artists

Leading webcaster Pandora has reportedly been giving artists a preview of new data tools so they can learn more about who's listening to their music.

Those tools include a "heat map" that shows where their songs are most widely played, and charts comparing demographics of an artist's listeners to Pandora's overall audience.

Billboard reports, "The tool is essentially a dashboard that tells artists such things as the spin counts of each of their songs, how many thumbs up (or down) their songs have received and their audience reach by age, gender and geography, among other things."

Various independent artists have seen the dashboard in recent weeks. New York singer-songwriter Ben Arthur, who got to preview the tool, told Billboard, "They showed me which of my songs were getting lots of thumbs up, and they were not the songs I would have guessed. I can imagine a time when I would upload tracks before they’re released to test which songs would be more popular, which songs to make videos for and which songs would get a label’s attention."

Read more in Billboard here.

Pandora plans to work with artists through an expansion into branded content and offline experiential marketing. Last week the Pandora announced it had brought on former record label exec and Billboard publisher Tommy Page as VP/Artist and Brand Partnerships, to "expand artist development programming through both branded content."

Page said, "My goal here is to help develop and grow those artists' careers and partnerships using personalized concert series and events."

In his most-recent blog post, Pandora founder Tim Westergren revealed the breadth and depth of Pandora listeners' streaming tastes (and the service's offerings) as reflected in some broad-based 2012 listening stats.

According to his stats, Pandora listners heard more than a million different songs by over 100,000 different artists in 2012. Of these artists, 10% were streamed to more than a quarter-million unique listeners. This totalled over 13 billion hours of music in 2012.

"The Pandora audience is large enough now to begin making a real difference in the lives of thousands of working artists," wrote Westergren.

Read Westergren's blog here.

While artists advocates complain about low payouts from streaming services like Spotify, Evolver.fm's Eliot Van Buskirk makes that point that such services may in fact be doing something far more important: helping to improve our shared musical culture.

Here's his argument: The economics of the music business of the past rewarded labels and artists when a record was purchased. Getting the customer to lay down the cash at the record store or the iTunes store was all that mattered. Whether that record became a lifelong favorite of the purchaser -- or they listened to it once and never again -- didn't matter. This reality incentivized the creation of "one-hit-wonders capable of moving product quickly."

But music consumption is moving away from the "upfront payment" of purchasing product, and towards "pay as you use" streaming services (Spotify, YouTube, Pandora, MOG, iHeartRadio, Rdio, Rhapsody). In this world, copyright owners and artists will earn not by creating a product that convinces a listener to take a one-time action (make the purchase), but by creating art that the listener wants to enjoy again and again.

"It’s no longer enough to convince fans to buy a disc once," writes Van Buskirk. "Instead, artists and labels have to turn them into lifelong fans."

More from Van Buskirk: "This new phase of music consumption...is just what music fans who are sick of one-hit wonders and flashy pop hits need. By paying out only when people actually listen instead of suckering fans into buying something only to leave it on the shelf... on-demand unlimited music services build an incentive into the music business to create works of lasting value."

As we've argued the Internet may usher in a new golden age of radio, Van Buskirk wistfully hopes for a return to a time "when labels used to spend years or decades developing an artist instead of releasing whatever they think will sell that week."

Read Van Buskirk in Evolver.fm here.

Internet radio network Live365 has announced the release of IndiePro, a service designed to help independent musicians promote their music. The package includes a 24/7 streaming station a player artists can share across different websites.

Plus, Live365 says artists can add their music to the company's music library. That allows other Live365 broadcasters to play the artist's music on their stations.

You can find out more about IndiePro from Live365's press release here.

Deli Radio is a new Internet radio service with an emphasis on local live music and indepedent artists. Founded by Wayne Skeen, also CEO of the California-based record label Ninth Street Opus, Deli Radio allows users to build instant radio-like playlists filled with music from independent artists playing a show near a specificed location.

Users can also listen to music from bands that call a certian location home, and can filter their station by proximity, date, venue, genre or a specific artist.

As SFWeekly points out (here), the site is rough around the edges. As it's up to artists to upload their own music, some selections are quite sparse (for example, trying to create a Chicago station turned up only one artist).

That said, the site is easy to use and it's a great tool to discover artists you've probably never heard of before. The emphasis on live music -- with prominent information about where the currently-playing artist is appearing next -- sets Deli Radio apart.

All in all, an interesting Internet radio site with potential. -- MS