Topspin™

A few days ago, Hypebot published a piece about the Topspin approach to empowering artists with the tools to create high-margin, premium music offers for their fans. The story comes complete with “unboxing” videos of Metric, Beastie Boys, Byrne & Eno, and Beck Deluxe Editions hosted by our head honcho (and resident hand model) Ian Rogers. The only thing missing is a glimpse into the making, packing and shipping of these goods, so we thought we’d share a few words and behind-the-scenes photos of the Eminem “Relapse” Deluxe offering.

The key to a compelling and successful premium direct-to-fan product is to make it as unique and personal as possible. Simply bundling a CD and vinyl is easy to do and is different from what casual fans may find at retail. However, with a little extra effort and investment in items like hand-signed merch or custom packaging relevant to the theme of the record, you can offer your fans something of much greater value and price, and your true fans will jump on the offer. The Deluxe version of Eminem’s Relapse sells for $129.99 and includes a few collectible items like a high-quality 24×24 print of the “Relapse” cover art hand signed by Eminem (he signed 1,000 in one sitting), a Marshall Mathers prescription pill bottle, and CD and vinyl versions of the record. Fans can also upgrade their Relapse Deluxe purchase with one of five t-shirt and hoodie designs, including a limited-edition Eminem+Undefeated shirt.

Once you’ve assembled your premium offering, the next step is finding a fulfillment partner to ship the goods to your fans. In some cases, the manufacturer of the products can ship individual items direct, but with premium offerings containing items from multiple sources, you’ll want to partner with a fulfillment house that understands the logistics involved in assembling and shipping product to fans in a timely, cost-efficient manner. Eminem’s management is working with Topspin partner Kufala on fulfillment of Relapse physical products in the direct-to-fan channel. Kufala receives Relapse items from three different sources, assembles the items based on a list of 300 product configurations, and emails the customers when packages are leaving the warehouse. (Kufala also specializes in on-demand CD and DVD production for artists like Pearl Jam, Counting Crows, Phish and Smashing Pumpkins, to name a few)

Packaging for the Relapse Deluxe product (see above) is somewhat non-traditional in that the 24×24 high-quality print is shipped flat instead of in a tube. Kufala built a custom box to protect the print and house the rest of the Deluxe package items. Shipping the print with the rest of the Deluxe items is more cost effective than sending two different pieces separately and it makes for a much better out-of-box experience for the fan.

Relapse Deluxe packages began shipping today to Eminem fans. If you’re one of them, watch your mailbox. If you didn’t get one yet, there’s still a few left so drop by Eminem.com to pick one up. And, keep an eye out for the Relapse Deluxe unboxing from Ian’s picnic table in the coming weeks.

Gary Brotman
Topspin

The future of the music industry is hard.  No one does it for you.  No limos, no fancy dinners, and (almost) no million dollar marketing budgets after a bidding war over your 3-song demo tape.  So what next?  Will Topspin ride into LA, London, Nashville, and New York to save this industry?   No – we won’t, but some of you will.  Topspin’s direct-to-fan marketing, management, and distribution technology just sits there until someone uses it.  For the last year or so, the Topspin Artist Service team have been the expert pilots.  As of Wednesday, June 3rd 2009, that begins to change after our first class of Topspin Certified marketers and web designers left the building after an intense residency with expert Topspin trainer Adam Bates (Thanks, Adam!).

So yes – the future is hard – but fortunately we are lucky enough to have some amazing (and hearty) managers, marketers, and web designers helping us all grind our way forward.   Our goal is to find and train as many of you as we can both via our residency programs and through the Berklee.com certification course “Marketing your Music with Topspin” starting 9/28/2009.  As the first crew of Topspin certified users trained last week will tell you, 75% of our training had nothing to do with using the app.  It’s marketing in this new world that is hard.  Topspin’s app simply makes executing easy and efficient.  So many thanks to all of you early believers.  We will keep writing code, testing new ways to create demand for your music, and educating in every way we can.  You need to do the rest or, if you need help with marketing or web development, hire one of the Topspin’s certified marketers and developers.

The Topspin Class of June 2009 is
(Top Row Left to Right)
Justin Travis, Topspin Intern from Berklee College of Music, Marketer
Patrick Woodward, Topspin Intern from Pepperdine MBA Program, Marketer
Bob Cahill, Partner, Bigger Picture Group Nashville, Management
Parker Todd Brooks, Principal, We Are Everywhere LA, Web Developer
Jay Coyle, Principal, Music Geek Management Nashville, Marketer
Kami Knake, Topspin Artist Relations Nashville, Marketer
“La Professora” Adam Bates phD2F, Director, Topspin Artist Services NY
(Bottom Row Left to Right)
James Lamberti, Vice President, Topspin Artist Services San Francisco
Nicole Fields,Topspin Artist Relations Boston/NYC, Marketer
Jason Feinberg, President, On Target Media Group LA, Marketer
Mike Nelson, Two Minutes for Music Toronto, Management

[foto by Louis Beche from Flickr, CC licensed]

Hello London! We’re headed your way next week for a few meetings and a couple of runs around Princess Di Park. If you’d like to say hello, please come to the meetup we’re hosting with our friends at Songkick (in order to keep the intercontinental Ian balance Ian Hogarth will be in the US while I’m in London, but his co-founder Pete will be hosting from the Songkick side).

We’ll be at Electricity Showrooms from 7:30pm onward Wednesday evening for some serious music startup geek action. Come on through, and spread the word.

I added a Facebook event for the meetup, please RSVP here and forward the invite to any London friends you think may be interested/ing.

ian c rogers
Topspin

Friends of Topspin,

When Topspin asked me to share an artist’s perspective on using the platform, I couldn’t wait to write this blog post. In addition to being a full-time product designer at Topspin, I’m also a long time folk musician with an up-and-coming band in San Francisco called BASECAMP. It’s certainly no coincidence that I play music and work in these digs. Being able to use my experiences as a musician to design rocker-specific software is a dream job I never even thought existed until a year ago. Being able to also use this software to promote my own music makes the work incredibly more meaningful.

Which is why I am thrilled and humbled to be writing this post. Tonight, BASECAMP is playing our biggest show yet at San Francisco’s Rockit Room (formally The Last Day Saloon). We’ve dedicated four months of planning, practice and web strategy for just one club gig, and I’m hoping it’s really going to pay off tonight. We got offered this show after the bar owner saw us play a previous Monday night back in October. He knew we didn’t have the draw to fill his 400 person club, but he liked our sound enough to trust we’d find a way. So I had a great problem. How do I get new fans (that don’t even know me yet) to all come a show four months from now? How do l also make the most of this opportunity for my band in the long-term? Sounded like a great challenge for me as a musician, a great test for the Topspin platform.

I chose a simple goal: I didn’t want to make money, I wanted to build my network. If I was going to spend all this time (oh, and money) to promote a concert and get the word out, I wanted to also be establishing long-term fan relationships with people who really dug my music. That meant getting more emails from more avid fans. Topspin is great for selling media, but how could I tweak this to build a richer direct-to-fan experience for a club show? Something more than passing out flyers, posting bills and getting the Chronicle to do a short blurb about me.

We thought hard about the best way to sincerely help our fans. We lowered door prices, gathered some fun, eclectic supporting bands and gave the show an interesting face that we could talk up around town. We dubbed the night “Rock The Pink Slip” and branded the gig as a discount concert for our fans during hard economic times in San Francisco. We talked the bar owner into dropping the door price from $12 to $8. We convinced the three other bands into playing with us for free. We then immediately began offering subsidized, “recession-proof” discounted door entry through our website for as low as $2.50. It was pretty simple. Basically, people bought a .pdf file and their name goes on the guest list. This offer that was only available on our website, so all the traffic moved to us. We built an offer page for the show, featuring all the bands, info and links to the purchase flow. You can check out the site here:

http://basecampmusic.com/pinkslip

Once we had built a place for fans to go and learn about us, we put that URL out E-V-E-R-Y-W-H-E-R-E. BASECAMP has dropped a press release & the URL on 237 websites, 14 local newspapers, a handful of 3rd party blogs, and generated some new fans by running ads on 5 different ad networks. Oh, and we also did the postcards, flyers, bills and general pavement pounding anyway.

The Topspin platform allowed us to share our video across Facebook and send out rich HTML emails promoting the show, something that’s been super key for us for awhile now. We were also able to outfit our homepage with widgets that tracked fan usage and gave us great opportunities for fans to interact withour music. While the widgets worked great in the wild, we also ended up building our own “ticket” widget for our homepage:

Check out the Ticket Widget here

I think we’re like alot of bands that will always want some super custom widgets for special situations like this. And it’s cool, we all should learn to design this stuff to some degree. It goes with the business. What I really care about from Topspin is the wealth of data the widgets were bringing back to me. Every day, see what new fans we were getting from which activities, where they were coming from and what songs and videos they were most into. We were quickly able to rarefy our approaches even in just the last couple of weeks. It’s definitely been a science in many ways.

So it’s 12 hours till our show, and I gotta say, it’s pretty hard to get people to buy a club ticket. It’s also good to know that all this work will remain a long-term resource beyond just this show. We’ve set ourselves up with a network that we can rely on more and more. Still I do think that no amount of software will ever replace the message you put in someone’s hand after you play a local open mic. Topspin’s great to help support, organize and inform your work, but ultimately it’s the musicians getting real about connecting with their fans. No bullshit, no gimmicks; it’s really been refreshing.

I’ll post a comment here (maybe some video) this weekend and let you all know how the show turned out.

Have a good weekend,

Christopher Grant Ward
Topspin and BASECAMP

[(almost) all the drums in Topspin's Santa Monica office gathered up for a group photo]

Woah. Guess the cat’s out of the bag about Josh Freese’s upcoming album release. Not only has Josh made a great record, “Since 1972″, which he’ll be selling for $7, you can spend as much as $75,000 on items as varied as drum lessons (!), dinner at PF Chang’s, taking shrooms with Danny from Tool, and dinner at Disneyland.

Sign up here to be notified when Josh’s album is released.

The Topspin platform is powerful, especially in the hands of someone as creative as Josh.

WE LOVE JOSH FREESE.

ian c rogers
Topspin

[potential packages below, subject to change]

Josh Freese - Since 1972

$7
* Digital download of Since 1972, including 3 videos

$15
* CD/DVD double-disc set
* Digital download

$50
* CD/DVD double-disc set
* T-shirt
* “Thank you” phone call from Josh for buying Since 1972. You can tell him what you like about the record that you purchased, or what you thought sucked. Ask whatever you want, like “Is Maynard really THAT weird?” or “Which one of Sting’s mansions has the comfiest beds?” or “Are Devo really suburban robots that monitor reality or just a bunch of dads from Ohio?” or “Why don’t the Vandals play more stuff off the first record?” It’s your 5 minutes to yack it up. Talk about whatever you want.

$250 (limited edition of 25)
* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* T-shirt
* Signed drum head and drumsticks
* Go on a lunch date with Josh to PF Changs or The Cheesecake Factory (whatever you’re into)

$500 (limited edition of 15)
* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* T-shirt
* Signed cymbal and sticks
* Meet Josh in Venice, Calif., and go floating together in a sensory-deprivation tank (to be filmed and posted on YouTube)
* Dinner at Sizzler (get your $8.99 steak and “all you can eat” shrimp on)

$1,000 (limited edition of 10)
* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* T-shirt
* Signed cymbal, drum head and drumsticks
* Josh washes your car OR does your laundry … or you can wash his car
* Have dinner with Josh aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, Calif.
* Get drunk and cut each other’s hair in the parking lot of the Long Beach courthouse (filmed and posted on YouTube, of course)

$2,500 (limited edition of 5)
* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* Get a private drum lesson with Josh, or for all you non-drummers, have him give you a back and foot massage (couples welcome)
* Pick any 1 member of the Vandals or Devo (subject to availability) to accompany you and Josh to either the Hollywood Wax Museum or the lunch buffet at the Spearmint Rhino
* Signed DW snare drum
* Take 3 items of your choice out of his closet (first come, first serve)
* Change diapers and make bottles with him for an afternoon (after hitting the strip club)

$5,000 (limited edition of 3)
* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* T-shirt
* Josh writes a song about you and makes it available on iTunes
* Co-direct a video with him for the song about you and throw it up on the YouTubes
* Josh gives you and a friend a private tour of Disneyland
* Get drunk together. If you don’t drink, we can go to my dad’s place and hang out under the “Tuba tree”
* Stone Gossard from Pearl Jam will send you a letter telling you about his favorite song on Since 1972

$10,000 (limited edition of 1)
* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* T-shirt
* Signed DW snare drum from A Perfect Circle’s 2003 tour
* Josh gives you a private drum lesson OR his and hers foot/back massage (couples welcome, discreet parking)
* Twiggy from Marilyn Manson’s band and Josh take you and a guest to Roscoe’s Chicken ‘n’ Waffles in Long Beach for dinner
* Josh takes you and a guest to Club 33 (the super-duper exclusive and private restaurant at Disneyland located above Pirates of the Caribbean) and then hit a couple rides afterward (preferably the Tiki Room, the Haunted Mansion and Tower of Terror)
* At the end of the day at Disneyland, drive away in Josh’s Volvo station wagon. It’s all yours … take it. Just drop him off on your way home, though, please.

$20,000 (limited edition of 1)
* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* T-shirt
* A signed drum from the 2008 Nine Inch Nails tour
* Maynard James Keenan, Mark Mothersbaugh from Devo and Josh take you miniature golfing and then drop you off on the side of the freeway (all filmed and posted on YouTube)
* Josh gives you a tour of Long Beach. See his first apartment, the coffee shop on 2nd Street where his buddy paid Dave Grohl $40 to rip up tile just weeks before joining Nirvana. See the old Vandals rehearsal spot, the liquor store he got busted at using a Fake ID when he was 17 (it was Dave from the Vandals’ old ID). Go check out Snoop Dogg’s high school. For an extra 50 bucks see where Tom and Adrian from No Doubt live. For another $25 he’ll show ya where Eric from NOFX and Brooks from Bad Religion get their hair cut.
* Spend the night aboard the Queen Mary and take the “Ghosts and Legends” tour. (Separate rooms … no spooning.)
* Josh writes 2 songs about you and both are made available on iTunes and appear on his next record (you can sing back up on ‘em, clap, play the drums, triangle, whatever)
* Drum lesson OR foot and back massage (once again … couples welcome and discreet parking available)
* Pick any 3 items out of Josh’s closet

$75,000 (limited edition of 1)
* Signed CD/DVD and digital download
* T-shirt
* Go on tour with Josh for a few days
* Have Josh write, record and release a 5-song EP about you and your life story
* Take home any of his drum sets (only one, but you can choose which one)
* Take shrooms and cruise Hollywood in Danny from Tool’s Lamborghini OR play quarters and then hop on the Ouija board for a while
* Josh will join your band for a month … play shows, record, party with groupies, etc.
* If you don’t have a band he’ll be your personal assistant for a month (4-day work weeks, 10 am to 4 pm)
* Take a limo down to Tijuana and he’ll show you how it’s done (what that means exactly we can’t legally get into here)
* If you don’t live in Southern California (but are a U.S. resident) he’ll come to you and be your personal assistant/cabana boy for 2 weeks
* Take a flying trapeze lesson with Josh and Robin from NIN, go back to Robins place afterwards and his wife will make you raw lasagna

Spinnerette has officially released a special 7″ colour vinyl version of the Adam Freeland remix of Sex Bomb, available only on SpinneretteMusic.com. When you buy the 7″ you can immediately download MP3, FLAC, or Apple Lossless, and the individual stems in case you’d like to remix your own version of Sex Bomb, and a premium package that offers both the stems and vinyl at a discounted rate.

Also, to celebrate Valentines Day, Spinnerette is helping you send a Sex Bomb Lovegram to everyone you love. Click here to send a Sex Bomb to that special (or not-so-special) someone.

Happy Valentine’s Day,
ian c rogers
Topspin

Hello,

Yes we’re watching the layoff news and we’re not growing at the pace we once were ourselves, but we do have a few key positions to fill still, including our VP Engineering. If you know someone with VP-level engineering management skills who loves music and would be motivated by building a software toolset to help artists run successful businesses, please have them reach out to us. On the flipside, if you *don’t* have these skills (or skills matching one of the other jobs on our Jobs page), please *don’t* email us. No offense, but we’re very busy building software and would like to keep the signal-to-noise ratio at a manageable level. Thanks!

VP Engineering, Topspin

Topspin is a media technology company helping artists and their partners build successful businesses and brand awareness by providing the software, services and infrastructure through a turn key marketing platform. We create the tools to manage content, connect with fans and generate demand for music while providing deep visibility and analytics that are actionable throughout the system. What ProTools did for music production, Topspin is dedicated to doing for music marketing.

You can read more about our company on our blog, in this Billboard article, and get a bit of a sense of what we stand for in this TechCrunch article. Our chairman and co-founder is ProTools-founder Peter Gotcher and we are backed financially by Redpoint and Foundry Group. I am the CEO and my background includes a stint at Nullsoft and Grand Royal, as well as the GM of Yahoo! Music.

We are currently on the hunt for an inspired and experienced VP of Engineering to lead the majority of our employees, our incredibly talented engineering team of twenty-five. The right candidate is a former VP of Engineering with a history of passionate leadership, knowledge of engineering process and a track record of delivering robust software against aggressive timelines. They have experience building simple, elegant and powerful Web applications as well as possessing a passion for music, either as a performer or a fan.

Experience in ecommerce, CRM, digital media delivery, analytics, scalable services and/or marketing based systems is desirable. Responsibilities include the management and oversight of the developers, network operations/IT, data services, QA and program managers in a 24×7x365 high availability environment. Technologies include RoR, MySQL, Java and python.

If this describes you, please reach out to us ASAP.

ian c rogers
Topspin