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Ever wonder why so much of modern pop music sounds so bland and indistinguishable? Why, thank focus groups for the tedium!
Thanks to Jason for the tip.
What next? Mr. Valdez has some rather good advice:
To be a working Jazz musician requires one to constantly be booking and promoting gigs. It's getting less and less common to have steady gigs anymore. The player is usually responsible for doing much of the promotion that the club owner used to do. The club may have an ad in a weekly paper or a listing in the entertainment section, but many times this isn't enough to ensure a decent crowd. When I was younger I didn't take promoting my gigs very seriously. I just cared about making the music good and pinning down the next gig. If you don't draw many listeners to your gig it doesn't really matter how good the music is, you probably won't get many more gigs there in the future. Besides, how much fun is it to play to an empty house?
- ...[P]osters are not always the best way to advertise your gigs. Postering is expensive and time consuming.
- Mass media is the musician's best friend. Make sure you send out your press releases for your gigs about two weeks before they happen.
- Make sure you send a note to the music calendar editors. These are usually different folks than the journalists.
- You should try to develop personal relationships with the writers and DJs that cover Jazz [or whatever musical genre you are playing... --Casper].
- Try to get on the radio as a guest before your gig. People's memories are short so do this right before your gig.
- Get your demo CDs to the DJs to play on their shows.
- Find out when the outdoor fairs and festivals happen and start working on them six months before they happen. Many times these will be booked by a professional booking agency.
- Contact every booking agency, caterer, and party planner in the phone book. These are the real money gigs.
- Work on an email list. Bring a notebook to every gig and make sure to ask the audience to put their email info in it.
- Get on the phone and personally invite people to your gig. This is much more effective than any other promotion method.
- Talk the club owner into offering some kind of food or drink special just for your gig. Use this as a draw in your promo materials.
- Save every review, blurb and ad about your band for your promo package.
- People are always more interested in musicians and bands from out of town. Bring in a player from out of town for a few gigs to generate more buzz.
Recent bickering between labels and Apple over download prices has made headlines in the last week. Many see this as an issue of labels biting the hand that feeds them. Others see this as an issue of encouraging growth and responsible pricing in digital music. Many think uniform prices are integral to gaining more customers.
(Consumers don't like to be confused, goes the argument. We need flat pricing. Forget that uniform prices exist in few places in our economy, and that such a rigid pricing structure would usually attract the attention of federal regulators who seek out and crush collusion. We're told it's in our best interest to pay the same for a hot new release as a 40-year-old catalog title that sells 3,000 units a year. Sensible? No.)
Glenn has touched on this before, but he still says it quite well.
Some tips on landing gigs (a bit condensed; follow the link for the full text):
So, Warner is going to start a label that abandons the physical world altogether. I'm not sure as to where I stand on this one right as of now.
On the one hand, I've bought way too many albums that were 80% dreck. Sometimes, I got a pleasant surprise; most of the time, though, I got used to finding the fast forward button in the dark. The idea of being able to buy only what I want without having to suffer through a bunch of filler has it's appeal. On the other hand, there's something to be said about listening to a song in the context of what the artist intended, taking the emotional ride from tune to tune.
Glenn has a few thoughts on the subject as well:
The album is still a defining artistic statement and the de facto measure of an artist’s career. Any musician worth his/her salt has put out a good album. Not a good single. Not a good MP3 download. A good album. Do I expect future artists to think so little of themselves that they aim to release singles or three-song EPs? Not at all. The album format is still what matters. Egos will demand albums. Fortunes are made on albums. Better than the single or EP, the album portrays all a band’s strengths, moods, conflicts and thoughts. If a band is one-dimensional and shallow then by all means let’s relegate it to a career of one-offs. If a band is genuinely good it shouldn’t stop at an EP, it needs to offer more to listeners.
Granted, there are plenty of bad albums, and there are many more that are merely mediocre. In the old days — pre-digital era — consumers were strong-armed into buying the entire album. But as Lou Reed sang, “These are different times.” People can choose not to pay and find just about anything on P2P networks (if they want to roll the RIAA dice) or they can buy a la carte at online stores. In fact, in a time when buyers can preview online (band websites, MTV.com, VH1.com, MySpace.com) and often at retailers (listening post, new digital kiosks) there’s no excuse for buying bad albums because there shouldn’t be any surprise.
But buyer beware: Buying three or four tracks may encourage the mediocre to keep recording. Here’s my theory on the sub-album model of the e-label: The downside of the digital revolution is that it will eventually provide a business model that will support mediocre artists who don’t have the goods to make a good album. You see, good bands make good albums while mediocre bands make three good songs and a ringtone. Buying albums will foster long term artist development and more worthwhile music. The three-song-and-a-ringtone model encourages labels to seek a quick return on a flavor of the month. It won’t weed out the weaker artists, and it will ruin the process of natural evolution that previously ended the careers all but the stronger artists.
One of the reasons why I can't quite decide where to fall on this one is that I'm in the process of starting my own label (for the upcoming album). Holding on to the idea of the album does have more appeal from the business side of the fence, but I suspect that the single will be rising in acension, dragging album sales along with it (rather than the supremecy of the album in the world today). But I could be wrong.
The RIAA, ever exemplars of infinite wisdom, has decided that the next threat to life, liberty and small fuzzy animals clearly must be The Ability Of Users To Burn CDs (caps are required, since it's such a scary thought).
Music copied onto blank recordable CDs is becoming a bigger threat to the bottom line of record stores and music labels than online file-sharing, the head of the recording industry's trade group said Friday.
"Burned" CDs accounted for 29 percent of all recorded music obtained by fans in 2004, compared to 16 percent attributed to downloads from online file-sharing networks, said Mitch Bainwol, chief executive for the Recording Industry Association of America.
For the record, Mitch, have you perhaps heard of the Audio Home Recording Act? You know, the one that specifically mentions copying a record at home for personal purposes? In fact, I'm pretty sure it says something like this: "...users may still make as many first-generation copies as they want..." Sounds pretty much like we have permission to burn CDs to our hearts content. I'm also reasonably sure that if I take three tracks off of one CD (that I own, naturally) and two tracks off of another CD (for which I have paid good money), it's still a first generation copy for me to compile them onto a single CD.
Thanks to Simon for the tip and who has a lovely little spot of sentiment:
Simon Wright, chief executive of Virgin Entertainment Group International, which oversees the Virgin chain of music stores, said he's in favor of labels releasing more albums in a copy-protected CD format, regardless of the potential for consumer backlash.
"If, particularly, the technology allows two-to-three burns, that's well within acceptable limits and I don't think why consumers should have any complaints," Wright said.
You don't, Simon? Well, how about this: I've paid for my CD, and I want to decide what to do with it, on the same basis that I've been allowed to for the last thirty years when I've been buying music and supporting your industry. If, all of a sudden, there are to be limits placed on what I can do with the CD, then I'd expect to see a substantial reduction in the price, in the same way that a disposable plate costs a lot less than a plate i can use many times. And when you say "acceptable" - to whom? I have songs which I put on every bloody compilation I make (I'm told the technical term for this is 'anal') - why is this unacceptable to you?
The big question is: does all this signal that the RIAA have accepted they've lost the filesharing battle, and are trying to move on to safer ground?
Now that's a much more interesting question....
Patterning after Hollywood's movie release windowing, a possibility is to release songs to different formats at differing times:
One strategy [Thomas] Hesse [a Sony BMG executive] mentioned was to utilize different windows when releasing music. This movie industry does this when it has different windows for theaters, rental, purchase and sticking it on poor, defenseless airline passengers on cramped cross-country flights. It would go like this: Sell a $3, 30-second ringtone a month or two before the album is out. A few weeks prior to street date, stick the song on iTunes and sell tens if not hundreds of thousands of downloads for $0.99 each. Then when the album comes out it's business as usual.
This is a fairly reasonable suposition as to what's proably going to be the way of the world (and could I make that sentence any more tenative). I'm not sure as to how I would want to fit in this model, but give me some time to think about it.
The grain of salt here is that the column is written by a lawyer, so there just might be a bit of self-servingness here.
Not surprisingly, musicians have come to loathe the complex, "fancy" contracts lawyers invariably draft, to the point that the mere prospect of a lawyer becoming involved at the deal-making stage is often enough to induce nausea. But it shouldn't be that way. In fact, as explained below, these "fancy" contracts -- which are loathed for the excruciating detail and precise language they employ -- are valuable to all parties involved precisely because of these detailed provisions.
I don't particularly like dealing with lawyers, but I understand the necessary evil they tend to be. In fact, I know that I'm about to go through a round of unpleasantness with one of the bands I'm currently working with regarding money and credit. We didn't work out the details before hand -- and commit what details we did work out to paper -- so the devil in the details is asking for his due.
From Here's A Hint.
I believe this to be crucial to success on the local level. If the band's performance is not so much a transmission of notes from musician to audience, but a social event, people are going want to come. When I go out, the company is as important as the destination. I can spin indie records at home and drink much more cheaply than at Liberation Dance Party, but if I'm out with people, it makes all the difference. I think this is why a band that normally draws 40 or 50 people can draw in the hundreds for a CD release party. It has the "eventy" feel to it that gets the outliers to come out when they normally wouldn't for "any old show".
The real question, though, is how to make your shows feel events? Obviously, it helps to not suck and have interesting songs. It also helps to know a lot of people and make sure they know you're in a band. I think that key to that last bit is how you let them know. It's got to be honest and normal. It can't be weekly emails to everyone@yourcompany.com saying that you're playing some show. It has to be through real methods like conversation and human interaction. And even then, it has to be real. There's nothing more insulting than having a musician "network" with you. You can see the look in their eyes when you tell them you aren't in a band; they immediately start scoping for a "more important" mark. Those musicians ensure that I will not be patronizing them if I can help it.
Personally, I rather hate dealing with the "networkers" -- in music or otherwise. One of the things that I have had to get after the other people in various bands in which I've played is to mingle during breaks and after shows. It's not enough to go over and spend all of your time with your buddies from the office. Don't ignore them, but please take the time to talk to as many of the people who came out to see you as you can. It's the least you can do ('specially as they are willingly giving up large portions of their night and money to see/hear you play) and you just might make a new friend.
One of the dirty little secrets of pop music (or much of any music, for that matter) is that it's so very hard to make a living doing nothing but playing music in a band. To that end, various people are contributing to a list of jobs that various musicians have held either while they were working or afterwards.
Some examples:
I'd also advise taking the list with just a tiny grain of salt.
It's titled The Cheapening Of Music, but I'm not so sure about this.
Creating an album — not just a collection of songs, but an entire “experience” has long been an artform in and of itself. It’s part of what got me interested in design early on: studying the packaging design and album artwork of bands and artists I worshipped. The collection and artwork combined with a group of songs recorded within the same time period always seemed like a time capsule of what the band was doing at that moment. But with the ability to buy a single song immediately via the web, will a shift materialize? Will we go back to the days of 7” 45s, where the single ruled?
When my friend said that he believed music has been cheapened, he was referring to the fact that music is now everywhere. It’s in your cellphone, on the web, on your microwave, TV, toys, etc. It’s even a marketing tool. It’s become easier to get, but will that affect the music itself?
To me, the near ubiquity of music doesn't cheapen it -- rather, it changes the audience for the piece. There's a challenge in writing a meaningful piece of music for a audience that is only going to hear thirty seconds of it; I would say that's actually harder than taking 3:05 to get your thoughts across.
Music is cheapened if it becomes mass produced and thrown out the door just to fill the gaping maw of consumerism. On the one hand, this has been happening for quite some time now. On the other hand, quality still manages to find it's way out, too. I'd be willing to hazzard a guess that it's probably in the same proportions it's always been in; it's just that the larger numbers of the dross drowns out the gold.
The author goes on to talk about websites and music:
What has become crucial is the band’s web site — the depot for news, info, photos, music, videos, etc. It’s possible that the web site will become even more important as digital distribution gains even more steam. Perhaps an “album” will really be a web site devoted to a group of songs released at the same time. Each “album” will stand on it’s own like an archived article.
I'm rather sympathetic to this point of view. Jeff Jarvis has been harping on this for quite some time -- the media marketspace (particularly the entertainment marketspace) is moving more and more towards a conversation rather than a lecture.
Under the old model, musicians would lay their work out and hope that people liked it. Feedback tended to be record sales, as well as the occasional letter and meet and greet. Now, fans email, IM, comment (et al) back to the artists directly.
It's a good thing, I think.
And thanks to Paul for the tip.
...men spend more money on video games than they do on all forms of music...
Initially, this surprised me. Then, I thought about my brother, who's an avid gamer at 38 and hasn't bought a CD (other than a gift) in ten years. So, I can see it.
Brad points to an article about the use of physical discs vs. the potential future of internet bound media.
But if we have learned anything from digital music, isn’t it that optimism is futile? The grand vision of a celestial jukebox was in everybody’ eyes in 1999, and look what it has come to. The record labels don’t want no stinkin’ celestial jukebox, that’s for certain, and the tech companies want it only if they can deliver it in their own private format. How will Hollywood differ?
In very real terms, he's right. The entertainment industry has historically shown out and out animosity towards technological innovations -- starting with the player piano.
Throw in there the Betamax decision: Hollywood was deadset against it (Valenti's rhetoric was nothing short of apocalyptic. Now, movie make more money from selling DVDs than they do from box office receipts.
Clay Shirky was given a DVD made by a friend of him speaking. Yet, he ran into problems when he tried to copy it for himself.
Got that? I am in possession of a video, of me, shot by a friend, copied to a piece of physical media given to me as a gift. In the video, I am speaking words written by me, and for which I am the clear holder of the copyright. I am working with said video on a machine I own. Every modern legal judgment concerning copyright, from the Berne Convention to the Betamax case, is on my side. AND I CAN'T MAKE A COPY DIRECTLY FROM THE DEVICE. This is because copyright laws do not exist to defend the moral rights of copyright holders -- they exist to help enforce artificial scarcity.
Tonight, during the voting off phase, a contestant [Aloha] let slip that they do actually have to deal with song rights clearance, right up to the moment the show airs. Watch the clip to catch the explanation, and how the chosen song didn't work out. She was voted off the show moments later.
Thanks to Matthew for the tip.
Many books become hits on the strength of personal recommendations. I would hazzard that the same thing applies to music; if I someone I know and trust tells me that I may like an artist, I'm much more inclined to check them out and hear what's being offered.
Thanks to Cory for the tip.
From time to time, I sell some of my older crap on Amazon. Still, I have some hopes of selling some original material of my own some day (maybe a Canvas CD someday?). Kevin Kelly gives the eight steps you need to get onto Amazon.
A recording engineer is suing both the record label and Ray Charles' estate, claiming that he was denied a credit on the Grammy winning album.
J-Lo has says that she can't stand to be alone.
A German study finds that copyright law may be hurting the very people it's obstensibly intended to help.
According to a GEMA (German collecting society) insider, only about 1,200 German composers can live from their creative output.
Only a small minority of artists reaches ordinary living standards from copyright income...
Thanks to Cory for the tip.
The top 5 money makers of 2004.
It seems that some insurance companies didn't want to pony up about $10M when she cancelled her tour.
Some good news:
The music industry reversed a four-year decline as album sales rose slightly in 2004 while overall music sales spiked..."
Yeah, remember when digital music and filesharing was going to end the industry?
SXSW, the amazingly successfully music showcase in Austin, is being copied in Detroit. And your band could play there, too.
Thanks to David for the tip.
These days, it seems like all the old favorites are getting back together for a little outing (and some quick cash, just maybe?). The Guardian lays out some ground rules for any band thinking of making a comeback.
3. If it's about the money, admit it
We understand that a lot of great, great bands never get their due at the time. And we understand that after splitting, the members - who may very well have changed the fabric of pop music - will often spend 20 years releasing solo albums no one buys and playing gigs no one bar two fanzine writers attends. So if the drug-addled members step forward and say, "Enough of noble poverty. We want some of the cash that talentless wasters have made by ripping off our sound," it's hard to argue. It's hard to feel quite so sympathetic when the musicians insist that they feel more relevant than ever now and have really got something to communicate to the kids - kids young enough to be their grandchildren.
Getting it right: The Pixies named their reunion the Sell-Out Tour. They've made a bundle, and they've played some blinding rock music. Now they and we can go home happy the job is done.
Getting it wrong: Jane's Addiction's reformation "came just when they're needed most", according to their website. No, no, no. It came when they were at a loose end.
A gallery of album covers that are oh so close to a more famous one.
Thanks to Brad for the tip.
Jaxx, the local venue where metal bands go to die, might be on the block. Figures being tossed around are anywhere from $750k to $2M. It'll be worth it if new management takes a decent space and starts to book worthwhile bands. I've been to Jaxx a few times (even played there once). The venue has the potential to be so much more than it is.
Thanks to Here's A Hint for the tip.
Beyonce says that the latest Destiny's Child album might be the last. Given her success as a solo artist, I wasn't particularly thikning there would be all that many more anyway.
The Beastie Boys sampled a small phrase of James Newton's Choir for one of their rap songs. When they did so, they paid a license fee for the privilege. Newton sued under copyright infringement. The Beasties won.
The sample consisted of three notes. Now, I wonder how this fits with the NWA/Funkadelic copyright decision.
Gladly, if I can get the same amount as Sting did. And I'll even do more than eight songs.
Brown Paper Tickets seems to be a site providing an alternative to the Ticketmaster.
I suspect that this site will fail much like Pearl Jam's effort in the late 90's, but I'm hoping not. Anything to add competition is a win for everyone who isn't Ticketmaster.
Thanks to Andy for the tip.
We can only hope they'll rest on their laurels.
The Darkness have sold enough official band thongs to pay for their new album.
According to a new report, the rockers have sold so much official merchandise - including black G-strings emblazoned with The Darkness, which cost £10 each - that they can afford to make another album and go on tour without having to sell any records.
As a side note, I'll be glad to sell anyone a Casper thong. I'll even make it £2 ($5) -- what a bargain!
Eliot Spitzer, the NY attorney general who has already been after the insurance industry and the brokerage houses for illegal shenanigans, is taking aim at the record labels for how they use money to buy radio time.
The inquiry encompasses all the major radio formats and is not aiming at any individual record promoter, these people said. Mr. Spitzer and representatives for the record companies declined to comment.
The major record labels have paid middlemen for decades, though the practice has long been derided as a way to skirt a federal statute - known as the payola law - outlawing bribes to radio broadcasters.
Broadcasters are prohibited from taking cash or anything of value in exchange for playing a specific song, unless they disclose the transaction to listeners. But in a practice that is common in the industry, independent promoters pay radio stations annual fees - often exceeding $100,000 - not, they say, to play specific songs, but to obtain advance copies of the stations' playlists. The promoters then bill record labels for each new song that is played; the total tab costs the record industry tens of millions of dollars each year.
The new scrutiny comes at an inconvenient time for the major record companies, which have been pressing federal and state law enforcement officials to shut pirate CD manufacturers and the unimpeded flow of copyrighted music online.
This could stand to be a pretty huge thing. Payola (I don't really care what the labels want to call it, a spade's a spade) has been a major force in the music business for almost as long as the industry's been around -- see Hit Men for a much more thorough discussion. I don't know if anything will come of this (or if the money will just be shifted around like what happened after the legislation from the 70's), but it will be interesting to see.
I just caught the tail end of this discussion (as I was spending most of my time with Mr. Pope), but what I did hear was interesting.
Several A&R people were talking about the lack of successful catalog sales in any market other than rock -- urban has virtually none whatsoever. The reps were saying that very few artists ever make it to Diamond status, and those that do tend to be rockers from the 70's.
And, as a random aside, the A&R rep for A Simple Plan said that their forthcoming album will be released on the hybrid CD/DVD format. It's part of Atlantic's testing of the waters to see what the consumers are going to do.
Will Lee, bassist extrodinaire for the David Letterman show (amongst other things) opened up Bass Player with a key note address. His mannerisms and presentation was very different than his talk at Bass Camp. He was more stilted, less open. He read his comments from a sheet (as opposed to speaking off the cuff).
Only 49% of the tickets on the latest tour sold? Has the KISS Army raised the white flag?
-- Update --
Now with linky goodness!
Wal-Mart may be helping drive down the price of CDs to under $10.
In the past decade, Wal-Mart has quietly emerged as the nation's biggest record store. Wal-Mart now sells an estimated one out of every five major-label albums. It has so much power, industry insiders say, that what it chooses to stock can basically determine what becomes a hit. "If you don't have a Wal-Mart account, you probably won't have a major pop artist," says one label executive.
Along with other giant retailers such as Best Buy and Target, Wal-Mart willingly loses money selling CDs for less than $10 (they buy most hit CDs from distributors for around $12). These companies use bargain CDs to lure consumers to the store, hoping they might also grab a boombox or a DVD player while checking out the music deals.
Less-expensive CDs are something consumers have been demanding for years. But here's the hitch: Wal-Mart is tired of losing money on cheap CDs. It wants to keep selling them for less than $10 -- $9.72, to be exact -- but it wants the record industry to lower the prices at which it purchases them. Last winter, Wal-Mart asked the industry to supply it with choice albums -- from new releases from alternative rockers the Killers to perennial classics such as Beatles 1 -- at favorable prices. According to music-industry sources, Wal-Mart executives hinted that they could reduce Wal-Mart's CD stock and replace it with more lucrative DVDs and video games.
"This wasn't framed as a gentle negotiation," says one label rep. "It's a line in the sand -- you don't do this, then the threat is this." (Wal-Mart denies these claims.) As a result, all of the major labels agreed to supply some popular albums to Wal-Mart's $9.72 program. "We're in such a competitive world, and you can't reach consumers if you're not in Wal-Mart," admits another label executive.
I don't know if I like the idea of Wal-Mart using it's de facto monopoly position to arbitrarily set prices to it's own liking, but they didn't particularly ask me for my opinion.
Another piece of fall out from this decision will be the increased death of independent music stores. Having seen the impact that Wal-Mart has on independent and small businesses, I can only conclude that the same thing is nearly inevitable for indie music stores. Unless they differentiate themselves into niche marketers, Wal-Mart will run them out of business.
Our dearly departed mp3.com used to be a great repository for unsigned bands. One of the people involved with making mp3.com has posted an analysis of how successful bands organically grew their audience.
We spent a fair amount of time analyzing this data which included actually contacting the bands to find out why they were in our charts. After interacting with somewhere around 20-30 bands we came up with a series of characteristics of these bands which included:
There was a lot of more fascinating data, but once we had this data we decided to take a look a level deeper.
- These bands were generally pre-Soundscan (they didn’t show up on local retail sales figures because they only sold their CDs at shows.)
- They were organized online using a combination of IM, blogs, and street team tools to get the word out.
- A majority of them were playing all ages venues which didn’t normally pop up on the radar of club goers. (Who wants to hang out with 15 year olds ;-) )
- The genres of music were genres that weren’t typically represented by MTV, radio and retail and were clustered around emo/pop punk and grindcore.
- These bands generally played around 50-100 shows a year.
It's worth the time to read.
Thanks to Scott for the tip.
Gerd draws a parallel.
The RIAA, protector of poor musicians everywhere, set up a group called SoundExchange to collect the royalties for satellite, cable and web based broadcasting. So far, so good, right? The catch here is that musicians have to contact SoundExchange to get their money. If they don't, SoundExchange gets to keep what they've collected.
Tens of thousands of performers have failed to claim their digital dues from the Recording Industry Ass. Of America's royalties agency, SoundExchange. If they don't get in touch by the end of the year, SoundExchange will keep the royalties that were owed to them between 1996 and 2000.
I have this mental image of a scene from the invetiable movie: Someone from the RIAA protesting to the camera, saying "We've made announcements and tried to get musicians to sign up" while on a split screen, a small man walks around a music conference, whispering "Hey! If you want your royalties, sign up here!".
Thanks to Simon for the tip.
The RIAA racks up another 762. Bravo, guys.
From Fred von Lohmann at the EFF:
The campaign appears to have hit its stride, with the Recording Industry Association of America announcing roughly 500 new suits each month.
Suing large numbers of "regular folks" is relatively unprecedented in the annals of intellectual property law. But we could be watching the makings of a new trend. DirecTV, for example, has in the last three years sent more than 170,000 demand letters to individuals who are allegedly "stealing" satellite TV. The letters deliver an ultimatum: pay $3,500 or face a lawsuit. So far, DirecTV has filed more than 24,000 suits against people who have called their bluff.
So it looks like the recording industry may be lifting a page from DirecTV's playbook. But have the lawsuits worked for the recording industry?
It's an interesting read about how the legal punishment strategy isn't being all that effective.
Thanks to Cory for the tip.
At least we don't have to worry about replacing our entire music collection for another five years or so.
Thanks to Coolfer for the tip.
Music Thing has a few posts about how Prince got his sound on some of his mid-80's music.
- Kiss was originally a country song. Prince recorded it on cassette and gave it to a band he was developing. They were called Maserati. The tape was just a verse and chorus with Prince singing and playing acoustic guitar. Maserati weren’t impressed.
- The band worked on the track for a day, trying to make it work. They still weren’t impressed.
- Early the next morning, Prince came into the studio and listened to what they’d done. He recorded the electric guitar part and his vocal. Then he threw the band out of the studio and stripped off most of what they’d recorded.
Off the top of my head, if Prince writes a song for you, you pretty much damn well find a way to make it work.
Also some details on the keyboard player who always dressed as a surgeon.
- Those massive synth sounds on ‘1999’? They came from an Oberheim 4 Voice, multi-tracked four times with different patches.
- Everything was always played live. The only time he let Dr Fink use a sequencer was to play the rhythm part on ‘I Would Die 4 U’ from Purple Rain. Prince could play it live himself, but Dr Fink couldn’t.
For what it's worth, I feel this guy's pain. Back when I was playing with In The Pocket, we did a Jeff Beck tune called Star Cycle. It had this heavily sequenced keyboard part that Tommy refused to program; he played it all by hand. The upshot was that we could only rehearse the song once or twice a week because his hands would get too tired to play through the song.
Given what some of the soundtracks sound like, I'd guess they're going for the too-much-money crowd, crossing New Age music with vaguely world rhythms. Not that there's anything wrong with that; I'd love to have a crack at that marketspace.
Thanks to Simon for the tip.
This article has been getting lots and lots of conversation over at Pho. Three myths are covered and discussed:
It's a good article to read, maybe get into a few conversations for yourself.
Bootlegs from live music can be copyrighted, but only for a limited time. It's that whole pesky Constitution thing (Article 1, Section 8, "by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries [my emphasis]"), unlike what the original law said (namely, protection for all time).
...[The record label's] anxieties about monetizing music in the future are justified. Things are going to get a lot worse. Most of you know how bad. I'm talking today because in five years of reporting from Silicon Valley on these issues, the technology people have failed to tackle the issues. For me, they lost the moral authority when they argued that Napster should be legalized and when asked "How do you pay the rights holders?" answered, "That's not our problem". All scientists bear some responsibility for what they create. Secondly the music industry has now started to sue people for enjoying music. It needs to remember that it's in the music business. And thirdly, no one believes in the "cure" that's supposed to solve these problems. It isn't sustainable.
A music reporter hands out some free advice. I don't agree with everything he says, but it's at least interesting to consider.
Yeah, I know that this is a joke, but it's still amusing. Not to mention spot-on, and a little too close to the truth.
Dear Content Producers and Owners: [i.e. labels and artists, among others]
... Look at us: every year, we churn out more computer games than your entire industry is worth. You know how we do it? We like our customers. We don't treat them like potential criminals, and try to make our products do less. We invent new things like online role-playing -games, where the money does not come from duplication of bits (which cannot be stopped, regardless of your DRM scheme) but from providing experiences that the people want. ...
Signed: The Computer Industry
Festivals like ATP [All Tomorrow's Parties] are the best PR for the increasingly successful business model of selling eclectic music made by and for people who actually like it. There are a host of like-minded events targeted to the dedicated fan of niche sounds. The Coachella festival of Indio, California, has become a pilgrimage for followers of cult favorites and rising international acts. Bonnaroo of Manchester, Tennessee, has roots in the jam-band scene but an open-ended vision. ...
These are but a few of the signs that the record business is coming to grips with a small new future. That doesn’t mean the industry’s overall revenues will shrink, nor that record sales will go down. Right now, record sales are plainly rising.... They’re just not rising in the ways we’ve become accustomed to -- the biggest, most famous artists are no longer posting ever more impressive sales figures. Suddenly, there are more and more records selling 10,000 to 500,000 copies each year, and less and less selling 1 million to 10 million. To put it simply, the patterns that used to govern sales no longer work. The industry’s biggest successes are now small ones.
Some good observations from an indie music festival across the pond in the UK.
Microsoft my be trying to add DRM directly to the operating system.
[The] deal would see Microsoft support "an industry-wide copy control platform" built in to its next-generation Longhorn operating system, with the computer giant instructing labels that the compatible secure CDs must contain additional multimedia content, such as bonus tracks, "as a quid pro quo for adding effective [DRM] into the consumer experience".
Coolfer comments on the same topic, but he is saying that the labels are reaching out to MS. To be honest, I'm not sure as to which is more likely to be true.
Thanks to Frank for the tip.
Steve Albini, the producer of Nirvana's In Utero album, tells a tale of how a band can succeed only to fail. Well worth the read.
Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there's only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says "Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim again, please. Backstroke". And he does of course.
This is a bit of old news for some people, but I'm just now finding it:
A federal appeals court has ruled that rap artists should pay for every musical sample included in their work -- even minor, unrecognizable snippets of music.
Lower courts had ruled that artists must pay when they sample other artists' work. But it has been legal to use musical snippets -- a note here, a chord there -- as long as they weren't identifiable.
The decision Tuesday by a three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati gets rid of that distinction. The court said federal laws aimed at stopping piracy of recordings apply to digital sampling, and it ordered the case back to a lower court for rehearing.
"If you cannot pirate the whole sound recording, can you 'lift' or 'sample' something less than the whole? Our answer to that question is in the negative," the court said.
"Get a license or do not sample. We do not see this as stifling creativity in any significant way."
I, on the other hand, see lots of lawsuits in the future. When the legal principle is that even a single note must be licensed, I hate to even think of the number of court cases that will soon be on the way (not to mention the nuisance suits).
Want good tickets or to meet your favorite artist? Bribe someone!
A week later Lil' Kim was scheduled to play the B. B. King Blues Club. All shifty glances and thick Slavic accents, the staff could have been extras in a movie about cold war black marketeers. No need for disguised motives here: I placed a 50 clean in the palm of my hand and pressed it into the flesh of the ticket taker.
"I really want to see Lil' Kim."
His eyes grew large, and he shot a frantic glance at the manager, a large man with a black suit. "I help you?" he asked. I delivered the 50 straight into the fat palm of his big bear hand. "I really want to see Lil' Kim."
He cleared a path and ushered me to the head of the line like a Gazprom executive to a waiting Gulfstream. "You let me know you want come back," he said, handing me his card.
It didn't always work out for the writer of the article, though. I think he went about one for ten.
Prince suggests the new musicians should avoid the industry.
Thanks to Simon for the tip.
Cassettes 2 CDs is a service that converts analog cassette tapes to CDs (and quite cheaply, too). Michael had some tapes of his uncle playing sax and clarinet that he sent off to be converted, and he speaks quite glowingly of the experience.
Thanks to Anil for the tip.
Jorgen Larsen, CEO of Universal Music International, may just be one of those who gets it -- he writes cogently as to how the music industry should be facing the new environment of the web:
...[T]he internet also represents the greatest silver lining in our 100-year history, once legitimate delivery systems can make all the music in the world available to internet-connected consumers. That era is just around the corner, as exemplified by the recent Europ