Category Archives: A to Z of Making It

A to Z of Making It, Music, Piracy

Create Something That Is Forever

There is an article doing the rounds on TorrentFreak about Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto.

The part that interests me is the below quote;

“In fact, from our perspective you want to create a game that people will want to keep and keep playing for a long time. That’s the approach that we always take and that’s the best way to avoid used games.”

As an artist/creator that is what you need to do. Metallica created Master of Puppets, Mötley Crüe created Shout At The Devil, Dream Theater created Images and Words, Queensryche created Empire.

What will you create?

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

Creating News Every Day

I was telling people at work the Kim Dotcom story. At first I was surprised that none of them had heard of Kim Dotcom. Then I was even more surprised that none of them had heard of MegaUpload.

So I pointed them to YouTube and I told them to check out the raid on his house. I pointed them to articles on various web sites like Techdirt and Torrent Freak. I even pointed them to his Twitter account. Finally I told them that if it’s not in the prime time news or in the newspaper, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. T.V stations and the owners of the newspapers are all part of the Entertainment Lobby Groups, so they have no interest in running a story that is going to put the Entertainment Lobby Groups in a bad light.

It then got me thinking. Kim Dotcom has been painted as this money laundering criminal that needed SWAT teams to break down his door and arrest him in the early hours. Then you talk to normal people and they don’t even know who he is and have never heard of him. This just adds further evidence to the already known fact, that the U.S. Government acted on the hearsay of the Entertainment Lobby Groups.

These days, everyone must do their own analysis. Even though most people claim to be educated, they are not. They stick to the one thought, and dig down into the trenches defending that view point. You need to be critical of what you read. Seek differing viewpoints.

One thing I learned from University, is that authors of journals, research pieces and non-fiction books normally have a financial backer who has an interest in the piece. Who is paying the writers? Research funded by the MPAA or RIAA paints a very different picture of piracy and sharing compared to research funded by independent bodies.

In the end we always do what we want to do. We don’t need to get our news from traditional sources anymore. WordPress had a blog post on the Turkish Protests and the Police Brutality around it, from a Turkish resident who was living it. The Turkish media and news outlets had nothing. We are exposed to news 24/7.

The punch line is, if any musician / artist wants to survive the times, they need to be creating news every day.

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A to Z of Making It, Music

Who Cares About Sales?

It’s not just about the sales anymore.

Who cares if an album had a good opening week in sales. What matters these days is how long will the music remain in the public eye. Will people stream it, YouTube it, share it. That is the new model.

NOTE: Sales figures are U.S figures.

Megadeth’s Super Collider moved 30,000 copies in its first week. Big deal. It will not last more than 8 weeks in the public eye. The fans need to spread it and talk about it. In this case they won’t be. It’s a forgettable album.

Alice In Chains, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here has sold 80,000 after two weeks and 30 Seconds To Mars, Love, Lust, Faith and Dreams has sold close to
70,000 after 3 weeks.

Will they have the same staying power as Halestorm’s The Strange Case Of…which is 60 weeks old and sold over 236,000 units or Shinedown’s Amaryllis which is 64 weeks old and it has sold over 410,000 units.

I believe they will.

Volbeat’s Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies has moved 90,000 after 8 weeks and Killswitch Engage, Disarm The Descent has moved over 90,000 after 10 weeks.

Will they reach the 500,000 mark of Kid Rock’s Rebel Soul after 30 weeks or Five Finger Death Punch, American Capitalist, which has moved over 500,000 in 87 weeks.

The Revolver Gods Most Hated, Black Veil Brides, Wretched and Divine: The Story of the Wild Ones has moved over 110,000 in 23 weeks. On the other hand, In This Moment, Blood is 44 weeks old and moved over 163,000 units.

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A to Z of Making It, Music

Risk Management

As soon as you look forward to something, there is always something on the horizon that makes you realise how fragile everything in your life is.

Our whole lives are about risk management.  As soon as we are able to make our own choices we start to manage the risk ourselves.  Up until that time it is managed by our parents.

We make life decisions based on our working life.  So what do we do when our employer changes the rules?  What do you we do when our employer makes us work more hours for the same pay?

Should we leave and get a new job elsewhere.  What happens if that new job doesn’t come as quickly as we need it.  Bills need to be paid, a mortgage needs to be paid and the family needs to live.  Sometimes it’s better the devil you know then the devil you don’t know.

In most cases we just stick it out, depressed and unmotivated, because we are beholden to the system.  We are beholden to the pride that we place on ourselves.  We are beholden to the fear of change.  So we choose the safe option of sticking around and being treated like dirt, as our risk management strategy.

If you are not on the bleeding edge of society, you are just part of the fabric of society.  You want to be a rock star, you cant do it working a nine to five job.  You cant do it if you are beholden to your employer.  You cant do it if you are beholden to the family.

The only way you can do it is if you throw all thoughts of risk management out the window.

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A to Z of Making It, Music

The New Artist Lesson

I have come across some good music lately, however the bands/artists that created the music are still languishing at the bottom of the music pile.  So what can bands like Burnside, Tesseract, The Night Flight Orchestra, Polution and Vaudeville do differently to get their brand and music out there.

IS THERE A MARKET FOR YOUR MUSIC?

The common misconception that most bands/artists have is that their music will succeed. The cold hard truth is that no one knows what music will succeed.  That is why A&R people, have a bad strike ratio.  They can find talent, however that doesn’t mean that the talent they find will succeed in the music business.

New bands need to test the market.  You need to see what kind of response you get back.  Find ways to measure the longevity of your song.  Did fans spread it on social media? Did a torrent go up on The Pirate Bay? Does it have seeders? Does it have leachers? Are people streaming it? Are people purchasing it? Are people listening to it on YouTube?

If the song is setting the world on fire, repeat the whole process again with a new song as there is a market there for you.

If the song is not setting the world on fire, take a step back, re-evaluate, create a better song and repeat all of the above as there is no market there for you at the moment.

Burnside created a brilliant album in Evolution that consisted of 13 songs and released them all at once. They relied on an old business model that doesn’t work anymore. They needed to test the market, so that they could see if there is a market for their music.  They should have released a song and measured it’s reach first. If you have an audience of less than 10,000, you should not be spending time creating a 13 song album.  

The Night Flight Orchestra wrote a song called West Ruth Avenue, that in my mind rivalled Gotye’s Somebody That I Used To Know.  Somebody That I Used To Know found a market, West Ruth Avenue didn’t.  (Yes, I know that The Night Flight Orchestra is a side project, however it is one album that should have found a bigger audience).

TesserAct in my view released a great album in Altered State.  Century Media streamed the album on their YouTube page and it had over 90,000 hits.  The album comes out and it moves over 4000 units in the U.S.  Is this a good thing or a bad thing? The label tested the market with the pre-release stream on YouTube. I think both artists where expecting a better turn out in sales, however this is the wrong view point to have. Fans can now stream their music.

SUPPLY vs. DEMAND

I hope that the bands I have mentioned are not focusing on the payment side of things. Remember Spotify, Pandora, iTunes are all services that you use to get your music out there.  Don’t solely rely on these services as a source of revenue.  It’s a diversified music game. You need to have other strategies for that.  However, before you get to this stage, you need to ensure that a market exists.

Remember that you are a seller and a supplier.  It’s simple economics. Supply vs Demand. At the moment, the recorded music world is over supplied. There is so much music out there, however not all of the music that is released has a demand waiting for it. Demand equals buyers. Buyers equal fans. The artists should be satisfying the needs of the fans.

BUILDING PLACES OF WORSHIP FOR YOUR FANS

It is the fans that will promote you.  No one cares about the music that radio pushes. No one cares about the music that the press and mainstream media pushes.  No one cares about the music if you scream until your black and blue about how great your song is. 

People care and pay attention, when they see fan blogs created in your name (like the John Petrucci forums, the Mike Portnoy forums, the Dream Theater forums and so on).  You need to ensure that you build a cathedral so that your fans can worship your music and spread it.

In the end, you need to have great music marketed to people that will like it and buy it.  Otherwise you will remain in your local suburban market.

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A to Z of Making It, Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Music

The Evolution of Burnside

I’m listening to an album from a band called Burnside. The album is called Evolution and it was released in December, 2012. I really like it and I recommend it.

I need to know more. So I go straight to Google. I type in Burnside.

I get all these results about Uniting Care, the city of Burnside, the Burnside Public School and all these other results that do not deal with music. Not a good start.

So I change the search words to “Burnside Band” and the website, http://www.burnsideband.com is the first one that comes up. That is better. However I would have expected the Facebook and Twitter accounts to come up as well.

So I change the search words to be, “Burnside Band Facebook” and it comes up, however it is not the first one. Anyway, I go onto the Facebook page, and I see that they have an album launch happening soon. I am confused. The album came out in December 2012. An album launch six months later is a bit weird. 

This is why the idea of the album fails in this day and age, especially if you are a band starting off. Evolution is a great album, one of the best I have heard in the last few years, and it is in my top 10 of releases for 2012. So how does a band, that recorded a great album get it out to the people, without disappearing.

The answer is the fans. The fans need to be sharing the songs on their Facebook accounts, on their twitter accounts or blogs. Once upon a time there was an old way. Bands and new music where broken by radio and the press. Theses outlets are obsolete today. The fans are the new way. They are the new press. They are the new radio.

Burnside have over 7000 likes on Facebook. It’s time to mobilise these fans. The fans need to share. The band needs to record themselves playing some of the songs acoustically and put them on YouTube and then get fans to share those YouTube clips. It’s not about the sales anymore, it’s about remaining relevant and in the public eye. That is the battle.

Burnside are from an area called Penrith, Australia, which is about 70 minutes away from where I live. This is typical of Australia, where talented bands fail to escape the local area. I only live 90 minutes away and I have never heard of them. They formed in 2009, however the members Grant O’Hara (Vocals, Guitar, Bass), Sheldon Wharton (Vocals, Guitar, Bass) and David Rice (Guitar, Bass) have been in other bands prior.

Their bio has them comparing themselves to Birds of Tokyo. Why? They are way better than Birds of Tokyo. Silverchair is also mentioned. Evolution is an album that Silverchair wished they could make. Foo Fighters is another reference. Foo Fighters are renowned for releasing albums with four to five great songs and the remainder is seen as pure filler. Evolution is an album that has no filler.

Be sure to check out Remember When.  If you like Everything from Lifehouse, you would like this song.

The combination of The Battle moving into With A Gun is brilliant.  The strings over the distorted guitars sounds grand.

Lost The Will is modern rock in the vein of Shinedown.

Will I Find You There reminds me of The Calling.  The Last Time is the best song that Daughtry hasn’t written.

What You’ve Become merges brilliant piano playing with distorted guitars.  Its melodic and haunting at the same time.

Through My Veins, has that AC/DC, Long Way To The Top vibe.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Derivative Works, Music, Stupidity

Why do creators still follow the old way?

I just listened to the new Megadeth album.  Apart from the opener, Kingmaker and the cover, Cold Sweat from Thin Lizzy, I don’t really like it.  For me to say that, is a big thing.  If anything, you can call me a Mustaine Fanboy. I still cop flack for liking Risk.

The idea of the album has evolved since Megadeth released Killing Is My Business in 1985.  In this day and age, the fans want more.  Our time is valuable.  TV shows like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead can take us away from listening to music.  Gaming can also limit our time.  We live in a world of choice.  If something is not good enough, we just move on.  It could be another band, a movie, a TV show, a game, a book, a magazine, a holiday and so on.

I still purchased the physical CD of Super Collider, so that I can have it as part of my Megadeth collection, however I cannot recommend it.  I wish I could.  What disappoint’s me is that Chris Broderick is still utilised purely for his lead breaks.  Is that all he is capable off?  I don’t think so, however that is how it remains in Megadeth.  Dave Mustaine is the riff meister.  He is the songwriter, however in this case, I believe that the songwriter of the band has gone missing.  It’s not a bad album and it’s not a good album.

Going back to the meaning of the post.  Why did Megadeth and Dave Mustaine follow the old way?  He could have recorded and released more frequently and still toured behind Gigantour?

For example, he could have recorded and released Kingmaker one month and then released Cold Sweat from Thin Lizzy the next month.  During that two month period, the band could have fine tuned the other songs, written better ones or just kept them as the same, if the initial songs connected with the fans.

There is no need to follow the “spend six months creating and recording an album”, release it, watch it fade away from the minds of people’s within weeks and then go on tour of the world and hope that the tour will rekindle sales.

Don’t get me wrong, the above format still works for great albums.  Five Finger Death Punch released American Capitalist in October 2011, and it is still selling.  They got five singles out of it.  The fans spread it via social media.  They have a new album coming out in July and then another album scheduled for either a November 2013 or February 2014 release.  I really liked how Coheed and Cambria did the same thing with The Afterman releases and Stone Sour did the same with House of Gold and Bones.  The bands need to be here today, everyday.  If you are gone tomorrow, in this day and age, its game over.

Megadeth in this case didn’t have enough material for a great album, and that is all we have time for these days.  I still love the band, I will still purchase tickets to Gigantour if they bring it to Australia and I will be hoping that Megadeth return to writing great songs.

Keeping with the creators following the old way theme, there is an interview doing the rounds at Loudwire, with Shinedown singer Brent Smith.  Basically, back in April, Shinedown allowed their Facebook fans to vote on which songs the band should cover.  So after the results came in, the band went away and filmed themselves playing the cover songs.  They have no plans to sell the songs. All they want to do is release the video’s of them performing the cover songs on YouTube, so that they releasing content each week. However, they cannot release the songs due to licensing issues.

The licensing part of music, is the old way of thinking.  This the way it works in two sentences.  The creators write the songs and then sell the songs for a fee to a publisher.  The publisher then licences the songs to advertising, TV shows and collects monies for them.  In my view, Publishers should be all shot and buried.

If anything, Shinedown will bring more attention to the original versions of the songs they cover.  I know that I am keen to hear them do Nothing Else Matters from Metallica.

Shinedown is trying to do things the new way, releasing content more frequently.  Amaryllis came out in March, 2012.  It’s still in the minds of the public.  As at last week, it was sitting at 410,000 sold in the U.S. alone.  Now they are going to be involved with the Carnival of Madness Tour.  In between they also released the Warner Sound’s Live Room Sessions EP  and Brent Smith has been very vocal about getting fans to speak up and stand up for rock music via social media and the hashtag (#theriseofrockandroll).  They also have the covers YouTube clips up their sleeve.  

The game is changing every day. The old wayers’ need to get in bed with the new wayers’ and start thinking differently.  It’s not all about the initial pay-day on release day.  It’s about staying in the minds of the public and the fans.

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories

The Great Gatsby and Iron Man 3 and the Lessons They Can Teach

I watched The Great Gatsby on Saturday with my wife and on Sunday, I took the boys to watch Iron Man 3. So what, you say, who cares. I agree. Who cares? This post isn’t about the movies, nor is it a review of the movies. It is about what we music lovers can learn from the movies.

What can The Great Gatsby teach us music lovers? From the storyline, nothing. However, from looking at the story of it’s creator, we can learn a great lot.

The author Scott Fitzgerald, started planning the novel in 1923. He was coming off the commercial success of his two previous novels, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned. The book is released in 1925 and it sells poorly. In 1940, Fitzgerald died, seeing himself as a failure and believing his work is forgotten. At the time of his death, The Great Gatsby had sold only 25,000 copies. Today, The Great Gatsby has sold over 25 million copies worldwide and it still sells 500,000 copies annually.

So let’s just say that you are musical creator, either in a band or as a solo artist. You release an album and start to have some success, generating a buzz around you. You release another album, and the buzz starts getting louder. You spend a long time creating your next masterpiece. You then release what you believe to be your magnum opus and the silence is deafening. The buzz starts to dwindle. It doesn’t sell as well as you expected. It doesn’t sell anywhere near the numbers the marketing firm focus group predicted. You believe that you are failure.

Are you really a failure? Is Scott Fitzgerald really a failure? Fitzgerald died believing he was.

Comparing yourself to the instant hit wannabe’s is wrong. Yes, some people can strike gold on the first dig, others, will need to dig a little longer and in more than one place. Persistence is what builds a career. If you want to be around for a long time, doing what you love, you need to persevere. Luck and timing also play a big part in the grand scheme of things. If you create something great, people will find it. That greatness that you create could be something that is so evolved and so out there, that people just fail to understand it right now. Eventually that audience will find it.

Another point to consider here, is that after the failure of The Great Gatsby to sell the numbers that Fitzgerald wanted, Fitzgerald started to focus on short stories as a means to an income. It is in this format, that he made the most of his monies. So instead of focussing on the big novel (the album), he moved onto short stories (great songs), which meant, that he released more content frequently. So instead of spending two years writing a novel, he wrote more frequently, releasing more frequently, while still focussing on the great novel as well. Fitzgerald went on to release another novel while he was alive, and one more was released after his death. However the monies he made came from short stories.

As a musical creator today, that is what you need to be doing. The album format, is still a good statement, however it needs to have quality all around it. Having four great songs and seven fillers, is unacceptable in today’s world. Also being out of the public eye for such a long time, is a bad idea in today’s world. To be relevant, you need to be releasing quality and the fans need to be spreading the word. They are the ones that steer the ship these days. The fans own you. They are the shareholders that the band needs to please and satisfy.

Moving on, both movies combined have earned $1.5 billion in box office takings. That is $1.2 billion to Iron Man 3 and $300 million to The Great Gatsby.

So what can we rock / metal heads learn from Iron Man 3?

So the character, Iron Man, had two of his own movies, Iron Man 1 and then Iron Man 2. Both movies were hits. He then went on to join the supergroup, The Avengers and had another hit movie. So he is back to his own movie, and scores another hit.

So let’s just say that the Iron Man 1 and 2 movie releases are album releases from an artist. The artist already has two hits under their belt. The artist then goes on to become a part of a super group project (think the Avengers movie). The artist then has another hit, bigger than the other two combined. Said artist returns to their solo career or band and they release album number 3, that also makes a lot of money.

Let’s use Ronnie James Dio as an example. He was in Elf. He was in Rainbow and released two albums (Iron Man 1 and Iron Man 2). He was then asked to join Black Sabbath (Avengers). Think of this project as the SUPERGROUP. Dio then goes solo, and see’s even more success with Holy Diver (Iron Man 3). Going back to the Scott Fitzgerald story, initially, Holy Diver, didn’t set the world on fire in sales on its release (like The Great Gatsby). It almost took a year to obtain Gold Status, and six years to obtain Platinum status. The Heaven and Hell album from Black Sabbath also followed the same time line.

In the end, it is okay as an artist to spread your wings, just ensure, that when you do, it needs to be quality 24/7. Be patient and be great.

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A to Z of Making It, Music

What Can Daft Punk teach the rock/metal heads?

Daft Punk entered the charts this week at Number 1, moving 339,000 copies of their Random Access Memories.

So what can other genre’s learn from Daft Punk.

1. You need to be in it for life.  That is the committment needed to music.  Instant successes do not end up having a career. There will be times when doubt rears its head, and trust me, it is a hard obstacle to overcome.  It’s a normal feeling to just walk away.

Vito Bratta from White Lion is one example.  He just walked away from it all, where Mike Tramp (White Lion vocalist) and James  Lomenzo (White Lion bassist) have just kept on going.  Mike Tramp formed Freak Of Nature, then went solo, then reformed White Lion with a whole new suite of musicians and is not running solo again.  James Lomezo went with Zakk Wylde into Pride and Glory which morphed into Black Label Society, as well as a stint in Megadeth.

How many bands break up because they do not have instant success?

2. You need to engage your fan base.  The fans are loyal to the artist, not to the record label.  The fans will talk about the new song or the new album, they will spread the word and share the new video clip.  That is how marketing is done today.  Forget about the scorched earth marketing policy of Bon Jovi, David Bowie or even Black Sabbath. If no one is sharing your work, it’s time to create new work that is better.  It’s time to start engaging.

3. Excellence.  I don’t even like dance/electronica music, however I still dig the single Get Lucky.  It’s got that classic seventies funk disco vibe in 2013.  You need to be able to find your voice.  For any artist starting off in music it normally means writing songs in a style similar to what your heroes write about.  If that is your voice, cool.  However i suspect it isn’t.  Refer to point 1, you are in it for life.

TesserAct said that they put screaming vocals in their songs when they where starting out, because that is what was expected of bands in the Djent movement, however they never liked screaming vocals.  Check out their new album, Altered State.  There is not one screaming vocal line in it.

4. Streaming is king.  65% of Daft Punk’s sales came from digital downloads.  In addition, the buzz created by the fan base caused high streaming on Spotify. The Get Lucky – Radio Edit has been streamed over 33 million times.  Other songs from the album have been  streamed more than 10 million times.  Of course the RIAA will still scream piracy, and order that Google take down links via its search engine.

Compare this to say Stone Sour (I’m only using Stone Sour as an example as they have a new release), where Absolute Zero is getting close to the 2 million streams.  The only song from Stone Sour that has broken through the 10 million stream mark is Through Glass and that is from an album released 7 seven years ago. Songs from House of Gold and Bones Part II are not even in the million stream range and I really like that album.     

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A to Z of Making It, Music

Megadeth

Dave Mustaine.  He has a mouth on him, an influential legacy, a chip on his shoulder called Metallica and an excellent outlet of creativity called Megadeth.  He is super creative on other fronts as well.  He is a book author. He runs his own label. He organises the Gigantour tours. In my view, he is the creator of technical metal riffing.

The shit he did in the early days of Metallica and Megadeth, set the standard for many bands to come.  He raised the bar.  As much as everyone credits James Hetfield for being this awesome riff machine, I believe that James knows deep inside, that angry young Dave Mustaine, was an influence on him.

I am just listening to a new song called Kingmaker from the upcoming album Super Collider.  The first thing that grabs my attention is the Children of The Grave influence in the verses.  At one stage the vocal melodies are identical.

I like it when artists give a nod to their influences.  Of course some “artists” create music in a vacuum and that is why they are so original and never influenced by anyone.  Yeah right, whoever tells you that is spinning bull shit on a grand scale.

It is way better than the major key happy feeling Super Collider.  Actually i wouldn’t be surprised if this song is a left over song from the Cryptic Writings or Risk album sessions.  It fits those musical styles.

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