Grace Potter at World Cafe Live in Philadelphia

The 12th Annual NON-COMMvention, hosted by Philly pubradio station WXPN, is well underway.

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals kicked things off with a Wednesday night performance at World Cafe Live, adjacent to the XPN studios.

Attendance is strong, with radio station and music industry executives selling out both the main and overflow hotels. A full slate of meetings and performances continues through Saturday afternoon.

Updates will occur on TheTop22.com in the coming days.

Walk Up registration is still available. Learn more by navigating from our NON-COMMvention home page.

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Commercial Radio was already entering slash and burn mode before the recession hit.

Consolidation was driving out the researchers, marketers, programmers, and talent. Once the recession hit, things got considerably worse, and radio company leaders all but abandoned radio’s killer apps such as localism for a generic, sound-alike approach — positioning itself as a “reach” medium.

The results were predictable.

Commercial radio was up fractionally last year to $14.1 billion in revenue — well below pre-recession levels, according to the NAB. Even this week, radio companies are reporting first quarters that trailed last year’s numbers.

Contrast that with cable television, which poured millions into the development of creative programming directed at specialized audiences.

Again, the results were predictable.

New Neilsen data shows that cable, forever a backwater in the media world, has caught up to its broadcast counterparts. In 2011, cable collectively billed $21 billion, just shy of the broadcast networks’ $21.1 billion. (Note that TV’s total haul, which includes syndication, etc. is almost $72 billion, more than all other platforms conbined.)

For longtime watchers, it’s an amazing milestone for cable to catch the big 5 broadcasters.

But perhaps more amazing is the growth that came during the recession. In 2007, cable pulled in $14.8 billion — so we’re looking at nearly 50% revenue growth while facing the worst economic headwinds in the history of the medium.

Over the same period, broadcast television slimmed by just shy of $2 billion. So cable not only poached broadcast dollars, but more importantly, it grew the business.

Radio stagnates while cable experiences massive growth. Same recession for both.

Cable did it by investing in the product — something commercial radio simply has not done.

Any excuse to run a picture of Grace Potter. This from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Fest last week.

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals will kick off the 12th Annual NON-COMMvention for early arrivals Wednesday night, May 16 at 10pm. The band last week hit Jazz and Heritage fest…

Willie Nelson will perform Friday at Noon, along with Norah Jones and Brandi Carlile. Here’s what looks like iPhone footage from backstage as he records with Kris Kristofferson…

Norah Jones hit Good Morning America to perform Happy Pills and the title track to her new CD Little Broken Hearts…

John Mayer is still in voice-rest mode, but he’ll speak with David Dye for World Cafe Friday afternoon. Here’s the clip for Shadow Days…

Michael “Iron Man” Burks died Sunday in Atlanta of an apparent heart attack. He was 54.

Burks was returning from a European tour to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson Airport when he collapsed.

Burks earned the nickname “Iron Man” from his intense, hours-long performances. The Arkansas native self-released his debut in ‘97 and recorded for Alligator since 2001.

Learn more about Michael at our sister-site TheBluesMobile.com, including this exclusive archive interview.

On a lighter note, The New York Times recently published two interesting articles on breakthrough businesses that are directly helping musicians in a Web 2.0 world.

First, they profiled Kickstarter, a company we’ve written about before. The Times noted Kickstarter’s benchmark — having funded 50,000 projects to the tune of $200 million. $38 million of that went to music projects. All in just three years – amazing. Check out their very cool graphic presentation of the crowdsourced projects.

Also worth reading is a profile of Jeff Price and his company Tunecore. Jeff ran spinArt Records, but moved into digital delivery, helping countless bands get their stuff on the major download sites. Tunecore currently delivers 4% of all digital downloads. And they do it for an artist-friendly fee.

Check the story here.

We’ll be honest, overall, the 2012 batch of Webby Award winners left us a little underwhelmed. Lots of usual suspects – TED, BBC, NASA (100 Best Planets in the Galaxy!), ESPN. NPR nominated but not much in terms of wins. They’re all great, but we’ve seen the movie.

And Pinterest, sorry, we don’t get it.

In past years, the Webby Awards turned us on to a host of innovative or otherwise “oh wow” designs, ideas, and functions. Much less so this year.

Perhaps that’s predictable — maybe the web has come of age and there are simply fewer “new” things that can be done. It’s also possible that the number of highly functional, off-the-shelf templates are saving everyone money, but leaving us wanting in terms of design. Everything sort of looks the same.

That said, there were some great things that happened on the web in 2012. The Webby’s honored Louis C.K. as their Person of the Year for his $5 direct-to-fan concert download. Bjork was named Artist of the Year for her Biophilia album, which had apps that accompanied the songs.

Notable for their creativity were the Muppets and a guy in New York who leaves money around the city for people to find. And then there’s a hilarious homage to the late Kim Jong-Il.

Radio? Well, they eliminated the radio/podcast category this year. Thanks.

A roundup of categories that relate to the media and music biz, plus other winners — and that’s where the real creativity comes out…

Music

Pitchfork (Webby Award Winner)
Pandora (People’s Voice Winner)

Best Visual Design Aesthetic

Kinetic Fanzine Vol. 1 (Webby Award Winner)
Google Music (People’s Voice Winner)

Television

HBO Connect (Webby Award Winner)
Hulu (People’s Voice Winner)

Celebrity/Fan

MTV O Music Awards (Webby Award Winner)
Team Coco (People’s Voice Winner)

Weird

I Found Money Today (Webby Award Winner)
Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things (People’s Voice Winner)

Other Winners

The Muppets Mahna Mahna
VW Beetle
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Cultural Institution Winner)
Foodily (Food and Beverage)
The Work of Robert Jaso (Self Promotion/Portfolio)

Vevo, the joint venture between Sony Music, Universal Music, and Abu Dhabi Media, launched an “upfront” last week, attempting to attract advertisers with new, original content.

It’s an interesting idea, as several new media companies are now imitating the television upfront process.

While garnering a lot of press with the announcement, what may have gone unreported are the amazing numbers the company has been putting up.

Globally, the service racks up 250 million visits per month, and forecasts 36 billion views this year. In short, it dominates music video, and one has to wonder how much better it would do if the Warner Group participated in Vevo.

Read more about the original content slate in AdAge.

Last week we reported numbers out of the NAB that an HD Radio-equipped car is sold every fifteen seconds.

Now comes a JD Power and Associates report from more than 17,000 vehicle owners this past March. The survey was an “Emerging Technologies” study seeking to gauge consumer interest in various options.

There was good news for HD Radio, as 70% of those surveyed said they’d pay extra for HD Radio. Learn more in MediaPost’s Marketing Daily.

Marshall Crenshaw’s Kickstarter Project has been funded.

As previously reported, the singer-songwriter aims to release six EPs over a two year period thanks to the crowdsourced funding model.

It looked a bit scary for the project, with Crenshaw sitting at $23,000 of the $32,000 goal with one day to go. But he must have had a few major donors sandbagged as he ultimately came in at nearly $34,000. With $200 of that coming from us, we’re looking forward to our beer with Marshall at a future show.

See more about his project.

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals will play Wednesday, May 16 at 10 pm

Last minute cancellations have tweaked the musical lineup of the 12th Annual NON-COMMvention as two veterans drop out.

Paul Weller has canceled his Wednesday night performance, and Sinead O’Connor has announced the cancellation of her entire tour citing doctor’s orders. O’Connor stated on her website that she has been suffering a bout of mental illness, and she will follow her doctor’s wishes that she stay off the road.

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals will grab the open slot on Wednesday night at 10 p.m., and The Walkmen have been added to Friday night’s lineup.

Also just announced is the addition of legend Dr. John, who will be interviewed by David Dye for a future episode of World Café.

The interview will take place Thursday afternoon right after Dye’s interview with Joe Jackson.

The complete lineup, including artist set times, is now posted on our NON-COMMvention schedule page.

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HD Radio equipped cars displayed outside the NAB Convention

We’ve always been fans of the idea of HD Radio. The opportunity for niche and ethnic programmers is significant.

If only big radio could get out of its own way.

The report from the 2012 NAB Convention is Las Vegas is as follows: In the face of a small army of hostile engineers, consultants who’d prefer to play it safe and get paid, and a station ownership situation that amounts to herding cats, HD Radio continues to knock down barriers in a slow but methodical march to the market.

With a reported 7 million radios in the market and an HD Radio equipped car selling every 15 seconds, it won’t be long before ten million radios will be deployed. Will that number, combined with the approved power increase, be enough to finally get owners to invest in the product and content? Let’s hope.

142 auto models offer HD Radio, 64 are standard equipment.

Beyond auto, iBiquity rolled out working prototypes of mobile phones with an embedded HD Radio chipset — one that is apparently both affordable and does not suck the battery dry.

The phone is part of Emmis Radio chief Jeff Smulyan’s seemingly Quixotic quest to force phone manufacturers to embed FM chipsets. While his wish for federal mandate will never happen, a test drive of the HD Radio equipped phone proved impressive — they sounded great, offered album cover art and artist information, music purchase buttons, and an equally impressive sales solution featuring couponing, QR codes, and other options that would be of interest to sales teams.

The working prototype HD Radio equipped phone. Sounded and looked great.

The “back end” interface was developed by Emmis Interactive, and it’s an add-on that’s worth a look for mobile manufacturers and carriers alike. Kudos to Smulyan for R&D efforts that are simply too rare in radio these days. Ultimately, he may have created a very significant innovation for radio. His international experience no doubt showed him that in many countries, listening to broadcast FM on equipped mobile phones can be quite high.

Among the current arguments for the embedded chip is the same argument one hears from across the convention hallway at the mobile television kiosks.

Interestingly, broadcast television is rolling out a new digital mobile platform that will beam live television into mobile phones and tablets via a solution called an ATSC tuner.

Both HD Radio and ATSC (Mobile TV) advocates argue that the ability to listen and watch (free) local broadcasts on phones and tablets will help relieve bandwidth pressure for both consumers and carriers, perhaps easing the need for throttling as a result of all the streaming.

Think of this offer: Would you be interested in an aftermarket dongle or an embedded chip that would enable your iPad to receive television? We sure are.

These two new digital players ought to team up in a big way to bring free local broadcasting seamlessly to handheld  devices.

-Paul Marszalek

Ryan Adams covering Bob Mould, a Jack White liquid-filled 12″ disc, The Knack Live in Los Angeles 1978 — hell yeah, it’s Record Store Day once again!

This brilliant awareness stunt returns this Saturday, making those of us without a local record store incredibly jealous as the event continues to attract more and more participants from the artist and label world.

Let’s cut right to the chase, with the annual walk-through from Chris Brown of Bull Moose in Maine. BTW, this is just PART ONE…

Chris Brown Record Store Day 2012 Preview Pt.1 from Record Store Day on Vimeo.

And here’s a great related clip about how a record gets made — literally. The Band Preteen Zenith is made up of Tim DeLaughter of Polyphonic Spree and Philip E. Karnats of Secret Machines. They’ll make their debut with a Record Store Day limited release of 500 vinyl copies of Rubble Guts b/w BB Eye…

Download the complete list of offerings (not everything will be at all stores!) here.

Click the Record Store Day icon above to learn more about where you can shop.

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We haven’t been to Restoration Hardware in forever.

Once a regular stop, once our home came together, the store fell off our radar. Out of site, out of mind.

While we forgot about Restoration Hardware, they apparently did not forget about us. A couple of weeks ago, we received perhaps the most impressive piece of direct mail we’ve ever seen.

Restoration Hardware sent us two huge, gorgeous, glossy books — a 654-page Spring catalog, bundled with a 281-page Outdoor catalog.

Combined, the mailing cost alone had to be outrageous. Restoration Hardware put its money where its mouth is in an all-out effort to get us back in the store. And it worked.

Another recent example of a great customer acquisition strategy was from the woman who originally brokered our mortgage.  She recently sent us a soft-sell message notifying us that she had changed banks by sending a large tin of Godiva biscuits. Cost? About $60.

These examples have had me thinking about customer acquisition cost.

Was a time that radio stations would spend significantly to acquire audience, but it has become incredibly rare. Marketing budgets were slashed along with content development and research budgets as Wall Street’s love affair with radio waned, and things only got worse with the recession.

But the fact is, to continue this way is unrealistic. For radio stations, if you’re not doing anything to increase cume, you’re losing cume. It’s no different than any other business – if you’re not working constantly to increase and retain your customer base, you’re not going to be long for this world.

Out of sight, out of mind.

A case in point that we’ve referenced recently is OWN – the Oprah Winfrey Network. In trying to explain what went wrong, it could be that OWN set itself up for a struggle by failing to treat itself as a startup. Instead, it acted as if it was a mature brand. One of the big mistakes startups make is to severely miscalculate customer acquisition costs. Sure OWN had Oprah’s name, but nobody knew what channel it was on, or what shows it had.

But back to radio. I speak regularly with stations that complain about their declining cume.

In almost every case, when I ask about their customer acquisition strategy, there is no plan. It’s as if people will just magically find the radio station and fall in love with it. Just like OWN, no one is entitled to an audience.

Stations, and their brethren in the music business, need a marketing plan. It’s an old saw, but you need to spend money to make money.

They key for radio and the music business is to keep the customer acquisition cost low, considering the small margins. Restoration Hardware is a bit pricey, so they can afford to spend ten or fifteen bucks to get me back in the store. 60 bucks worth of cookies is nothing if I re-finance my mortgage.

But remember, only a fraction of the prospects will come through. My mortgage broker probably spent thousands of dollars re-connecting with her former client base.

Stations that want to increase cume by 10k, 20k, or 50k will have to work backwards with the math — first determining what that cume increase would mean in terms of revenue. Once that estimate is in, stations can then figure out what they can spend to acquire those customers.

For example, if a public radio station wants to acquire 10,000 new listeners, and believes that it can convert 2% of those to $10/month members, those newbies would be worth $24,000 in revenue annually. So it wouldn’t be crazy to spend 25k in search of 10,000 new listeners (noting that many of those 2% will stay members for years to come.)

I regularly get mail and email from WNYC/New York and WFUV/New York in an effort to get me back into the membership fold (customer retention). But rarely do I see any station of any stripe marketing to increase audience, tune-ins, or time spent listening.

It’s worth saying again. If you’re not doing anything to increase your cume, you’re losing cume.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Royalty Deal

Big players in the music industry including the RIAA, National Music Publishers Association, and the Digital Media Association have agreed on mechanical royalties for digital media — as well as new types of business models such as music storage lockers and genre-specific specialty streams.

The deal must be approved by the Copyright Royalty Board. Check the full story in The Hollywood Reporter.

Multiple Screens Mean Kids Have the Attention Span of a Gnat – and that’s Important.

Neilsen reports, to no one’s surprise, that 88% of Americans with tablets use them while they’re watching TV. See the graph below and the story in Paid Content.

But the ramifications of the above point are extremely important for marketers, as a new study suggests that adults in their 20s change media 27 times per (non-working) hour. Frankly, that sounds insane. But all you need to do is look at PPM data to feel that it’s true. So how do you break through that kind of clutter? Interesting thoughts in AdvertisingAge.

Who Wants a Job?

Scrappy up-and-coming AAA NON-COMM WXPN is looking for a diginative interested in handling social media duties at the station as well as editing the station’s local music blog, The Key.

Details here.

We’ve mentioned before how much we love Kickstarter, the crowd-sourced funding engine that’s helping artists, writers, film-makers, designers, and others bring their projects to life through small donations.

Now, one of our long-time faves, Marshall Crenshaw, has listed a project.

Crenshaw wants to release on 10″ 45 RPM vinyl (and MP3), six EPs over the next two years. Each EP will contain a new song, a cover, and a re-imagining of a Crenshaw classic. He’s positioned it as a subscription series.

To raise the money, Crenshaw will give those who pledge goodies that range from signed versions of the EP to a private concert via Skype to an actual performance in your living room. Pledge levels run from $1 to $5000.

His ask is a rather significant $32,000. And he needs it by April 28. As of this writing, Crenshaw has raised $8348, or just better than 25%.

According to Kickstarters rules, it’s all or nothing. If he doesn’t hit the 32k goal, nobody pays and the project goes away.

As can be expected, more than half of the pledges are coming in between $25 and $100. If that keeps up, he’ll need anywhere from 300 to 500 more people to get on board.

For an artist like Crenshaw, that’s certainly achievable — if he can get the word out.

That’s really the key to Kickstarter — getting those superfans engaged. For a web-savvy, social media friendly digi-native, that might be easier than for an artist with a fanbase that might not exactly be full of early adopters.

Someone like Marshall Crenshaw is going to need some help from old friends — perhaps in AAA radio who can tell the story on the air and online. Kickstarter is a great story to begin with, and this project would make for a great morning show bit at the least.

New York area stations should consider getting on board in a bigger way — it’s a story they can talk about (and take credit for) literally for two years if the project comes through. Kickstarter-like projects will become more and more common, so here’s an opportunity to hip your audience to the concept with an artist they know.

Check out his pitch, which can be embedded on any site…

By the way, we’re in for $200.

Chrysler's Sergio Marchionne

All businesses need revitalization at some point in their lifespan. Some need complete reinvention.

Regardless of the type of business, often the problems struggling businesses face are very similar.

With that in mind, we thought we’d share this piece profiling Sergio Marchionne, who first turned around Fiat, then salvaged Chrysler.

To manage the latter, he took a high interest, $6 billion loan from the government. Amazingly, not only is Chrysler already in the black, they repaid the loan early.

Take some time out to watch this profile of Marchionne on CBS’ 60 Minutes — and think about the issues he faced and how he dealt with them — and how similar some of those issues are to our own…

John Mayer will be interviewed by David Dye for World Cafe.

The 12th Annual NON-COMMvention is excited to announce John Mayer as an addition to the conference lineup.

Mayer, sidelined from performing due to granuloma — essentially an inflammation affecting his vocal chords — will instead tape a conversation with David Dye for an upcoming episode of World Cafe.

The session will take place Friday afternoon, May 18.

Other important developments include the expiration of Early Bird rates Friday, April 6 at 5pm Eastern. Radio personnel can take advantage of rates as low as $50.

Also noteworthy is that the primary hotel, the Inn at Penn, is sold out. There are rooms available at the overflow hotel, Club Quarters, for the favorable rate of $126/night.

Club Quarters standard room. Looks nice, no?

And if that’s not enough news, the musical lineup has gotten even bigger.

Just added are Philly act Good Old War, Quebec’s Barr Brothers, and Brooklyn’s Elle King (fun fact: she’s the daughter of SNL’s Rob Schneider).

All necessary links for registration, phone numbers for hotel reservations, and the emerging schedule can be found here at TheTop22.com.

Just start at the top nav bar and work your way around.

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Ulysses S. Grant. Why is he on the fifty dollar bill?

Because he was a badass general in the Civil War — managing to finally end the thing after Lincoln’s previous leaders failed to act.

Think General George McClellan. The dude could have ended the War years earlier — ultimately saving tens of thousands of lives– if he only would attack. But no, he basically sat on his hands as events developed around him. Sounds like a deer in the headlights commercial radio guy (relax, it’s a joke and we’re talking about your boss.)

Grant? He got shit done. He beat the rebel army, got reconstruction underway, and then kicked the collective ass of the Ku Klux Klan in 1871.

That’s how you get on the fifty.

And that’s why it may cost you as little as fifty dollars to attend the 12th Annual NON-COMMvention.

In honor of U.S. Grant, all additional attendees from the same radio station can attend for 50 bucks. So the first station employee pays an Early Bird rate of $95, and everyone else just $50.

There are conditions: First, all radio employees must register at the same time to get the special rate. Second, the rate expires at 5pm EASTERN this Friday, April 6.

$200 Early Bird rates for music industry employees also expire at the same time.

So you need to ask yourself, are you McClellan or Grant?

Thought so. Follow this link to sign up.

Times writer Joe Levy writes a fun travel section story on a bona fide music business success story — the music cruise.

He boarded this year’s Weezer cruise and filed this report…

Speaking of successful music business stories, here’s a leftover SXSW link from the LA Times’ Pop & Hiss blog that not only wraps up the event, but opines a bit more on the state of the business…

Moshcam.com has been steadily shooting live concerts across the globe for a couple of years.

But last week they released an app that brings these shows to your phone. It’s another potentially great application for music monetization.

It’s a freemium model. Download the free app, and you get a handful of free shows. Then it’s pay per view.

Learn more on their site, and check out The Pretenders below.

Watch The Pretenders and other great gigs on Moshcam.