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In a flurry of news blurbs that I’d come across, I was excited to hear the potential of a few inventions that will be shaping how music is circulated. Referencing an essay I had written (to be posted in due time) that outlines how music could be more efficiently served I am now witnessing some fruition of those ideas (I’m sure I wasn’t the first one to have come up with those ideas, but I did come up with them without prior conversation, consultation, or direct references.) in a patented solutions and technology methods, one of them dubbed by Chuck D of Public Enemy as having the ability to “solve the visibility problem better than any other technology that I have seen.”

uPlaya is the storefront of trademarked Hit Song Science and Music Universe technologies created by Music Intelligence Solutions.

Above all else I also consider Hit Song Science the most innovative music solutions technology today that analyzes your song’s hit potential and commercial success. The premise of its feedback is based on algorithmic search modalities and compiled analyses of classic hit patterns that provide a grading scale to see where your song could lie in the marketplace. While this paid service (though you get to upload 2 songs for anaylses for free) won’t give a detailed explanation or musical breakdown why your song does or doesn’t have hit potential, it definitely is the most cutting-edge tool that could help songwriters and producers aim for that hit.

I would emphasize that Hit Song Science is a tool and hope their technology doesn’t produce a mass rush of wannabes who are “hit-hunters” only. I know I may sound a bit idealist at this point but I’d prefer to parallel my music with the technology that’s on the perpetual fringe as it were. In this way we as producers of music could use the tool to change the landscape of hits rather than have the results of this tool shape our creativity (or lack thereof).

Powered by its Music Universe technology, uPlaya also boasts a centralized hub that has bundled together what most the other sites out there do for you. For examples:

What Last.fm does to match similar music to your listening habits?
uPlaya’s got it.

What Magnatune does to connect you directly to potential buyers of your music?
uPlaya’s got it.

What Pandora does to distribute your music to outlets like Amazon and iTunes?
uPlaya’s got it.

What We Are Hunted does to spider through the blogosphere writing about your music?
uPlaya’s got it.

Indeed uPlaya is the best all-in-one package I have seen thus far.

Last May I had posted my discontent with variable pricing, a producer-driven pricing scheme forced upon consumers by the majors to ensure profitability for their bottom-line minority. Another fringe invention spawned by Digonex Technologies Inc. though shows promise that it can serve not only the bigwigs but also the vast majority of consumers to efficiently gauge what buyers are likely to cough up from the bottom-up.

So much of the music industry has thrived on market manipulation and its derivative hit-churning machine that consumers have been strung up like puppets to behave in accordance with their glitzy ads and promos and herded into the belief they get what they pay for. These controls were traditionally based on the number-crunching science, for instance, that if decreases in the sales percentage number never becomes larger than the percentage of the price increase they will always make a profit.

For artists, imagine if you will a roster of them signed to a publisher or label. Wouldn’t the above calculations muddy up marketing budgets and logic and eventually lead to an unfair contract renewal or termination? Artists within that roster would essentially compete for budgets and against each other to stay signed! That’s not what I call a family as some artists have kiss-assed. Yet from the view of the the publisher or label as a de facto bank, they are leveraging the sweat and anxiety of their artists otherwise condescendingly known as products or widgets under a general fiscal safety blanket.

Enter Digonex’s Digital Online Exchange (DOE) platform and marketers and A&R will have the ability to focus in with more quality-driven efforts to micro-manage their artists.

Collecting consumer demand in real-time will help publishers and labels work for their artists and themselves rather than just for a company’s overall gain.

In a deal announced with The Orchard to unveil in three weeks what they call “dynamic pricing,” they hope to entice a higher volume of digital music sales through decreased price points. Digonex CEO Jan Eglen says:

We use our science to systematically decrease the price. We find the exact moment and the exact price that the people are willing to pay. That’s the sweet spot.

Under the DOE’s scenario there is a improved opportunity for all parties to benefit and/or profit.

As a side note from a mechanical royalty perspective however, how this pricing will contend with the statutory fees remains to be seen; the price can’t steep so low that it won’t cover these current and just recently governed rates. The budding concern that creators and/or copyright owners of the respective music won’t make a decent living off 35 cent downloads may spawn a new discussion to an overhaul of the music economy.

And if we were all long-term minded musicians, perhaps we should explore this revenue stream to a new compulsory standard based on splits rather than on fixed rates. If so, lawmakers look out!

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