Category Archives: A to Z of Making It

A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories, Treating Fans Like Shit

Four For Friday

TAX THE HELL OUT OF YOU

Motley Crue and Def Leppard came and they left, but not without complaints.

Tommy Lee walked into a 7-Eleven and purchased 4 packets of Marlboro Gold 25s in Melbourne.

The price. $251.96 AUD.

Yep welcome to Australia, Mr Lee, the place that loves to tax the hell out of you on everything and on top of that, has the highest tobacco taxes in the world as well. Basically 77% of the retail price is taxes.

If Tommy Lee purchased four packets in the US, it would have cost him $32USD which translates to $48AUD.

And no I didn’t go watch em. I’ve seen Motley Crue too many times and while I haven’t seen Def Leppard play, the price for the tickets was way too high and it was outdoors which I hate.

REISSUES

Remember when Metallica wanted to release the “Metal Up Your Arse” cassette tape as part of the “Kill Em All” reissue or maybe it was for a special Record Store Day release.

Anyway that got shot down by Dave Mustaine because he wouldn’t accept giving song writing credits to Lars Ulrich on songs he didn’t or was involved in writing.

Fast forward a few years and Linkin Park looks like they are in trouble with a former bassist.

As the Billboard article states;

Linkin Park is facing a lawsuit that claims it has refused to credit or pay royalties to an ex-bassist who played with the band in the late 1990s — a legal battle triggered by an anniversary re-release of the band’s smash hit 2000 debut album.

RE-RECORDINGS

The labels are up to their usual tricks again. They seem to forget that they are irrelevant without the artists.

Their whole business model is making money from music. So when they knew in the 60s that songs would become copyright free they lobbied hard and got laws in place to ensure their business model survives for a long time.

But Taylor Swift really messed with this by redoing her albums under her own control. This made the original recordings held by the labels basically worth a lot less.

And now they want to stop that.

I think if an artist wants to re-record a song or an album they created they should be free to do whatever they want.

And it was standard practice for artists to have re-recording rights either two years after their contract expires, or five to seven years after the original recording is released.

MONEY IN MUSIC

Warner Music Group Corp released its full year earnings.

And the take away is, they have earned over $6 billion in yearly revenue for the first time.

How much of that has filtered down to the creators?

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories

Four For Friday

A special Australian edition today.

STREAMING

The one thing I like about streaming services is how songs from the past can come back with a vengeance and dominate.

A lot of the times this happens when an artist passes away but it also happens in other ways.

“RipTide” from Vance Joy is over 10 years old and it’s dominating again on streaming and since the charts include streaming numbers it’s back at number 1.

Not a bad place to be especially when the artist doesn’t have anything new released.

LIVE VENUES

Once upon a time, an artist had to play as many places as they could to build a following.

That worked when those places had people there to watch live music. But when people stopped going out to venues to watch live music, it’s a bit hard to build a following when there is no one watching.

So it’s no surprise that venues in Australia are closing. While the headline alludes that these venues are closing due to the pandemic, the truth is, live music venues have been challenged for years.

The sad thing is that the government doesn’t care about the Arts in Australia. So without tax incentives and funding, the Arts will suffer.

LEAVING THE INDUSTRY

So it’s no surprise that at least 50% of artists currently working are thinking about leaving the industry in Australia.

The mass migration. And from that group, 55% are women. As the article states;

Commonly cited reasons within the survey include financial pressures, time constraints, mental health and burnout, a lack of opportunities and a lack of support.

And live gigs make up 60 percent of their incomes but when the venues get less and less, this will shrink as well, unless they are large enough to play clubs and theatres.

MONEY IN AUSTRALIAN MUSIC

APRA AMCOS collects royalties and licensing for Australian artists. For 2023, they collected $690.5m with $595.2m distributed to artists.

In total, 1,628,107 unique compositions earned money.

For a small market, it’s a lot of money. But it’s a good market. And if the Government showed interest, it could be a great market.

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A to Z of Making It, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Four For Friday

A short one today.

IN THIS MOMENT

What happened to em?

“The Dream” and “A Star Crossed Wasteland” are great albums of melodic rock/Metal.

And then the transition started to the point where there is nothing recognizable or worth liking on their new album “Godmode”.

DOKKEN

A new album is out but if you can’t put any effort into the singing, why bother.

It’s the same monotone throughout, which is a shame because songs like “Lost In You”, “I Remember”, “Saving Grace”, “Fugitive” and “Gypsy” could have been great if the vocal delivery had emotion.

LYNCH MOB

George Lynch sure keeps busy and as a fan of the 80s, I like it.

And Mr Scary has still got a lot of things to say with his riffs. And Frontiers Records is keen to give him a platform to showcase his riffs.

So here we are with “Babylon”, the 8th Lynch Mob album. The difference between Lynch Mob and other artists from the 80s is the singers.

Gabriel Colon is a great vocalist with a great tone. He is the X Factor here. On the Metal cuts, it feels like Halford. On the rock cuts, its loose, sleazy and rawk.

And if Lynch could keep him around he has a lot of albums with him.

For the Metal check out “How You Fall”.

For the Rock check out “I’m Ready” and it’s nod to the great EVH.

ANY GIVEN SIN

The song “Dynamite” came up on a playlist and I pressed save instantly. It reminded me of Shinedown and it’s a great act to be associated with.

What do you guys think of em?

And that’s a wrap for this week.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories, Stupidity

Four For Friday

It’s a SPOTIFY and HIPGNOSIS special today.

The article I am referencing is from Music Business Worldwide.

NEW ROYALTY MODEL

There will be an annual stream count that artists must meet in order to start generating Spotify royalties.

Spotify is targeting a tiny proportion of tracks on its service that are very low in popularity.

In total, the tracks Spotify is targeting, generate royalties that when combined add up to tens of millions of dollars a year. If no action is taken, these tracks accumulated together will generate around $40 million.

SO WHAT HAPPENS TO THE $40 MILLION?

It will go back into Spotify’s ‘Streamshare’ royalty pot.

And the monies in the pot will be re-distributed amongst the tracks that are, more popular.

Take from the poor so that the rich get richer.

Spotify is telling the world that this targets the royalty payouts whose value is being destroyed or who are not even being paid to the creators because they haven’t met the digital aggregator minimum level for payments. And they are sitting in their bank accounts, earning interest.

Spotify seems to forget that every artist begins with low plays/streams.

MMM. SO THIS HELPS THE ARTISTS HOW

So while Spotify is thinking of keeping streaming money in their bank account to pay the larger artists, Hipgnosis who is an investment fund is doing something fishy.

As you probably are aware, Hipgnosis purchased a lot of rights to valuable intellectual properties. It’s share price doesn’t reflect what the company believes it’s worth.

It wanted to do something sneaky to inflate or boost its share price by selling a stake of the company to another entity owned by Hipgnosis and to use the profits of the sale to pay down debt.

This was all contingent on some mathematical equations about retroactive Copyright payments from the US.

Hipgnosis estimated they were due USD$21.7M however when all the dust settled they are only getting $9.9 million.

So they had this share but back scheme which they have now shelved and their share price went down even further.

All of these schemes and creative accounts on the backs of the rights they own from artists.

And Yes, I do know that the artists sold their rights to Hipgnosis for a large fee.

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A to Z of Making It, Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Copyright, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Stupidity

Four For Friday

PET SHOP BOYS vs DRAKE

The Pet Shop Boys need to relax.

The lyric in question is “the west end boys and east side girls”.

The lyrics are the main Chorus words for “West End Girls” by Pet Shop Boys and those same words are said three times in Drake’s song “All The Parties”, which is a shit song by the way.

And the words are not said with any sense of melody or to a backing track of music. They are just said. Spoken like and then auto tuned.

But “East End Girls” is at 239 million streams on Spotify so the Pet Shop Boys are very protective of their intellectual property.

COPYRIGHT TERMS

John Naughton writing for the The Guardian said the following;

…especially copyright – have been monopolised and weaponised by corporate interests and that legislators have been supine in the face of their lobbying.

Authors and inventors need protection against being ripped off.

It’s obviously important that clever people are rewarded for their creativity and the patent system does that quite well.

But if a patent only lasts for 20 years, why on earth should copyright last for life plus 70 years for a novel?

Yes why should it.

When the songs from the 60s were recorded, the Copyright terms for the songs was 28 years with the chance to renew for another 28 years. A total of 56 years.

And yet those songs got retroactively locked up for a long time by a 1978 Amendment to the Copyright Act by Disney which changed the terms to “life of the creator plus 70 years”.

This would mean that Disney’s “Mickey Mouse” created in 1928 and based on the laws of the time, should have been out of Copyright by 1984 however it would be locked up until 2003.

But in the late 90s and with the 2003 date looming, another Disney amendment was made that extended this law for Corporate works to 95 years. So the Mickey Mouse work from 1928 would finally be out of Copyright in 2023.

And 10 months in, Disney hasn’t suffered the financial losses they said they would if they lost the rights to Mickey Mouse.

SITE BLOCKING

In Australia, the Labels and the Movie/TV networks can go to the Federal Court with a list of sites they want blocked and the Federal Court will just approve the lists and the ISPs will then need to block their users from accessing these sites

The Federal Court is meant to review the lists (which they don’t) before rubber stamping the lists (which they immediately do). Because hey, these entities are the good guys, trying to protect Australians from pirates. And the ISPs need to do their bit to protect the business models of the labels and studios.

WHAT I’M CRANKING RIGHT NOW

Savior from Rise Against.

I became a fan because of the Guitar Hero game this song featured on many years ago.

And at 618 million streams it’s definitely making money for whoever holds the rights to it.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Influenced, My Stories

Four For Friday

A bit of Copyright, NFTs and Stallone.

NFTs

Remember when they were all the rage.

Sina Estavi is a crypto entrepreneur. He purchased an NFT of Jack Dorsey’s first tweet for $2.9M. It’s now worth $4.

Or check out this research which claims that 95% of NFT’s are worthless.

Not sure how owning a chunk of digital art on a blockchain is a valuable investment. Even Justin Beiber is down 95% on his Bored Ape NFT.

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are unique chunks of cryptographic data that connect to a digital object.

Let’s say we have a picture and its copy. If these objects are turned into NFTs, they will be distributed with unique identification codes, and will, be considered unique apart from the other. From this moment, the object that was once just a copy gained its own determined proof of existence, separating from its source.

Although the two NFTs now have an identical visual appearance, they cannot be treated as one thing and can have different financial values, hence the name ‘non-fungible’.

And somehow people came to the conclusion that these are good investments.

THE LABELS vs X

You know when you go on X(Twitter) and you see a music snippet shared by an account. It could be part of a video clip or a live performance.

Well the labels see this as “breeding” mass copyright infringement.

And since X basically ignores the takedowns from the labels, as a result, the labels sued, asking for $250 million and an ongoing licensing fee.

But X put in a motion to dismiss. The labels then counter argued and a judge in Nashville needs to decide if it goes to trial.

ROLLING STONES

Taylor Swift has shown other artists the financial windfall that could happen if you own your masters.

When Swift realized that she would never get her masters back, she went about and re-recorded the whole albums and made those albums, the versions people should stream and license.

This puts the power of Copyright back in her hands.

The Rolling Stones wished they could have done something similar because they lost their rights to all of their pre-1971 albums to their manager Allen Klein.

It’s just another case of a person who’s never made any art in their life, claiming it as their own and using it to for financial advantage. Geez, it sounds like a record label. Then again, labels did come up with the cash that most artists could never pay back.

As “The Rolling Stones” grew in popularity, they hired music-business accountant Allen Klein.

Klein negotiated a new deal with Decca and he also got a million-pound advance payment for their next album.

But he wasn’t paying Keith Richards and Mick Jagger their songwriting royalties. So they ended the partnership however as part of the severance, Klein managed to keep ownership of the Rolling Stones music for the years he managed them from 1965 to 1970.

But the Stones did receive millions of dollars in royalties from Klein but not as much as if they’d owned their music outright.

STALLONE

After writing the script of Rocky, Sylvester Stallone was offered $360K to not play the role.

The production company that was interested didn’t want him to play the role.

And since 1976, the rights to the Rocky franchise (which Stallone created) are in the hands of producer Irvin Winkler.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories

Four For Friday

Ahh copyright. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Well it does really. It gives the writer an incentive to create for their whole life plus 90 years after death. Don’t know how it’s even possible after death, but hey, who am I to judge the intellectuals who wrote and debated this change.

It also gives rise to lawsuits and perpetual payments to corporations for valuable copyrights. It’s also a form of censorship and anti-innovation (remember Napster).

THINKING OUT LOUD

Thank god this silliness has been put to rest.

Remember when Ed Townsend’s estate wanted Ed Sheeran to pay them millions for writing a song with a similar feel to Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On”. The trial went to jury and they lost. They appealed and then they withdrew their appeal.

This is what happens when people who create nothing of culture believe they are entitled to that culture.

And for the record, “Let’s Get It On” is not so original itself. It’s also influenced by what came before it. Cause that’s how creativity works.

CAN YOU COPYRIGHT A BEAT?

But the madness continues.

Reggaeton is a style of popular and electronic music that originated in Panama during the late 1980s and it was later popularized in Puerto Rico. It’s basically massive in Latin America and from the 2010’s it’s creeped into the mainstream of English speaking countries.

In 1990, a song came out called “Fish Market” from producers Steely & Clevie. In that song there was a drum rhythm.

The lawsuit claims at least 80% of the genres songs have used that drum beat.

Sort of like the 4/4 drum beat and it’s variations.

They are common elements and building blocks to creating. The fact that 80% of the Reggaeton industry use this beat shows how common it is.

AI

What’s people’s view on AI?

We’ve had AI in our lives for a long time, yet many have failed to recognize it. At a basic level which everyone would recognize, remember “Spell Check” in Word docs or Google Search.

For the recent waves of AI to work, they need training. And this training involves material which is under copyright.

So.

If I develop an AI tool and train it with the music and books and movies I’ve purchased, am I breaching Copyright?

If I then release the AI tool for others to be allowed to create, is the tool breaching Copyright?

All the AI knows is how to write and review based on inputs.

Basically it’s a tool, that people can use however they want. It’s innovative at the moment. And the copyright industry doesn’t like innovation if it’s not paying them. So it tries to censor or kill the innovation.

Until the come to an agreement and they accept it.

REVENUES

$8.4 billion in six months was brought into the labels accounts with streaming payments making up 84 percent of that pie.

So if you are an artist or songwriter and you’re not getting a cut, your deal is super shitty. Change it.

Because if there was no value in streaming, all of the Investment House and Hedge Funds wouldn’t be buying up the rights to valuable catalogs.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories, Stupidity

Four For Friday

Copyright and Spotify again.

SHARE PRICE

It’s cool how copyright makes money for valuable Intellectual Property. And you can’t get a bigger and more valuable IP than “The Beatles”.

The thing is, not one of the members from The Beatles held or even hold their rights. At one stage, Michael Jackson was the sole holder of the rights.

And with all the transfers and sell offs, The Beatles catalog settled at Round Hill Music Royalty Fund. But like all companies on the stock exchange, the share price just didn’t reflect the true value of the Company.

In this case, shares in the company were trading around $0.70. And share prices this low don’t make share holders and board members happy.

So in comes Alchemy Copyrights with a $496 million buyout offer which means shareholders in Round Hill Music will get $1.15 in cash per share. Suddenly, you have happy shareholders and board members, who get a nice payday for holding shares in culture.

They created nothing culturally and yet still benefit. But I keep hearing how stronger copyright is needed to protect the creators.

Mmmm.

SHARE PRICE 2

Hipgnosis Songs Fund is also selling some of its catalogues for $465 million. This is to pay down debt and increase its share price

And as expected, the share price increased,

Again, you have an organization that created nothing culturally and yet it still benefits. And I keep hearing how stronger copyright is needed to protect the creators.

COPYRIGHT FAMILY DISPUTE

Motown songwriter and producer Ron Miller died in 2007. If Copyright expired on the death of the creator like it once did, then this would be a non issue.

But, Copyright doesn’t expire at this point. It’s still valid for another 70 to 90 years, depending on the country.

Fast forward to 2022, Sony Music Publishing signs a deal with Lisa Miller, for rights to 130 of her fathers songs.

But Ron’s other children Julie Moss and Mark Miller from Ron’s first wife didn’t like this and are now going to court.

They allege that Lisa Miller tricked her mother, Aurora Miller (Ron’s second wife) to sign away her claim to the songs.

The claim further states;

“As Aurora’s health continued to decline, Lisa began forging Aurora’s signature on notices of copyright termination.”

And I keep hearing how stronger copyright is needed to protect the creators. In this case a dead creator.

SHOWCASE

Spotify’s new marketing tool.

Artists can buy dedicated space on listeners home pages to promote new releases, deep cuts, etc.

Each click from a fan on the showcase button will cost the artist 40 cents per click until their campaign budget is maxed.

Spotify believes that people who see these ads are six times more likely to stream the release.

It shits me how artists always have to cough up cash.

Back in the label days, if the label marketed you, they billed you to recoup their costs.

If an independent act marketed themselves, they paid for a marketing campaign themselves.

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A to Z of Making It, Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Vandenberg – Sin

Adrian Vandenberg has come full circle.

When John Kalodner met with him in 1987, Kalodner had two propositions; one was to replace all the Dutch members of the Vandenberg band with American musicians and the other was for Vandenberg to join Whitesnake.

Morally Adrian Vandenberg couldn’t do that to his Vandenberg members and he also couldn’t pass up on a position to work with a vocalist like David Coverdale.

So he chose Whitesnake.

But when he tried to resurrect Vandenberg circa 2014/15, those Dutch 80s members didn’t have the same moral conviction as Adrian did and they took him to court so he couldn’t use his own surname anymore.

Six lawsuits later and a lot of money spent, Vandenberg was allowed to use his surname again.

But while all of the lawsuits were happening, Vandenberg’s Moonkings was created and they released three albums.

Then Vandenberg returned, dropping the excellent 2020 album with former Rainbow vocalist Ronnie Romero on vocals, Rudy Sarzo on bass, and Brian Tichy on drums.

And here we are in 2023, with another excellent album called “Sin”. This time around Adrian is joined by vocalist Mats Levén, drummer Koen Herfst and bassist Randy Van Der Elsen and the album is produced by Bob Marlette.

How cool is the cover art?

Once again, created by Adrian, he wanted to show an actual destination for the flying sharks who made their appearance on the “Heading For A Storm” album.

Instead of flying over a road in the desert, they are now flying into New York, the city of sin.

Thunder And Lightning

This is a person writing songs for the love of it. No pressure to write hits and no pressure to conform.

For those who grew up in an era of driving with the window down and cranking the music from the stereo, well this song is perfect for it.

Vocally, Mats Leven is channeling David Coverdale. Musically the song channels the spirit of Eddie Van Halen and the Euro blues rock of Michael and Rudolf Schenker.

Stick around for the guitar solo.

House On Fire

Heavy palm muted arpeggios start it all off with Leven singing in a low bass/baritone. Then it goes into a sleaze like riff.

This is a straight ahead rock and no one is doing it better in 2023 than Adrian Vandenberg.

Sin

This sounds so good. Vandenberg rewrote “Judgement Day” and I like it?

Then again “Judgement Day” is heavily based on “Kashmir”. And I still like it.

Alot of legacy artists keep saying “what is the point in writing new music as no one cares about it”. Tell that to Vandenberg.

Light It Up

Love the swagger on this.

Walking On Water

Ooh, that guitar intro and the vocal. Very 70s Free like.

And stick around for another masterful guitar solo.

Burning Skies

The album keeps going, sounding different from cut to cut. Like “Back In Black”. This one feels like a classic Scorpions cut.

Hit The Ground Running

It’s all about the vocal.

This one has Leven channeling Coverdale and the groove sits nicely on your lap.

Baby You’ve Changed

It’s intimate.

A ballad that rolls along like “Is This Love” and “The Deeper The Love”. But it’s not a copycat.

Out Of The Shadows

The arpeggio riff in the Intro reminds me of Coverdale/Page and their song, “Whisper A Prayer For The Dying” but the song is nothing like that.

It’s got this classic 70s Rainbow Dio era vibe and I like it.

It’s just 9 songs clocking in at 41 minutes. Like old school albums, pre CD.

Mats Leven is one hell of a vocalist. A journeyman like so many other vocalists from the late eighties and early nineties.

He came to my attention with the band Swedish Erotica in 1989.

He has then performed (just to name a few) with Treat, Yngwie Malmsteen, Candlemass, At Vance, Firewind, Trans Siberian Orchestra and Therion.

By doing so and picking up whatever work he could get, he found a way to survive the wastelands of the 90s and early 2000’s which were not very kind to hard rock vocalists. Jeff Scott Soto and Johnny Gioeli are two others that come to mind.

Finally, Adrian Vandenberg is 69. He still rocks as hard as he did when he was 29. He hasn’t mellowed out at all. He’s actually gotten heavier and he is free to write the music that he wants to write.

If you want to read my review of Vandenberg’s recorded output up to a certain point in time (it was up to 2014 and the first Vandenberg Moonkings album), you can read it here.

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A to Z of Making It, Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, Unsung Heroes

Tony Martin – It Ain’t Worth Fighting For

Tony Martin never wanted to be a singer.

When he went to an audition with a band called “Legend”, he took his guitar.

But they said to him that they need a singer and wouldn’t let him play.

And then he gets the vocalist gig for Black Sabbath, who were going through an identity crisis between 1984 and 1987.

And as soon as he righted the Sabbath ship, he was out and Dio was back in for the “Dehumanizer” album.

And while that was happening on the Sabbath front, Tony Martin kept writing until he had enough material for a solo album.

“Back Where I Belong” was released in 1992 on Polydor.

“It Ain’t Worth Fighting For” is the opening track from the album.

The musicians are seasoned professionals.

Nigel Glockler from Saxon is on drums. Neil Murray from Whitesnake is on bass. Richard Cottle is a session pro, and he plays the keys and also performs the saxophone solo. Carlo Fragnito is on guitars.

A bit if trivia, Fragnito and his brother Anthony formed a band called Blacklace, with vocalist Maryann Scandiffio.

Hailing from Canada, their music is best described as NWOBHM. They released “Unlaced” in 1984 and “Get It While It’s Hot” in 1985. Like a lot of bands who didn’t see success right away, they struggled and eventually broke up.

Carlo then became a session pro.

As soon as you press play, the riff that smacks you in the face is reminiscent to “Headless Cross”.

But the track feels like a heavy blues rock track instead of a metal track.

If it ain’t worth fightin’ for
It ain’t worth having
And I just gotta have your love

The Chorus is Arena Rock. Make sure you pay attention to the melodic guitars underneath the vocal melody.

Bad Company comes to mind here and the feel from “Rock ‘N’ Roll Fantasy.”

Vocally, Martin comes across as a combination of Lou Gramm and Paul Rodgers.

And that Sax solo works perfectly. It outlines the Chorus vocal melody with some improv.

Press play.

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