tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-107504822011-04-21T13:44:00.373-06:00House of Blues Concerts DenverRoss Hollman's unofficial HOB weblog, covering everything House of Blues Concerts in Denver. Even though I work for House of Blues Concerts, not everything accurately reflects the views of my employer, my management, my co-workers, or anyone even remotely affiliated with my company. Things that I say here are not to be construed as "House of Blues Concerts Policy".Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.comBlogger311100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1144892543078315662006-04-12T19:42:00.000-06:002006-04-12T19:42:23.086-06:00Just 50 more laps<p>Someone that I know that works in car racing told me recently that if they had had just 50 more laps, they would have done even better. I’m sure that the statement was absolutely true, but the reality is that the number of laps at any given track is determined months and years in advance of the race actually being run. The statement made me think about the kinds of issues that all kinds of businesses face: trying to win based on the constraints that have already been set.</p><p>So how do you win if you can’t get 50 more laps?</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114489254307831566?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1144892276441359342006-04-12T19:37:00.000-06:002006-04-12T19:37:56.440-06:00everystockphoto<p>I use tons of stock photos in my presentations, so I was excited to find everystockphoto, which does not host any stock photos, but rather aggregates stock photos from various different services. Please stop filling your PowerPoints with endless bullets and start using everystockphoto to tell your story with pictures — you can’t beat the price.</p><p><a href="http://www.everystockphoto.com/index.php">Link</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114489227644135934?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1144892150612282962006-04-12T19:35:00.000-06:002006-04-12T19:35:50.613-06:00Mark Cuban's success motivation<p>It’s just this simple: <strong>Don’t Lie to Yourself</strong></p><p>Read the rest of Cuban’s post, become enlightened, stop lying to yourself.</p><p>QED</p><p><a href="http://www.blogmaverick.com/entry/1234000527073594/">Link</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114489215061228296?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1144892071209633952006-04-12T19:34:00.000-06:002006-04-12T19:34:31.216-06:00Are Payless Shoes disposable?<p>I don’t shop in Payless Shoes, but I get that they essentially rip off uber-trendy designs and sell them ridiculously cheap. Here’s something to consider: If you needed trendy shoes for a particular event and didn’t necessarily ever care about wearing them again, is it better to spend $14 at Payless or to spend a lot more?</p><p>I bet your answer is totally different depending on whether or not you’re male or female.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114489207120963395?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1144891914594488432006-04-12T19:31:00.000-06:002006-04-12T19:31:54.600-06:00What to do when you can't earn a MBA<p>Rajesh Setty has published a free e-book entitled <u>When You Can’t Earn an MBA. . .</u> Aside from the fact that you can’t use “an” in front of a word that starts in a consonant, the e-book is a worthwhile read.</p><p>Those of you that read this blog frequently have read a lot of my previous posts about MBAs and would encourage you to read this e-book if you’ve enjoyed (or violently disagreed) with any of my previous posts.</p><p><a href="http://www.lifebeyondcode.com/ebooks/NoMBA.pdf">Link</a> — e-book download</p><p><a href="http://blog.lifebeyondcode.com/blog/_archives/2006/3/2/1792993.html">Link</a> — Rajesh’s post explaining why he wrote it</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114489191459448843?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1144891657106523472006-04-12T19:27:00.000-06:002006-04-12T19:27:37.106-06:00Can't and won't<p>Seth Godin has a terrific post on can’t vs. won’t. Here’s an easy lesson: take the last statement that you made where you said “can’t” and replace “can’t” with “won’t” and reevaluate the statement.</p><p>What if we were just honest about what we won’t do vs. what we can’t do? I try to do this every day.</p><p><a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/03/cant_vs_wont.html">Link</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114489165710652347?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1144891524879441322006-04-12T19:25:00.000-06:002006-04-12T19:25:24.886-06:00You know these things, but you don't do them<p>Seth Godin’s absolutely right:</p><blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><p><em>1. treat different products differently<br />2. treat different customers differently</em></p></blockquote><p dir="ltr">Perhaps it’s just to simple.</p><p dir="ltr"><a href="http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2006/04/two_things_you_.html">Link</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114489152487944132?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1144891018587305412006-04-12T19:16:00.000-06:002006-04-13T00:48:01.320-06:00Can't access some of the saved content on BloglinesSo this really sucks. It’s bad enough that Bloglines is not effectively pulling new posts, but now I can’t access some of the saved posts that I’ve got in various folders — this totally blows.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114489101858730541?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1144890848660713952006-04-12T19:14:00.000-06:002006-10-23T12:59:28.413-06:00Summer employment<p>If you’re looking to work at Coors Amphitheatre-Denver this summer, allow me to provide you with some contacts:</p><ul><li>Security, usher, ticket taker, cleaning, or parking — Argus Event Staff (303) 799–1140.</li><li>Concessions, bartending, or waiter — Aramark Concession (303) 846–3645.</li></ul><p>Aramark and Argus are our 2 biggest subcontractors and employ the vast majority of the staff that work our events. In addition both Aramark and Argus provide services at many other entertainment venues in the Denver Metro area, so they are great places to start if you are looking to get into the entertainment business. I actually started working for Argus when I was in college.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114489084866071395?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1144890692471490292006-04-12T19:11:00.000-06:002006-04-12T19:11:32.493-06:00What are you doing right now?<p>Excellent question. We spend an awful lot of time dewinterizing the amphitheatre — think about the amphitheatre as about 100 times the work that you do in dewinterizing your house (if you live in a climate where you winterize and dewinterize).</p><p>We do the following (and this is a very abbreviated list):</p><ul><li>All of the plumbing and toilets get taken apart during the winter, so we get everything put back together, turn all the water back on, and make adjustments to ensure everything flows correctly and is at proper pressure. For those of you that use urinals and have been splashed when you flush, you will appreciate the time that we take.</li><li>We hand-inspect every seat in the building and replace broken parts, tighten bolts, replace springs, replace seat numbers, and do whatever maintenance is necessary. For those keeping score, that’s 6,823 seats that we hand inspect and hand repair.</li><li>Unpack everything that we stored for the winter. Folding tables, folding chairs, box suite furniture, tents, equipment, vehicles; everything gets unpacked, cleaned, serviced, and ready to work.</li><li>All of the signs get uncovered, cleaned, and repaired if necessary.</li><li>We check every light bulb in the building and replace all of the bulbs that are burned out.</li><li>Painting</li><li>Cleaning</li></ul><p>It takes a lot of work to get buildings the size of ours going for the season.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114489069247149029?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1143922215975605572006-04-01T13:10:00.000-07:002006-04-01T13:10:15.983-07:00Big Champagne<p>If you’re in the music business and not paying a lot of attention to the data that Big Champagne provides, perhaps you should consider whether or not you should be in the music business.</p><p><a href="http://www.bigchampagne.com/">Link</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114392221597560557?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1143920873291718802006-04-01T12:47:00.000-07:002006-04-01T12:47:53.333-07:00RSS competing with CDs?<p>Check out the post on The Work Better Weblog. I think the artist and people that seek to have/purchase/sponsor artist content need to realize that although the labels tend to own all the rights to the songs, the stories about the songs, stories about the band, stories about anything are free game.</p><p><a href="http://workingpathways.com/workbetter/archive/rss-feeds-replacing-cds-its-starting/">Link</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114392087329171880?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1142809516338842382006-03-19T16:05:00.000-07:002006-03-19T16:05:16.350-07:00Class Action law suit against the music industry<p>Check out this description:</p><blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><p><em>The suit also alleges that the record labels sought to shut down online music pioneer Napster at the same time they were introducing their own joint ventures to sell online music. MusicNet and pressplay "were not serious commercial ventures, but rather attempts to occupy the market with frustrating and ineffectual services in order to head off viable Online Music competitors from forming and gaining popularity after Napster's demise," according to the suit.</em></p></blockquote><p dir="ltr">More details in the full post on Ars Technica.</p><p dir="ltr"><a href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060313-6368.html">Link</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114280951633884238?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1142809230618882592006-03-19T16:00:00.000-07:002006-03-19T16:00:30.633-07:00Arctic Monkeys make it big using the internet<p>Unlike traditional bands, the <a href="http://www.arcticmonkeys.com/">Arctic Monkeys</a>, an indie UK band on an indie UK label, developed a following online that helped them sell 360,000 copies of their debut album in the first week, which is a UK record for the fastest selling indie debut album. Notably Arctic Monkeys released many of their songs on MP3 for free and encouraged fans to share the songs including sharing the songs on P2P networks. Not surprisingly, the band also used a <a href="http://myspace.com/arcticmonkeys">MySpace site</a> to connect with fans and further encourage the spread of their music.</p><p>Is this a sign of the new way of breaking bands? I sure hope so.</p><p>Read the full story on Monkey Bites.</p><p><a href="http://wiredblogs.tripod.com/monkeybites/index.blog?entry_id=1438139">Link</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114280923061888259?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1141619731547496072006-03-05T21:35:00.000-07:002006-03-05T21:37:26.126-07:00I'm trying to understand this MySpace Music thing<p>Ok, I get a lot of what’s going on with MySpace Music and I get a lot of what’s not going on as well. As part of my <a href="http://strategize.blogspot.com/2006/03/grand-myspace-experiment-begins.html">MySpace experiment on Strategize</a>, I’m playing around a lot with MySpace Music because music is my business.</p><p>Here’s what I think about:</p><blockquote dir="ltr" style="margin-right: 0px;"><p><a href="http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=593089">Stars Hide Fire</a> has some really good music. Their profile on MySpace has 77,00 views. Their 2 songs have 29,000 combined plays. They have 6,210 MySpace friends. Does this mean that someone in the live music business on the East Coast should be paying attention to booking these guys? After all, with as many friends and views and plays as this band has on their MySpace site, which doesn’t even count their <a href="http://www.starshidefire.com/">website</a>, shouldn’t this be a good regional booking if not a good national club booking?</p></blockquote><p dir="ltr">The problem with the logic above is that it does not seem like anyone is running any sort of correlation data for MySpace metrics against live music sales. I’m not talking about measuring the power of nationally touring acts like <a href="http://www.myspace.com/greenday">Green Day</a>, I’m talking about measuring the power of MySpace for emerging, regional, and local bands in a quantifiable way. What people like me want to know is how many friends or profile views or song plays it takes to indicate a successful band.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114161973154749607?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1141618661600318092006-03-05T21:17:00.000-07:002006-03-05T21:17:41.636-07:00Snaptune<p>Snaptune allows you to record music from FM radio to a PC. This isn’t hard to do with other services and configurations, but Snaptune adds song metadata, does not record repeated songs, and if you use a USB FM tuner, can even change stations based on how you program it.</p><p>This is probably going to drive the RIAA crazy.</p><p><a href="http://snaptune.com/">Link</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114161866160031809?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1140820301788282492006-02-24T15:31:00.000-07:002006-02-24T15:31:41.796-07:00Google Web Page Creator<p>100 megs of storage and the ability to build pages with a web-based tool — the name says it all.</p><p><a href="http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3586916">Link</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114082030178828249?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1140820031250960872006-02-24T15:27:00.000-07:002006-02-24T15:27:11.286-07:00Malcolm Gladwell's blogging<p>Not sure if this is new news to anyone else, but it is to me.</p><p><a href="http://gladwell.typepad.com/gladwellcom/">Link</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114082003125096087?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1140125195257799982006-02-16T14:26:00.000-07:002006-02-16T14:26:35.300-07:00Sprint reports 1 million song downloads<p>Ok, at $2.50 per song, I find it a little hard to believe that Sprint users have already downloaded 1 million songs to their phones.</p><p>Check out the article on cellular-news through the link below.</p><p><a href="http://www.cellular-news.com/story/16161.php">Link</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114012519525779998?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1140107725381095052006-02-16T09:35:00.000-07:002006-02-16T09:35:25.426-07:00Podbop<p>Podbop is a service that brings together upcoming concert events with available MP3s from bands that are performing. All of the information is organized by city, and once you’ve done a city search, Podbop provides a RSS feed that you can subscribe to for each particular city search. What’s cool about the RSS feed is that any available MP3 files from bands that are performing are included within the RSS feed so that you do not have to click through a bunch of links to get at them. The cities that I have looked at seem to include information not only for national touring acts, but also for local bands performing at smaller venues, which is really cool.</p><p>Check it out.</p><p><a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/Techcrunch?m=622">Link</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-114010772538109505?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1139785177751844212006-02-12T15:59:00.000-07:002006-02-12T15:59:37.800-07:00I'll be at CIC on ModayI’m flying in tomorrow morning and leaving tomorrow night, but I’ll be around most of the day tomorrow. If you’re going to be there to and want to chat, shoot me an e-mail and I’ll do my best to meet up with you.<div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-113978517775184421?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1139621642265190422006-02-10T18:34:00.000-07:002006-02-10T18:34:21.496-07:00Beatport<p>I bet that you’ve never heard of Beatport. Beatport is a local Colorado company serving paid downloads to the somewhat niche market of dance music. You will find remixes of popular artist tunes and original content all available for sale. It used to be that you couldn’t get a lot of the great dance music and DJ remixes in an easy way, but Beatport has changed all that.</p><p>No special software downloads required, everything works directly in the browser and works perfectly with Firefox. As you would expect with any digital music store, you can play track samples, some songs are available as singles, and some songs are only available as part of an album purchase.</p><p>I was checking out “Their Low The Singles 1990–2005” Parts I & II by The Prodigy, a band I still enjoy listening to — haven’t seen those albums on iTunes.</p><p>Beatport offers a variety of delivery methods: instant delivery (mp3 or mp4 tracks), mail delivery (mp3, mp4, or wav CDs).</p><p>Oh, and Beatport averages something like 75,000 downloads per week.</p><p><a href="https://www.beatport.com/">Link</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-113962164226519042?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1139527210357922002006-02-09T16:20:00.000-07:002006-02-09T16:17:19.330-07:00Job Opening -- Accounting Clerk<p>Accounting clerk will assist the Business Manager in day to day tasks that include journal entries, general ledger account analysis, weekly deposit preparation, account payable duties and administrative support.</p><p>Strong excel skills are a must. Previous accounting experience a plus but not required. Candidate must be detailed oriented. Degree in or pursing degree in accounting preferred.</p><p>Please visit the link below for the full description and the e-mail address to which you can submit a resume.</p><p><a href="http://hob.com/venues/concerts/coors_denver/jobs.asp#AccountingClerk">Link</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-113952721035792200?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1139526908833657162006-02-09T16:15:00.000-07:002006-02-09T16:18:53.076-07:00Seasonal job opening -- Assistant Ticket Manager<p>House of Blues Concerts Denver seeks an Assistant Ticket Manager. Responsibilities include but are not limited to managing event day and seasonal Box Office staff; creating and/or updating daily, monthly and annual accounting reports; creating and/or maintaining event ticketing system information; filling house ticket requests; document organization management. </p><p><strong>Qualifications</strong></p><p>1-2 years Box Office experience required. Ticket system (Ticketmaster preferred) and intermediate Excel knowledge required. Successful candidate must have basic accounting principles, be comfortable handling cash, and have the ability to provide excellent customer service while working in a fast-paced environment. Must be able to work Night and Weekend hours. This position is seasonal full time from March 1 - October 1. <br />Part-time opportunities possible the rest of the year. </p><p>Please visit the link below for the full description and the e-mail address to which you can submit a resume.</p><p><a href="http://hob.com/venues/concerts/coors_denver/jobs.asp#AssistantTicketManager">Link</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-113952690883365716?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1139457789219936732006-02-08T21:03:00.000-07:002006-02-08T21:03:09.223-07:00Bob Lefsetz and I agree that Apple is not killing the record business<p>I wrote <a href="http://strategize.blogspot.com/2006/01/apple-is-not-killing-albumcd-business.html">my original post</a> on this topic last month on <a href="http://strategize.blogspot.com/">Strategize</a>. Here’s what my post boiled down to:</p><blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><p><em>Here’s the simple fact of the matter: if record labels were scouting talent and investing in and backing artists that could produce more than 1 good song, people would do the math and probably buy a CD.</em></p><p><em>Here’s what’s going to happen: the record labels are going to cause me to turn into a consumer of singles rather than a consumer of full albums. Sure it will be a little difficult for me to change my buying behavior, but I bet it won’t take too long — chances are good that I’ll probably even wind up saving a bunch of money over the course of a year. Oh, and by the way, I haven’t heard a single in a long time that was worth $2.99.</em></p></blockquote><p dir="ltr">Bob Lefsetz has this to say in his 2 posts today:</p><blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><p dir="ltr"><em>Sometime in the nineties it became about the track, not the act. THAT’S what’s killing the labels, not the purchase of single hits at the iTunes Music Store.</em></p><p dir="ltr"><em>Suddenly, the labels are gonna wake up, and I mean SUDDENLY, and they’re barely going to be able to give away a CD. THEN what are they going to do? Sell singles on iTunes and DECIMATE their bottom line?</em></p></blockquote><p dir="ltr">It’s a little eerie isn’t it? Especially when you consider that Bob and I have never talked, let alone met each other. Sure, you can say that we both see it the same way because we’re both in the industry, but at the end of the day, everyone else is smart enough to see it too.</p><p dir="ltr"><a href="http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2006/02/08/the-itunes-fiasco/">Link — Lefsetz “The iTunes Fiasco”</a></p><p dir="ltr"><a href="http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2006/02/08/the-album/">Link — Lefsetz “The Album”</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-113945778921993673?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1139457420123228992006-02-08T20:57:00.000-07:002006-02-08T21:05:22.926-07:00artistShare<p>Check out artistShare — it’s an interesting concept for a potential future of the record business.</p><p><a href="http://www.artistshare.com/">Link</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-113945742012322899?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1139193098195853422006-02-05T19:31:00.000-07:002006-02-05T19:31:38.240-07:00Pandora<p>I just read a post by Bob Lefsetz and feel like I need to address my feelings about Pandora. In August of 2005 I stumbled across Pandora and <a href="http://strategize.blogspot.com/2005/08/pandora.html">posted about it on Strategize</a> because I thought it was a really cool service. To be honest I was so busy with the summer season that I did not revisit Pandora — last August they were only giving 10 hours free and then you had to pay for the service or it would no longer provide you with service.</p><p>When I read the post by Lefsetz, I checked the service out again. Instead of having a trial period and then requiring paid subscription, Pandora now has an ad-supported free site and an ad-free paid subscription plan. There are a lot of web companies out there that provide free services in return for the ability to run ads — one of the biggest is <a href="http://www.google.com/">Google</a>. Lefsetz seems to have a problem with this model:</p><blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><p><em>It’s not about turning you on to new music, it’s about selling ADVERTISING! Oh, you can avoid ads by paying three bucks a month.</em></p></blockquote><p dir="ltr">Exactly correct, Bob, if you choose not to pay for the service, you have to look at ads. Lefsetz goes on to complain about the programming and matching capabilities of the Pandora service. I have to admit that if I was paying for the service, I wouldn’t be 100% happy about the content that Pandora provides, but the fact that I can now use the service, albeit with ads, for free makes me feel a little better about investing my time to listen.</p><p dir="ltr">I spent much of the day listening to a station that I created with Counting Crows as the base artist — Pandora was open and running in a tab and I was doing other stuff on the web and writing blog posts. Maybe half a dozen times I clicked over to the Pandora tab to skip a song, but on the whole, I didn’t think the content was too bad; once or twice I even clicked over to Pandora to check out who was singing a song that I had never heard before. With regard to the ads: they seem to be mostly ads for content on iTunes and I was not aware that some of the content advertised was available on iTunes, so I didn’t mind it so much.</p><p dir="ltr">Here’s my take on Pandora, which differs greatly from Bob’s:</p><ul dir="ltr"><li><div>Pandora does help you discover new music — you may not like the music and you may not totally understand why some music is matched to the artist that you pick, but that’s why you have the ability to skip stuff you don’t like.</div></li><li><div>I like that Pandora offers a free, ad-supported service. Had I not read Bob’s rant about it, I’m not sure when I would have gotten back around to checking Pandora out again. Most people are used to ad-supported services these days and don’t generally have problems with it.</div></li><li><div>The ads on Pandora are relevant to music and don’t really bother me at all.</div></li><li><div>If you’re looking for perfect content that is exactly what you want to hear, buy an iPod and author your own playlists. Pandora doesn’t do a perfect job, XM and Sirius don’t do a perfect job (and you can’t skip the stuff you don’t want to hear), and traditional radio does a worse job than XM and Sirius combined.</div></li></ul><p><a href="http://www.pandora.com/">Link — Pandora</a></p><p><a href="http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2006/02/03/pandora/">Link — Bob Lefsetz post</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-113919309819585342?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1139025970892810532006-02-03T21:06:00.000-07:002006-02-03T21:06:10.930-07:00Perspective on the digital music download business<p>Here are some figures from my <a href="http://strategize.blogspot.com/2006/01/some-amazing-facts-that-i-extracted.html">original post on Strategize</a> that extracted some information from the MacWorld 2006 keynote:</p><ul><font face="JansonText-Roman"><li><em>14 million iPods sold in the holiday quarter (that’s more than 100 every minute, if you’re trying to do the math); over 42 million iPods sold worldwide to date</em></li><li><em>850 million songs sold to date on iTMS with the expectation of hitting 1 billion in the next few days (maybe they’ll run a 1 billionth song promotion)</em></li><li><em>iTMS has an 83% market share</em></li><li><em>8 million videos sold since launch on Oct. 12, 2005</em></li></ul><p>The business2blog puts this in perspective (because the numbers above seem damn impressive at first blush):</p><ul><li><em>Number of songs sold on iTunes in the past three years: 850 million.</em></li><li><em>Number of songs traded on P2P file-sharing networks during the same time: 90 billion</em></li><li><em>850 million iTunes songs/ 42 million iPods = 20 songs/ iPod.</em></li><li><em>Over three years that comes to people spending an average of $7 a year on music at the iTunes store.</em></li></ul><p>The numbers that Business 2.0 are reporting come from a company called <a href="http://www.bigchampagne.com/">Big Champagne</a>, which is a service that tracks P2P music volumes — it’s a service that lots of us in the music business subscribe to and that we pay a lot of attention to.</p><p>Here’s a quote from Eric Garland at Big Champagne regarding the stats on the Business 2.0 post:</p><blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><p><em>People do not buy music from Steve Jobs. That is fine with Steve Jobs. He is not in the music business.</em></p></blockquote><p dir="ltr">How easy it is to forget that Jobs is not in the music business. If you had just read the stats from his MacWorld keynote, you would forget that Jobs is not in business to sell music, he’s in business to sell hardware, namely to sell iPods. It’s important not to forget that.</p><p dir="ltr"><a href="http://business2.blogs.com/business2blog/2006/02/putting_itunes_.html">Link</a></p></font><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-113902597089281053?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1138983213046094182006-02-03T09:13:00.000-07:002006-02-03T09:13:33.083-07:00HOB Ones to Watch update<p>Ok, so I have to be honest that I was a little bummed when I went to our <a href="http://hob.com/onestowatch">Ones to Watch</a> page and couldn’t get it to auto-discover in <a href="http://www.bloglines.com/">Bloglines</a>. I’m not sure if it was a Bloglines problem or a HOB problem or a me problem, but I finally got the page to auto-discover this morning.</p><p>As I am a heavy user of iTunes, I generally don’t subscribe to podcasts using Bloglines, but I did want to check to see if you could because I know that not everyone out there uses or likes using iTunes. For those that do use iTunes, I’ve included a link below so that you can find and subscribe to our podcasts through the Music Store — they are available free of charge.</p><p>I did notice that we added the universal RSS/ATOM symbol to the Ones To Watch logo on the <a href="http://www.hob.com/">House of Blues main page</a>:</p><p><img alt="" src="http://hob.com/pics/promos/gatewaytop/artistfeatures/podcast-spot-03.gif" border="0" /></p><p>However, there is no RSS/ATOM symbol on the Ones to Watch page, which is certainly an oversight on our part.</p><p><a href="http://www.hob.com/artistfeatures/onestowatch/rss.asp">Link — Subscribe via RSS to Ones to Watch</a></p><p><a href="http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=107506544&s=143441">Link — HOB Ones to Watch on iTunes Music Store</a> (note that this will call for the iTunes application to open)</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-113898321304609418?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1138764055040604192006-01-31T20:20:00.000-07:002006-01-31T20:20:55.083-07:00Travis and Mark from Blink 182 have a new project called Plus-44<p>I was watching <a href="http://www.mtv.com/onair/dyn/meet_the_barkers/series.jhtml">Meet the Barkers</a> tonight (yes, I watch <a href="http://www.mtv.com/">MTV</a>) and it triggered me to remember the name of Travis and Mark’s new project called Plus-44. Check out their single at the link below — it automatically starts playing when you visit the site. I like the new single and it certainly seems like Travis and Mark are trying to reinvent themselves.</p><p>I always liked Blink 182 — the guys were genuinely cool people (Tom even walked my dog at a show) and they always seemed to be having a blast on the stage. All of Blink’s albums are on my iPod and I listen to them frequently.</p><p>Plus-44, based on the single, seems like it’s going to have some good music. I look forward to the album (not that I know the release date) and to seeing them on tour (whenever they decide to go out).</p><p><a href="http://www.plus-44.com/index.html">Link</a></p><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-113876405504060419?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10750482.post-1138573356473286072006-01-29T15:18:00.000-07:002006-01-29T15:23:36.140-07:00HOB Ones to WatchAs part of our support of emerging artists, House of Blues has a new section on its site called "Ones to Watch." Check out the site because it's pretty cool -- it features podcasts that contain both interviews and music from emerging artists.<br /><br />Our goal is to feature 5 emerging artists every quarter. In order to find our features, we are searching websites, asking our friends, listening to free downloads, sifting through self-produced CDs, and putting our ears to the ground to detect the beats of the future. All of our venues are encouraged to send candidates to our home office in LA for consideration, so if you're in a band and want a chance at being featured and you know someone that works for HOB, be sure to have them toss your name in the hat.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.hob.com/artistfeatures/onestowatch/">Link</a><div class="blogger-post-footer"><img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10750482-113857335647328607?l=hobdenver.blogspot.com' alt='' /></div>Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07149366013937654586noreply@blogger.com0