Music Ally

2009 was the year of the App Store, as Apple passed the two-billion downloads milestone for its store, which now has more than 100,000 apps available. The year also saw labels and artists jumping onto the bandwagon with their own branded iPhone apps.

The most successful, like Smule’s I Am T-Pain (pictured right) sold tens of thousands of copies a day. It’s only fair to point out that the vast majority sank down the app charts fairly quickly though – proving that iPhone apps provide a return on investment for the music industry wasn’t a huge priority this year.

Even so, there was plenty of creativity being put to work. To highlight it, we’ve chosen a selection of 40 branded music apps that we thought were innovative this year – which were all covered in the Music Ally Daily Bulletin.

They’re all based on artists, labels and other music brands – the list doesn’t include apps for music services like Spotify or Pandora, nor does it include pure music games like Rock Band or Tap Tap Revenge (although one of the latter’s artist-branded spin-offs is included).

Read on for a snapshot of what was released this year, and let us know your thoughts on the best and worst of what the App Store had to offer. Oh, and yes, we’ve put them in a rough order reflecting how much we liked them, starting with the best.

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Grr! iPhone developer Tapulous has launched the latest artist spin-off from its Tap Tap Revenge games: Metallica Revenge.

The game features branded visuals and tracks including Enter Sandman, One, Master of Puppets and For Whom The Bell Tolls. And for added rawk factor, there are new modes with four and five tap rails, rather than the usual three. This is the iPhone music game equivalent of turning amps up to 11, we think.

The game has gone live today, and costs $4.99. It follows previous games created by Tapulous for Coldplay, Weezer, Lady Gaga and Nine Inch Nails.

Remember the days when Metallica were the villains of the digital music world for suing their own fans? Now they’re actually one of the more innovative artists, having grasped the nettle of digital for promotion and retailing, while also showing a more relaxed attitude towards file-sharing.

The latest example is Live Metallica, an iPhone app that went live this week. It costs $0.99, and lets fans stream professionally mixed recordings of the band’s concerts as they tour the globe. Well, at any one time, there is one show available for free streaming – the latest one. But the app is really about showcasing the archives from the band’s LiveMetallica website, which has been selling live concert recordings since 2004, and just introduced the option to buy single tracks too.

So, the iPhone app lets fans listen to samples from these archives, and then buy them from within the app. They’re instantly available to stream in the app itself, but can also be downloaded from the site to the user’s computer. This is interesting, as it’s one of the few examples of an iPhone music app that’s driving paid downloads from somewhere other than Apple’s iTunes Store. It’s been approved, so presumably Apple is comfortable with the idea.

It seems Amazon UK’s £0.29 price tag on a slew of MP3 albums today was a cock-up rather than a special offer. The company has swiftly changed their prices back, indicating that the reduced pricing was a mistake.

Earlier today, we discovered that Lily Allen’s latest album was selling for 29p on the site, and further investigation revealed the latest platters by Coldplay, Metallica, Jason Mraz and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were selling at the same price point, as well as a 24-track Led Zeppelin remasters album.

We bought several, so they were working (see screenshot above – click on it for a larger version). But checking back on Amazon now, and the prices have been changed. Lily Allen is back to £7.99, Coldplay is £9.29, Led Zeppelin is £8.98, and so on.

Hats (or hi-hats) off to Lars Ulrich out of Metallica – despite being surrounded by reps from his label WMG at a recent press event, he was happy to talk about the band’s plans to possibly go it alone now its deal with the label has expired.

“Let’s cut to the chase: The primary – not the only, but the primary – function of a record label is to act as a bank. When you’re fortunate enough to be successful and so on, you don’t need to rely on record companies as the banks… We’re doing a bunch of shows with Trent [Reznor - of Nine Inch Nails] this summer in Europe. I look forward to sitting down and talking to him about what’s on his radar.”

Reznor, of course, has been trying tactics like giving away his album on BitTorrent – and even setting up his own torrent tracker. We suspect Metallica would draw the line at this, but whatever you think of the band’s previous attitudes towards file-sharing, taking tips from NIN on how to evolve in the digital era is a positive move.

Well, unless you’re WMG of course. Meanwhile, Ulrich is also excited about the Guitar Hero: Metallica game that’s coming out. “I really believe that if we sit here five years from now or ten years… it’ll be a fairly standard way of releasing music.”

Thankfully Metallica take a more relaxed approach towards file-sharing than they did in the days of Napster – otherwise drummer Lars Ulrich might be staring down a lawsuit from his own band.

He’s admitted downloading their last album Death Magnetic illegally. “I sat there myself and downloaded Death Magnetic from the internet just to try it,” he tells VH1. “This was like two or three days after it leaked… I figured if there is anybody that has a right to download Death Magnetic for free, it’s me.”

Quite so.

Good news: console music game Rock Band 2 sold 809,000 copies last year in the US, while Guitar Hero: World Tour sold 1.5 million copies there.

Bad news: both games sold less than their predecessors, with the latter selling 55% less copies than Guitar Hero III. Meanwhile, NPD Group says that music games saw a 6% drop in revenues in 2008. Have music games lost their lustre?

Clearly it’s early days: 2009 will see a new focus on spin-offs to both these franchises, including a Metallica-themed Guitar Hero in March, and the Beatles game from Rock Band developer Harmonix, due out by Christmas.

(via PaidContent)

It’s been an open secret for a while now, but it’s finally official that Metallica are getting their own version of Guitar Hero, following in the footsteps of Aerosmith.

Due out next year, it’ll feature 28 of the band’s songs, as well as tracks from Alice In Chains, Foo Fighters, Slayer – \m/ – and Queen. It’ll come with a drumkit as well as a guitar, and there’s apparently an Expert mode using two bass drum kick pedals.

Meanwhile, in other music game news, Pearl Jam’s Ten album will be released in its entirety through Rock Band in March, and EA is publishing metal-centric music game Brutal Legend. Analysts have been suggesting that music games may have reached their peak, but there certainly seems no let-up in the number of deals being signed in this area.

The band’s new album `Death Magnetic’ has come under fire by audiophile fans complaining that the mix is too loud and as a result the sound is clipping. The head engineer at the mastering studio has apparently admitted to not being proud of the work on this album, and an online petition has been signed by over 6,000 people demanding for a re-mastered release. The real controversy is that many fans allege the Guitar Hero release of the lead single `The Day That Never Comes’ sounds better than the album version; so much so that an illegal game rip (more…)