Category Archives: Copyright

A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Unsung Heroes

The Art Of Copying, Tweaking and Creating

“Good artists copy, great artists steal.”

“Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.”

“To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.”

One person said all of the above and that person was Pablo Picasso who is seen as one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century and who is also known as a co-founder of the Cubist movement. His comments about success leading to copying oneself is spot on. Bon Jovi re-wrote “Slippery When Wet” and called it “New Jersey”. Jovi and Sambora re-wrote “Living On A Prayer” and called it “Born To Be My Baby”, “Keep The Faith”, “It’s My Life”, “Bounce”, “We Aren’t Born To Follow” and so on.

Stryper re-wrote the “To Hell With The Devil” album and called it “In God We Trust”.

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to”.

Film director Jim Jarmusch said the above and he is seen as one of the most ORIGINAL storytellers in the world of cinema.

Metallica took the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal to new heights.

All of the above sort of led me to Black Sabbath.

“Take a tune, sing high when they sing low, sing fast when they sing slow, and you’ve got a new tune.”

The above advice came from the experienced Woody Guthrie to a young Bob Dylan. And that is exactly what Black Sabbath did. They took the blues, distorted it even more, played it faster and sang it darker.

Now some might dispute this way of songwriting where an artist uses the structural template of older songs to create newer songs. And the funny thing is this, music progressed and developed through the ages because of this. The whole British blues rock invasion of the world happened because those artists copied, tweaked and reinvented blues classics. Prior to the recording industry, music mainly spread from performer to performer without any issue of copyright or licenses.

Music’s history is very much like any other form of creativity – influences and ideas are taken, reshaped and reinvented. All of that originality is simply reinterpretation.

But then came the Corporation and Copyright was remade so that others could get unearned income from someone else’s creations. In other words, enter the RECORD LABEL and the PUBLISHERS.

The lawmakers at the time were quite worried that extending copyright to sound recordings would stifle creativity and it could create monopolies, harm consumers, throttle innovation and competition. It is there to protect the profits of the record labels and the publishers, not the artists. Mitch Bainwol and Cary Sherman got paid in millions each year due to their involvement with the RIAA.

This is what Copyright has created. People getting paid so much more than the actual artists who created the works. Copyright law originally lasted for 14 years from production. In most parts of the world, Copyright is now life plus 70 years.

Jimi Hendrix has been dead for 44 hears and it looks like his music will not enter the public domain in my lifetime for others to build on and re-invent.

The rise of digital music, both pirated and legal, has led to a steep decline in revenues for artists yet there has been no decline in the amount of music being written and recorded. More people are making music now than in the pre-Napster era and that is all happening with piracy and copyright infringement being rampant.

Copyright needs a re-think and a re-write so that it benefits the artists again.

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

Piracy, Lost Sales and Profits

I am sure that everyone has come across the “Minecraft” game in some form or way. My exposure to this game was when my kids asked me last year if they are allowed to download the free version of the game, which I agreed. After playing it for months and unable to save their progress, they kept on asking me to download the full version, which cost $6.99AU.

I said NO.

They kept on playing the game and as they did new features kept on getting added to the game that made it better. However they still couldn’t save their progress and they kept on asking me to allow them to download the full version.

Eventually after a stellar week of good behaviour I couldn’t say NO to them and they got the full version at the beginning of the year.

For the uninitiated, Minecraft is one of the biggest games in the world right now. It debuted on Mac and Windows PC in May 2009. By February, 2014, it had sold 15 million copies of the PC version. Also in the same month, Mojang (the makers of Minecraft) had sold more than 21 million copies of Minecraft: Pocket Edition on Android and iOS; more than 12 million copies of the Xbox 360 Edition; and more than 1.5 million copies of the PlayStation 3 Edition — making for a sum very close to the 50 million mark. They have over 100 million registered users.

Just imagine if a streaming service had those numbers. However, the argument would still be the same. Artists are not getting paid. We all know why this is so. Talk to your record label.

And they did all of this with piracy being rampant on the game. However, Minecraft’s developer Notch (Markus Persson) has been on record in saying that worrying about piracy was a waste of time, and it was much more important to focus on giving people a reason to buy.

“Piracy is not theft. If you steal a car, the original is lost. If you copy a game, there are simply more of them in the world. If you just make your game and keep adding to it, the people who copyright infringed would buy it the next week.”

Persson adds features to the game based on conversations he has on Twitter with random people and he fixes bugs based on the Minecraft community voting on the priorities. He is engaging with the users and a majority of those users are people who said that they copied the game initially, but then bought a copy for both themselves and a friend. Or they are people who didn’t ever buy a copy, but had friends who learned about it through them who then went on to buy copies.

There is a clear indicator here for any artist.

Make sure that everyone has access to your music.

I remember a time when I went to Utopia Records and I purchased four CD’s. They were “Subhuman Race” from Skid Row, “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere” from Slash’s Snakepit, “Balance” from Van Halen and “Waiting For The Punchline” from Extreme. I hand over my cash and a sale goes onto their chart record.

The fact that “Subhuman Race” and “Waiting For The Punchline” gathered dust on the shelves, while I played the hell out of “Balance” and “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere” didn’t even come into the equation. All of those bands got a “SALE” or a “COUNT” from me. The fact that two albums connected with me more than the other didn’t even come into the equation. Probably the reason why SLASH is still such a force to be reckoned with in the music business, while Skid Row and Extreme, not so much.

That is why a lot of the Eighties bands couldn’t understand or get a handle on their decline in popularity. Everything under the sun got blamed, however the real reason was ignored.

WHAT DOES A SALE OF A PIECE OF PLASTIC/VINYL REALLY MEAN?

Everyone saw a sale as a fan number, a unit to add up, however the fact that the real fans listened to the music non stop and due to playing it to death they had to re-purchase the album.

In my music collection, anyone will see that for bands like Motley Crue, Dokken, Megadeth, Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Twisted Sister, Bon Jovi, Whitesnake, Stryper, Ratt and many more, that I would have an LP, plus a CD, plus for a select few, remastered releases and remastered releases with bonus tracks. That means that I have re-purchased the bands whole catalogue over 4 times. And I am sure I am not alone in that.

In other words, a sale of an album never reflected what we (the fans of music) did with the albums after we purchased them. The second-hand music market thrived for a reason as music consumers got rid of those albums that gathered dust. However, was this stat shown.

But what about all the tons of money, lawsuits, lobbying, education campaigns, advertising, threats, news reports and the like from the recording industry, all telling people who unauthorized downloading was unquestionably morally wrong and that each download is a lost sale.

The developers of Minecraft (who struck even bigger when they got acquired by Microsoft in 2014) showed that you can compete with free and that you can get people to commit if you focus on the art. Making money was always a byproduct and in the end they made a bunch of it.

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Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Music Is Art, However The Price Point For That Art Ranges from $0 to ????? For Each Fan

The tech industry is excited about the music industry in the current day while others see it as a bad time for artists.

Which side is right or wrong is for another post. What I am getting out of it all are two very different arguments and experiences.

The techies see opportunities on a grand scale. They have introduced new revenue streams into the recording industry that did not exist previously due to the way fans started to accessed/get their music online.

The techies celebrate that they have created a direct to fan connection for the artists. People can now participate in the recording industry that previously couldn’t. Artists don’t need a record label however it can be argued that without the record label machine the artist more or less remains part of a niche. Their music can be up on all digital outlets without the need of a record label.

However, the artists, see a decline in revenue. I am sure everyone has heard the following comments;

“We made good money selling CD’s” or “Our music is worth nothing because of streaming” or “Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for.” The last one is from Taylor Swift in her Wall Street Journal Op-Ed.

Spotify is talking about competing and killing off piracy. Spotify is talking about adding a monetary value to the recording industry that was not there before. At no point do they state that Spotify is a substitute for selling CDs.

“Piracy doesn’t pay artists a penny – nothing, zilch, zero. Spotify has paid more than two billion dollars to labels, publishers and collecting societies for distribution to songwriters and recording artists.” Yep, that is what Daniel Ek said in his blog post response to Taylor Swift.

So what we have is the recording industry and misguided artists thinking about the “loss” and they keep doing what they did before which in the long run would end up hurting them more. What they forget is that without the public and the fans, they have no industry. So, yes I agree that music is art, however the price of that art differs from person to person and if an artist cannot cover all different price points then they are failing to service their customers/fans.

Seriously we are 15 years after Napster changed the rules of the game and we are still having the same conversation. The recording industry and misguided artists want us all to buy CDs again.

FAN: “But we only like one track.”
MISGUIDED ARTIST: “I’m sorry, but music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for, so hand over your one of payment of $10.”
FAN: “But I don’t want the whole album.”
MISGUIDED ARTIST: “How do you expect me to make a living if you don’t buy my CD’s. You fans are killing the music industry and the artists by not supporting us.”
FAN: “But I don’t want to own music, I want access to it. And all I am trying to change is the recording industry viewpoints. ”
MISGUIDED ARTIST: “I put my blood, sweat and tears into making this music and its important and rare and since rare things are valuable, you WILL pay for it.”
FAN: “No thanks, I will go elsewhere.”
MISGUIDED ARTIST: “But, wait a minute, I have my own download store available where I am selling MP3’s”.
FAN: “Are you serious, Apple stopped making the iPod and you are still pushing MP3’s.”
MISGUIDED ARTIST: “But”
FAN: “What stuns me is that you have failed to see that the game has changed. The past is gone, it is never coming back. You want me to buy CD’s and Apple doesn’t even have a CD/DVD/BluRay Drive on any of their computers. You want me to buy MP3’s when all I want to do is listen. No one wakes up in the morning and goes to themselves, gee, I wish I bought an MP3 or a CD today. We wake up in the morning thinking, gee, I would love to hear “King Of Errors” from Evergrey.”
MISGUIDED ARTIST: “But music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for.”
FAN: “Your job as a musician is to make music.”

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Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Everyone Is Trying To Twist The Narrative To Their Own Advantage.

So Desmond Child is telling the world that Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora and himself had to split a total of $110 in 2012 for the 6.5 million streams of Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” on Pandora during a three-month span in 2012. Pandora’s published rate is about .0013 cents per stream. So doing the math, that means that “Livin On A Prayer” actually earned $8,450 for that three-month spell on Pandora. If that is true, that means that the songwriters are getting about 1.3% of the monies paid to the record labels.

Daniel Ek claims that Spotify will pay $6 million to Taylor Swift from worldwide streams. Swift’s label, claims that is a lie and that they received less than $500,000 for the streams. However what the label is forgetting to say is that the amount is for US streams only.

And Spotify argues that it is competing with free/piracy, while the artists side argue about Spotify not paying enough. They are two different arguments that have no correlation with each other whatsoever. When are people going to realise that Spotify doesn’t sell music, it provides access to it. And consumers like it, otherwise Spotify wouldn’t be starting to overtake iTunes in some markets.

Rob Zombie once upon a time hated copyright infringement and now he reckons it makes him more creative as he doesn’t have to write songs that fit a sales metric.

Lars Ulrich is now reserved and diplomatic in his responses to music piracy or copyright infringement. Maybe it is because he knows that if it wasn’t for music piracy, Metallica wouldn’t be playing sold out shows in China or the Middle East and some South East Asian countries.

Scott Ian wanted the people who downloaded the “Worship Music” album to be disconnected from the internet, even though they could have been fans who ended up purchasing a concert ticket and an over-priced T-shirt.

Gene Simmons famously said that downloaders/fans should be sued and also have their houses taken from them. He said that rock is dead because of piracy. Yngwie Malmsteen, Paul Stanley, Joe Perry and others agreed with him. Many others didn’t.

Internet Radio station Sirius XM is going to lose its case over pre-1972 sound recordings by the band The Turtles. The shameful part here is that the recording industry fought hard against making pre-1972 recordings fought hard against this. The hypocrisy here is huge. While the recording industry has fought so hard against making pre-1972 sound recordings subject to federal copyright laws, now they suddenly want aspects of federal copyright law (like public performance rights which did not exist under previous laws) to apply to those very same works. If Congress made it so those works were under federal copyright, there wouldn’t be an issue and all these works would be treated identically. But the truth is that the RIAA wants to keep these works out of federal copyright law to use them as a weapon against internet innovation.

Sony is re-evaluating it’s support for free streaming, however as a part owner of Spotify, I find it hard to believe that they will pull their catalogue from the free-tier.

Everyone is trying to twist the narrative to their own advantage.

Everybody has an angle.

And what about the musicians.

The hardest challenge facing musicians is getting people to listen to their new music and then getting them to stick around once the album because those big marketing awareness campaigns are goneski. It’s proven that they don’t work if the music is shit and the narrative is shit.

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Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy

The Poor Middlemen

Most people think that copyright is a property right however it isn’t. Copyright is a government granted monopoly. The government via legislation creates these monopolies on music, movies, photographs and books as an “incentive” for creators to create more. Then all the middlemen step in and start make money that way.

That is how the record labels made money.

That is how managers made money.

That is how sheet music sellers and music publishers made money.

That is how record stores made money.

Every time the copyright industry is faced with competition, they start mobilising the lawyers. If they cannot sue, they then start lobbying hard to get laws passed so they can sue. If they cannot get federal laws passed to suit their obsolete business models, they then organise secret treaties/pacts which force all governments to pass the laws they want.

At no point does the copyright industry ever say to itself, that they should compete. Their “solution” to legal competition is to either make the competition illegal or organise a new fee that needs to be paid for the new technology.

All the middlemen do is live off what the government grants them. They never create. They never innovate. They merely take their cut. When their cut gets too small, they blame everyone but themselves. They even go as far as to sue their own customers or demand to have them kicked off the internet. As if that would magically make them start paying the old tolls again.

There was a story doing the rounds here in Australia about how piracy is killing the film industry. In the article the film maker is supportive of the Australian government’s new proposals, that would hold the ISP’s responsible for copyright infringement.

It is the usual rhetoric, that each illegal download is a lost sale/movie ticket. Just say if the movie was available for streaming at the same time as it’s movie cinematic release? Guess that thought didn’t cross the mind of anyone. What copyright infringement highlights is a gap in the business model of the people behind the movies.

It is the usual view that if someone spent money to make something and it doesn’t make any money then the government needs to step in and protect them. What about all of the developers and inventors that tried and failed. Did the government step in and protect them with legislation?

Do you want to know why Marvel movies or other comic book/graphic novels are big ticket items today? It’s because of sharing, copyright infringement and the second hand book market. You have more and more people exposed to a product, it is highly likely that a connection will be made.

Do you want to know why Iron Maiden plays sold out shows to manic fans in Central and South America without even selling a large number of albums? Yep, piracy.

How do you think Metallica got so large in China that they got the chance to play a few sold out shows there? Surely it must have been sales of CD’s.

What the copyright industries want is the governments to pass legislation that would eliminate the motivation for rights holders to make their content available cheaply and discourage them from investing in more innovative ways to distribute movies and TV shows.

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Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

If Money Is Not Filtering Down To The Artist, Whose Fault Is That?

There are still a lot of misguided people/entities in the recording industry that believe that they are immune to the changing times. Our world is constantly evolving. When will the recording industry accept that the landscape has changed.

Napster showed the recording industry what the fans of music want. The recording industry responded by shutting the service down. However, CD sales didn’t pick up as the recording industry would have hoped and what did happen was that the fans of music just went elsewhere. Suddenly there was Audiogalaxy, Limewire and KaZaA. Then came BitTorrent and The Pirate Bay.

In the end the customers just wanted free music. And even though Spotify and YouTube might give the illusion to the fan that music is free on their service, it is not. Spotify and YouTube do pay a large portion of their incomes to the rights holders.

Young people don’t purchase music the same way their parents and grandparents did. Access is more important than ownership. The car makers are being challenged at the moment as purchasing a car is no longer a rite of passage. The new housing market is being propped up by the older people, as young people are happy to rent or stay at home until their late thirties.

Spotify is a business based around access. This gives the fans greater choice whereas a purchase model takes away the choice of the fan and it makes them commit to which artist they would like to support. I remember walking into record stores, looking into my wallet to see how much cash I have and making decisions to maximise my cash with my purchases.

There are advantages and disadvantages to both. More choice means confusion and the fan just doesn’t commit to anything or they revert to trusted filters or playlists.

It is in the best interest of the recording industry and artists that streaming services gain traction. Otherwise the fans will just go elsewhere and if you take away the free tier of Spotify or YouTube, then what.

Once Napster went to a paying service, did fans start paying for music again?

Of course not.

What about Rhapsody? It has been trading for at least ten years and it has failed to get mass appeal.

The struggles that the recording industries are facing today were already quite clear in 1997 to people paying attention. The focus of sales as a success metric had to be tweaked and worked together with a smart business model. What we have here is an inability to adapt to a changing market.

Today’s world is much better for bands starting out today than in the past because they don’t need to win over the gatekeepers. They can find their own audience. They can create their own business models and make a living — unlike under the old system, where you either hit it big or you gave up and went back to your day job.

Can someone please explain how getting people to stop listening to free music magically makes them start buying music again?

What will do that, however, are smarter business models and Spotify is one link in the NEW MUSIC ECONOMY.

Shinedown just received a gold certification for their album “Amaryllis”. That means their album has moved over 500,000 units in the U.S. They moved that many units while their music was available on Spotify, YouTube, P2P and other services that offer free-tier models. They toured for over 12 months on the backs of that album. Their business model isn’t just about sales as a metric of success.

I seriously struggle to understand the long-standing debate between Spotify and artists. The debate should be between artists and the Record Labels. The debate should be between artists and the Publishers. Spotify pays the rights holders (labels and publishers) 70% of their income. From the other 30% they make, a certain percentage goes to the record labels who are shareholders of the company. The record labels had the power to negotiate a shareholding stake because of the amount of copyrights they have amassed from the artists on their rosters.

Quincy Jones posted on Facebook that “Spotify is not the enemy; piracy is the enemy”. Daniel Ek put that into dollar terms. Piracy could lead to higher concert attendances and merchandise sales, however in relation to the recording industry, piracy yields a ZERO return. Spotify at the moment has paid TWO BILLION dollars to labels, publishers and collecting societies for distribution to songwriters and recording artists.

As I have mentioned before, if that money is not flowing to the artists in a clear transparent way, then whose fault is that. The streaming services or the record labels.

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

Music Lives Because Of Sharing and Copying

We all want to first and foremost SHARE something. If you go to Facebook, people are sharing their day and their lives. Go to any internet page and you will see people sharing photos, writings, music, opinions, stories, etc. And all the things that we share are all free. We do it for free.

However, the recording industry will say that artists cannot survive without being paid. What the recording industry is saying is that the recording industry cannot survive if they are not getting paid. Artists NEED to create. And there are artists who WANT to make money from those creations. And a few of them actually CAN make money from their creations.

As always, there are lots of bands created every day. Only a few survive. Only a few of them make enough money to live. And only a very little few of them make a lot of money. That has always been the same. We know of Motley Crue, but how many bands were there in L.A at the time? How many of them have we never heard of? We know of Metallica, but how many bands were there in San Francisco at the time? How many of them have we never heard of? We know of Accept and Bonfire from Germany, but how many bands were there in Germany at the time? How many of them have we never heard of? Get my point.

The difference now is that musicians can reach many more people and they don’t need a whole industry for that, and the industry is frightened about it.

Music will always exist along with people’s need to share it. The fact that we have music alive today is because it was shared and copied from day dot.

Music is about beauty and beauty has no real set price. For super fans, that beauty could be worth thousands of dollars in music, merch and concert purchases. For others, the beauty could be worth a few dollars and for others that beauty could be worth just the enjoyment.

If we listen to a song and we like it, we will listen to more songs. We could purchase a CD, we could download an album, we could purchase a ticket to a show or a T-shirt. Hell, we could even fan fund the next recording. That is how the fans build social communities around their favourite acts. They chat about them to another person. Then they share the music that they love. And once upon a time, there was no law forbidding this. Information was exchanged freely. However when the entertainment industry kept on growing, and when they kept on getting the governments to pass laws to give the industry a monopoly, that is when the repression began.

I bet no one has heard about Paulo Coelho. He is one of the best-selling authors and a few years back he decided to create “The Pirate Coelho”, an non-official fan page that allows people to download the full texts of his books in different languages. And guess what happened. He started selling more books now than ever. Guess you need to balls to try something that is unknown.

In bands, this is a difficult card to play because band members very rarely see eye to eye, so as soon as something goes astray there will be one band member that will start throwing the blame at another band member.

 

 

 

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

Music Overload, Fans And Platinum Albums

Back in the past there used to be about a thousand metal and rock releases a year and from those releases only a few got traction and if an artist didn’t get traction or press they were doomed. Now there are thousands upon thousands of metal and rock releases. And they are all online and unless someone that we trust verifies their quality or a track becomes a viral phenomenon, we don’t care and suddenly most people don’t care, and then that album that the artist worked on for two years is gone.

The days of multi-platinum sales are over. Have you seen the latest report on the state of the recording industry?

The sales model is dead. No artist-album released in 2014 has gone platinum in the major U.S market. Sure, bands like Avenged Sevenfold, Five Finger Death Punch and Volbeat are pushing close to the GOLD mark however their albums came out in 2013. And yes Metallica’s self-titled album is pushing closer to 20 million in sales however that was released back in 1991.

The RIAA began certifying American platinum records in 1976. A long time ago and since then 345 albums have received the award.

Think about that for a second and do the math. Even when the record labels controlled the distribution and set the price, only 345 albums achieved platinum status over the last 38 years. 345 albums out of 40,000 plus albums. It comes to about 1%.

And of course, the record labels and the misguided artists will be quick to blame piracy and simply forget about streaming, the outdated albums format, the quality of the music released or the fact that fans of music prefer access over ownership.

Things change.

And one of the big changes is the shift in consumer behaviour. It seems that a lot of people don’t miss owning music. We have put our trust in the internet and the speeds they offer. Sort of like flicking a light switch. We have faith that the lights will switch on.

And bands that are still writing long players. You end up putting them online to be cherry-picked. It doesn’t make sense.

We live in a world where what was a hot news item in the morning is forgotten by days end.

Hell, with everything at our fingertips, we gravitate to the few that break through. We only want the very best all the time and therefore it takes an incredible effort to penetrate our consciousness and stay there. Furthermore, the more successful something is, the more it continues to grow, reinforcing its success. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

Digital downloads were once hailed as the saviour, however they only provided a bridge between the CD and streaming. And the whole issue about money. Just because you released a song or an album it doesn’t entitle you to be paid. As the Metal Sucks piece notes,

“Nowhere is it written that rock stars should be well-off — the only reason it worked for the 50-year period between 1950 and 2000 is because of a market inefficiency whereby distribution was completely monopolized by the rights holders.”

And here is where the misguided and out of touch people talk about the cost of production, the years of blood, sweat and tears and the entitlement that all of that deserves our attention and our money.

Rubbish.

And yes, music is hard. Writing a great song is hard. The new Five Finger Death Punch double albums for me have four definitive tracks. “Lift Me Up”, “The Wrong Side Of Heaven”, “A Day In The Life” and “Watch You Bleed”. On the Avenged Sevenfold album, “Shepherd Of Fire”, “Hail To The King” and “Coming Home” are the definitive tracks.

So as we move forward, more than ever, it depends on the hit. And with so many of us listening to music in different places no one knows how to aggregate all of that data. And because of that the onus is on the fans. That’s right, the fans make and promote the hits. Once the fans find you, you need to feed them and that doesn’t mean one song a month or one song a week, or an album every two years.

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

Thinking Out Loud About Music

MUSIC OVER MONEY

Everybody wants to get paid. But if money is your primary desire, you’re not an artist.

First and foremost an artists want to create and have their creations experienced by as large an audience as possible. There is a local Australian artist called Ricki-Lee Coulter who is in the pop market game. She has spent the last two years making her fourth album. This process has involved her funding a three-month stint in New York to work with American songwriters and producers, paying rent there as well as back in Australia. Then there was a self-funded trip to LA to work with more American writers, aware of the need for an ‘international’ sound to compete on radio. Then she flew an LA-based writer called Brian Lee to Australia for a ten-day workshop to co-write three songs. She paid for his flights and accommodation. And this is how she sums it up;

“Over the last ten years if I added it all up I could have totally bought a really nice house with what I’ve spent on my career. But sitting in a big house with empty dreams? I’d always be wanting more. I always pay for my songwriting trips overseas. I don’t want to be reliant on anybody or answer to anyone. I want to have the freedom to do things the way I want, not the way someone else does because they’re paying for it. I don’t want to take away from the support I get from my record label, but if I want something I want it. Sometimes it’s me that has to suck it up and pay for it and that’s fine, because I don’t want to have any regrets. Record labels aren’t an endless source of money. I’m lucky with the opportunities I’ve been given and I’m not left wanting. But if I wanted to be a billionaire I wouldn’t be doing music in Australia. There’s plenty of other jobs where you can work as hard as you do in music and make a whole lot more money. But I don’t do it for dollars and cents, it’s who I am. I’d feel empty if I didn’t do it.”

If you are not investing in yourself how do you expect others to do so.

CREATE

An artist creates constantly. That’s their job. You’ve got to keep doing it because you love it. You need to be trying to create something that connects all by itself and you have the fans spreading its greatness, not some marketing campaign.

TRUTH

How many Googles are there? How many Apples are there? How many Facebooks are there or Amazons?

The answer is ONE Major player. So why do you think that musical fans have time for thousands of bands.

POINT OF VIEW

Robb Flynn puts it out there with his journals and it is a great way to keep in touch with the fan base. It is him also creating art. His recounting of the “Through The Ashes Of Empires” album making off was brilliant.

LIKES vs MUSIC

Keep the likes for social media. They have nothing to do with music. Music has an edge and as an artist if you rub off all of those rough edges that make you unique, then no one will care about you.

CHANGE

People will try to change you. There are a million ways to screw an artist financially and career wise. Don’t change.

ONE TO MANY

The tech game is all about how can I go from one to many. In other words how can I produce something so good that it sells itself.  It used to be the musical game however it hasn’t been that way in a long while. You will never make money from recordings if you don’t have hit songs. I don’t mean a Billboard Number 1 style of hit,I mean a Paranoid, Live Wire, Holy Diver, Lick It Up, Darkness Within style of hit. Apple as we know it today was built upon the iPod. That was their hit.

VINYL/CD’s

It’s a niche market selling these musical artifacts. Now, more than ever before, your success depends upon your music. The traditional recording sales revenue may have tanked, that does not mean new opportunities have not arisen.

STREAMING

Streaming is just too easy, and on streaming services everything is available. You need great music to rise above.

TOURING

Recordings keep your career alive. Spend too much time on the road or leave large gaps in your recorded output then you are moving in the direction or being irrelevant.

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