No Revolution

No Revolution: Now Part of IndieHQ

2006-12-06T11:04:00.000-05:00

Readers and Friends, I'm happy to announce that effective immediately, I'll be officially joining forces with the IndieHQ family, where I will become a contributing columnist / editor. This also means that NoRevolution will go on indefinite hiatus.

Anyone who subscribes via RSS should switch their subscription to:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/IndieHeadquarters.

Good night, and good luck.

It's Been A Little While

2006-12-02T20:24:00.000-05:00

Things are ramping up at over at Haystack. If you haven't checked it out yet, please do. The early phase of our beta is done and in the early part of the new year we will be launching some incredible enhancements and have some pretty amazing content announcements.

One request, I'm looking to find some of the best band sites (-not myspace, purevolume, or haystack pages) that use social media or community contribution in really amazing ways. I have some of my own, but would love to see more, please leave them in the comments below.

Two that I can come up with off the top of my head are: +44 and Head Automatica.

Haystack Now In "Public Preview"

2006-11-15T12:33:00.001-05:00

So what is Haystack? A social discovery network for music and music only. We took the best elements of social media optimization (think digg or del.icio.us) and built it upon a community of listeners and artists. We also have a group of users, called Tastemakers, who are established authorities on music.

From the Haystack FAQ:

Tastemakers are influencers within the Haystack community and are trusted sources for music recommendations. Tastemakers can be established music experts like producers, writers or DJ’s or just friends who you look to for suggestions on “what’s next.” A great Tastemaker can bring an unheard artist to the masses, or revive a forgotten release to its glory days.

The final component is a built-in library of music, where the artists and labels are compensated, using our RightsNow Media Royalty. We currently have almost a thousand major, indie, and unsigned bands and tons more will be uploaded over the next few weeks.

There are many many more features currently available, as well as in the works... but I hope you take the time to check out this early preview.

To check out my profile: http://www.haystack.com/bill

Don't believe me? Listen to what Greg Verdino at Digitas and Daily Candy have to say about Haystack.

Idolator Says College Radio Is Bullshit

2006-11-11T13:13:00.000-05:00

In the second part of their secret interview series, Idolator talks to a label college radio promotion person, and gets the straight dope.

Here's a summary:

College radio programmers love to name drop, but do not really know who Sebadoh is.
Adds and college charts are an irrelevant barometer of success that exist only to please out-of-touch higher ups.
Records are seldom, if ever, added on merit- it's all politics.
A large percentage of charts are totally fake.

Besides a handful of stations like WSOU, Blackout! never really was big into spending money on buying overpriced trade ads, or indie promotions teams. I always felt that tour support yielded a much better ROI.

CMJ Wrap Up

2006-11-04T22:42:00.000-05:00

Aside from today's Haystack/ V2/ L-Magazine party I didn't really attend a ton of CMJ events this week. However, I was fortunate enough to moderate a panel called Improving Retail Relations With Labels and Distributors. The main focus of discussion was how indie retailers and record labels can help one another in pursuit of their shared business goals in a changing marketplace.

In addition to yours truly, my fellow panelists were:

Pat Egan, Director of Retail Sales, Relapse Records
Audrey Faine, Director of Marketing, Kill Rock Stars/5RC
Michael Kurtz, President, Music Monitor Network
Carl Mello, Senior Buyer, Newbury Comics

(Unfortunately, nobody currently who works at a distribution company was on the panel.)

Here are a few of the panel's observations about the current music landscape:

Music has been devalued. Music loss leader status at the mass consumer level. Apple uses music to sell iPods, Best Buy to sell refrigerators. But the net effect puts the squeeze on indie retail because it simply cannot compete at that level.
Distributors concentrate on big box stores. Another problem is that distribution companies put a tremendous amount of emphasis on chain marketing programs at those large chain retailers. Distros defer to the big box stores who can deliver thousand piece orders in their game of pennies. Distributors then turn to the labels, who are compelled to spend $3 a unit on a "micro-marketing campaign" which in reality translates to a piece on a shelf (IF you can actually get compliance.)
Shift in consumer behavior. There's also been a shift in the consumer base. At one point, niche albums for niche crowds were served by specialty retailers and ignored by the chains. In addition, the epicenter of music community has shifted from a geographic location (record stores in major cities) to a virtual one (the web.)

So, with all these problems, how will indie stores survive to help indie labels break new bands?

Re-establish themselves as the hub of community. The whole panel agreed on this. Carl indicated Newbury is doing this by expanding into suburban malls, and going head to head with "lifestyle" stores such as Hot Topic on their own turf. Other stores are morphing into a music related coffee house and performance spaces, where the small and growing artists can find a voice. Another idea brought forward was also to bring in special screenings of concert films or documentaries to retail (ex. Movies like American Hardcore aren't playing on a national level.)
Embrace the internet. Pandora's box isn't closing. Ergo, stores also need to harness the power of the web to reaffirm the discovery and tastemaking ability of knowledgeable record store people. (cough, Haystack, cough.) Instead of just moving coupons or email blasts... stores need to know how to better utilize what's out there in emerging technologies to better serve their local market.
Labels need to keep supporting the indies. Special tools such as in-store artist appearances, special releases for indie stores will enable stores to draw traffic.

It would be great to hear from others in the trenches on this. Perhaps we can do a virtual follow up to this panel via Skype and issue it as podcast.

Time Warp: Ed Gein's Car

2006-10-20T01:38:00.000-04:00

Many thanks to the Record Robot blog for finding this. I remember seeing them play several matinee shows back in the mid 80's. A good reminder that not all "hardcore" sounded like Agnostic Front back then. I wish someone had the full album available for download, becuase I don't think it ever made it to CD.

download a track or two here.

Time Warp: Bullet LaVolta

2006-10-16T20:05:00.000-04:00

I've decided to start going through my old collection and pulling out stuff that I really love but haven't listened to in a while. One of the standouts is Bullet LaVolta, a band that brilliantly merged the ferocity of older boston hardcore with the sensibilities of sonic youth influenced indie rock.

Check out Bullet LaVolta on MySpace.

Indie? What Is Indie?

2006-10-16T02:10:00.001-04:00

A few weeks ago, my co-workers and I had a rather interesting (read as heated) discussion regarding the word "indie" and what it means. Is it a status, style or genre of music? A subset of rock? Does it stand on it's own? Now CNN is jumping on the bandwagon with their recent article, If it's cool, creative and different, it's indie.

Given my soon-to-be greying punk rock roots, my stance is that indie first means independent. Not distributed through one of the majors, and not owned in total or in part by them. In a sense, totally entrepreneurial: where failure means not eating, paying your rent, having your significant other berate you, and possibly having to relocate to your mom's basement.

Here's the litmus test: If you call out to your assistant to pick you up a latte after they call to schedule your car service to the show, YOU AREN'T INDIE. You're a spoiled rich brat, who thinks that Death Cab is a miracle simply because the other sheep are bleating to the same drummer.

When used to describe a sound, I draw my definition from the Sebadoh single "Gimmie Indie Rock" recorded way back in 1991.

Just Give Me Indie Rock!
Started back in �83
Started seeing things a differently
And hardcore wasn�t doin� it for me no more
Started smoking pot
Thought things sounded better slow
Much slower, heavier
Black magic melody to sink this poseur�s soul
VU Stooges undeniably cool
Took a lesson from that drone rock school
Manipulate musicians hack righteous drool
Getting loose with the Pussy Galore
Cracking jokes like a Thurston Moore
Peddle hopping like a Dinosaur, J...
Rock and Roll genius, ride the middle of the road
Milk that sound, blow your load
Shoot it further than you ever said it go
Four stars in the Rolling Stone
Oooh sludge rock,
That�s hard as harsh
Just gimme indie rock!
It�s gone big
Come on indie rock
Just give me indie rock
Taking inspiration from Husker Du
It�s a new generation
Of electric white boy blues
Come on indie rock
It's gone big
Come on indie rock
Just give me indie rock
Breaking down the barriers
Like Sonic Youth
They got what they wanted
Maybe i can get what i want too
Come on indie rock
It's gone big
Come on indie rock
Just give me indie rock
Time to knock
The hard rock on it�s side
Time to knock
The shit right up a storm
Turn to amaze
With the indie sludge
Grunge!
Aaah!

I blame the Brits, particularly NME for allowing the bastardization of the indie moniker during the mid 90's.

Sunday Evening Rant: Banks

2006-10-15T21:25:00.000-04:00

When I purchased my shiny new Apple laptop a year or so ago, I did it through their credit line at MBNA. I didn't pay it off during the allotted "free" time, so I got banged with interest payments. (That was my own doing so I can't complain about it.)

However, in order to keep up with the payments, I put it on auto-pay. Tonight I looked at my account, and found out that I overpaid about $1000, because although the thing was closed, they still kept taking my money. I called them and am getting a check back in a few days.

But that isn't the point. These motherf*#kers CHARGE THE LIVING SH!T out of people in interest, and if payment's a nanosecond late, they send the party to collections, or have some a##hole call at 8 in the morning. Am I getting interest on the grand they held for over a month? Nope. Can I awaken the chairman of MBNA at 6am to ask where my money is? No. I also believe it should be illegal for them to take money against an account that is paid off.

I'm not sure I have a point in this, as I'm just ranting. But one thing's for sure... the personal tip, MBNA will never ever see one thin dime from me, ever again. On a different level, with the multinational banks and the wealthy gaining more and more control, we only have more of this screwing of the middle and lower classes to look forward to. Sadly, most will never notice the fleecing because they're too busy fighting the Pyrrhic "culture war" against gay rights or the teaching of evolution.

Ahhhh. That makes me feel better.

(BTW, if you don't agree with me don't waste your energy posting a comment. Not only could I give a rats ass, it won't be approved, and nobody will see it. I'm not interested in dialog with Republicans, Evangelical Christians, or idiots of any other sort.)

So It Appears That Piracy Is A Business Model

2006-10-11T00:07:00.000-04:00

Newsflash: It is better to embrace technology than spend your war chest fighting it!

Yes! According to arstechnica, Disney ABC has finally gotten wind that maybe trying to sue the pants off of people and turning all that sharing into money might not be a bad thing.

"So we understand piracy now as a business model," said Sweeney in a recent analyst call. "It exists to serve a need in the marketplace specifically for consumers who want TV content on demand and it competes for consumers the same way we do, through high-quality, price and availability and we don't like the model. But we realize it's effective enough to make piracy a key competitor going forward. And we've created a strategy to address this threat with attractive, easy to use ways to for viewers to get the content they want from us legally; in other words, keeping honest people honest."

With Universal and WMG making deals with GoogleTube, are they actually gonna bumble their way into getting it right?

Great Digtal Reissue Label: Anthology Recordings

2006-10-10T22:45:00.000-04:00

Anthology Recordings is cool. Great website, good stuff. I'd say this is the first quality digital imprint I've seen so far. I just downloaded the elusive Moondog release (featuring Quicksand, Gorilla Biscuits, and Rival Schools' own Walter Schreifels) . Good luck to all involved!

From their about page:

About Anthology Recordings: beyond the mainstream, beyond boundaries.

Anthology Recordings is the world’s first ever all digital reissue label, its goal to provide an online outlet for rare and out-of-print music of all eras, genres and cultures.

In the Fall of 2005, as the demand for digital music was mounting exponentially, Anthology Recordings founder Keith Abrahamsson (an A&R executive with New York City-based indie label Kemado Records) was struck by the conspicuous absence of obscure, but influential music titles on most high volume online retailers – an injustice to both these artists and their prospective fans, which he grew determined to address.

Beyond the mainstream and beyond all boundaries; the Anthology Recordings team pledges to continually seek out music’s underrated, forgotten, or overlooked, and help make the digital music landscape richer, more complete, and definitely more eclectic with every release.

Reaction To The Tower Liquidation

2006-10-10T17:05:00.000-04:00

There's been quite a buzz surrounding the demise of Tower from around the web. One of the most telling items comes from a response to Lefsetz' take on the subject from Redeye Distribution's John McGlasson:

I wouldn't care at all if they didn't owe our dist. (Redeye) a shitload of money, a screwing that you can be sure will be passed onto us, though Tower bought a bunch of one of our new releases (10/03, John Blakeley/Ron Nagle's Tan Mantis) for cash, something that surprised me, even in bankruptcy, it seems Tower thought if they could make it thru the holidays they could pull out of it. Big retail and the big labels have made it hard on indies forever, and distributors still try to get indies to play the big label game with the stores who charge hundreds or thousands for decent store placement, knowing we can only sell at best a handful of cds per store. So in this transitional period, we have no choice but to play along with the distributor and big retail, though we all know we're just going through the motions, waiting for it's death. Big retail is our biggest liability right now as a label, but we'll win.

Everyone's starting to see what I've been blathering on about for the last year. Big marketing costs from retail making it almost impossible for indies to succeed. What's going to happen is that the indies will change to a digital model, possibly monetize their relationships with artists by taking over booking and merchandising, and leave the CD business to the dinosaurs.

Welcome aboard.

Lefsetz Agrees With Me

2006-10-09T19:30:00.000-04:00

A few months ago, I posted about how the label business as a stand alone entity is pretty much going the way of the dinosaur. What will take it's place is a management/ label hybrid that will produce content, supply funding, guidance and faciliate connections for the artist.

Lefsetz also seems to be on board with this idea, as a recent post of his screams it loud and clear.

You can’t survive the present economic conditions unless you participate in ALL revenue streams of the act. Since the disc/legal file business is de minimis. But the majors can’t get a piece of these streams. Because it’s these monies the acts are living on. The label builds you, you profit on ticket receipts and merchandise sales. And since the label can’t get a piece of this ancillary revenue, they trumpet acts that work on their paradigm. In other words, two-dimensional caricatures that can be sold via image all over the media. They want something with INCESSANT impressions. They want to beat the public over the head to purchase the equivalent of hula hoops. Because to take the time to develop an act slowly, that has real fans… Well, the Grateful Dead never sold that many records. And how many albums did Fleetwood Mac make before they hit on a winning formula? The majors don’t want to invest in musicmakers who march to the beat of their own drummer, they just want a pretty face, who’ll do what they say, who will sing the songs written by the hacks and produced by the usual suspects.

Given the way things are, I can't compete in the CD marketplace. It's chock full of people spending massive dollars to potentially have a "hit" which maybe clears the red out of all the books. Where I can compete is the same place that I did back in the 80's, in the true underground- where the barrier to entry isn't a $3 per unit co-op at Best Buy.

Never Buy Another Hard Drive

2006-10-07T19:08:00.000-04:00

For most indie labels, data storage and backup is (or should be) a huge issue. With multiple kinds of digital data being the basis for almost the entire business, having a viable backup and archive strategy should really be a serious priority.

I remember as far back as the early 90's, backing up all of my documents and artwork onto big, clunky Syquest disks and having stacks of floppy disks sitting around my office. This media would perpetually fail, so I had to have multiple backups. When CD Drives arrived in the later 90's, I transferred all of that data over to little shiny discs and kept them in a closet in the event of a meltdown. Recently I've kept multiple redundant hard drives and backed up religiously.

That's all over.

Thanks to Amazon S3 and a great little shareware utility called Jungledisk, I can store all of my label documents (art files, documents, music files, data archive) in a completely secure off site environment that can be accessed from anywhere.

How easy? To quote Jungledisk's page:

Download and install Jungle Disk.
It's available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and only takes a few seconds to install.
Sign up for Amazon S3™ storage
You can use your existing Amazon.com account! It's free to sign up and you'll only pay for the storage you use.
Configure Jungle Disk with your Amazon Access Key
It will automatically prompt you the first time you run it.
Connect to your Jungle Disk
For Windows users, just use the Start Menu shortcut provided. Connecting is easy for Mac and Linux users too.
Start using your Jungle Disk like a local hard drive!
You can copy files to it using Explorer (or Finder on Mac). When you copy a file to your Jungle Disk it is encrypted and uploaded in the background to the Amazon.com servers.

For more information about how and why to switch, check out this article by Jeremy Sawodny.

Screw CD's

2006-10-04T01:07:00.000-04:00

The first record I ever put out in 1989 was a hardcore compilation entitled NYHC:Where The Wild Things Are. At the time, it really was something special for me. From what people tell me, for a great many it documented the pinnacle of the second wave of New York Hardcore.

That record remains my favorite release, not because of the relative success it had when it came out. Not even because of the bands that it documented. It was the people, who surrounded it and the fond memories it brings back. One of those people is Jim Gibson. He (and his label Noiseville) were co-founders of Blackout! He remains a close friend, and in addition to still doing his label, he runs an amazing store called Cold Spring Music Company, in upstate NY.

A little while ago, Jim approached me about doing a vinyl reissue of the compilation. Nothing too crazy, just a thousand or so, on colored wax that would surely sell to collectors. As the record wasn't around for a while, I decided that we should do it. Certainly more of a fun thing, as nobody was going to be able to pay their bills with it.

For a while, I've been pondering if I should do a CD reissue of this. Maybe with a DVD or some cool bonus. The Photoshop files have been sitting idle on my hard drive since 2001. But today's CD marketplace is so utterly underwhelming, I decided to take a different path.

In addition to the vinyl version of the release, Where The Wild Things Are will be released digitally via iTunes, eMusic, Downloadpunk, Audiolunchbox, in conjunction with the vinyl release. The record will also be streamed for free in it's entirety, on demand, at Haystack.

I'm hoping that this vinyl/ digital only release will be the start of something new. I'm only going to be advertising it on blogs and on the web, staying away from high priced retail co-ops and print ads in faux punk glossies. It should be an interesting experiment and this release seems to be the one to try it with.

Love to know anyone's feedback on this.

Blog-o-mercials?

2006-10-02T14:14:00.000-04:00

Payola has now officially entered the blogosphere. Techcrunch reports on a new service called PayPerPost:

The service is a marketplace for advertisers to pay bloggers to write about products for a fee. Commenters to our original post wee polarized into those violently for and those againt the product. The key area of controversy is the fact that advertisers can mandate that posts be positive on the product, and disclosure of payment is optional for the blogger.

If you want to pay people to write about stuff... I guess that's fine. But to not disclose it -or- require positive reviews in exchange for money is pretty reprehensible. (You listening, Armstrong Williams?)

Yes, Because Your Bands Need LESS Exposure

2006-09-28T02:04:00.000-04:00

According to the fine folks over at PaidContent, Universal has pulled their company videos from Fuse and WEA has pulled videos from Yahoo. While Universal seems to be looking to monetize every ounce of content and build a proprietary network, I'm a little surprised at the Warner Bros. thing.

Why be stingy with video? Because the music has pretty moving pictures with it they're worth "more" than music? I thought that they are "promotional" video clips. Certainly in most major record contracts I've been aware of, videos are 100% recoupable from the bands share of royalties. So how can videos, ostensibly made for "promotion" be sold in this way? Don't the bands feel a little cheated because they've been deprived of the promotional value they paid for? I really just don't understand. But I also don't understand DRM or the way the digital format has been handled at all by the big companies.

Content is king. Keep it flowing, there are so many bands out there that the only way to rise above the din is to keep up a consistent stream of free media for fans to enjoy. Free discovery is the only way to make things happen. Once fans are loyal to your b(r)and, MAYBE they'll pay for something, but not before.

2006-09-11T22:00:00.000-04:00

http://wtcoutline.com/

The Story Behind The Music

2006-09-04T21:59:00.000-04:00

People who weren't there during the mid 80's NYHC hardcore scene don't really understand what it was really like back then. In fact, by the time I started becoming a regular matinee rat at CBGB in late '85/ early '86, most of the early bands including Minor Threat, The Misfits (w/ Danzig), and Dead Kennedys (w/Jello) had already played their final NYC shows and were on to different things. By the time I arrived, the influx of B&T kids (like myself) was already changing the direction of the downtown scene.

One of the earliest bands I can remember being schooled on was Major Conflict, fronted by the charismatic Dito Montiel. Dito was somewhat of a legend, especially to the Astoria kids. By the time I hung around he was in a band with some of the ex-members of Kraut, called Gutterboy. After that fizzled in a spectacular way, he made his way out to LA to seek fame and fortune in the film world.

A few years ago Dito contacted me for a copy of the Killing Time "The Method" CD, because there was a Major Conflict cover on it. In trade he sent me a copy of his book, called A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints. More than about hardcore, It was a memoir of sorts, about growing up in a tough city and looking to escape the economic and social barriers of a lower-middle class upbringing.

That book is now a movie starring Robert Downey Jr., Chaz Palminteri, and Rosario Dawson, and will be released on September 29. It's already won a few awards at Caan, and from what I saw of the trailer, it looks way more worthwhile than most of the Hollywood schlock out there. I encourage everyone to go and see the movie, support one of the founding fathers of NYHC, and get a window into a world that most people never even knew existed.

So MySpace Is Selling Downloads

2006-09-02T19:35:00.000-04:00

MySpace has now joined the digital music retail war by announcing plans to create a non-DRM download store where artists can sell their own music. Liz Gaines at Gigaom offers the following details:

This isn’t a challenger to iTunes because the songs will be unrestricted MP3s, therefore leaving out the DRM-obsessed major labels. But it’s a great way to play into the allure of being part of the cool crowd — one of MySpace’s greatest strengths. Bands will be able to set their prices, with MySpace and Snocap each getting a cut. Fans can syndicate the stores on their MySpace pages, but it’s not clear if they will be able to take a share of the revenue as well.

While this a cool widget, I don't see this ala-carte MySpace store catching fire unless the larger independents and majors hop on board. Would I consider having Blackout! artists selling music through individual stores on MySpace? Absolutely, provided the labels rights were protected.

By using this somewhat traditional model of digital commerce, MySpace missed a huge opportunity to really seize the hearts and minds of music lovers. Instead of the pay per download model, they could have set up a low cost monthly subscription plan, that would rival eMusic. For a few dollars a month (or other incremental micropayment users) could dowload up to X amount of releases. I believe this would have ultimately created more long term value for labels, artists, and MySpace itself.

SpiralFrog

2006-08-30T12:44:00.000-04:00

Yesterday's big news was SpiralFrog, a company that allows free downloads in exchange for advertising. While I applaud Universal's entry into this marketplace (as I believe that ads can sustain a music model) I don't see how SpiralFrog can work- given the obstacle course a user needs to run just to listen to, nevermind keep, a song.

Neither do the folks at PCWorld:

The service, due later this year, will be offered by a company called SpiralFrog, which says it would like to sign deals with the other major music labels. Watch a 90-second ad and you can download a song; watch a two-minute one, and you can download a video; to keep them, you'll need to return to SpiralFrog's site and watch more ads. The music will be free, but not freely available, and because the music and copy protection are wrapped up in Microsoft's WMA format, the tunes won't play on the vast majority of audio players out there (read: iPods).

What kid is going to waste any time watching ads to get a song. It's WORK. Advertising works best when it's not a roadblock to the content you want. At a baseball game, do you have to watch a commercial on the big screen before every pitch? No. The ads are in the background and don't impede the experience.

Clearly those involved at this company are executives who are far removed from the reality of the current music marketplace. It's musical lipstick on an advertising pig. (apologies to pigs everywhere)

Tower Chapter 11

2006-08-21T13:09:00.000-04:00

Another crushing blow to the world of indie music. Any label that thinks this is still about selling little silver shiny things needs to get the hell over themselves.

More later.

The Return Of Sun Records

2006-08-16T21:00:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite movies is O Brother Where Art Thou. It's a depression-era adaptation of Homer's Odyssey, and features a ton of great music. At one point in the movie Everett Ulysses McGill (George Clooney) and his fellow prison-escapees find refuge in a lonely radio station, where they record a song, which is released as a single. It's a regional hit, and the song winds up being a key component in the ultimate reunification of the Pater Familius and his estranged family.

This exemplifies the small-time home-grown model of music that existed until Elvis changed it all. Songs were recorded and released by labels like Sun Records, who had the connections to get the material promoted, usually on a regional basis. The artist would then tour regionally and make their money on performances.

This is where music is headed again. With the cost of marketing a release in the stratosphere (even for indies), labels simply cannot afford to pay unproven baby bands' recording budgets. Some even flat out refuse to give advances, and expect delivery of a finished master (while taking merchandise rights and publishing.) Blackout! is fortunate that a partner in the company owns a recording studio, so we're still able to record bands quite reasonably.

Instead of focusing on how to buy "hits", what about figuring out how to use the new (low cost) models of distribution to release moderately recorded and modestly promoted records that have a reasonable break even point?

Google Copies Last.fm

2006-08-16T20:50:00.000-04:00

Seems like everyone's getting into the personal playlist game.

Here's An Idea

2006-08-14T15:40:00.000-04:00

According to Paidcontent, the folks over at the Home Shopping Network have enabled click-to-purchase right through the teevee.

MTV networks/ Fuse or other music networks should follow up on this. In my dream scenario:

Customers would register their download store preference (iTunes, Napster) at the network's website, including username and password.
Songs that are available for purchase would have a special icon on screen.
When they see the "purchase enabled" icon on the screen, the user can click a button on their remote, and that track will be added to a queue to purchase.
The cable network makes money from the referral fee to others, and there's a tangible conversion rate from viewership to intent to purchase to actual purchase. Very viable statistics.

This could also work with television commercials (buy the song from the Honda commecial) and TV shows (Gray's Anatomy, The OC.)

If anyone implements this idea I expect a cut. :-)

2006-08-14T14:55:00.000-04:00

Clell Tickle: Indie Marketing Guru

This is beautiful satire, yet rings quite true.
(Funny thing is, I remember a few hardcore bands in the old days pretty much exactly doing this.)

Shhhhhh... Haystack Is Now In Beta

2006-08-09T22:11:00.000-04:00

After almost two years grinding away in our startup sweatshop over by the Jacob Javits Center, Haystack is finally in private beta. With great pride (and a little trepidation) we switched the IP over from our dev servers at 5:42 yesterday evening.

Right now, we're in "soundcheck" beta mode- fixing bugs, polishing the chrome, and getting music content in from content partners, friends, and family. We will slowly be opening the service to the public. If you're in a band or from a label, we'd love to have you aboard. Please sign up for entry at the site. We promise that we'll let you in as soon as we can.

Haystack Update

2006-08-08T10:30:00.000-04:00

I got a message about how I haven't said anything about Haystack for a little while. The truth is that we're a few days away from the private beta, and have several big strategic partnership announcements coming to coincide with our founder speaking at Digital Hollywood.

Tower In Trouble

2006-08-05T14:02:00.000-04:00

The LA Times (via Coolfer,) reports that Tower Records seems to be in trouble again and could be going down for the count.

Tower was the one chain that could be counted on to bring in more than just the "hit" music, and really catered to the music-loving crowd. When searching for deeper major label catalog as a buyer you could pretty much go to the tower stores and find what you were looking for. As a label, they'd always take the chance on my releases and during late 80's and 90's, really was the only chain that would take my stuff in quantity (and sell through it) without demanding an advertising quid-pro-quo.

If they truly go down (as they almost did once before,) it strengthens the remaing big players like Transworld, Best Buy and Circuit City. (I don't count Target and Wal-Mart because they don't carry much indie punk/hardcore stuff.) I can't imagine that indie label life will get any easier with them gone.

This is yet another reason why I believe that the future of emerging artists is clearly headed in the digital direction.

Warner Music Digital Revenue Up 109%

2006-08-03T23:17:00.000-04:00

According to Paidcontent:

Warner Music Group’s FY3Q06 earnings report backs up its rep as a music company that “gets” digital. Revenue from online hit $92 million, up 109 percent from $44 million in its third fiscal quarter last year. Perhaps more important, that represents 11 percent of the company’s total revenue and digital accounted for half of the year-over-year gain. Warner continues to have a larger digital presence domestically — 74 percent of digital revenue comes from the U.S.

Although I've previously said Cordless is a flawed model of a digital record company, the parent company seems to be going in the right direction. I wonder what the breakdown for indies is? In some months, digital accounts for almost 50% of Blackout! music sales.

UPDATE- they still posted a loss though.

Indies Screwed by KaZaa

2006-07-27T23:44:00.000-04:00

So it appears that KaZaa is going legit. They've reportedly settled all of their lawsuits with the major record companies and Hollywood studios to the tune of 100 million dollars. Future payments on the settlement will also be in the tens of millions. This makes me wonder :

Indies make up about 20% of the music market. Where's my cut?

The answer is nowhere. While I know the catalog of my label isn't worth (in financial terms) anywhere near the level of a Koch, Epitaph or TVT, I can imagine that there's still been quite a few P2P trades of the Blackout! catalog. This money could go towards advertising, studio time, or other expenses.

As indies become a greater share of the marketplace, paying attention to these kind of details is very important. However, very few can afford the time or expense of keeping track of this stuff that could result in such a windfall.

Interestingly enough, I haven't seen any press from the A2IM on this issue, so I'm not sure if they've been at all proactive in this. Although I do hear they met with the FCC about the highly relevant issue of indies and radio payola. (Way to go! now I have someone to fight for me about access to a virtually irrelevant media platform!) Talk about a day late and a dollar short.

Anyone else's ass stinging right now?

They're Giving It Away

2006-07-23T16:55:00.000-04:00

I'm not the only one who knows it's hard out there for an indie. A few days ago I posted about one of my bigger brethren who sold to a major company to survive. There's simply not enough long term return in the traditional model to sustain the enormous marketing and manufacturing budgets necesary to create band/brand ubiquity.

Labels such as Nitro Records are now starting to give it away. The first half of the new album from CA's Hit The Switch is now posted for free on the Nitro site. The second half will be posted soon. The reason?

With stores giving less space for independent CDs these days, indie labels and young bands are under an unrealistic pressure to sell a lot of CDs very quickly,” says Jerod Gunsberg, Marketing and Sales at Nitro Records. “By giving away the music online for awhile we can take that pressure off and focus on getting people to hear the music and let the band develop at a normal pace.

As a marketing strategy, this is an interesting idea. The label keeps it's identity as a tastemaker and creates a flood of people listening to their band. (As free tracks from "signed bands" are somehow deemed more valuable than those from unsigned ones.) For the sake of Nitro and it's band, I hope it works in creating a host of new fans.

I do wonder however, what the long term strategy of this is. Will Nitro be taking a managerial / merchandise piece of the band to recoup some of the lost sales? It seems they are hoping that the download traffic will be part of a story that enables them to convince Best Buy and Hot Topic that this band is worth keeping on the shelves.

Should be a fun experiment to watch. If anyone can get periodic 'scans or other numbers on this, please post to the comment section.

song links:
1. The March of Dissent [MP3]
2. Operation Northwoods [MP3]
3. Heavenly Deception [MP3]
4. Shift [M P3]
5.Mr. Abrasive [MP3]
6. Anarcho-Syndicalist [MP3]

Zune: Microsoft's New Music Network

2006-07-22T15:12:00.000-04:00

Microsoft has once again entered the field of music by confronting Apple with a similar hardware/software/ internet service called Zune.

Engadget and Jupiter have some great posts on the service features, so I won't bother rehashing them here.

What intrigues me most about this new venture is they are saying that their service will have a "social" side to it. It's possible their music store will allow some sort of social networking and authorized P2P that surpasses iTunes' editorial and minimal social content. While fun to think about, it still doesn't sell me on Zune taking the 800lb primate to the mat.

The Cupertino camp has proven that the multi-platform strategy of linked hardware, software, and retail is a huge winner. Team Redmond has built their business on following Apple's winning OS format, and now they're going to try to one-up them once again. What's that the President said? "Fool me once, shame on... on.... won't get fooled again." I would imagine Jobs has learned from his previous mistakes and is prepared for this. (Can you tell I'm a Mac user?)

From the label perspective? Yet another music store where the customer still has to pay out the ass for music doesn't make me all that happy. CD's are dying, and despite the huge gains in the digital market, downloads are still too expensive to encourage experimentation and impulse purchases by the more casual listener. This is why I still think that the eMusic subscribe-to-own model is the best because it's not limited by DRM and it's financially pretty painless.

Cracks In The Dam

2006-07-18T16:51:00.000-04:00

I was at the Lifetime reuinion at Bowery Ballroom the other day, and a friend casually mentioned to me that a pretty large indie had recently sold an interest in their company to a major label. The reason for doing so was not expansion, but survival.

This particular indie is no slouch. They have some amazing bands and bill exponentially more than Blackout! does. But this proves what I've been saying for a while. You can't keep shelling out massive marketing dollars to sell just enough pieces to break even. What's the point in billing a million dollars a month if you spend 1.1 million to get there? None.

It's pretty clear to me that the next wave of indie music is a digitally distributed talent incubator with an artist management core. The funds will come from other places than selling music. Merchandise and digital means of distribution (and later concert tickets) will provide the financial backbone to growing bands.

In fact, I've just started building a team for a new venture called Interstitial Media (no website yet) to do just that. I'll tell you more as it starts to come together a bit more. If you're interested in getting involved as an early stage investor or partner, hit me up with an email.

Must See

2006-07-12T15:23:00.000-04:00

American Hardcore movie trailer

Every Silver Lining Has A Cloud....

2006-07-12T14:21:00.000-04:00

I just started reading Chris Anderson's new book The Long Tail . While I agree that the era of the blockbuster is gone and the future is about selling less of more, I have a practical issue with it. In order to take advantage of his theory, indie labels need to be able to manufacture the CD's to sell and this manufacturing requires a prohibitive up-front cost.

The label is in a situation right now where it has missed several thousand dollars in sales because it doesn't make sense to lay out the cash to run 1000 copies of older catalog that will take a year or more to sell. This may not seem like a ton of money to some, but it all hellps pay for publicity, retail promotion, advertising and phone bills. While we'd probably make the pressing money back within the first few months, the true result to the bottom line nowhere nears the negative impact on cash flow.

At the retailer level(Amazon, Netflix) the model holds. On the producer side, it's clearly not worth it. I need to either shift these titles entirely to digital distribution, or find a way to manufacture quality short runs at reasonable prices.

Radiohead Mulls Self-Distributing Upcoming Album

2006-06-30T17:06:00.000-04:00

In an interview with Radiohead front man Thom Yorke, his response to whether they would distribute their next album, The Eraser, he hesitantly said yes. "We have two or three options and that's one," he said. "I would love for us to drop a chemical weapon within the music industry. But I don't see it as our responsibility, either."

read more | digg story

This would be the starting gun that truly launches music business 2.0. Radiohead doesn't need the two things that record companies really provide these days- investment capital and business administration. The band can easily produce their own music and then monetize it in any number of ways before it even went out to stores. I'm sure Apple would cough up a pretty penny to get some kind of exclusive on it. Even if they didn't go for the up front bucks from anyone, the money from digital microchunks alone would be incredible. Ringtones, videos, song streams, downloads. The only thing they'd really need is an entity to handle manufacturing and shipping of records to real world stores. That's if this release wasn't the first truly digital hit.

Way to bend 'em over.

For Anyone In NYC

2006-06-29T13:48:00.000-04:00

The soon to be launched Haystack has teamed up with Insound for a summer concert series at Club Midway NYC. (Formerly Save The Robots, for all you old-schoolers.) Each week we'll feature some great bands, as well as a set by The Cavalier King. Come down and join us!

The BBC Gets It

2006-06-25T12:45:00.000-04:00

SuicideGirls' newsfeed posts that the BBC has just launched a John Peel archive.

John Peel loved music in a way that others can only aspire to. It was part of him and it came out in his broadcasts, as well as the live performances on his show. Many of these performances have been documented over the years, and a lot of them are arguably some bands' finest releases. I think The Damned's session from 1979 might be their finest hour. Or Gang of Four's session. Or Siouxsie. The list goes on and on.

And it's been difficult to tackle this list. Until now. Our friends over at the BBC have archived all of the Peel Sessions and have made various clips and samples available for your listening and general perusal.

The Brits really know how to do music. For decades, weekly mags like NME and KERRANG were the written equivalent of today's blogosphere. As a kid in the early 80's, I can remember getting turned on to bands like Venom and Metallica not from the US press... but by the only trusted sources there were back then for metal. The fine tradition continues today with both publications making the digital jump to offer cool video podcasts and newsfeeds.

So hats off to the BBC for keeping the legacy of one of the world's most informed music fans alive for the future.

iTunes Movie Store Expected to Debut with $9.99 Price Point

2006-06-19T15:09:00.000-04:00

I'm a big fan of TV shows I can watch while I'm on the treadmill, or just watch on my laptop. The whole no-commercials and immediate gratification thing makes me very happy. Plus I can hook my iPod to my TV in a pinch. But the price point is a little sticky.

$9.99 for a movie seems a bit much, as music is something that's used more frequently. Not too many people watch a movie more than once a year. While people may listen to their favorite album far more frequently.

read more | digg story

Interesting Article On The Hype Vs Reality Of Blogs

2006-06-14T19:23:00.000-04:00

Yes. This is about political blogs, but it also applies to music.

Why Aren't The Weakend Signed?

2006-06-14T18:10:00.000-04:00

In my daily troll of the digital rockosphere, I noticed this post at Absolutepunk. A user posed the question "why a band this good doesn't get signed?" This is my attempt to answer.

First, the criteria is different for music listeners and labels. While I've purchased quite a few recordings based on just hearing someone's music, I've personally signed only one band from a demo. The basic difference is this... buying a record costs about ten bucks. Indulging an impulse doesn't really hurt.

Signing bands requires a pretty significant investment. That investment needs to come back so the label can record more records. In the days where "bigness" is king and the chain stores rule the retail roost, getting something heard costs alot more money than it used to.

Here's a short list of criteria I ask myself when it comes to rock bands:

Do they have good music? Yes. It's the first question but not the last. This is often followed by "will enough other people think so too?"
Can they cut it live? Nothing worse than pieces of wood who can't play on the stage.
Is the frontperson charismatic? I'm not talking incredibly handsome or sexy. It's that eye-magnet quality that makes people want to watch.
What's the work ethic? If the band hasn't played any out of state shows before putting out a record, there's a huge signal that they're going to do more of the same. Waiting for a label to come in on their white horse and save the day with tour support before you hit the road is bad news. Get a van. Book and play some shows. It's an investment in making your band and if you can't do it, why should someone else?
Are they in it for the right reasons? Third rate rockstars looking to "make it" before they hit their mid-20's are trouble. Those who don't couple their hunger to play Madison Square Garden with a genuine love for the lifestyle are going to wind up angry and embittered. If you don't find joy in sleeping in shitty kids houses, waking up with another unwashed band member spooning you, living on $5 a day, or driving all night to a gig with 10 attendees, then stay the fuck home and get a job.
Do they have a business infrastructure? Can the band get to shows on time? Many small indies play manager and even booking agent for alot of their bands. In reality, having to do that detracts from the labels core mission of trying to convince Transworld to bring in more records to support a few Warped Tour dates.
Do they make friends easily? Wallflowers don't really cut it. You gotta be in the mix to create relationships with other bands. Many big tours that "break" smaller acts happen becuase of friendships between bands not some back room powerplay.

Anyone have additions to this list?

Chains: The New Mom and Pops?

2006-06-03T16:30:00.000-04:00

One of our newer bands on the label, Grace Gale, has been perpetually touring since the release of their album. Each subsequent tour gets better and better. But to be honest, given the amount of traffic I see to their media pages, and the amount of merchandise they are selling at shows- getting their records into stores is still quite a bitch.

I could take some potshots at our distributor, but I won't. Mainly becuase I think the situation has to do with the subtle shifts in the marketplace over the last few years.

Formerly my bread and butter, it seems that a great deal of "indie" type stores don't pay as much attention to punk, hardcore, or metal anymore. Sure, there's still Vintage Vinyl and Generation Records, but there's also more like Waterloo. The bulk of their customer base has shifted from the "kids" to an older demographic, who prefer Matador over Trustkill.

As an indie label that has a history of punk and hardcore, I've come to the horrible revelation that mall stores like Hot Topic, TWEC, and Best Buy are more important to sales than my beloved indie retailers.

It makes total sense really: punk, like Hip Hop (or hair metal) in the previous decades, is a more commercially viable form of music, and expanded from it's niche. The kids begin to understand the worth of the artists based on their real or artificially created "bigness." Major chains started bringing in the bigger sellers and the trickle-down titles from labels like Epitaph and Victory. Those labels start really supporting the major chains, and the fans started abandoning the underground. Kids who are fans become conditioned that they can get the music at the local mall, so they don't go out of their way to go to the indies. The customers that remain, are part of the High Fidelity set (like me) that have a romantic connection to that way of life.

My idealogical side cringes at this. Punk is not as easy as buying it at a mall, it's something you work for becuase it's your life, and is certainly not something you do to be popular. Moreover, I feel punk is about supporting the DIY community of retail who supported you.

Alas, I'm a realist. Digital distribution is only about 10% of music sales for a label and you can't sustain a business on those kind of numbers. While I'll support the indies till the day I drop, to continue making records for bands like Grace Gale, Blackout! needs to put records where the kids buy their music, not where I wish they would buy their music. This means that to achieve what we need to do, the label needs to overcome another barrier to entry: having the means to pay thousands of dollars in price and positioning programs to just get the records in the door.

yippie.

(Would love the cats from Suburban Home and any other label folks to chime in on this.)

A Little Experiment

2006-06-01T16:31:00.000-04:00

Wahoo! I finally just got approved for an Ether number! If you notice the right side of the page, I have a fancy new link that allows anyone out there who's interested, to call me and talk bidness at a very reasonable rate. Wanna start a label? Are you in a band and need advice on where to go? Confused about digital strategy for your music? No problem. Don't panic. I am here to help and welcome the opportunity to talk with you.

Whaddaya think?

update: the interface is a little cumbersome and the emailing doesn't work all that well. Many thanks to the "beta testers" out there. I'll continue to suss this out over the weekend and see how it goes.

The VH1 Rock Honors

2006-06-01T14:49:00.000-04:00

Anyone else catch that VH1 Honors thing? I began watching just as Godsmack started their Judas Priest medely. One thing that comes to mind is that: A large portion of newer bands can't play live anywhere near as well as the old ones. The bands that grow up on ProTools and autotune simply do not cut it as well as the ones that had to perform instead of hire an expensive producer to slice n dice their performances into a radio-friendly mix.

While I'm not really a fan of this band: The Def Leppard cover of T-Rex (with Brian May guesting on guitar) was pretty top notch. The All American Rejects cover of Def Leppard was pretty dismal, mostly becuase of a weak vocal performance.

Mr. Magoo

2006-05-31T17:08:00.000-04:00

Indeed the blind must be in charge somewhere over at Warner Brothers. The other day Lefsetz wrote a really great review of a Mark Knopfler video on YouTube:

Only 3,279 people have watched Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris on YouTube. And that’s CRIMINAL! You’ll be mesmerized by Knopfler’s licks, but just shy of three minutes in, when Emmylou starts kicking her legs backward in time to the music, you’ll exclaim VOILA, she’s fucking KIKI DEE!

One of the legal-eagles at the label must've gotten wind of it and had the video taken down for copyright infringement. This sparked a second post:

I still don’t believe MySpace breaks acts, but I DO know that music FANS are conditioned to go to the site to hear streams of songs by their favorite acts. i.e., you’re interested in an act, you CHECK IT OUT! But the staff at Warner Brothers didn’t seem to get the memo. If you want to hear Knopfler and Harris performing, you’ve got to go to THEIR site. Not the acts’, but WARNER BROTHERS’! And it’s the ELEVENTH LISTING! Done in a typeface so small and so blue that if you’re of an age to LIKE Knopfler and Harris you can’t read it. Then, at the end of the spiel, you click and are taken to ANOTHER page, that allows you to click once more and launch the player and listen to the music. What, are the dodos in Burbank still living in the nineties? When record companies lamely tried to establish THEIR label sites as destinations? Before they rarely updated them with lame information and everybody went elsewhere? (Turns out there IS one song on Emmylou’s homepage, but not the single. Yup, stream the album track, don’t appease curiosity.)

I agree. Exposure is the name of the game. Holding onto the music and making it more difficult to sample means that you're fucking with the ability to take advantage of the most lucrative part of the long tail. Even with all their crappy filtering, MySpace and YouTube does make media exposure EASY, you just have to be willing to participate. Labels need to give up the ghost and understand that the more exposure for the artist, especially on essentially benign non P2P networks, is good.

And if you don't offer quality FREE content, prepare to have it hacked, and then pirated and done for you.

So instead of paying six digit salaries to an army of attack dogs, what about if they invested a portion of that in creating promotional content on a timely basis for release to the public, to not only focus on new releases, but showcasing older catalog items. If you can't beat 'em..... join em and do it better.

Behind The Curve

2006-05-27T23:18:00.000-04:00

I should have gotten around to reading this sooner, but this is brilliant.

update: link fixed. duh.

Has Hell Frozen Over?

2006-05-26T19:13:00.000-04:00

So I was checking out eMusic today, ready to download the newest indie fare, when I could barely believe my eyes. There it was, for all to see- THE WHITE STRIPES & MOBY V2 RELEASES posted. Is it true? Have the majors awakened to the fact that DRM is a short term and flawed solution to piracy and a painless subscription model could actually work???

It really makes sense. Most of the people who were going to buy these releases at full price on iTunes for $9.99 or on CD at retail have already purchased it. I imagine some savvy soul decided they'd rather sell it at a reduced price in a universally available format and earn some revenue from it, rather than have any money they'd make from the catalog disappear into the 'torrent abyss. In addition, those eMusic downloads are also tallied by Soundscan.

If all the majors did this with "catalog" titles, eMusic's subscription base would grow significantly. An explosion in revenue would create a bigger pie to be divided by the labels/artists that might very well start to earn them more than the .65 per song you-know-who pays per track.

I wonder how many people would re-purchase GNR "Appetite For Destruction", Green Day "Dookie", or even The Eagles "Greatest Hits" if they would become available in the same way?

What a nice way to start a long weekend.

update: Check out this informative article on eMusic, which we found from our pals at Digital Audio Insider.

One Step Closer...

2006-05-23T15:24:00.000-04:00

My compadres over at Haystack are inching closer to Beta launch. Today marks the debut of some of the unique content shot for the site, and kicks off with a hilarious interview with We Are Scientists.

This is also the launch day for the Haystack4000. The H4k is a sub site which contains even more video content and a signup page for bands and music fans to become part of the super-secret and oh-so-exclusive initial private beta.

Go With The Flow

2006-05-19T16:52:00.000-04:00

When I work from home I often leave the TV on as background noise. Often I'm so busy that I wind up leaving things like The Weather Channel or CSPAN on all day. I don't recall which station it was, but one of the stations discussed the dangers of a riptide. According to the show (and Wikipedia,) a riptide is "a strong flow of water returning seawardfrom the shore."

Swimmers caught in the current often panic and react poorly. Instead of swimming parallel to the shoreline and using the current to help push them to safety, they fight against it. They expend all their energy fighting it and are then once their strength is exhausted, they're overwhelmed and drown.

You see where I'm going with this. The music biz at large is fighting something they cannot possibly overcome with legislation or DRM. Is this lawsuit against XM really going to plug the already gushing hole in the dam? For every software scheme, there's a workaround. For every hardware scheme, there's a hack. And for every one of these plans that works, there are exponentially more that simply fail (or backfire.) One step forward and two back.

So, I'm going to say it again. Music is no longer a "unit based" commodity. It's a liquid and as digitally ubiquitous as water. Have any doubts about this? Just look at the number of downloads from one P2P music piracy site in just one month! To control it, you need to do it from the source and principal distribution points. Here's how I'd do it:

1. Take Control Of The Flow
Instead of playing catch up, be proactive. Remember the days when the labels engineered the switch from LP to CD? The same could be true here. If one super high profile artist in the right demographic (like a Green Day or My Chemical Romance) released an album EXCLUSIVELY digital for the first 3 months, would have a profound influence on the marketplace and it's perception. Oh and forget about trying to half-ass it like Cordless- treat digital releases like "real" records and the shift will happen.

I understand that since retail is involved (and may react negatively to this strategy) this transition would need to happen over a much longer period (a decade.)

2. Lower The Price
I talked about this in two previous posts. No matter what posture the labels take, margins on digital are better than CD. I've always thought that selling 100 copies at .50 would be better than selling 10 at .99. So instead of raising the price to the point where people steal it, make it so cheap that people don't even see price as a barrier to purchase. Better still, remove the cost to the end user entirely by shifting the burden to ISP's in the form of a music surcharge coupled with a centralized server for (non DRM) files that can account back to artists.

2. Legitimize Digital Promos
Is it really necessary to use snail mail and plastic to promote music? CD promos not only invitations to "leaks" of material, but are wasteful and more often than not wind up in resale bins. With all the rich media out there, I'm sure some Flash developer could come up with a very compelling virtual promo package that goes beyond the average e-card.

3. Entice CD buyers to become Digital Buyers
I'm not going to discuss my idea for this right now, but there's a really simple way to help transition consumers to the digital model from hard goods.

4. Collectibles For The Fans
It's clear a person can get the music anywhere, but true believers will want something collectible to cuddle and display. It's happening already, with more shelf space being dedicated to lifestyle products & merch that's music related. Music sold at retail needs to have amazing packaging. A CD isn't just music, it's an event- like the new Tool album (or those Kiss records I talked about few posts ago.)

Over time, a strategy like this could do something we may not have thought possible: create ultra-cheap music for fans while compensating the content owners and artists.

Your feedback would be appreciated.

Mobile Music

2006-05-13T19:45:00.000-04:00

An article in a recent Washington Post Online confirms (yet again) that the traditional record biz is looking down the barrel of the digital gun. The first part of the article, Music Labels And Artists Turning To Cell Phones Over Radio For Distribution And Promotion..., discusses the shift from commercial radio as the primary means for artist exposure. It then moves to talk about how the cell phone is a huge revenue source.

The first album from punk-pop band Yellowcard became a hit through conventional radio and CD sales. But the group only broke into the big time when it launched songs from its second album exclusively on a new stage: the cellphone.

Pictures of the quintet were blown up into 40-foot Verizon Wireless signs draped off the side of buildings in Manhattan. Their title song, "Lights and Sounds," became the centerpiece soundtrack for 30-second commercials promoting the cellphone company's music download service. In total, Yellowcard benefited from $5 million to $10 million in advertising, something the band's label, Capitol Records, couldn't have afforded, said Deborah Klein, the band's manager.

I agree radio is losing it's lustre (some may argue it's already lost.) Between Elliot Spitzer's payola investigations, XM/ Sirius, and the web, I wonder how influential programmed music radio really is to anyone below 40, (let alone 25) age bracket. But to expect these big dollar ads to be a panacea that allow the coporate music industry can continue their marketplace domination is foolish.

Anyone else remember those contact lens commercials featuring the band Lillix? That was all over the place- but did very little to help propel the band to any real fame. I guess the lesson to be learned is: Unless you're already famous before you pimp a product, you wind up being remembered only as "that contact lens band," and not remembered for your music. Yellowcard was already "famous" by the time this ad hit, and coupling them with a cool cellphone/music technology product is a much better fit than contact lenses.

The article then gets to the meat of the matter: the cellphone, being the most ubiquitous piece of technology worldwide, is the next wave of media player. The cell companies and majors are making this marriage of convenience to achieve their marketing goals. One offer unique custom content (on the cell end) to lure customers, the other gets mass-media exposure in ads that would ordinarily be too pricey.

The cell model is perfectly in line with the music business 1.0 way to sell music- a proprietary distribution system that you can charge outlandish prices for.

Ringtones use music as a style accessory- like a pair of shoes, handbag, or little dog. It fills the pockets of both the cell companies and labels for a very disposable service. In that case I understand charging a buck or so for a song that someone may use repeatedly as a ringtone or ringback. But some companies have the nerve to not only charge you for the tone but a monthly maintenence charge as well. It's just DRM in another form.

When customers can readily rip quantities of CD's to a phone, sales of high price ringtones and other dubious content offerings, will suffer. My feeling is people will pay for custom tones because they have no choice, but once there's a way to get it for free, they'll follow the most cost-effective path. (And the fair-weather-friends at the hardware providers will happily oblidge whatever trend is necessary to move their products according to marketplace demand.)

I still maintain music is a liquid commodity. And you have to control it at the source to effectively monetize it. Chasing pennies and "units" still works for now, but it won't as a long term strategy.

My First "Guest Blogger"

2006-05-06T23:25:00.000-04:00

Kelley at Kelley's Market helps my label with some mom and pop retail store relationships.
He sets up retail programs and keeps them updated with label information, tour dates, etc. As the former head of retail for Initial Records, he has a great background in DIY. During our semi-weekly catch-up call he read me part of an email he sent to a friend concerning the current state of independent distribution. It goes along with the whole concept of "bigness" I wrote about a few posts ago.

It's fairly recent, 6 or 7 years ago, when every label felt the burning need for exclusive distribution. Prior to that many strong labels did it for themselves, with the help of some indie distributors and a few key one-stops. I think it's time for some labels to return to doing a bulk of the distribution themselves. Get rid of the middleman, build a personal relationship with the stores, do it diy and get a direct flow of cash for your troubles, plus you'll know what works and what doesn't and there'll be less finger pointing.

Until a distribution business steps up and does it punk rock again, by carrying good releases, building a direct relationship with indie stores, and practicing fair "we're in this together" business practices, this current business model of distribution is only going to get worse. EVERYONE is joining the corporate team all of a sudden, and the corporate team is only going to take care of their corporation. The indie is going to get fucked everytime. I just do not believe good indie stores won't stock quality independent releases and that people won't buy quality records.

I do believe large distributors with a corporate model are going to ensure they pay you the least they possibly can, and charge [the label back] for every service they can possibly tack on, and possibly pad it with returns #'s that you will never know is true or not, because they are housed at a warehouse that you may never see. Once you can't take it anymore, somebody else is waiting right behind you. How do you change it? I believe all it takes is a phone call and creating a relationship. Remember punk rock can be a community.

All you label cats out there- how do you feel about distribution?

More On Burnlounge

2006-05-04T11:52:00.000-04:00

Check this out:

It is now officially time to call bullshit on this. Pay? Pay to be an affiliate and make someone else money?? I thought this was a cool idea before I saw this. I could see maybe offering a free solution to "fans" and charging people who may want some more custom features a premium. Anyone who signs up for this is a sucker.

Burnlounge

2006-05-04T10:53:00.000-04:00

I got this email from a friend a few minutes ago:

I got an email from someone I know who works in the industry suggesting that I sign up for this, that it is supposed to be some kind of HUGE opportunity. I feel like I'm being advised to sign up for Amway or something. I'd never heard of it until today, you heard anything good, bad or otherwise?

Here is the link:

https://reg.burnlounge.com/regstart.asp?storeId=27153#

So what is Burnlounge?

Take a standard Windows Media digital music store and enable the public to create their own mini-stores (playlists) from that store. Instead of marketing the site itself, spin it like the users will be able to go behind the velvet rope and be a part of the music industry.

BL is pretty clever. They shift the marketing burden to the public who then use word-of-mouth on their own produced content (myspace, blogs) to sell their site's music through the affiliate stores. The individual store owners get some kind of cut from their own personal store. It's a pretty cool spin on affiliate relationships. It takes the idea of the iTunes affiliate program (with it's irritating sign up and maintenance process) and puts a more user-friendly interface on it.

I whole heartedly agree that using trusted sources as guides for music discovery is very important. So this site will be interesting to watch, as I think that there's something to be said for de-centralized music consumption. I wonder if the Amazon digital music store will operate in a similar way to really take advantage of the whole long tail.

If I were an iTunes marketing person? (sigh) I'd create a much more user-friendly WYSIWYG store builder and move the whole program management in-house. If they could do for this idea what iWeb did for personal page creation, they'd have another slam dunk on keeping their stranglehold on the digital music marketplace.

Indie Rockers And Hipsters Need Not Apply

2006-05-03T21:24:00.000-04:00

I recently read an interview where Sick Of It All singer Lou Koller mentions that kids always tell him how they like new albums from his now 20 year-old NYHC outfit, but how they LOVE the first record. His commentary is delivered in typical Koller deadpan humor: "Have they heard our old records?"

But non-believers should listen up right now. The new SOIA album, Death To Tyrants is simply fucking ferocious. I doubt there will be matinee-sytle, moshoholic hardcore record that can match it for the rest of the year.

The years have honed Lou's bloodthirsty yet-somehow-melodic scream to near HC perfection. The production is loud, crisp, and brutal without going into chugga-chugga metal territory. But what puts the icing on the cake is the lyrics. Ain't no typical "you stabbed me in the back" here. No, these are words forged by some very angry and intelligent adults who are very angry at some very real things.

Yeah.

The Haystack Pre-Launch Blog

2006-04-30T22:35:00.000-04:00

Friends, neighbors, countrymen... We're gearing up for the launch of our private beta over at Haystack. So for a short while I'm going to be shifting my online punditry to the spankin' new, pre-launch Haystack Blog. I encourage y'all to visit and do whatever subscription thing you do. I'm really excited about it andwant everyone who enjoys what I do here to be an early part of what we're building.

Show Him The Money

2006-04-26T17:41:00.000-04:00

Inside the grimy beltway in DC, Lawmakers are currently trying to pass the PERFORM act. According to Billboard:

The Feinstein-Graham PERFORM Act -- the Platform Equality and Remedies for Rights Holders in Music Act of 2006 -- would require satellite, cable and Internet broadcasters to pay the same royalty rates, reflecting the fair market value, for the performance or distribution of digital sound recordings of music. It would also require the use of readily available and cost-effective technological means to prevent music theft.

Two sides (satellite radio v. labels) are lobbying on opposite ends. Bronfman and others argue this is about fairness, while the sat radio people claim this whole exercise is a negotiation tactic.

I don't have a satellite radio. I'm one of those people who likes to pick almost exactly what they are listening to, and thinking of hearing anything without being able to fast forward drives me crazy. As a music fan,being able to download music from streaming broadcasts seems like a cool idea. If I like it, I can have it on demand.

The problem for me comes as a label guy who's trying to fund marketing and new recordings. I'm compelled to agree with Mr. Bronfman that anything that enables someone to download a perfect copy of music and then add it to your personal collection is indeed an alternate method of digital distribution. (Although I do think the "technological means to prevent music theft" aspect of this law is impossible to enforce.)

However, If you look at the big picture, this seems like the first step to the industry at-large bumbling their way into actually doing it right. At it's core, this legislation takes the download fees off the top, so essentially the downloads are painless and free in spirit (if not in reality.)

I've always been a huge fan of the eMusic model. You pay a few bucks and get to download a pretty significant amount of music. They then divide the revenue on a more or less pro-rated basis (after backing out mechanicals.) As their subscription builds, the pie gets bigger and bigger and is a boon for everyone. People get music on the cheap through a reliable service and the artist actually gets paid.

Take this to another level. If household and business ISPs (who take money for providing pipeline for this) and satellite radio (ditto on the pipeline thing) added a somewhat "invisible" music surcharge, ($2 a month?) and then process those payments on a pro-rated basis to the rightsholders (artists/labels) through an entity like SoundExchange. After a small adjustment period, music would wind up being like a water bill. (every time you turn on the shower, you don't think about how much it costs to scrub your ass, do ya?)

I can't wait to see how they fuck it up.

The Velvet Rope

2006-04-26T00:03:00.000-04:00

I was looking over my Google analytics today, and saw that I had some referrals from the Velvet Rope. For those of you not in the know, it's a music biz messageboard filled with people unwilling to sign their real names to posts and the random worthwhile discussion of the music biz at large. I hadn't visited the site in years but while I was trolling the site, I stumbled upon an interesting thread concerning MySpace and its ability to really generate a fan base.

Let me start out with a rehash of my current take on non-commercial radio promotion. Dominated by the majors and overwhelmed by digital alternatives, it's a far cry from what it once was in the 80's and early 90's as a tastemaking tool for an underground artist. For the most part, Radio is still great as a network of people into music, but is really more of an extension of a street team. (Note: I'm not talking about web-friendly public stations like KCRW or KEXP, or well programmed legacy stations like WSOU or my beloved WFMU.) But the whole chart business is total bullshit. The only people perpetuating the myth are those who still make their living from promotion and the trade mags. But as long as there is a chart, people with cash to burn will spend money to try to be number one, even if their victory is mostly pyrrhic.

The same "chartiness" (an homage to Colbert's "truthiness") is true with MySpace and the social networks. The 'ropers are so busy asking about ways to cheat the system and how to artificially inflate their numbers, they miss the whole point. If your band is touring, engaging their fans in other ways, and really uses MySpace as a tool for 1 to 1 contact, the fans you build will be worth it. (Check my previous posts or see the page for bands like Grace Gale, The Fire Still Burns, and Vaeda.) But random adding a bunch of people just to spam their comments is ineffectual. Maybe it's just that I grew up in hardcore, so community is very important to me- but most of these guys just don't f'n get it.

Part of it is the poor follow through on MySpace's music section. There are quite a few things that they could do to create a far more compelling music experience for the listener, and really enable the artist to reach their fans without resorting to third party plug ins. But that's a story for another day...

Buy This Immediately

2006-04-25T21:40:00.000-04:00

Att: Rockers! The new EP for be your own PET has dropped. I gushed about them in a previous post, so either check the archive or take my word for it. Check the duly authorized .mp3 here and here.

Also, certain indie stores have a limited edition single you should try to get your grubby little collector paws on.

And Yes Smarty Pants, I DO Live Under A Rock

2006-04-25T21:38:00.000-04:00

Glad to see the folks at Billboard are hopping on this new iPod fad.

The Illusion Of Bigness

2006-04-23T17:08:00.000-04:00

Part of the reason I've made the paycheck jump from indie music to new media is that I remember the days when it wasn't so hard. When I first started my label way back in 1989, the whole scene was different. In addition to the whole hardcore punk genre being a true sub-culture (and thereby more engaged in seeking out music,) the technology and skill barriers to entry into the label biz were significant. (Anyone need a tutorial on how to cut some rubylith?)

At that point Blackout! was one of a handful of labels from NY doing HC with any degree of regularity. It was not unusual for early releases to sell 5,000 - 10,000 copies, and they would sell without a ton of promotion- mostly via ads in a handful of zines like MRR, Flipside, and Suburban Voice. The money generated was always plowed back into the label, so we could record new music, release new stuff, and try to step up the promotion. Even then, I was only able to run the label full time and hire an in-house staff for a very short time in the mid/late 90's.

Since those pre-internet glory days, it's gotten much more difficult to release new bands, spend the money you'd like to make them successful, and actually see a return enough to be self-sustaining, let alone profitable enough to make a real life from. (note about real life: I'm talking about buying a house, paying for a kids college, and medical insurance- not champagne taste and caviar dreams.) My bottom line is that for an unestablished baby band it costs about 5x as much to sell 1/5th of the little shiny things it used to.

Many could argue that Blackout! just has shitty bands now and that I've personally lost touch with what the kids really want. While I'd debate you on the accuracy of the statement, I'd also counter that with ... it's not just me. I've had this same conversation with three other label people over the last few weeks, all three of whom run labels with significantly more annual billing than Blackout! One guy described it as "a war every day", while another said "what the hell else am I gonna do?" It's a perpetual cycle of praying your returns don't outweigh your sales on a month-to-month basis. One hiccup in that cycle and boom- the label is teetering on disaster. Two or three? You get Lookout.

So what's the problem? The perception (and pursuit of) bigness. It's the only source of legitimacy. If it isn't all over the place or a household brand name, then obviously it isn't any good to the industry or the kids.

Labels buy into this. Victory is great at the bigness game and uses it to their advantage. They have massive zine and web ad campaigns, do TV commercials, and lease huge chunks of real estate in primary retail locations. In turn the marketplace responds with success stories like Hawthorne Heights, Taking Back Sunday, and Thursday. All of which wipe away the red ink on losing releases. Lefsetz is right about Victory, it's exactly the major model. I know this isn't possible, but I'd love to know the financial details and what percentage of their revenue comes from "hits" and what their overall P&L is.

Fanzines and big magazines buy into this crap also, cuz it's easy money. Journalistic integrity my ass. Bigger magazines who are regarded as the "alternative bible" are just as much in the pocket of the labels who supply their ad revenue as Republican Senate were led around by the nose by Jack Abramoff. These mags spin it as "we need to show you are supporting your artists with advertising" but the lines are clear- buy ads or we won't write about you. Those who get the press are the ones buying the ads.. or haven't you noticed? Too bad there's really nothing Elliot Spitzer can do about this one. (BTW, all you Williamsburg daddy-pays-my rent bloggers who your cues from NME can step up and join the suck-ass club too. If I see one more fucking Arctic Monkeys post or a glowing review of some other c-list Joy Division rip off band I'm gonna go postal on Bedford Ave.)

Worst of all, the kids, especially the hipsters, buy right into it like the consumer drones they are. Since MTV made rockstars out of the first punk bands- bigness is the name of the
game. It's all about cool. Well little Lindsey Faux-han, you aren't cool becuase of what you buy or buy into. You're still the sheep in punk rock clothing.

The good news? The web is leveling the playing field. MySpace has proven that a social network can be a valuable tool to reach people, albeit with a flawed and selfish model. When someone figures out the equation on how to make it really work for bands and indies, record biz 2.0 will really take shape. Which brings me full circle: I'm just as excited about how these technology advancements will enable music powered by people more and more as I was to hold the colored wax on my first Blackout! LP way back in '89.

Last FM meets Pandora

2006-04-21T23:31:00.000-04:00

Techcrunch just posted about a cool mashup of Last.fm and Pandora called PandoraFM. PFM takes your Pandora page and automatically adds your playlists to your Last.fm account. This is a great first step in blending Pandora's audio properties based model with the social taste sharing backbone of Last.fm. I'll be taking it for a spin over the next few days and I encourage everyone who uses both services to do the same and let me know what you think!

The Flight 93 Movie

2006-04-19T01:46:00.000-04:00

This post has nothing to do with anything music or band related.

Although I assume this is preaching mostly to the converted, I wanted to encourage everyone NOT to go see that Flight 93 travesty. As a person who stood on the corner of 2nd Ave and 3rd St on 9/11 at 9am, I will never forget the abject horror of that morning, nor the lingering taste and smell of death ash that covered most of the city for weeks following. I don't know if this is some propaganda ploy to keep us fearful and pave the way to an invasion of Iran, or just some douchebag trying to make a buck on someone elses pain. But in either case, fuck them (and you if you go see it.)

We all know how it ends, and this is too close to our hearts to make it into Titanic.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Hey, Nice Package

2006-04-17T01:29:00.000-04:00

The first band that I ever was a true fan of, was Kiss. I was in fourth grade when Alive II came out, and I gotta tell you one of the things that really made the band special was all the cool crap that came with their records. Gatefold double 12", booklets, stickers, faux tattoos, and paper love guns made each record special. Recorded music was as much about the tactile experience as it was the sound. With Emteevee and concert-going-age being several years away for me at that point in my life, the record packaging was the only thing.

When I first started getting into hardcore, I recall sitting in my room for hours on end reading the Suicidal Tendencies (Frontier LP) lyrics memorizing Mike's twisted words. Same thing with Minor Threat, AF, and the CroMags demo. This whole affinity for toilet reading material carried into the early Blackout! years, where the booklet we put into the Where The Wild Things Are... was directly influenced by that early experience.

Now we have today, I download music files from iTunes, eMusic, or AudioLunchbox onto my portable music player. My records and a great deal of my CD's are in storage (no room) and although "digital booklets" (i.e. .pdf's) delivered free with a purchase via iTunes are interesting, and watching videos are great for commuting... there's a huge part of me that still wants a better, more tactile experience.

Aside from shirts, toys, and other novelties... is there room for content-based collectibles in this brave new world? If so, what are they? I'd love to hear your ideas.

Intermission...The Taxman Cometh

2006-04-17T01:09:00.000-04:00

It's been really nice out, so I've been spending alot of time outdoors playing with my dog. So, I've been pretty reluctant to spend alot of time indoors pontificating. I'm also up to my neck in doing the books for my own taxes and the label, so I haven't been able to blog all that much. I do have some stuff almost finished, so look for a few new posts in the near future.

Oh.... for those of you into the whole online social music experience... I'm getting really excited for the launch of haystack.com. Do yourself a favor and sign up for the mailing list and be a part of the beta. You will not be disappointed.

New Contender In The Recommendation Wars

2006-04-05T21:50:00.000-04:00

Musicstrands has just released a beta of a recommendation tool for Mac.
As this is a beta I wasn't expecting a whole lot but I'm pretty impressed. The depth of catalog (based on other users' listening habits) isn't there right now so the recommendations aren't that hot, but I think that as it develops it will be a very interesting competitor for Last.fm.

The console is interesting. When asked to tag a song it gives a pull down list of different "buckets" such as:

* This song is good for:
* This song makes me feel:
* I heard this song in:
* This song reminds me of:

I'm sure as more users join, this will really help them create some great recommendations based on mood and locations and memories.

Last.fm still dominates though. It creates streaming radio stations based on the aggregated neighbor profiles and playlist comparisons. That reduces the barrier to entry and a very compelling service.

Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose

2006-03-16T01:05:00.000-05:00

It's clear to me that we're somewhere in a valley between two markets.
Music Business 1.0 is screaming downhill, with the CD monkey
relentlessly perched upon it's back. In this old model, results were
quantifiable on a unit basis via Soundscan. The commodity of Music
Business 2.0 is liquid. Music ebbs and flows through a digital pipeline
according to demand.

Every time there's a new P2P innovation, the industry shudders and
prepares another set of lawsuits. The kids, doing their best
impersonation of Montgomery Burns, touch their fingertips together and
breathe a collective "excellent" under their breath. Soon after, there's
a deluge of blogs and board posts decrying the labels and how
music is going to, at long last, be free.

Why exactly is it that the very people who sing a sad song about paying
for music are the same pie eyed consumer drones who need to be force fed their music through MTV2 videos and big ads in Alternative Press? Sure, with Protools and Photoshop it's cheaper overall to make a CD. But to become well known and get the machine started, even the basics
cost money. How much money? Here are some sample costs, and by no means
a complete list:

$5000- $10,000 in studio and mastering costs
$5000 on print and web ads
$2000 on postage to send out promos
$400 on posters
$1000- $2000 per month for a publicist
$1000- $2000 per month for retail promotion personnel
$1 or $2 allocated for each CD for positioning programs at retail.
...and don't forget tour support, IF you can even FIND an agent.

If this is indeed the case, who will foot the bill for the "brand ubiquity" the marketplace demands ? Certainly not artists, who usually cannot rub two nickels together. It's not Rupert Murdoch, whose MySpace bills hundreds of millions of dollars as the middleman pimping free tracks from hundreds of thousands of willing artists.

My impulse is that it will still be some form of label- that acts more like a venture capital marketing fund. Where a corporation throws down money in exchange for a big chunk of the entire business of the band. This isn't that far fetched. Labels like Vagrant already manage many of their acts, and Victory takes merchandising and publishing from theirs. Plus we've already seen these kinds of alternative deals happen with Korn and Bowie bonds.

If this is the case, the consumer wins. But the future might not be all that bright for the bands looking to get a leg up to start their business. They will have less latitude in negotiating deals, because all the investment houses (nee labels) will need to monetize all other aspects of an artists career in order to make their investment worthwhile.

Back To The Future

2006-03-06T00:53:00.000-05:00

Another competitor to Last.fm and Pandora has emerged in the form of Snaptune. According to the fine folks over at Techcrunch:

With a little user configuration, Snaptune will automatically downloads songs and other content directly from an FM radio to your computer, and add meta data from Amazon and other sources.

Forgive me. But I cannot see the point of this. FM radio? Who the hell listens to FM radio to find exciting new music? Who wants to record a shitty radio transmission? Don't these guys read any industry statistics? Hint: It's certainly not the same folks who can figure out how to connect their PC to the radio...

Punks Not As Dead As I Thought

2006-03-05T13:12:00.000-05:00

Punknews has posted on riots at the British Invasion 2k6 festival in San Bernadino. Nazis vs. ARA skins and punks, cops with tear gas, and a stabbing. Given my feeling on the yesterdays example of the Disney-fication of punk, why do I not really feel all that happy about this? But I guess that's the powderkeg you get when you mix old school skinhead bands with dubious right wing politics and a fiesty bunch of leftys.

More at The San Bernadino Sun.

Update: Some footage from YouTube. ("Yah Dude. Trash the place dude.") Take your frustrations out on a restaurant where people who had nothing to do with your bullshit are employed.

Everyone needs to get laid. Really.

Punk Is Dead (Again)

2006-03-04T13:47:00.000-05:00

The service for the death of punk will be held at CBGB's, 8pm tonight.
Closed casket. Do not send flowers.

I Wonder If You Can Get The Hawthorne Heights Record On This?

2006-03-03T21:09:00.000-05:00

From a blog feed I just read:

A new program has been released that takes internet radio streams from Shoutcast and records them as MP3's. But it doesn't stop there - it also seperates each song, titles them (track name & artist), then it locates the album art - and it has a link to buy the album at Amazon (isn't that sweet).

I don't really feel right about advertising this software, so I'm going to let make you search for this if you want the link or the name. But one things for sure: No matter what the actions the RIAA (lawsuits) or the government (i.e. the ridiculous broadcast flag) take, people are going to continue to get music via the web, for free. Programmers and P2P kids are waaaaay ahead of anything the biz can do to stop them. Nobody can turn the clock back to 1995 and restructure the way labels handle things.

Sure, Real fans who want better quality than a 128k .mp3 will still buy CD's. Fans who want to hold and cuddle a booklet or a collectible will still buy CD's and vinyl. Everyone else is going to rip it. There is no way to hold this back.

Here are some ideas:

Eliminate DRM for existing digital files and adapt an industry-wide model like Emusic, where people can download a shitload of files for a cheap price.
Build this nominal monthly subscription fee into service providers like one of the many fine-print bullshit surchages for telephone service. If everyone in the US who had broadband internet paid a buck a month extra, couldn't we monetize this whole thing and the perception of "music for free" would still be there? (Yeah, yeah I know this raises issues with other digital content sources, but so what. This is a blog, not an MBA thesis.)
Get someone else to foot the bill.

Anyone else out there have ideas on how to stop the dam from breaking?

Proper Care And Feeding Of A MySpace Page

2006-03-02T19:58:00.000-05:00

The other day in the office my co-workers and I were discussing the effectiveness of MySpace to create a real fan base for a band, as opposed to just hodepodge of useless faces with no loyalty. My opinion that it really depends on how you use it. To create real value, the MySpace (or web) page must be sticky.

As an example of a compelling MS page, my collegue introduced Vaeda. They're a top unsigned band with over 250,000 listens. Their page pretty much sums up what a band can do to create a great fan-centric online experience.

What's so special?

1. The overall look is clean and legible.
Yep. Someone in this band or their crew has a sense of design. Key points when designing a page if you're all thumbs or have no skills is keeping it simple. Don’t go font crazy. Make sure that you can read the thing. This is made way easier if you use one of the Myspace editing programs. Colorblind or colorstupid? Check this nifty web color picker.

2. The information is updated regularly.
These guys keep their tour dates current and seem to update their blog on a regular basis.

3. Offer some really cool add-on interactive and viral tools.

MP3’s and ringtones for sale
radio request link tool
pre-made style sheets with ready-to-paste HTML
banners with ready-to-paste HTML
“fan of the week” spotlight
incentive for referrals of friends
use of YouTube video to supply show footage
“exclusive” myspace only content

The final point is that randomly adding a bunch of friends is really a bad idea. Making the most of your current online friends and have THEM evangelize your band, and giving them the tools to work with under their own power, is really key.

By no means is Myspace the final means to an end at this stage of the game. Monetizing 499,000 profile views requires an investment and business experience. These are fundamental blocks to keep perpetuating content, distribution of CDs (for as long as that stays around), the band on the road, and manage other publicity. All MySpace can really do is help an artist reach the most advanced "demo" stage it can be.

But that will be the topic of a future entry...

If any reader has additions to the above, please post in comments.

My First Post About Actual Music

2006-02-19T19:30:00.000-05:00

After spending the entirety of my adult life around the "business" of music or somewhat related fields, I go through spells of really losing my enthusiasm for new music. As a music fan, it means I spend considerable time re-listening to existing collection and becoming reacquainted with old favorites.

And then there are the times when something comes along like a breath of fresh air and restores your faith in underground music. This time, that band has been Be Your Own Pet, who I was fortunate enough to catch at Maxwells.

Here's the disclaimer: I don't really read alot of the the hipster music press for the latest trendy band of the month, nor do I slobber in pavlovian ecstasy when the Pitchfork ilk extolls someone's virtues. Truth be told, I usually vacillate between rolling my eyes at, and/or wanting to punch said hipsters in their bony necks. I really walked into this event not knowing at all what to expect.

What I got was a very young band who could have been one of the best bands of the whole late 80's nascent indie rock scene. A post Black Flag / pre- Grunge SST sound? Toss in a little No-Wave? Fast, energetic, quirky with elements of Greg Ginn guitars and a female frontperson who conjures her inner HR with perpetual energy, and doesn't rely on sex appeal as a crutch. For those of you who remember the Lismar Lounge on 1st Ave. in NYC, they wipe the fuckin' floor with that entire scene.

Anyone with any sense of true punkhardcoredom in their veins must see this band live. For a tidbit, check out this cool video of byoP posted by the Ecstatic Peace folks. [note: beware crappy camcorder audio.]

I cannot wait to see what they come up with when they go into the studio.

Send them love here.

That is all.

pic from http://www.beyourownpetonline.com/

Ah Tony

2006-02-17T15:37:00.000-05:00

Tony Brummel of Victory may be the Bill O'Reilly of indie music. His rantings to music biz tipsheet Hits magazine are now almost as famous within the business as his bands. But you gotta hand it to him... everyone who read his iTunes bloviation certainly talked about it (and knows of a certain upcoming release.) And that's his game all along! So hats off to him in pulling a wonderful PR stunt.

Everyone from boardtrolls to bloggers seemed to chime in on this topic, so as I'm late to the table, I'll just post some of my favorite hightlights and my own personal feelings on the matter.

1) Apple/iTunes do not care about independent labels or, for that matter, the record industry. Without the music industry, their site and their iPods are useless. Why did the major labels bend over and super serve Steve Jobs free content without negotiating a % of each iPod sale, variable pricing of singles (if the labels CHOOSE to make one available from an album) and other say in how the content is sold? Has anyone looked into any stock option kickbacks here? Since when do record companies give their content away without extracting an advance? If the major record companies wanted to take a stand they would PULL their content. But, if they all pulled their content in unison, Apple would claim collusion… I say, pull it anyway. The defective hard drives are making people deaf as it is.

Pandora's box is now fully open with digital music and photography. 85% of kids don't even listen to the radio anymore. The web is it. There's no going back. Don't you think SONY (remember the Walkman?) who owns Epic and Columbia would have proverbially shit themselves to have thought of this vertical hardware/software/content solution during the mid 90's? What about Matsushita Panasonic, who owned Universal Music during the glory days of Web 1.0? They were certainly capable- but they, like Brummel, are married to the CD. Furthermore, what other business model gives the consumable goods producer a percentage of the hardware?? The detergent company doesn't get a percentage of dishwasher sales do they? It's an ass-backwards thinking process. Like it or not, those deafness-inducing hard drives are here to stay. With digital downloads accounting for 7% of music revenue (and growing fast) those who aren't selling their music in any format possible are ultimately shooting themselves in the foot.

For an indie, Victory is in a really unique position. They've had enough success with bands to command major-label respect from the buyers at all the key chains. They can afford to do a $300,000 end-cap campaign to support their latest slew of MTV2 advertised releases. They also make a ton of money from all those "special edition reissues." But what Tony really doesn't like is that nobody wants to give him, just another software vendor, preferential treatment and massage his ego. It would be refreshing to hear, "I just want to keep on milking this sweet deal I have, and by going digital, I can't continue on my gravy train." If I were in his postion, maybe I'd feel the same way. (I'm not, and most of us aren't.)

2) I absolutely believe that allowing people to cherry-pick the tracks they want from each album cannibalizes full-length album sales and is ultimately detrimental to the artists who created the music.

Buying the one good song and not having to suffer through album filler is the way it is. I personally still buy complete albums as I'm concerned with the "body of work". But letting people just get what they want isn't so bad. Again, my feeling is that this goes back to the major label mentality of "sell them a $16.98 CD so they can get the one song they saw on Fuse." If bands make great albums, they'll start selling complete works.

To compete this, I imagine artists may go back to the model that existed before Album Oriented Rock became the buzzword in the 70's. Sinatra, Elvis, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, The Beatles, and scores of Motown artists recorded some of the most memorable "sides" in history, not albums. Albums were really just glorified compilations of greatest hits, possibly re-recorded, with maybe a few new tracks included. Even in the days of early 80's hardcore, those short blasts of (collectible) music on 7" were (and remain) a precious commodity.

3) If only 4% of this business is iTunes, who cares? Focus on the 96% which is traditional retail. Traditional retail supports music 1,000 times more than iTunes does. If someone does not want to leave their house, they can go to our webstore, Amazon or the hundreds of other online sites that sell music. For the very casual consumer. there are digital consumption models that will work when and if properly deployed. People are using iTunes because they like the iPod. When Dell or Samsung makes a better device, iTunes will lose relevancy.

Not for long. Like I said above, digital accouned for 7% of WMG's revenue, while CD sales continued to take a dump. Web media means more to the music marketplace than radio or MTV (note their recent push into Overdrive.) As far as iTunes model? I agree that there are other models that work just as well. Like I said many times before, I use Rhapsody, Emusic, and iTunes to get my legal music fixes. Will someone build a better mousetrap? Amazon? Maybe. Until then I'm pretty psyched with my 60g video iPod.

iTunes makes music disposable. It makes it a faceless impulse item. It steals its soul.

No. It makes it convenient and on-demand, which is the lay of the land in today's market. It's as meaningful as you make it. What makes it faceless and without soul is crass commercialization.

I'm outta gas right now... maybe I'll have some more later.

RIAA Lobbies To Make Ripping Your Own CD's Illegal

2006-02-15T22:06:00.000-05:00

A post at the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes that as part of the legislative procedures surrounding the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, our pals at the RIAA want to make ripping CD's you've purchased to digital files, an illegal action.

Since I can remember, making mix tapes has been a crucial part of the music experience. I personally remember getting a cassette dub of the Misfits out of print singles (before it was re-issued as The Collection) from a friend, and treating it like gold. That old-school viral legacy was very important to keeping that band's name alive. Now Big Brother is telling me that even taking my old collection and putting it on my iPod is illegal?

How exactly would anyone enforce this? Track ISP numbers that reference CDDB? Have Apple, Microsoft, et. al create hardware/ software prohibitions on CD ripping? Are they REALLY THAT FUCKING ARROGANT AND STUPID?

The only thing that this would do, on the outside chance that it does come to fruition, is create a wave of piracy which will probably even include legal downloaders (like myself.) My attitude as a music consumer is, I bought the CD and I should be able to play it through whatever device I want. What it will also do is speed along the death of the major label system as it exists.

Speaking directly for my label, there's no way I would ever support this knuckleheaded move. I want people that actually purchased my music in any format to be able to listen to it without the need to repurchase it for every device they own. I consider that part of the unwritten contract a label has with their customers.

Pandora In The Hot Seat

2006-02-05T00:17:00.000-05:00

A week or so ago, Lefsetz sparked a very lively debate about MySpace. This week, he set his sights on the Music Genome Project’s Pandora, a site that I recently compared with the slightly more human powered Last.fm. To those late to the table , both of these sites use collaborative filtering and advanced algorithms to recommend new music to a listener.

A recent addition to the whole “discovery through mathematics” set is Muiso, who uses an Audioscrobbler like software plugin to track listening habits on a users machine to create a personal playlist that it compares with that of your musical neighbors. (As it doesn’t run on a Mac yet, I have yet to actually test it, but I’ll get to a Windows machine at some point this week.)

We can apply Bob’s critique of Pandora to the other sites as well. Here’s the crux of his argument.

Pandora is a scam and not about turning you on to new music, it’s about advertising.
Pandora does not give you useful results..
Machines can never replace the good ol’human being.

I disagree on all of these points.

First, Broadcast radio isn’t about the money???? A certain Mr. Spitzer would disagree. Who cares if I have to look at ads if I get quality recommendations? If it worked well, I’d even pay for it (as I have with Last.fm.) There is no doubt in my mind that these types of services are ultimately going to drive traditional music radio to an even more marginal status. In fact, if Infinity, Clearchannel and other media giants had any brains whatsoever, they’d be already offering big money to get into this market.

It's no secret I’m a huge fan of Last.Fm. Their model (and seemingly that of Muiso) isn’t based on a “music genome” like Pandora. Their little web machines look at what other people who are already listening to similar music are listening to, and presents an individual with some new recommendations. I’ve actually made several purchases based on what I’ve heard.

I’ve had a decent discovery experience on Pandora. The problem Bob found with it is that they focus only on sound, and not any sociological reasons why people get turned onto music. There may be some stylistic similarities between The Banner and Kreator, but the social scenes (hardcore vs. metal) where these two bands come from, are pretty different when you look at them from within. I also don’t think Bob gave their internal filters enough of a chance to hone his taste to it’s maximum ability. Finally, the Pandora music database isn’t developed enough yet, and as they add more music there will be more viable options to recommend.

I concede, there are indeed duds in the mix. But far less than you’ll find with traditional radio. As more data is added, and the internal filtration / artificial intelligence is refined- near perfect niche, personal radio will be achieved.

As someone who never found new music from the radio, I welcome these services with open arms, and look forward to seeing how they develop.

MySpace Backlash

2006-01-28T12:06:00.000-05:00

LA Music biz pundit Bob Lefsetz came out swingin' the other day with this huge rant against MySpace and how it's not changing the world for the better and actually sucks. However, the comments that it spawned were also quite revealing.

His key points were:

MySpace is slow and buggy (agreed)
MySpace does not filter it's content (yep)
MySpace is centered around streaming not downloading (nope)
MySpace is not loyal to music (yep)
You cannot "break" a band on MySpace. (depends- see below)
"To improve and drive the music sphere we need people who really understand how the word is spread, how people USE music, how to TURN PEOPLE ON to music." (kinda)

Some of the comments furthered his feelings while others took issue. Readers in agreement added several other ideas:

MySpace is kiddieland for the "gymnasium and punch" set. (yes)
MySpace is more about T&A than really a music community. (yes)

The ones that took issue were also pretty interesting:

Bob's too old to figure MySpace out and plenty of discovery of new talent goes on. (no comment)
MySpace does allow downloading, it's the bands (and labels) who make the decision. (right)
MySpace isn't supposed to be the second coming, but is effective at allowing joe schmoe band to network with fans they would never ever have reached otherwise. (true)
The kids love it and use it like mad, and seem to find what they want. (uh huh)
The direct two way connection of bands to fans is priceless. (si!)
"The problem is, people don't USE music. Music nerds USE music. Everyone else just dances and fucks to it." (affirmative)

My reflection on the whole thing goes back to my days as a teenage bald kid looking for hardcore bands when the vast majority of kids in in my area were doing their best to look like an extra from an episode of Miami Vice or dancer in a Pat Benatar video.

The CroMags, Breakdown, Sick Of It All, Raw Deal, Absolution (among many many others) built a pretty strong followings on a demo tape. Most of these cassette only releases were really 2 track live in studio performances, mixed through a board. The bands (or their girlfriends) spent many hours dubbing cassette after cassette on their home machines, usually one or two at a time and selling them for $3 a pop at shows and at stores ike Bleeker Bob's, Some Records, and Venus. Each of the bands sold thousands of these cheaply produced demos, and the recirculation of those demos provided the backbone to the scene- completely under the radar of the "real" music business.

Today, MySpace (and to a lesser extent bulletin boards) are virtual extensions of the same DIY mindset. Like the demo of years gone by, it's a great way for a young alt/punk/core band to find fans. But like any tool- it is what you make of it. Going out and randomly adding friends (i.e. spamming) isn't going to do much to promote your band. But posting your music and letting your fanbase grow naturally is. Both Blackout! bands Grace Gale and The Fire Still Burns have had some pretty solid success on MySpace- because they follow a sensible methodology and really use it as a hub for band to fan contact.

I get what Lefsetz is saying about how (on a pop level) MySpace is not the Panacea for the ailments of the music business. Trying to market a pop record on a social network is counterintuitive to what pop(ular music) is. But from down here in the punk rock trenches, the social networks have been pretty good to us simply becuase it's a natural extention of what we've always been doing.

There's really one distinct difference between then and now that the internet cannot address. The "social network" of the 80's was an actual living, breathing thing- CBGB every Sunday (sometimes Saturday), maybe a Rock Hotel show at the old Ritz. To participate, you had to show up, not just "click in". You had to be brave enough to walk down the streets that your mom always told you to be careful of. You had to meet people and get yourself out of (or into) situations that were often pretty dangerous. That's the visceral part of it that chatroom superstars and snipers do not get.

The Pricing War Continues...

2006-01-24T12:48:00.000-05:00

Labels are still transfixed by the idea that they need to figure out another way to rape the public instead of creating a price (and a product) that consumers will be happy to pay for.

To have a meaningful discussion, let's actually talk about the revenue breakdown of a CD.

On a 10 song CD that has a suggested retail list price of $13.98, the cost is broken down as follows:

the retail store buys the CD for about $8.00 from the distributor
the distributor buys the CD for about $6.00 from the label
$1.00 for manufacturing and printing (cost of goods sold)
$1.25 for performer royalties (based on a 12% of SRLP with standard deductions)
$.80 for songwriter (mechanical) royalties.
the gross profit on each release (before recording and promo expenses) is about $3.oo
the gross profit per song is about .30

Now let's compare that to a vendor like an iTunes, who sells individual tracks for .99 and albums for $9.99

iTunes pays labels .65 per song or about $6.50 for an album
there is no packaging cost
performer royalties are .11 per song or $1.19 for an album without any deductions**
mechanical royalties are still .08 per song or $.80 for the album.
the gross profit on a full album is about $4.51
the gross profit per song download is about $.46

* some labels who go through an aggregator may pay 10% admin fee.
**higher profile artists may get a better deal on digital music
***most labels only pay mechanicals on up to 10 songs on an album for songs written by the artist (controlled compositions.)

So can someone please explain to me what all the bitching is about? What about an overall reduction in price that will bring down the SRLP of legimate downloads- yet retain the current margins? If you look at my label, Blackout! passes along the savings of packaging to the consumer and iTunes prices are only $7.98 for most full album titles. We take the hit because we want people to take the chance on music, and if the album is cheaper- they may buy the whole thing instead of just a track if they like it.

Please feel free to ridicule me if my math is off in any significant way.

Remember, No One Expects the Inquisition

2006-01-22T18:45:00.000-05:00

I'm glad to see our friends in government are taking cues from the geniuses at the majors when it comes to advancements in technology. In addition to the Republicans wanting to roll back the culture to pre-Scopes trial intellectual standards, destroy privacy and civil rights, and generally bending over for anyone with a big checkbook, the idiocracy are once again looking to pass The Broadcast Flag.

According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, this genius piece of legislation has a serious impact on the future of digital music:

You say you want the power to time-shift and space-shift TV and radio? You say you want tomorrow's innovators to invent new TV and radio gizmos you haven't thought of yet, the same way the pioneers behind the VCR, TiVo, and the iPod did? Well, that's not what the entertainment industry has in mind. According to them, here's all tomorrow's innovators should be allowed to offer you:
"customary historic use of broadcast content by consumers to the extent such use is consistent with applicable law." Had that been the law in 1970, there would never have been a VCR. Had it been the law in 1990, no TiVo. In 2000, no iPod. Fair use has always been a forward-looking doctrine. It was meant to leave room for new uses, not merely "customary historic uses."

Sony was entitled to build the VCR first, and resolve the fair use questions in court later. This arrangement has worked well for all involved -- consumers, media moguls, and high technology companies.

But that's not all! This legislation will also put satellite radio under the control of the FCC, where it will be subject to the same rules as traditional radio. (Watch out all you Stern fans!)

Besides extending the hand of government deeper into free speech, this new exercise in legislative hooey does about as much good to prevent piracy as those levys the Army Corps of Engineers did to defend New Orleans from the relentless onrush of Katrina.

Apple and The NSA, Two Of A Kind?

2006-01-11T15:06:00.000-05:00

Unauthorized, (illegal, and warrantless) wiretapping of Americans has been rearing it's ugly head all over the media recently. But instead of the NSA, the culprit du Jour is Apple. As first revealed at BoingBoing, it seems that the new version of iTunes has a new mini-store feature that actually checks out what you're listening to from your library and then suggests other music from it.

I have mixed feelings about this. I purposely downloaded audioscrobbler and happily use last.fm which really provide similar functionality. But that download and installation was my choice. Sliding that feature in, unannounced was a dirty trick and I don't appreciate it. At the very least they should have set the default to disable the feature, and only allowed transmission of data if the user opted-in to take advantage of it. I really cannot believe they did this, especially in the wake of the Sony DRM nonsense.

Does this shatter my faith in Apple and do I think they share more sinister motives with my nemesis in DC? Nope. I really think that they thought this was part of their user-friendly attitude to create an immersive music tool for their customers. For me it's a trivial sin as I enjoy participating in the whole collaborative filtering process.

2006-01-08T16:32:00.000-05:00

This new wave of major label "digital labels" reeks of the same stench of failure and weakness as their attempts in the mid-90's to create "hip" fake indie labels to build cool street-cred. I recently had a conversation with my co-worker from my day gig at Haystack about how they're missing the boat.

We came up with one conclusion- to be cool and legitimate you can't go into it thinking that your format is secondary. Fer chrissakes the copy on the Cordless fron page screams "these bands aren't really good enough to have a REAL CD but we're doing this so we look like we're cutting edge." How about launching with EP's from heavier weight bands, do some real promo around it, and make a real stand and say that this is the future of music. Want to make a difference? Release the next Linkin Park EP through Cordless: that will command attention and show that you've truly entered the digital realm, might actually be cool, instead of making transparent attempts at being so.

Cool is not defined by what you buy, but what you create. It's also defined by either how easy it comes to you (not really thinking about it) or by working very close (or past) your personal breaking point to realize your vision. In my perspective, Richard Hell was exponentially cooler than Malcom McLaren because Hell didn't fabricate the image (later stolen by McLaren to outfit his Sex Pistols.) If you're in costume, it doesn't work as well. This also applies to all the Deathcab For Cutie yindies and Hot Topic punks. Sorry kids. If it comes easy, it ain't cool.

How's that Jordan?

Things Are Not What They Seem?

2006-01-05T14:37:00.000-05:00

Interesting Blog post about Myspace. An essential read for all users of the site.

Fast Company On Pandora

2006-01-02T17:49:00.000-05:00

Today the Fast Company Blog profiled Pandora. They observed a key to why Pandora (and Last.fm) are so revolutionary- they're timesavers that allow busy people to find music. The article quotes founder Tim Westgren on the pitfalls of staying in touch with a hectic real life schedule, "People don't lose their love of music,they lose their ability to connect with it."

I'm one of these "adult" creatures, but I differ from my peers because my label is still active with young bands. I'm still a part of "the scene", but I still use last.fm and Pandora as part of my discovery process.

That's the ball game isn't it? Convenience. With smaller, buyer-friendly record stores going out of business or eliminating deeper catalog in favor of "lifestyle" items, and the big box stores only picking up sure sell faceless product- the adult music lover with a non-pop taste has nowhere to go. So these busy users abandon music for other, more easily acquired entertainment. These services step up and take the place of the Jack Black character in High Fidelity for finding new tunes.

FC continues the profile with an opt-in poll (take it below!) on how their readers find out about new music. It's too early to tell as I write this, but I imagine the results will be interesting. Although the non-random nature of the participants will not be accurate in a statistical sense, it'll be a good qualitative study of tech-savvy bizfolk.

How do I listen and buy? I discover new bands through a short daily troll of myspace, purevolume, webzines, bulletin boards, while listening to various podcasts, Pandora, Last.fm, or Rhapsody. If I'm excited enough about the band, my digital purchases are made primarily from Emusic & iTunes, though I still get odd CD at my local indie record shop. But in general, my consumption of music is about 90% digital.

Where are you?

H.G. Wells Would Be Proud

2005-12-31T13:59:00.000-05:00

After reading the Hypebot year-end post, I time-warped over to the Hits Magazine summary of the past events (warning: registration required) to see if anything was of interest to me here in the minor leagues. Aside from all the kudos to the executives and recapping of various hirings and firings, one paragraph really stuck out:

"iTUNES: Downloads accounted for a substantially increased percentage of overall sales via iTunes and the services chasing it, but more and more executives have come to believe that, rather than being the answer, a la carte downloads are contributing to the problem as they increasingly cannibalize album sales…"

Further down the post, they start talking about certain success stories. I noticed that American Idiot has sold about 3.3 million copies to date in the US. From perspective as a consumer, this has been the most well-received GD album since Dookie, and actually probably more so. The band is headlining stadiums for chrissakes!

In my estimation, this is about a third of what this ubiquitously promoted album would have sold in the pre-internet era. Part of me believes this is because there are a lot of other products vying for the entertainment dollar, but I also firmly convinced that there are twice or three times the number of bootlegged CDR copies of that record floating around in the digisphere than genuine purchased copies.

If the business-at-large insists on perpetuating the whole CD thing, then they need to re-establish a relationship with their customers.

Is the real problem that Steve Jobs created a product that started monetizing a growing share of what was being completely pirated? Or is the problem that no matter how many times people try and retrofit the CD with cockamamie copy protection, the format has outlived it's usefulness.

Hey industry, how about...
1. ...Wrapping your heads around the fact that the public is on to your scam. Unlike the schemes of credit card companies, or personal electronics vendors with their engineered obsolescence, the public has a way to fight back.
2. ...Doing some actual market research on what your customers want instead of thinking that you know everything and trying to fuck them at every turn.
3. ...Using that research to determine the most viable formats for your product releases based on age bracket or genre. There is no singular solution right now.
4. ...Leaving your Ivory towers, jump ahead of the curve and work with technology companies to engineer a shift to digital sales over time, keeping in mind that the public, and Elliot Spitzer, can smell a fraud.

Happy New Year!

What A Crock

2005-12-30T14:15:00.000-05:00

The CD horse is past rigormortis, yet the ignorant turds in majordom still continue to flagellate the poor dead beast. Behold the "terms" on the new Coldplay disc (full post at BoingBoing.)

I'm in the f'n business and this kind of crap makes me want to torrent it out of spite.

A Solution?

2005-12-29T03:21:00.000-05:00

Over the last few days there have been quite a few back and forths in the blogosphere regarding the "solution" to the problem with record labels. First Hypebot chimed in with an excellent Manifesto on solving the woes, then it was dissected in the Big Takeover.

The next blog that I read was Techcrunch where they gushed over the model of online label Magnatune. They even went so far as to say "I really think this is the music business model of the future."

To a certain extent I agree, but I'm not sure this is exactly it. Going back to a previous post, tastemaking is a huge part of being a record label, especially an indie. Not to sound like a marketing geek, but there's nothing interesting about Magnatune's branding. It's like Purevolume with a less compelling visual style combined with an excellent commerce engine.

Magnatune isn't part of a scene, they aren't connected in a spiritual way to the people buying their music except for the "We Aren't Evil" slogan. They seem to be selling their mechanism more than the artists who will make them what they are. In other words, I don't see them encroaching on the status of a Matador, Sub Pop, or Merge .

Secondly, I also don't really see what support the label gives to it's artists. Sure, it's absolutely fab that the bands get 50% of everything and that the commerce engine is sorted out so wonderfully. Yes, they do perform certain administrative functions. But does the label pay for recording? How about promoting the artists through publicity and consumer advertising? What about tour support? These are the primary functions that I still believe are the core components of the old-world record label that must follow into the coming digital era.

Keep 'em comin.

Comments

2005-12-27T23:55:00.000-05:00

Sorry, I was a bad boy. Didn't check the comments section in a while. All your comments are up and I'll be more careful in the future! I really want to encourage open dialog on this thing.

No Kiddin' - Part Deux

2005-12-27T17:16:00.000-05:00

A few days ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article entitled Silent Night For Music Sales, detailing the woes of music stores during the current holiday season and painting yet another bleak picture for the music business. A week prior, I received a similarly worded email from my distributor, detailing the changes they've seen in the marketplace and what they're building to adapt to what comes in the future. While some labels may have looked at this weather report as a doomsday memo, to me it said a lot of things that I already knew. I appreciate the dose of reality as I now know they're not sticking their head in the sand and praying that the internet just goes away, or thinking they're gonna solve the problem by hopping on some half-assed DRM spyware scheme.

The news is simple- things ain't as great as they used to be. Due to shrinking CD sales, Newbury Comics, one of the staunchest supporters of punk rock and the indie scene, has downsized their music section by almost a third, and shifted their focus to t-shirts, clothing and novelty items. To survive, a good deal of mom and pop stores and small chains are also following that "Hot Topic" model. By utilizing shelf space for black lipstick, Red Sox beanies and fake doo-doo, they can stay in business. One of the most telling items in the WSJ article concerns a huge supporter of Blackout!-Vintage Vinyl in Fords, NJ. It quotes owner Rob Roth "that being able to simply keep pace with last year's sales puts him among the lucky few. His new motto: "Flat is the new up.""

There are indie labels that are doing well, at least in the mind of the general public. They don't have the huge expectations that the majors do, and can still pump out stuff using a genre-specific marketing machine. The label folks I know see the costs of marketing records, in an oversupplied baby band marketplace to a fickle customer base, going way up. Ultimately, the business becomes a numbers game with the distributor- making sure you ship out enough records to cover the returns from the previous months over shipments and crossing your fingers for one record to become successful and wash away your sins. Without a cash-positive scenario the whole system falters and only the deep-pocketed will survive. Lookout! Records acrimonious situation with Green Day is a clear example of this.

How did this happen?

Myopia
The big picture isn't really the strong suit of the big labels and distributors. Most of the executives rose to power during the 80's and 90's- when MTV and commercial radio were making broadcast media stars out of Michael Jackson, hair metal bands and hip-hop,. Furthermore, major companies were still earning artificially-enhanced revenue from fans repurchasing their catalogs of LP's on the industry-engineered (and sonically inferior) CD format. Those who did warn of the oncoming danger of digital downloads in the mid-90's were laughed at, dismissed as crazy, or fired for their transgressions against the grain.

Luddism
Instead of embracing technology like the porn biz did, the music industry was the last to the digital table and continue to use Flintstones techniques in a Jestsons world. Christ on a bike, Billboard is just getting around to giving Myspace some ink as an "emerging" marketing tool. Ask virtually any record label person about Creative Commons, and they cock their heads to the side and raise their eyebrows like a dog given a command it doesn't understand. The major publishers should be all over that type of system, but they aren’t.

Narcissism
It's not about music, it's about THEM. The bleach toothed, fake tanned, fairest of them all at the top of the music food chain are too busy doing self-congratulatory power lunches and chasing aspiring starlets around their desks to think about the survival of their business. They've made their money on IPO's, all have golden parachutes, and they're milking it for all it's worth until the day it collapses in an Enron style crash/burn.

Hubris
The labels were always ahead of the game, owning and controlling the method of distribution. They figured that they count on their attorneys and the government to save them against a rebellion by the masses. The industry swaggering like the Captain of the Titanic But the recent numbers show that the public (and even some European nations) still embrace and (perhaps even legalizing) P2P. It took Steve Jobs to partially wake them all up and realize that digital format could not be marginalized.

Next?
The next three or so years are going to shake out labels and distribution companies- a great many labels will go the way of Lookout! The Victory and Saddle Creeks of the world will most likely continue to survive and thrive, having built a huge following and fan base and who can adapt more quickly to changes in the marketplace. But the economy of developing new bands will almost entirely rest in the digital realm as digital networks start to allow the more successful artists to monetize their art.

Looking forward, there will also be a marked difference in how the generations consume their music. Older users (meaning those over 34) will still primarily buy hard copies, out of loyalty to the packaging and the assumption better sound quality. Smaller, growing bands would be released exclusively in a digital format far ahead of (or in lieu of) a CD release. While a band with a large portion of older listeners like Bon Jovi, still would still find a large number of takers in the plastic disc format.

It’s starting to happen now.... Nitro recently released EP from Blackout! alumni Crime In Stereo in a strictly digital format as a way to nurture the digital marketplace and quickly release some great tunes. Blackout! will be releasing some unreleased material from The Banner in the same way in early '06. Warner does get an honorable mention with their Cordless label... but in order to be successful, they're going to have to promote those releases with at least the same gusto that an indie would. I fear this is going to go the same way of the fake independent labels they all tried to build in the 90's as a way to establish credibility for their artists, instead of looking at this as the true future of music.

Want proof of the age gap? Take a look at this, the statistics of users of the last.fm service I gushed about in a previous post. (I hope they don't mind me posting their publicly available info here.)

It shows the HUGE gap in the age bracket that is adopting their service. It also shows that among the youngest users, the disproportionate amount of males present evens out- so all music buyers will eventually get the bulk of their music digitally.

The Role Of The Record Company In The Digital Era
Hypebot has posted this brilliant manifesto for change in the music business.

To me, Number 7 on their list is the most salient point:

" Stop thinking that every act has to go platinum and start creating a profitable business around artists who consistently sell 50,000 - 250,000 CD's. Fragmented media is already leading to fewer superstars and a lot more mid-level artists. But when the artist's "output" resides on a hard drive rather than gathering expensive dust on store shelves or in warehouses; can't smaller but longer term sales numbers be profitable? "

So with all this talk of digital democratization of music, do we still need labels? Yep. This is based on three basic support systems required by artists to develop: tastemaking, funding & administration.

Roadrunner, Relapse, Saddle Creek, Merge are all tastemakers- their imprint is better than the UL and Better Housekeeping seals to large numbers of people who trust them to find the best talent out there. I don't think the majors will fare as well accomplishing the same mission as their system is meant to capitalize on popular music, as opposed to niche bands. But tastemaking is a very qualitative function. (More about this in a future post.)

What CAN be measured more tangibly is money- the one thing that most bands don't have, and what they need to grow. Artists and bands don't usually have the wherewithal to fund higher-end produced recordings, shoot videos, buy a van, and advertise in all the media they need to in order to reach the masses.

The other real quantitative item is business acumen, contacts and experience. Accountants, publicists salespeople, and product managers do labor-intensive jobs that most artists don't want to do, or simply can't handle. A bands first priority is to be out there- shaking babies, kissing hands, playing shows and writing songs, not the day-to-day drudgery of making the commerce engine work.

Put on your helmets.

Best Thing I've Read In Days

2005-12-24T20:55:00.000-05:00

Die, Hipster, Die from the Philadelphia Weekly.

Merry, Happy Y'all.

Putting The Orange Button To Work For You

2005-12-18T21:13:00.000-05:00

In a previous post, I discussed how RSS feeds are good for aggregating information from your favorite websites. I've decided to follow that with what RSS can do for your band, and why setting one up is a pretty good idea. I'll go through several options of how to set up syndication, and some of the cooler tools that can help a band maximize what the feeds do.

Who Subscribes To Feeds?
Significant numbers of users already utilize feeds, but the technology is so transparent, all but the few, the proud, and the nerdy don't even know / care that they are. However, A punk/ metal/ indie rock band (or label person) absolutely needs to be concerned with the bulk of the active, aware RSS users, as they are also the same people who probably are willing to listen to your music.

According to a November 2005 interview with John Manoogian posted on clickz.com:

"... as many as 27 percent [of U.S. internet users] consume RSS content through My Yahoo! and My MSN. If you extrapolate the number out, 27 percent of the U.S. Internet population is roughly 50 million people ... In the same study, only 4 percent of the Internet population actually knew what RSS was and consciously used it. That's the brilliant part. One of the promises about the Internet is that people can receive the content that they want, when they want it, in a user-friendly framework. RSS fits the bill"

If you're interested in more in-depth analysis, Yahoo! recently published a .pdf white paper on RSS. Some additional commentary can be found here.

Easy Blog It!
Most blog sites and programs provide the easiest and fastest way to set up a feed. Blogger, Typepad, LiveJournal all provide feeds for the user. Even Myspace allows the user to set up a blog with an RSS feed.

If you're interested in setting up a quickie podcast or video podcast, you'll need a place to store and host the media files as the freebie blog sites don't provide any bandwith. Among others, Liberated Syndication and others offer full service blog/podcasting hosting/ RSS solutions, services. A detailed comparison of podcasting services can be found at the Mitchelaneous blog.

If you have your own site, you can download server-based blog software for yourself and customize it to your liking. Six Apart, owners of Typepad and LiveJournal also have the Movabletype program. There's a free version available on their site to try, and then several various other paid individual and commercial license levels.

The highest end way to start a feed is to actually program your website to generate them from within your site. To do so, you'll need to know some advanced html, scripting, and your way around a SQL database. Some of the specs for the most recent RSS format (2.0) can be found at the Harvard Law website.

Burn it!
Switching an email or phone number always represents some problems with disconnects and lost contacts. This is also the case with feeds. So if you're looking at a Blogger page as a temporary solution to your online publishing needs, and think that at some point you may upgrade to another level, you may want to use the Feedburner service.

Why bother re-burning your feed? Think of it as the "permanent" address for your feed. If you move from host to host, your feedburner host will remain constant, enabling an uninterrupted flow of information. In addition, Feedburner offers some amazing tools that (in their words) allow the user to publicize, optimize, analyze, & monetize their feeds.

One of the most important ways that Feedburner helps podcasters is that it properly formats feeds to be compatible with the iTunes music store, by placing graphics and other items a standard feed won't do.

The Bummer Of Redundancy
Even If you set up your feed using a custom Movabletype solution or from your own database-driven site, almost all bands or labels have mulitple pages on multiple sites that perpetually need updating. An easy way to handle the seemingly endless schedule of updating is by using RSS to it's ultimate advantage, to "push" your content where you want it to go. Think of it along the same lines as the video codes that some people use to post videos onto their Myspace pages.

Feedburner offers a quick way to announce your blog headlines through the Feedburner Buzzboost program. It allows the user to drop in a little html/ javascript and have your headlines appear wherever you wish, as long as the site you're working on allows Javascript. (which Myspace doesn't.) The FB folks also offer a non-Java tool called Headline Animator that actually burns an on-the-fly .gif image that you can post virtuallly anywhere.

Not custom or seamless enough for you? I feel your pain. There are some other solutions to display your feeds.

Feedroll and Jawfish are similar to Buzzboost, in that they offers a headline publisher but with customizable look and feel. You just run the page and then just cut n' paste the code! The downside is to get your feed its own page, you'll need to pay for the service and of course the site you want to post the info on will have to be capable for running either java or .php. Those with programming experience can also use the guts of Jawfish, called CaRP.

At the moment, these appear to be the best in user-level RSS display tools, but none of the above solutions really fulfill the needs of the artist/label user. Especially those who are unwilling to deal with the barriers that iframes, java, or dynamic page rendering methods provide. I'll keep diggin' and keep you posted as to developments or simple workarounds that I can find.

Right On...

2005-12-16T13:53:00.000-05:00

Bob Lefsetz has an amazing blog/newsletter that talks about the music business on the major label level. Almost every day he debunks the secretive and self-defeating bullshit that goes on within the walls at the Dino-corps. Today he offered the following send up on the industry touting the upcoming Microstoft/MTV download store as an iPod/iTunes "killer".

"It took almost twenty years, but then it became clear. MTV was the major labels’ worst nightmare. Oh, it blew acts up. But they fell to earth so quickly that people rushed to get out of the way, not wanting to be tainted by the shit that emanated from the impact. I.e., you’ve got no careers and no catalog sales. Sound like a recipe for success? Then why did Time Warner blow out Warner Music at such a cheap price? Why did Sony merge with BMG?

Then you’ve got these same ignoramuses functioning in the online sphere. Or not functioning, as the case might be. Hell, they sued almost a thousand people for trading THIS WEEK! It’s almost as if Wham-O had a big campaign promoting Hula-Hoops. OR, we started seeing ads for Maypo on TV. HUH? Doesn’t everybody have an iPod? Aren’t iPods GOOD for music? Good for music, bad for major labels. At least that’s the way the major labels see it. Married to the CD paradigm, too fucking stupid to see there might be another way."

You can find the full article, as well as an archive of previous posts here.

No Kiddin' - Part I

2005-12-09T19:38:00.000-05:00

It seems that the early adopters in the music biz have come to the shocking revelation that the kids like their iPods over broadcast radio. Like this is news to anyone that has to rely on actually selling records instead of puckering up to the corporate teat or a venture fund to pay the bills?

College radio (with the exception of stations like WFMU and WSOU) has become almost powerless in it's capacity to really shape the taste of listeners. From my perspective, sending promotional copies for a hardcore/punk/indie rock label to the top 200 is pretty much only good as a street marketing tool, to encourage online support. CMJ Chart numbers are feckless , antiquated barometers of progress and only used by radio departments or indie promoters to justify their jobs. At best, those major-dominated statistics reflect a snapshot of where things were yesterday, instead of where things are going . (Which it was, back in its late 80's/ early 90's heyday.)

Existing radio stations do have the ability to create compelling content for the web, either by webcasting like lefty talk network AirAmerica (oh pardon me, is my progressive showing?) and/or creating podcasts. NPR affiliate Stations like KCRW offer a huge array of sources to their content. (My personal favorite music subscriptions are All Songs Considered, Morning Becomes Eclectic. and Celia Hirschman's music biz show, On The Beat. )

So What's Next?
What's stepping up to the plate? Since Podcasting has been explained to death elsewhere, let's talk about collaboratively filtered online streaming sites like Last.fm or Pandora.com.

Such experiences offer some core similarities:

Two way relationships between "broadcaster" and "listener"
The experience starts with the taste of the listener, not some overpaid tool at a corporate office.
Allows the listener to fast forward (and in some cases) exorcise aurally offensive material from their playist.
Show song information and graphics
Enables user to add the music to a permanent collection by linking to online stores.

Pandora's approach is take a song or band you like, and using various properties of that song, will play others. The users' "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" further refines the process. A recent station for Madball then suggests a Motorhead track, based on "hard rock roots, mild rhythmic syncopation, repetitive melodic phrasing, extensive vamping." (vamping?)

Last.fm actually requires you to download a plug-in, which then reports your actual plays of songs through iTunes, Winamp, back to the central site and creates your own personal profile page. Based on your profile, the site will suggest various playlists and other social connections to you. It also allows the user to put cool little dynamic charts on their web pages or blogs. (I'll be adding one soon.)

I'm especially enamored of Last.fm because it allows labels to not only manage their content (inclusive of free promotional downloads) but also link to online shops. They also provide some basic feedback statistics on the music they've uploaded.

In the honorable mention dept, I just tried Rhapsody for Mac. Decent track selection, playlists, but no real filtering or suggestion engine. Today it helped me get my Ramones fix, without having to find and rip a CD or re-purchase it on iTunes.

These are some super cool, yet simultaneously incredibly nerdy, sites that will help reshape "radio" as we know it.

All of the above services have a far greater reach and are far less expensive to utilize than the current solution. With this financial barrier to entry being removed, the paradigm of popular music being dictated by deep-pocketed mega-corps and their sycophantic cronies will shift significantly over the next few years. (If we can keep Newscorp out of it, that is.)

I'm well aware that 12 - 24 year olds aren't the only demographic buying music. (but they're the ones that matter to me the most). I'm sure soccer moms with a Garth Brooks fetish will still listen to country or hit radio while they shuttle junior back and forth to overachiever academy.
The complete marginalization of radio will come as high bandwidth connections become ubiquitous, the "MySpace generation" grows older, and portable media players get cheaper (and even cross with moblie phones.) Nobody can deny that there's no putting the Djini back in the bottle.

But radio isn't the only place the dinosaurs are subject to marketplace Darwinism. It's a brave new world, and the very fabric of the music business is breaking down.

More soon...

The Orange Button Is Your Friend

2005-12-09T01:24:00.000-05:00

In the fine tradition of the shout out from the stage at a show, this first “real” post is dedicated to Rex from Grace Gale who asked me about RSS in an AIM conversation. As I figured a primer on this would be helpful to other people unfamiliar with it, I’ll use this forum to tell what I know about ‘em.

You’ve probably seen these little buttons on websites before, but if you’ve ever clicked on them without knowing how to use them, you get some useless unformatted text that may seem like some kind of error. Nope, that sucker is the key to using RSS… but fear not, we’ll explain that later.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a method of pulling headlines and short summaries of articles from websites that you frequently look at, in a format where you blast through what you want to read and what you don’t, very quickly. The main advantage is that RSS feeds are a spam-free way to get the information you want, the fastest way possible. RSS is also the “engine” behind being able to subscribe to podcasts and video podcasts, so that audio and video files are delivered directly to your computer as soon as they’re uploaded.

What Do I Need To Check It Out
To use feeds, you’ll need to use an aggregator program (we suggest FeedDemon for PC and NetNewsWire for Mac). You can also view RSS feeds with free web-based aggregator services such Bloglines or Newsgator.

Show Me The Feeds

Not interested in using another new program or website? Users of the Firefox browser for PC and Mac can use the Live Bookmarks feature, and Yahoo, Google, and MSN users can plug their feeds into their My Yahoo, Google Reader or MyMsn pages respectively.

The trick to using those little orange buttons is the right click (or ctrl-click on a Mac.) This is because you don’t actually want to go to the page, just copy the link location. You then paste that copied link location into the subscripton feature of whatever aggre-thingy you’re using, and you’re in business.

Some sites also offer specialized buttons that enable you to “one click” subscribe, in some cases they’re tailored to a specific site. To check how that works, check out a feedburner page.

Gimme Some Feeds
started:In no particular order, here's a partial list of my favorite music oriented feeds to get you:

New Musical Express http://xml.newsisfree.com/feeds/12/3412.xml
Lambgoat http://www.lambgoat.com/rss/news/
Rolling Stone http://www.rollingstone.com/rssxml/music_news.xml
PunkNews: http://www.punknews.org/feeds/punknews.rdf
Blabbermouth http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/newsfeed.xml
AbsolutePunk http://www.absolutepunk.net/external.php?type=rss&forumids=165
Jade Tree http://www.jadetree.com/rss2.php?feed=news
Sub Pop http://www.subpop.com/syndicate/rss.php?type=news
Bob Mould http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/cRdr
Suburban Home http://www.suburbanhomerecords.com/blog/rss.php?version=2.0
Barehones Hardcore http://bareboneshardcore.blogspot.com/atom.xml
Stereogum http://www.stereogum.com/index.rdf
Purevolume http://backstage.purevolume.com/feed/

Want more? Check out an RSS feed search engine!

Now that we got the basics out of the way, in my next post I’ll answer the following questions: Why do I want Implement RSS feeds for my band? How do I implement RSS for my band or site? Why should I pay attention to this?

Kickoff!

2005-12-09T01:10:00.000-05:00

First things first… the name No Revolution comes from a song by The Explosion. They are not, nor have they ever been, on my label, but the lyrics express how I feel about what’s going on in music today on many levels.

This blog is also about technology. I’m fascinated by it, and have always been a fan of using it to make my life as an indie label guy easier. So, NoRev (see how long it took to abbreviate the name?) will link to, and offer commentary on, various internet and indie music biz related items. My biggest hope for the blog is that it’s useful and/or thought provoking to those who read it.

Depending on the reception this gets (and as long as my ADD allows) I’ll be reworking the visual and possibly even adding other writers to the mix.

Onward…