporate sponsors, music blogs and anyone else who can line up half a dozen bands and rent a club for an afternoon. People who are used to hearing recordings free online can spend afternoons, Tuesday through Saturday, surfing live music on the Lower East Side – most conveniently in the strip of clubs along Ludlow Street – and in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

Bands that are in demand, and willing to knock themselves out, can literally perform day and night. Caveman, for instance, a New York City band that mingles sustained, moody melodies and walloping percussion, has 10 shows scheduled; it’s hardly the only one. The unoffical parties give bands a chance to build momentum, striving for that amorphous anointment as a buzz band. Will it be the hardcore of Trash Talk? The goth electronica of Zola Jesus? Thebillowing, new-agey hip-hop of Main Attrakionz? The somnabulistic shimmer of Memoryhouse? The dizzying electronic minimalism of Purity Ring? The guitar-distortion-meets-rap of Young Magic? Will longtime indie-rock troupers like Wild Flag or Eleanor Friedberger show the newcomers how it’s done? Perhaps none or all of the above.

There’s a lot of retro out there, from neo-Appalachian to neo-psychedelic to punked-up girl-group to 1980s synthpop to shoegaze. There are also new hybrids incubating, just waiting to claim their own -wave or -core or -delic suffix.

Article originally appeared on NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com) and was written by Jon Pereles.