Category Archives: Piracy

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

The Real Copyright Abusers Are The Major Record Labels

The major Record Labels own the majority of copyrights and don’t they love to overvalue their content. As soon as a product is seen making money or drawing an audience from music, the big copyright owners swoop in. And when they do swoop in a few things begin to happen;

The Product will get threatened. Think of Napster, Limewire, AudioGalaxy and MegaUpload. All gone. Pandora is constantly battling against rates of payments as they struggle to make a profit. Spotify, in order to trade in the U.S had to give the major labels a share of the company. It was either that or the labels would not license them. Google is always blamed for linking to pirated content.

The Product will get litigated into non-existenance. Mp3.com, hotfile, isohunt are three that come to mind.

The Product will move on to different areas of innovation.

The Product will get saturated with content from the copyright industries that a lot of the people who flocked to the product in the first place will just move on to another product.

Like MySpace.

MySpace was once a haven for finding out independent/underground music. The whole culture and market reach of MySpace was built around this premise. Of course MySpace got so popular that it was inevitable that the major legacy players would take notice. Eventually, MySpace was littered with content from the major players. Ads of major label artists popped up everywhere and all of the independent content that made MySpace popular got pushed further into the background, making it harder to find.

Eventually those people who made MySpace popular started to abandon the site in droves, moving onto other social media sites, like Facebook and YouTube.

Anyone heard this quote from Robert A. Heinlein.

“There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back.”

Does it all sound eerily familiar? Does it sound like the attitude of the content industries for the last 40 years?

The MPAA and RIAA have never stopped lobbying the Government to pass laws that will protect their business models. Even Irving Azoff still blames technology for diminishing the music business profits instead of blaming the real devil, which is the GREED of the POWER PLAYERS. Someone like Azoff had a career on the backs of music that artists created.

The blame should be at the way the Record Labels/RIAA treated their artists and the fans of the artist.

The blame should be in the way the Labels creatively structured deals to ensure that most musicians never get paid a real dime.

Yes, back when the Record Labels controlled everything, artists are given advances, however the real term used should have been “loans on terrible repayment rates” in which the labels would add-on every expense that needs to be “paid back”.

Very few musicians ever “recouped” even after the labels made back many times what they actually gave the artists.

RATT sold 7.5 million albums in the U.S alone which meant total gross sales of $75 million. Even if the label gave them $1 million dollar advances for each album, that is $5 million the label would have spent on the band and in the process the Label made $70 million. I bet if the financials are made available, it would show Ratt as a band that still hasn’t recouped.

There is a post over at Techdirt that covers this in a bit more depth. The following comments are from Tim Quirk and how record label accounting relates to his band, Too Much Joy (TMJ):

A word here about that unrecouped balance, for those uninitiated in the complex mechanics of major label accounting. While our royalty statement shows Too Much Joy in the red with Warner Bros. (now by only $395,214.71 after that $62.47 digital windfall), this doesn’t mean Warner “lost” nearly $400,000 on the band. That’s how much they spent on us, and we don’t see any royalty checks until it’s paid back, but it doesn’t get paid back out of the full price of every album sold. It gets paid back out of the band’s share of every album sold, which is roughly 10% of the retail price. So, using round numbers to make the math as easy as possible to understand, let’s say Warner Bros. spent something like $450,000 total on TMJ. If Warner sold 15,000 copies of each of the three TMJ records they released at a wholesale price of $10 each, they would have earned back the $450,000. But if those records were retailing for $15, TMJ would have only paid back $67,500, and our statement would show an unrecouped balance of $382,500.

So going back to my Ratt example, it is a well-known fact that artist in the Eighties signed contracts that gave them a 5% cut of the album sold. Do the math? I am pretty sure it will come out that Ratt didn’t recoup.

As the Techdirt post pointed out;

“In other words, musicians don’t get paid anything in most cases, while the labels can earn a tidy profit for years and years, still insisting the band hasn’t recouped. It’s why a band can sell a million albums and still owe $500,000.”

The whole doctrine of “getting the government and the courts to guarantee profits in the future” is the reason why copyright trolls like Rightscorp have come into existence. It has also given rise to law enforcement working for the content industries as a pseudo “Copyright Police”, which in reality was always a civil matter, never a criminal matter.

In the end, the real copyright infringers and abusers are the actual Record Labels.

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

Record Store Day

For “Record Store Day” I paid $30AUS for the “Killers and Kings” single from Machine Head.

Online I can purchase the single for $15US from the Nuclear Blast store.

So I selected the three other covers that I didn’t have and added them to my cart. The total was now sitting at $45US. Then I registered my account and since I am in Australia I was charged $29US for postage and handling. The total of my purchase was now sitting at $74US. Once I paid it via PayPal, the final payment figure from me was $82.21 in Australian dollars.

That equates to about $27AUS for each single.

Now if the Independent Record Store was selling it for $30AUS, then that would mean that the actual independent record store would be making $3 per item.

Hell if that is the mark up for each limited edition item they were selling and let’s just say that one record store sold 200 items, that would mean that the pure profit for the record store would be $600 for that day.

So is the “Record Store Day” there to benefit/save the independent record store?

And to put a spanner in the math, the actual royalty paid back to the band is a percentage on the wholesale price. And the wholesale price is about 50% to 80% lower than the retail price.

Let’s use the Machine Head example.

If the wholesale price of each single would be between $3 to $7.50 and if the royalty rate is a generous 20%. That would mean for each single sold the band would get between 60c to $1.50 royalty cut, to split between 4 people, plus a manager and a legal team.

So what happens when there is an advance upfront payment.

The band takes the money upfront, forsaking (in a lot of cases) any claims on royalties and the risk resides with the label on recouping that advance payment with the single release, the album release and other types of releases.

Either way, Record Store Day is not there to save the record stores. It is there to replace the revenue lost by the record labels due to the declining CD sales. It has nothing to do with keeping the record store open or trying to save the mum and dad independent record store.

It is pure label greed.

Sort of like how the record labels are going after Pandora again. This time around they are suing the internet radio service for not paying to use sound recordings made prior to 1972. But hang on second neither does terrestrial radio.

So what we have is the following scenario;

– Record company lawyers are filing cases against Pandora in state courts. This will enrich them.
– It will do nothing to put money in the hands of the artists.
– What will happen is that Pandora will more or less stop playing these pre-1972 recordings instead of paying another license fee that federal law says you don’t have to pay.
– If the legal bills mount up for Pandora they will go out of business and the 60% royalty rates that Pandora paid will disappear from the record label and publishing companies bottom lines.
– It would do nothing to bring in more money.
– It still doesn’t solve the industry’s biggest problem which is to find a new business model that replaces the revenue lost from the decline of CD sales.

It is pure label greed. To use a phrase that they use in relation to piracy, “IT IS THEFT, PLAIN AND SIMPLE”.

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

In Music, Rules Are Meant To Be Broken (If You Want To Rock N Roll)

Small businesses need to understand that life’s changing and because it is changing so fast, it is a case of adapt or die.

To put it into perspective, the Australian Government recently signed a few Free Trade Agreements with South Korea and Japan, with China set to follow soon. All of this will make it easier for the big retail giants of those countries to enter the Australian market. All of these FTA’s makes it harder for small businesses to compete. Because as is the norm when big giants come into a market, prices go down, and for small businesses it does not make life easier, it makes it harder.

However, opportunities always emerge for the fast adapters.

Sort of like the music business.

The ones that adapted to the changes fast, survived. While the ones that complained and whined about peer-to-peer either perished or downsized.

Traditional music distributors. Gone or downsized. Replaced by Digital distributors.

Record Store Retail Outlets. More or less gone. Replaced by online shopping carts, streaming and digital downloads.

Publishing companies. Downsized or merged.

Record Labels. Downsized or merged. Saved by the tech industry.

Bands. Either are breaking up or are constantly replacing members.

So if small businesses needs to adapt to survive on a constant basis, than artists, record labels and the music business in general should be no different. And just because the recording business was dragged kicking and screaming to embrace mp3’s, then YouTube and then streaming, the innovation doesn’t end there. Adaption is the key.

Instead, the music business is cashed up and the record labels have a powerful lobby group that instead of innovating and adapting to the changes, they lobby hard to have laws passed to assist them.

Instead of adapting, they have the courts step in to assist them.

Instead of innovating, they had the Federal Police step up to the plate and assist them in using terrorist style raids on unsuspecting victims, like a 5-year-old girl and her Winnie The Pooh laptop.

And now that the recording business is all in with the techies, those same techies now have shareholders and boards that want profits first and innovation second.

Seen the stocks of Netflix, Facebook and Twitter recently. But tech is where the action is I hear people say. Well I say tech is where the action is up until profits trump innovation.

Music drove culture up until a point in time in the mid Eighties when executives put profit margins ahead of music.

And in business, cash flow is everything. In music, cash flow is a byproduct of great music.

In music, rules are meant to be broken. Innovation is about breaking the rules.

New musical legends will combine both and rise from the ashes to enrapture the public. And they will be different. These artists will not be interested in corporate deals and sponsorships.

These new artists will not be concerned about the past. They will be concerned about changing the future. With music. Like it was once before. When music led the way.

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

The Piracy Debate… Goes On and On and On and On.. But The Hard Work For An Artist Never Goes Away

BitTorrent is a tool. How people decide to use the tool depends on them. Technology has a history of people/society shaping the technology. The BitTorrent protocol was designed to move large amounts of data. So of course, companies like Facebook and Twitter use BitTorrent to send updates to its employees. Then you have other people who use it to download torrents.

To use an analogy, knives are used in the kitchen to great effect. However people also use knives in illegal ways. Should we ban knives because they are also used illegally. According to Robert Steele, one of the bosses at the copyright troll Rightscorp outfit we should.

This is what Robert Steele said;

“BitTorrent’s architecture and features are designed for one reason only – to assist people in avoiding legitimate law enforcement efforts when they illegally consume other people’s intellectual property.”

As TorrentFreak points out, people who use BitTorrent are easy to track down, which is in fact something that Rightscorp is basing its entire business model on.

So why is it that so many people in the industry are so against Pirates.

Studies of Industry Professionals show that the “Sales and Distribution” sector are the ones saying that they’d been most affected by piracy because it is those middlemen who sit behind the scenes, have the largest vested interest in stopping piracy as they don¹t have many other reasons for doing what they do.

Artists just want to create. Money is a byproduct of those creations. All the rest of the enablers are trying to make money of the creation.

P2P research even shows that Piracy helps push the overall industry forward and that downloaders actually spend more on music than non downloaders.

There is a reason why bands are going to South America, even when the number of albums sold in the continent dont equate to the fans who attend shows. Look at all the DVD’s coming out from bands. Dream Theater, Rush, Iron Maiden and Megadeth are four bands that come to mind that have all released DVD’s of concerts in South America. Metallica have covered Mexico.

I was also going through some Billboard BoxScore figures from last week and based on recorded sales, the concert grosses don’t really equate. So in the same way that the RIAA correlates an illegal download to a lost sale, I will say that each fan that buys a ticket to a live show has also illegally downloaded at least ten full albums. (I am being conservative).

Who would have thought that a bill of “Bring Me The Horizon” and “Of Mice & Men” would gross about $70,000 per show. Play 20 of those shows and you have a $1.5 million tour.

Who would have thought that a bill of “The Used”, “Taking Back Sunday”,”Tonight Alive” and “Sleepwave” would also gross about $70,000 per show. See above, do 10 shows and you have a $700,000 gross tour.

Even the mighty “Manowar” still gross $60,000.

A bill of “Asking Alexandria”, “August Burns Red”, “We Came As Romans”, “Crown the Empire” and “Born of Osiris” grosses about $50,000 per show. The albums sales combined from all of the artists wouldn’t even pass 50,000 in the U.S.

“Falling In Reverse” and “Escape The Fate” gross about $30,000 per show.

While a bill that featured “In This Moment”, “Butcher Babies”, “Devour The Day” and “All Hail The Yeti” gross about $19,000 per show which was the same as a bill featuring “Animals As Leaders”, “After the Burial”, “Navene-K” and “Chon” gross about $19,000 per show. Not bad for a progressive djent band.

“Sevendust” are doing a run of shows and they are grossing at least $13,000 per shows Since the start of April 2014 to July 2014, they will play about 54 shows. Do the math on that one. It comes to about $700K in gross.

Indiegogo champions “Protest the Hero” played a small venue and grossed $4,000 per show. If they do a 50 date run like Sevendust, then do the math. It all adds up.

It’s hard work being an artist however if you are in the game because you love it, it makes it easier. If you are in the game to bitch and moan about piracy, then get out of it and join the bankers or the techies.

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

YouTube

Do you want an audience or a fan base?

An audience will go and check out a song after being instructed to do so. The fan base will choose what song to play or what album to play when they want to.

It’s always the techies that are getting it right for the music industry. They can see how to make dollars in between all of those ones and zeroes.

“An audience changes the channel when their show is over. A fan base shares, it comments, it curates, it creates.”

YouTube’s global head of entertainment Alex Carloss said the above.

So where do you stand as an artist.

Do you have an audience? People who are directed to check you out?

Or do you have a fan base, people who share, comment, create playlists and do everything else.

It is a global world and YouTube is a platform that can reach all corners of the world. The reason why it is so popular is that while the major labels procrastinated over how much they would get from the streaming services, YouTube entered via the backdoor and became the leader. And it wasn’t even licensed.

Recent research has shown that by not having your music on YouTube could lead to an increase in music sales. What this clearly shows to me is that there are more factors out there that have led to reduced sales of recorded music than piracy alone. It also shows the shift of people’s listening habits. But wait, Neil Young and the Ponos team still reckon we need studio quality files. Yep, good luck with that.

If you are not using YouTube to promote yourself, then you are doing it all wrong and your career is challenged.

Even if the record labels do not renew their licensing agreement with YouTube, it will still survive. Because it is the fans that want it. YouTube’s success is made by the people, who apart from going to listen to music or view videos, they also upload as well. If I want to hear a new release before I buy it I normally go to YouTube. The whole album is there. Spotify is good as well, however it’s search algorithms are rubbish, plus it doesn’t have everything there.

I wanted to listen to Badlands “Voodoo Highway” album recently. It’s not on Spotify, however YouTube has it. Unlicensed.

I wanted to listen to Don Dokken’s “Up From The Ashes” album recently. For both, I could have gotten the CD and played it or I could have plugged in the portable drive and played it from there, however that was too much effort. Spotify didn’t have it, but YouTube did. Again unlicensed.

The record labels get wined and dined by Apple for exclusivity around their streaming service. And then when the cash rolls in from another licensing agreement to them, the artists will complain that streaming is killing the music business.

NO.

The Record Labels are still killing the music business. Their own greed will kill off streaming services. A stream is not a sale, so the royalty rates that labels pay artists are bullshit. Because the labels classify a stream as a sale which in turn brings with it a lower royalty rate.

Because if a band can stand to make $24,000 for putting up a silent album on Spotify that has been streamed for a combined sum over 4.7 million, then surely the larger acts that have 40 million streams will be making better dollars.

But they don’t.

Because that low royalty rate per stream that Spotify pays, gets further diluted when the Record Label applies it’s 80/20 split to it. Then that low 20 percent is split again by managers, lawyers, band members, etc..

What about illegal downloading of music?

It is still going on and it will never stop because people still want to have the mp3.

14 years have passed since the Napster revolution and music lovers still don’t have a legal ad-supported peer-to-peer download service for mp3’s. It’s leaving money on the table if you ask me.

Do you know what one of the main income revenues is for the record labels?

Yep, its YouTube fan clips that go viral. The ones that have unlicensed music playing in the background. With the YouTube Content ID system, labels can claim the clip as theirs and then reap the benefits that the clips views bring in.

Even Governments fear it. Turkey’s government blocked access to YouTube when an audio recording of top civilian and military officials appeared, which involved high-level security talks on Syria. The Government has classed it as illegal content. I see it as a form of censorship.

YouTube was seen as the enemy to TV stations and to the Music Industry. Now it is their greatest ally, only if they know how to use its potential. Expect to see the various YouTube networks become bigger than the movie studios in the future. Because they realise that it’s not all about the blockbuster effect. Releasing content more frequently is king.

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

Who Is Ahead Of The Game and Who Is Behind The Eight Ball

Ahead Of The Game
Demonoid. As the single largest semi-private BitTorrent tracker that ever existed, Demonoid offered a home to millions of file-sharers. Throughout it’s history it has been taken offline a few times and the most recent one occurred last year. However, the site is known as the “COMEBACK KID” and it is back again. Never underestimate innovation. It always trump corruption and money.

Behind The Eight Ball
As expected and predicted by everybody, the Entertainment Industries/Hollywood Studios are now suing MegaUpload. The fact that they conspired with the Government to take a cyberlocker off-line was not enough. The fact that they made a lot of people lose personal content like photos, papers and videos is not enough. Let’s spend more money and sue the organisation. I suppose the catchcry is going to be the whole “WE NEED TO SEND A MESSAGE”.

Ahead Of The Game
YouTube dominates music streaming UNOFFICIALLY.

Behind The Eight Ball
Apple’s got no streaming solution. iTunes Radio is no match for Pandora so Apple/Cook making a billion dollar deal with Beats Music (which was losing money) so that they could have a streaming solution. And Trent Reznor (who was an investor in Beats) cashed in with the Beats sale to Apple by making way more money than he ever made in music.

Ahead Of The Game
Streaming wins.

Behind The Eight Ball
Spotify laid the foundation for streaming by fighting from trench to trench. Can they compete with Apple? The word on the street is that Apple will have a better royalty rate when it comes to streams.

Ahead Of The Game
The Techies are still the winners when it comes to music and distribution.

Behind The Eight Ball
Ponos and Studio Quality music in our ear buds.

Ahead Of The Game
Independent bands that come up with creative ways to engage their fans. “The Airborne Toxic Event” a few years back released a series of stripped-down, single-shot videos for every song on their album. Check out their Spotify and YouTube numbers today. A lot of the established rock bands do not have those numbers. The lesson here is that the artists in today’s world have way more opportunities to reach out to their fans and share content with them. It’s a lifer game.

Behind The Eight Ball
Artists talking about CD sales. Or research that focuses on innovation hurting sales of music. Hell, lets bring back Eight Track Tapes and Cassettes while we are at it.

Ahead Of The Game
Number crunching. MusicMetric, Echo Nest and Next Big Sound are all out there providing analysis on music by examining all aspects of a bands presence, like Social Media, Peer To Peer, legal mp3 purchases and streaming numbers.

Behind The Eight Ball
Lobbyists are still pushing hard for prosecution of online pirates and that new law is known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Basically it is a free trade deal that is being negotiated in secret and it has similar provisions to America’s controversial SOPA and ACTA bills.

And what about these other little innovative beauties from the entertainment industries;

DreamWorks calling for a piracy crackdown while they rake it in.

MUSO (a takedown service) is the Entertainment Industries answer to piracy. And the UK Government is providing funding.

If you are an artist, you need to keep on creating so that you can stay ahead of the game. If you are a label, you need to be finding talent and innovating to stay ahead of the game. Otherwise, you will be behind the eight ball and blaming everyone else for your shortcomings.

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

The Power Of User Transcriptions and the Death Of Sheet Music

I can honestly say that with the rise of the internet, the need to use my ear and figure out a song has more or less gone out the window. All I need to do is go to UltimateGuitar.com or to an iPhone app and search for the song.

There is a 100% chance that it is there, especially the popular ones. The beauty of it all is that the transcriptions are free and made by musicians who are fans of the band. Some of the more complex progressive stuff is also out there and massive kudos to the guys and gals who sit down to transcribe Dream Theater, Periphery, Sikth, Animals As Leaders and Protest The Hero because they love it, not because they get paid to do it.

However, it wasn’t always UltimateGuitar for me. My fascination with other people transcribing tabs started off with “Harmony Central” back in 1999 which had basic and crude text tabs. However that interest went up a large notch with this website:

THE POWER TAB DUNGEON

The website is littered with PowerTabs from bands in the Eighties and Nineties. In some cases it has the whole album from a band or in some rare cases it has the whole discography for a band, even going into the Nineties and Two Thousands. It is simply as well. Click on the song and it downloads straight away. Nice and easy, just the way that I love it where as UlitmateGutiar.com has way too many clicks involved in order to get the song transcription.

If you are in the business that sells sheet music, your business model is challenged. Not because of piracy, but because of users wanting to show the world that they can transcribe music that they love. If you are in the business that sells magazines with transcriptions like Guitar World or Total Guitar, your business model is also challenged. I am a Guitar World subscriber and the last 16 months worth of issues are still sitting on my shelf with the plastic wrapping still on them.

When my subscription expires I will be letting it lapse. There is no need for it in the current world and their fascination with ass-kissing the classic rockers is getting too much. For example, i can honestly say that i have over 15 transcriptions of the same song from either Jimi Hendrix, Metallica, Ozzy/RR era, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton.

I digress. You will notice that I mentioned PowerTab earlier. It’s a piece of software which I still use today to capture riffs and turn them into songs. It is not the best piece of software out there on the market right now, however I was a very early adopter of PowerTab (circa 2003 or 2004) and it served my purpose well when my kids came into my life between the years of 2005 and 2011. Instead of plugging in and playing riffs, I opened up the lap top and fired up the PowerTab software. It more or less became my guitar.

And this brings me back to the the Power Tab Dungeon website. It is pure Eighties heaven. Even the hard to find stuff. Back then, when this site came out, a lot of the other tab sites didn’t have this collection of material. Now if you go onto UltimateGuitar.com you will more or less see it all there. However the original leader in Eighties tab was the Dungeon.

If you wanted to know how to play songs from “Shotgun Messiah” they are there. Or “Babylon A.D”. Or “Steelheart”. Or “Jackyl”. Or “XYZ”. Or “Ugly Kid Joe”. Even “Vince Neil’s” solo albums.

Also on the flip side you still have Hal Leonard selling Note For Note books for between $50 to $70 plus dollars in Australia. And they wonder why no one is buying. Let’s blame piracy. Why not, everyone else does.

Of course, there was a time when the Music Publishers Association freaked out about PowerTab and went all nuclear on the software.

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

Then And Now: Changes In Music

THEN
Music was all about achieving LIBERATION.

NOW
Music is all about the tyranny of MONEY.

THEN
Money served a purpose and it was a by-product of music

NOW
Money is the primary marker of status and success.

THEN
Music greats led the way in breaking down barriers and enhancing culture

NOW
We inhabit the world that The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, Jim Hendrix, Black Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Rush, Free, Bad Company, Van Halen, Thin Lizzy, Aerosmith, Doobie Brothers, Electric Light Orchestra, Kiss, Metallica, Motley Crue, Bon Jovi and AC/DC created.

THEN
We lied about what we earned.

NOW
We still lie about what we earn as the ability to make money is seen as a primary marker of acceptance. The shame of failing financially is so great that a number of people every year commit suicide because of it.

THEN
Bands/Artists needed to be busy to make it or stay relevant.

NOW
Bands/Artists still need to be busy to make it or stay relevant. Look at George Lynch and the amount of releases since 2008. Look at Mark Tremonti or Myles Kennedy and their involvement in various projects. Avenged Sevenfold are out on the road promoting the “Hail To The King” album, working on the “Deathbat” game and an anniversary re-issue for “Waking The Fallen”.

THEN
The challenge was getting your music heard

NOW
The challenge is still about getting heard.

THEN
No one toured South and Central America.

NOW
Touring dollars are in South and Central America. If you are an established band and are not touring South/Central America, then you are leaving money on the table. M Shadows from Avenged Sevenfold summed it up nicely in a recent Loudwire interview.

THEN
Platinum selling bands/artists were told that they owed the label millions. Check out Van Halen’s story during the Van Halen II era. “We went platinum. We toured for a year, we came back, and Warner Bros. told us that we owed them $2 million,” said drummer Alex Van Halen. “And on top of that, we owed them another record,” added guitarist Eddie Van Halen. “It was the end of the year. We had three weeks to deliver another record…then boom, we went straight out on tour again. The first record took about a week, seven days to do. The second record took about three weeks.”

NOW
Platinum selling bands/artists are still told that they owe the label millions.

THEN
Bands/Artists covered songs as a career choice and made them unique. They made those cover songs their own. Van Halen did it with “You Really Got Me” and again with “You’re No Good”, which Linda Ronstadt also covered.

NOW
Bands/Artists do cover songs as a tribute to their influence.

THEN
Bands/Artists borrowed heavily from other artists and styles without the fear of being sued. It was a cultural thing. Led Zeppelin comes to mind immediately. Jake Holmes played “Dazed and Confused” at a show in 1967 when he was opening up for The Yardbirds who had Jimmy Page on guitar. “Stairway To Heaven” had its whole intro lifted from a song called “Taurus” by Spirit. Again Led Zeppelin opened for Spirit once upon a time. In both cases, the artists didn’t sue.

NOW
Borrow anything, expect a lawsuit. Kudos to Avenged Sevenfold for having the balls to do so. They borrowed heavily and in turn they created an album that works brilliant live. And that is what it is all about. In addition it is one of the best metal sellers for 2013 and it is still selling in 2014.

THEN
The Record Labels didn’t know what would succeed or what would fail. Look at Metallica. “Kill Em All” was independently financed. Look at Motely Crue. “Too Fast For Love” was independently financed. Look at Twisted Sister. “Under The Blade” came out on a small independent label. “You Can’t Stop Rock N Roll” came out on Atlantic UK. The US arm didn’t want to touch the band. It was after the imported version of “You Can’t Stop Rock N Roll” started selling like hot cakes that Atlantic US became interested.

NOW
The Record Labels still don’t know what would succeed or what would fail. Five Finger Death Punch is a big seller in the world of metal and hard rock. Their first album was financed by themselves and issued on a small subsidiary label. Volbeat was a supergroup of Death/Extreme metal bands signed to a small sub label of a larger independent label.

THEN
Music was a risk business.

NOW
Music is still a risk business.

THEN
Labels invested in a lot of projects because they didn’t know what would connect.

NOW
Labels invest in fewer projects and blame piracy because they still don’t know what will connect.

THEN
Metal and rock labels signed the act first and then they figured out how to market them and sell them.

NOW
Labels sign an act based on how they decide to market them.

THEN
Recording was expensive.

NOW
Recording is cheap.

THEN
Distribution was expensive and controlled by gatekeepers.

NOW
Distribution is cheap.

THEN
Marketing was all about radio and record shops.

NOW
It is about Spotify, YouTube, social media and virality.

THEN
Labels had executive boards/owners that were music fans.

NOW
Labels have executive boards that are actual business executives with the exception of a few.

THEN
Universality is the key to success.

NOW
We have endless niches.

THEN
The release of music was controlled.

NOW
We have plenty. We are overloaded.

THEN
The song would sell the act.

NOW
The marketing hype sells the act with the exception of a few.

THEN
Rock music was liberating the masses.

NOW
It is known as Classic rock to the masses.

THEN
Acts wanted to lead. They challenged the paradigm.

NOW
No one wants to lead.

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

A Look Back

2009: This week (April 1 to April 6) – 5 years ago

Record Labels: The 360 deal had a lot of headlines as financially challenged record labels began forcing acts to give up income from touring and merchandise for almost nothing in return.

Innovation: A new anti-piracy law in Sweden meant that the VPN encryption industry got a new boost. This more or less pointed out that playing Whac-A-Mole over file sharing was useless.

PIRACY: The RIAA was still pushing the whole “Music is theft” argument. The RIAA was still pushing their whole “music acquired illegally = drop in revenues”.

DIY: Halestorm: Read this Techdirt article from April 2009. There is a reason why Halestorm is one of the main leaders of the current crop of rock bands.

A quick summary of the post (their debut album was still not released);

– Lzzy starts solo with a guitar around her neck and a mic, just singing acapella. Long notes, killer voice. She has people cheering for her before the rest of the band even walks out on stage. Before her voice gets hidden behind the rock, she lets ’em know she can sing and you can see people are impressed straight away.
– The rest of the band appears and they tear through a few songs. It’s straight-ahead rock, on the heavy side but ready for pop radio. Everyone in the band is high-energy and engaging, even Lzzy’s brother Arejay on drums is standing up for parts of the songs and just generally being a showman.
– Mid-way through the set Lzzy announces they have a new record coming out in a few weeks but you can buy a pre-release of it now for $5 at the merch stand.
– There’s a drum solo-y part that doesn’t go on long and ends with the entire band at the front of the stage playing drums and the crowd cheering as they go crazy with it.
– During the last song Lzzy reminds them that they have their own merch stand upstairs and CDs for only $5. She also says the whole band is going to be up there after their set and that she wants to meet everyone.
– I head over to the merch stand after the show and watch their tour manager relieve the woman who runs the merch table so she can disappear into the crowd below with a box of CDs with “Halestorm CDs $5” written on it.
– The merch stand is mobbed. It’s surrounded by people and they are selling merch literally as fast as their tour manager can manage.
– The band appears (after breaking down their own stage setup) and meets and talks to as many people as possible, while helping to sell their merch.

As Ian Rogers from TopSpin noted:

“The band is doing everything right. They’re using every opportunity to connect with fans, while also giving them a real reason to buy. They’re not waiting for their record label to get them on the radio or MTV. They’re doing everything they can to actually build up a rabid supporting fanbase from the bottom up.”

And that is what every band should be striving for. Connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy.

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

Innovation V8.0: You Gotta Love Innovation From The Entertainment Industries!!!

Progression

Music piracy opens up new technological innovations and new conversations. The latest one doing the rounds is the battle against piracy on the SMARTPHONE. The music industry trade group, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, (IFPI) called it an “emerging and as-yet-unquantified threat”.

It’s the same old argument.

One thing that is certain is that the SMARTPHONE is here to stay. That is why the “Music Maniac” app has been downloaded more than 10 million times. So why can’t the music industry innovate and have an app that is downloaded 10 million times.

The music industry of course have sent notices to Google requesting the apps removal. How typical. What’s next? Ban the smartphone because it enables song piracy. Ban cars because they kill people. This is progression. It is a new frontier.

Regression

In the UK, politicians decided to tax digital downloads. So this would mean a price increase for music.

A price increase in digital downloads will lead legitimate music customers to streaming and the more casual ones to piracy.

In my opinion this is a stupid decision by a Government that acts like a police force for the Entertainment industries.

Don’t mistake this tax for what it really is. A protectionist tax for the brick and mortar stores who think of their profit margins instead of their customers.

Bring back the CD’s screams the British Government.

Progression

Piracy in China is huge.

Not because that the Chinese don’t want to pay for it, its just that China audiences don’t have access to a lot of legal alternatives that are worth it.

So with Nokia launching a very OVERDUE streaming service in China, it is a step in the right direction to monetise that pirate money into legitamite money.

Nokia’s service will provide a legal alternative for free or a premium version for the equivalent of $3.99 a month.

Regression

Music industry group IFPI believes it is time to expand the web site blockades to other countries, and censor mobile networks too.

It looks more like censorship to me.

Progression

Anyone heard of Hatchet.

“Hatchet is a place (website) where users can share music, tastes and thoughts against one or more music services – and be portable across them.”

This is tech companies innovating to stay ahead of their competitors and it is no surprise that the announcement by Hatchet came shortly after Spotify acquired music technology firm The Echo Nest.

Regression

The everlasting saga of MP3Tunes and it’s founder Michael Robertson took another drastic turn in the courts. The whole lawsuit was another case of the record labels just being generally angry about innovation.

While MP3Tunes initially, won, the case went around the blocks and now the judge in the MP3Tunes case withdrew the original ruling and decided to take another look. That’s now resulted in a jury apparently finding that MP3Tunes was “willfully blind” to infringement.

So a jury now decides Copyright Law. Who would have thought that when Copyright was first introduced?

Maybe we should start charging all of the car makers for their cars being used in drive by shootings and drug trafficking.

The eventual endgame for the Entertainment Industry is to reduce the internet to a distribution model that is under their control where the flow of all content is all about paywalls.

Progression

BitTorrent and Music is normally associated with piracy, so of course you always need someone to show how it can be used for something different.

Moby showed last year that being the most downloaded torrent is a good thing.

This year we have a Hip Hop artist leading the way with a world first BitTorrent / Bitcoin venture, alongside their regular iTunes offering. And all donations go directly to the band as there are no middlemen.

Regression

So what do we own when it comes to music these days. According to a US politician, we own nothing.

According to this moron, the mp3 that we buy from iTunes is not really ours.

Of course Rep Nadler’s fifth largest campaign donor is…

Drum roll please…..

TV/Movies/Music

Progression

The courts are finally realising that an IP address does not identify a person.

Copyright troll’s like to use IP addresses as evidence to ask courts to issue subpoenas so they can get their hands on account details from ISPs. The problem with that, is that the person listed as the account holder is often not the person who downloaded the infringing material.

So it is good to see that judges are using some common sense.

Regression

Rightscorp is still in the news. It is a copyright troll that is purely there to shakedown people.

None of that money will ever go back to the creator of said works. It’s whole business model is built on identifying IP addresses and then sending notices to the ISP provider so that they could forward it over to their customer.

Progression

Music streaming services have taken in over $1 billion in sales worldwide. This is a big positive for the music industry. Let’s hope that the record labels dont kill it, by strangling the payments back to artists.

Regression

People still complain about the difference between analog dollars and digital dollars.

Progression

It’s good to see that Billboard is trying to remain relevant however it could be too little too late. Their latest piece of innovation is charting the chatter that happens on Twitter when it comes to music.

Of course, it wouldn’t be just Billboard taking this project on. Twitter and Billboard announced that they plan to create the Billboard Twitter Real-Time Charts: which is a continuously updated list of the songs being discussed and shared the most on Twitter in the United States.

Regression

This whole notion of a piracy tax. Italy is another country that is bringing it in.

The levy applies to any piece of hardware that can hold photographic or video material – whether that’s stand-alone storage or the hard drive of a device. In exchange for the fee, consumers are able to make private copies of copyrighted works they own — films, music and so on — for their own personal use.

So by having a piracy tax in Italy, does that no mean that uploading and downloading copyrighted works is now legal. Because hey the Entertainment industry cant have it both ways.

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