The Changing Demographics of Social Media

Flowtown created this nice infographic yesterday illustrating how the average age for social media users is increasing. For example, the average Facebook user is now 38 years old, and 64% of all Twitter users are now over the age of 35. Does this shift change social media strategies for artists, labels and online music services? Probably, but it would be useful to know what sociological factors are driving the increase, how are these age groups using social media, which countries and cities represent the greatest increases, etc.

University of Colorado Music Acquisition Survey

Assistant Professor of Music and Entertainment Industry Studies at the University of Colorado at Denver, Storm Gloor, and Clyde Philip Rolston, Associate Professor of Music Business in the Mike Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business at Belmont University are conducting a brief survey to better understand how and why people acquire music. If possible, please take 10 minutes to assist them with their research and the music community.

MixMatchMusic Releases Musician Collaboration Survey Results

About a month ago, MixMatchMusic conducted a musician survey about online music collaboration, and they just released the results. They found some interesting stats, here are just a few:

• 44.3% of all respondents stated they have never tried online music collaboration with other musicians
  
• 39.4% of all respondents would like to give their fans the ability to remix their music
• 43.9% of all respondents would be interested in allowing their fans to remix their music if it helped them increase their revenue and expand their fan base

To see all their findings, go here.

Pandora, Muxtape and Royalties: tell us what you think

This past Wednesday, we had a great discussion on the ArtistDish about the recent news regarding Pandora and Muxtape (you'll be able to hear the entire podcast in a few days). It's definitely a complicated situation that's going to require time to sort out, coupled with creative solutions and compromises from both sides to solve, as similar situations are on the horizon, and no one has a monopoly on the solution.

So, I wanted to poll my readers to see what you all think about the issues and how to solve them. As a former musician that tried to make a living in a band, I'm definitely pro-artist, and an advocate for musicians and bands trying to earn money from their digital music, so I applaud Pandora for paying royalties to date. Not to mention, I'm a huge fan of Pandora, and I use their service everyday. I also really enjoyed using Muxtape.

But, I'm also a technologist developing a music tech company that I hope will be cash flow positive by the end of 2009. With that said, it seems like a potential conflict of interest could arise if music tech companies try to determine what royalties should be for artists (e.g. COGS as it relates to the cost of song plays relative to earnings from advertising). However, royalty decisions should also not be left for the RIAA, Congress and/or major labels/artists to determine on their own either.  Rather, I submit that the long tail of the music industry (i.e. independent musicians and bands) needs to come together and join the conversation as well - you can begin now:

Musician Survey on Collaboration and Revenue

Help contribute to understanding how musicians from around the world collaborate online, engage fans, and make money by taking this survey. It should take less than 5 minutes to complete (only 11 questions) and the first 100 people to complete it will get a MixMatchMusic t-shirt! We'll have the results in a few weeks and I'll post the findings here.

Btw, MixMatchMusic is a new music tech startup I'm beta testing. I've got the inside scoop and I'll post a review as soon as I get the green light.

Take the survey.