Category Archives: Stupidity

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

Complicated Copyright and Why Do People Pay Good Money To Go To A Concert And Then Spend The Whole Time Filming It?

I do not understand why people go to a rock show or a metal show to film the whole damn thing on a smart phone. Seriously are they going to go back home and watch it over and over again afterwards? Of course not because it will sound like crap as smartphones are not designed to capture high volumes without distorting the sound.

Having been a high gig attendee my whole life, I have also been known recently to break out my iPhone and capture some footage or a few photos for posterity. However, I can honestly that 99% of the time I’ve never gone back and referred to my amateur filming or photography.

The reasons are simple, those captures can never accurately reflect the concert as I witnessed it.

So why did I do it? Why do other fans do it?

Is it for them to validate or prove to other people that they were there at the concert?

Like does anyone care these days. Everybody goes to concerts these days. Maybe once upon a time it was a big thing to go to a concert but these days it’s a nothing thing. Hell, I took my kids last year who were 8 and 7 to see, Kiss, Motley Crue and Bon Jovi. This year I took them to see Richie Sambora.

Do you think my father would have taken me to a rock concert at the age of 8? No chance.

Even if those people placed their concert video footage on YouTube, would anyone really care?

For example, Metallica is the biggest metal band in the planet right now. So they played “Frayed Ends Of Sanity” live for the first time and a fan of the band put it up on their YouTube account called MetallicaSoloFan and it has a whopping 2,473 views. Other accounts have the same song filmed from different viewpoints and again the view count is dismal.

Because no one cares that you went or for the crappy footage on display.

And what about the poor old fan that is standing behind a person filming the concert. As is the norm, in order to film a concert, you would need to hold up your device high above your head to capture the footage and in turn you are taking away from my viewing experience. Me and my boys copped that at the Richie Sambora gig.

However it is a product of the times. I get that.

In 2014, we don’t leave home without our Apple or Samsung devices. It is part of our make and build.

There are bands out there that would like this process of filming their show to be stopped.

The Eagles are one such band.

They want to stop people from filming their concerts by banning the use of the smart phone. Don Henley has hinted their tour of Australia could possibly be the band’s final tour and he wants fans to experience it with their eyes not their phones.

Of course we all know that Don Henley is very knowledgeable about artists copyrights and he is also opposed to fan filmed footage ending up on YouTube. For him it is all about CONTROL. He should be the one that CONTROLS how his music or the music that he is involved in is distributed.

So is videoing a concert with a phone a violation of an artist’s copyright. Don Henley says it is, however he also said that he doesn’t want the shows posted on YouTube because it spoils it for people who are going to come to a show in the future and that he doesn’t want to see Eagles content out there that sounds horrible.

However, live concert filming is done every day by multiple people at the same show. Some use it as a form of a diary record, to remember or relive that moment when their favourite song came on. Some do it to share the moment and their love for the artist. Some do it because they simple can. A smart phone or an iPad or Tablet, allows us the convenience to do so.

To put into context about how messed up the current music copyright business is you need to get your head around the Copyright laws that have been written over the last sixty years.

At a high level, every live performance has a multiple set of rights that come into play.

(1) the copyright in the music, usually controlled by the publisher;
(2) the copyright in the lyrics, also usually controlled by the publisher;
(3) the copyright in the live performance, usually controlled by the label;
(4) the band’s right of publicity;
(5) trademarks owned by the band;
(6) contractual rights (potentially arising from signage posted by the band or the venue, the ticket stub or the terms and conditions of the website to which the footage is posted.
(7) the performance rights organisation like APRA or ASCAP, from which the venue needs to obtain a license.

Music was never meant to be this complicated but over the last sixty years it has come to be so.

And what about the rights of the fan who paid $600 for a front row ticket and another $100 plus at the merchandise store.

What about the rights of the fan, who had to drive 90 minutes to get to the venue and then pay another $30 in parking fees and then get charged $10 for a beer and $20 for a Hotdog and Chips.

There needs to be a sensible re-think but due to the money involved the copyright holders are not playing ball. They want stricter copyright laws, which is contrary to the public and culture in general.

ARTICLE

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

What I Am Over Reading …..

Metallica’s New Album

Seriously it has been six years since Death Magnetic was released. For the last six months, the band has been working on songs. They have mentioned in press interviews that they have thousands of riffs stockpiled. The hype means nothing in 2014. Do people want a full Metallica album every six or seven years? I know what I would prefer, more quality frequent releases.

In relation to new music, “The Lords Of Summer” is the only new offering, while “Beyond Magnetic” broke the cobwebs on some old Death Magnetic demos. And the less said about “Lulu” the better.

However the Metallica live show sells out.

Led Zeppelin ReIssues

Seriously. How many times can someone own the original three albums or the songs contained within those albums.

Rockstars becoming owners of ,insert business venture here>

The fans want you to write music and play for them. Instead we get our heroes become owners in football clubs, technology start ups and so forth.

Piracy

Seriously. Is this still an issue in 2014?

YouTube and Spotify more or less have everything that a person would want. However the labels along with the RIAA still use piracy as a means to get more laws written. In Australia, our Attorney General is talking up a three strikes policy as a means to combat piracy even though evidence from all over the world has shown that these policies have done nothing to stop copyright infringement.

It’s because the people have no respect for copyright law anymore and the corporations that abuse it. Music survived for centuries upon centuries because there was no copyright. Artists copied each other. Music and melodies got passed on from family members to family members via copying each other.

Google Needs To Do More

People like U2 manager Paul McGuinness or the RIAA or the MPAA or the various bots they employ to issue takedowns need to get a life because Google is not to blame for copyright infringement. Google is not to blame for the THEFT of music. I believe the latest comment from McGuinness is that “Google is the greatest theft enabler on the internet”.

Seriously McGuinness should look up what THEFT means because as far as I know, U2 still has their music on iTunes. No one has stolen the mp3 that exists there. However if millions of copies of that same mp3 exist all over the internet, is that Google’s fault.

Streaming Doesn’t Pay

It does pay. If you are not getting any of the pie speak to the label or the organisation that is getting the pie. But according to Paul McGuinness again, bands should gate their releases like the good old days.

Sales

Seriously,they are irrelevant. All they do is give the old guard a way to measure something that is irrelevant because the new way to measure an artists reach is just too hard to fathom for them.

Are people listening to the album? That is the question. Instead of focusing on Soundscan numbers, what is happening on the live front?

Press Releases for new albums

People can see through the hype and bullshit. In other words, we don’t care about what the bands say about “how great this new album is” or “how it is a definitive statement of the band right now”. All we care about is if we like it. If it is great we will push it. If it is crap, expect it to disappear.

Because if publicity does increase sales, then bands should be selling by the millions and selling out their shows. But they don’t.

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

A Note To APRA AMCOS and Andrew Harris – It’s A Brave New World. Deal With It.

We live in a far better world when it comes to the consumption of entertainment products. As much as the RIAA, the Performing Rights Organisations and the labels still use the smokescreen piracy argument, we are as a matter of fact living in a post piracy world.

The user decides what he or she likes. The user decides how they will tell their friends about what the like. In most cases, it is via social media. And the recording industry is scared of this. It is scared because a social media account has more reach than their marketing efforts. They are scared because the audience is connected to one another and that they are out of the loop.

So when I read an opinion piece from an APRA representative that is all fluff and without any fact, it upsets me. It upsets me because it is misleading. It upsets me because as an APRA AMCOS member, that this line of thinking is the best that they could come up with. Seriously Andrew Harris needs to get his head out of the lies and really take a look at the world. You would expect that a person with a title of Principal Analyst at APRA AMCOS would actually do some analysis.

His whole piece is misleading. From the start to the end.

What streaming services like Spotify have shown is that people that did pirate and paid nothing for the content are now actually contributing to the recording business through the free-ad supported Spotify. It is putting money there where previously it didn’t exist.

There will always be people that will upload and download pirated content in the same way that people bootlegged copyright recordings in the pre-Internet days. Hell, the whole rock and roll movement that swept over the Communist Eastern Bloc in the Sixties’ was from bootlegged recordings.

Furthermore, Napster showed the recording business what music customers want. And 15 years later there still isn’t a legal version of what Napster created. If people want to download mp3’s for free, then allow them to do so legally. If the ads on the pirate sites generated so much money, then why doesn’t the recording industry cater to suit. Instead you get the recording industry with their larger acts locking up their content to capitalise on first week sales because that is still their mentality.

Seriously, since when did copyright infringement become such a dangerous crime to warrant monitoring and surveillance of people’s on line behaviours because the recording industry along with the movie industry are insistent that the privacy of people and their digital footprint needs to be stored and monitored in the name of protecting profits.

The truth is that the recording industry has not delivered on all of the demands of customers.

There are still customers that want to download high quality mp3’s for free. Cater to that market with free advertising and you will see more money enter the record labels pockets.

There are still customers that want to download uncompressed FLAC audio files for free. Cater to that market with free advertising and you will see more money enter the pockets of the record labels. I don’t know how much the artist will end up getting but one thing that is certain, is that the record labels are all cashed up.

And it is possible to compete with free. Free to air TV networks have competed for over 70 years.

Does that mean that sales of a physical product are gone? My answer is NO because fans of bands will always want that special unique deluxe package. The part that some labels like Rat Pak or artists like Coheed and Cambria get and other labels or artists don’t get is that the deluxe package in 2014 is more than a CD with a DVD. Those days are long gone.

In relation to APRA all you need to do is cast your mind back to 2008 when APRA supported an aggressive new copyright law in New Zealand including punishment of persons accused but not proven to be infringing copyright. This position was opposed by artists and APRA members but hey they still thought it was a good idea.

The thing with Andrew Harris and APRA AMCOS is that they get paid when they collect monies on behalf of the songwriters. And the thing is, even though streaming pays the rights holders which in most cases are the Record Labels, where does APRA AMCOS fit in all of this.

The AMCOS arm collects and distributes mechanical royalties for the reproduction of musical works in CD’s, music videos, DVD’s and digital downloads to name a few. So if people are streaming music, what does AMCOS collect? This is from APRA’s sustainability report published in October 2013.

Nowadays, new media accounts for almost 50% of AMCOS revenue, with licensing revenue from digital downloads totalling $26.7m in 2012/13. Revenue from subscription and ad-funded services more than doubled during the year, however, to $1.2m, and most of the world’s major players in that space – including Spotify, Google, Rdio and Deezer –now operate in Australia and NZ.

By comparison, traditional mechanical royalties from the sale of physical product accounted for only $10.5m of AMCOS revenue during 2012/13 – a decline of some $4m over the year – and a figure that is expected to decline further in the immediate future.

And that is the crux of the argument from APRA AMCOS which has been the same argument from the record labels for a long time. Still focused on what they get paid right now without any thought as to what a future with a hundred million paying streaming subscribers could bring to its business. Still focused on CD sales right now instead of a future with a billion subscribers who download mp3’s for free on ad supported legal websites.

It’s a brave new world out there and it is a shame that organisations that make their money from artists/songwriters are not doing their best to push innovation and in turn make more money for their members.

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A to Z of Making It, Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit, Unsung Heroes

Eye Empire

“I know that all of you are wondering, what happened to Submersed? Well, the answers is… A lot.. This business and struggle to make it took its toll on the members… Two weeks before “Price of Fame” was slated for release, Tj, Kelan and Justin decided to move on with their lives and left SubmerseD. Garrett and I believing in “Price of Fame” made the choice to press on and see what could happen. Well, nothing happened… the single never had a chance… mind bottling… The fact is, is that a majority of our fan base is unaccounted for due to Burning, making it impossible for the labels to understand just how many people really support us out there… When it comes down to it now, SubmerseD no longer has a place on Windup’s roster and will be dropped shortly… I was trying to wait until things were a little more official before an announcement but you guys and gals are smart and I felt you deserved an explanation now rather than later”

The above is what Donald Carpenter, the singer of SubmerseD put up in 2008 on their MySpace page. Some people call it a whiny rant, however the truth of the post is hidden in the words “making it impossible for the labels to understand just how many people really support” the band. Yep, while Wind Up Records focused on the old business model of CD sales or mp3 sales as a band’s popularity, they ended up failing their artists. Piracy is a black hole that the record labels like to put in their financial reports back to artists that if something doesn’t sell it must be piracy’s fault.

Go on YouTube. The song “Never Again” has had 351,372 views. An acoustic version of the band performing “Hollow” has been viewed 178,498 times. People were listening to the band. Maybe not in the way they hoped or wanted, but they were listening.

For those people who don’t know about SubmerseD. They band was signed to Wind Up Records. Mark Tremonti from Creed/Alter Bridge worked with them. Guitarist Eric Friedman was a key ingredient in the chemistry that made “In Due Time” such a good album however by the time their second album “Immortal Verses” came out, Friedman was gone and the band was dropped by Wind-Up Records after its failure.

So in 2009, Eye Empire is formed. It was a pseudo supergroup of members who had label deals with other bands. The foundations come from Dark New Day members Corey Lowery and B.C. Kochmit. Vocals came from Donald Carpenter. Drums came from a range of other musicians.

So they go the Independent route, self-releasing their music through their website in limited edition 1000 runs. That way they compile an email list of people interested in purchasing their music. YouTube became a promotional outlet. That is how I came across Eye Empire. Their clip of “I Pray” has had 147,120 views. The song “More Than Fate” has had 81,729 views on the Eye Empire VEVO account, 46,447 on the Eye Empire You Tube account, 41,694 on a user/fan account and 72,508 on the Submersed YouTube account. In total, that is 242,378 views.

The band was making inroads and I always say that success comes to the ones who outlast the competition. In this case, the version of Eye Empire that people started to adopt as the definitive band is no more. From when the release of Eye Empire’s second album “Evolve” came out in October 2013 to April 2014, Donald Carpenter, the very reason why I got into the band was out. Lowery, Kochmit and Bennett said in a statement that Carpenter was trying to reassemble a former band which to me means SubmerseD. Carpenter replied with a philosophical “Starting over is always hard but it’s not the first time and I am certain that it won’t be the last.”

The hardest part of change is actually making the decision to change. Once that decision is made then the rest is easy. In relation to Eye Empire, I can relate to the driven aspect of some members not being in sync with another band member.

In the early nineties, I was in a hard rock band that was out-of-place in the Industrial Alternative Nu-Metal wasteland between the years of 1996 and 1999. It was a three-piece band. The drummer wanted to be big as Pearl Jam but didn’t have the work ethic. The bass player/singer was happy playing the club circuit week in/week out as it was a stable income.

Each three-hour gig got us $150 each. We used to play three gigs a week. So $450 in the pocket each week was a good little additional income for me on top of my normal full-time job. However, the bass player/singer and the drummer didn’t have any jobs. So their cash income came on top of the unemployment benefits they received. So our lifestyles were very different. While I had a mortgage, they lived at home with their parents. So the work ethic between us was very different because of the different responsibilities we had.

I practiced my guitar playing each day. The drummer didn’t even practice. The only time he played the drums was at band practice and then live. The bass player always started the jam sessions/live performances sober and by the end was getting pretty tipsy. So again, the drive between us as musicians was different.

I was married and looking to start a family. The drummer was single, in and out of relationships. The singer was separated and had two kids to two different woman. So our personal lives brought different responsibilities to the table.

The song writing was like this. If I wrote a song, I would bring it in complete, with music and lyrics. If the bass player/singer wrote a song, he would bring it in complete. And we jammed them without any questions. So you can see where the arguments would come from later on.

And you get this in bands.

The different work ethics, the different drive of the individuals and the different expectations that they place on each other and the band.

And I am thinking that Carpenter’s definition of success and fame is over exaggerated or over inflated.

Shinedown is one of the biggest rock bands right now and they play two to five thousand seat arenas. Is that a bad thing. Of course not. Maybe if Donald Carpenter was the lead singer it would be a bad thing.

So what about the songs on “Evolve”?

“Beyond The Stars” and “Live Loud” are real good songs. The stand outs by far. “Within” is a good merge of their Sevendust influence along with Muse. “The War Isn’t Over Yet” is an aggressive piece of music. “The Man I Am” is very reminiscent to what Donald Carpenter did with SubmerseD and to be honest it brings back a memory of Deep Purple “Soldier Of Fortune” for some reason. “Don’t Look Back” is reminiscent of “Animosity” era Sevendust. Another quality track.

The other half of the album borders too much on Sevendust. Which is a shame as the potential is there, however it will remain unfulfilled.

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

The Barrier Of Entry

It always pained me to talk about business models with the bands I was in, especially when the business started to change dramatically from the early two thousands.

The other members just believed that someone will find us, sign us up with millions and off we go recording and touring the world. They still had this view in 2010, when after another argument over business decisions, the band splintered apart.

So after I left, they signed a record deal with a small European label for the album that we just finished recording, and they had to pay $1500 Euro for that deal. WTF. After all of those arguments they still didn’t listen to me and they signed away my copyright to the songs that I had written to that label. Guess they just wanted to say to people that they had signed a record deal.

I contacted a lawyer who charged me $300 just for the consultation, however since the band was only a minor league band, it wasn’t worth pursuing in the courts and attempts at any mediation to have me set the record straight and get back my copyrights ended with further arguments and fisticuffs.

The songs in question are songs that I wrote for previous bands I was in and had them registered with a performing rights association years before my most recent band was even formed in 2008. So imagine my surprise when the performing rights association contacted me in 2010 saying that my ex band members have put in claims as songwriters. Even the bass player that joined after the album was finalised put in a claim for a 25% share of the songwriting.

The ugly truth of being in a band.

Just in case aliens are visiting the Earth right now, the “old record label business model” was to identify an artist, put them in the studio, release their recording on a format that a customer could take home and hope that it connects with an audience. That is what my ex-band mates wanted to happen to them in 2010.

This was the principle revenue stream for a very long time for the record labels. It was the sole purpose of their existence. Now that physical product is a loss leader. It has been reduced to an advertising tool to help the artist build a fan base and sell the live show.

Withholding an album from Spotify in the way that Coldplay or The Black Keys are doing is the wrong line of thinking in 2014. It’s back to the old paradigm of “windowing” and maximizing sales through physical retail or download stores first and then moving over to the streaming service when those sales die down. Windowing is still employed by the TV and Movie industry with zero degrees of success and a high rate of piracy.

However, Coldplay did release the singles to Spotify, so it’s no surprise that “Magic” has been streamed more than 55 million times on Spotify. To me, it seems that the recording industry is trying to re-create that “BARRIER OF ENTRY” around how they distribute new music today.

You see the music business once upon a time had a thing called “THE BARRIER OF ENTRY”. This barrier of entry was around which acts got picked up and which acts didn’t. This barrier of entry was also around which music was released and which music wasn’t.

Now the record labels could argue that this “barrier of entry” was the reason why the music coming out of their stables was of high quality. You know the model I am talking about, the one where the artist got lucky because they had some look that the label could exploit and by default they ended up getting a record label deal and the only way to hear all of their output was to buy an overpriced CD. And now those labels are not raking in the cash they used to get and they are blaming piracy.

Let’s look at three superstar acts today and how the show artists today, that the barrier of entry didn’t exist for them, because if you want it, you will do anything.

Metallica

“Kill Em All” was independently financed through independent record label Megaforce Records. Megaforce Records was founded in 1982 by Jon and Marsha Zazula solely to publish the first works of Metallica. The Zazula’s even had the Metallica guys living in their house because they believed in the music and the attitude.

Even Metallica’s “Ride the Lightning” album was recorded and originally released in 1984 through Megaforce Records. A few months later, Metallica signed with Elektra Records who re-released the album.

Motley Crue

The first album “Too Fast For Love” was independently financed via their own Leathur Records imprint in 1981. Leathur Records was a small imprint owned by the band and their original manager Allan Coffman. It was actually Coffman that coughed up the funds for it all.

Elektra Records signed the band the following year.

Five Finger Death Punch

“The Way Of The Fist” was recorded, produced and financed by the band members themselves. Once the album was done, they ended up getting a small independent deal to release the album. In its first week of release it did nothing, but four years later, it was certified GOLD for sales in the U.S.

Only after those bands had proven themselves as viable options did the major Record Labels commit to them. Because they saw dollars and profits. Nothing else.

What all of the bands above had was a product that was ingrained with a cultural movement.

Today, we have musicians promoting themselves on Facebook, Twitter or other social media outlets and in reality they still do not have an actual PRODUCT that connects. Getting 10,000 likes doesn’t mean 10,000 fans if no one is talking about your product or sharing what your product with others.

Don’t blame piracy, blame the lack of product because there is so much product out there today, we normally don’t go back to something we checked out once and didn’t like.

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

Band Harmony: Is There Such A Thing?

Who remembers watching interviews or reading interviews from their favourite bands about how much the band members love each other and all of that other rubbish about how great they are for the band.

The cold hard truth is this. Bands/artists want to show a solidarity, a unity.

They don’t want people and fans of the band to see weaknesses, so they try their best to make it look like everything appears fine on the surface.

However underneath it is a different story.

Every biography I have read, from “The Dirt” about Motley Crue, to “Enter Night” about Metallica, to “Lifting Shadows” about Dream Theater, to “Face The Music” about Kiss or to Dave Mustaine’s bio about his career. The same theme is prevalent throughout. The band members didn’t like each other.

No one really speaks their mind as it would cause problems in the band.

Others want to speak up and do more, however since a band member has already taken on that responsibility they step down as they don’t want to step on any toes.

Others want to have their songs included, however they keep on getting rejected or changed until the song loses it’s soul.

So they hold their tongue until it gets to a stage where they can’t anymore and all hell breaks loose.

Look at a few bands that are doing the circuit today and there is a pretty good chance that they do not have the original members in there.

Volbeat – holding on to lead guitarists proved problematic.

Five Finger Death Punch – holding on to bass players and lead guitar players proved problematic.

In This Moment – holding on to bass players, guitar players and drummers proved problematic.

Shinedown – holding on to bass players and lead guitar players proved problematic.

Dream Theater – where do you start. Singer changers after one album, three different keyboardists and a drummer change.

Trivium – changed drummers.

Evergrey – only Tom Englund is the original member.

Machine Head – only Robb Flynn is the original member.

When a record label signs an artist/band, they want to know that their newest signing/s are committed to the cause.

Want some advice.

Sacrifice everything. If you are in a band that means you are only as good as your weakest link. If the other band members don’t have the same committment, then they need to be sacrificed or you need to sacrifice yourself from the band.

If you don’t sacrifice everything then it is just a hobby.

Want to know about sacrifice. About change.

Look at Marty Friedman. Megadeth is on a high, selling platinum records (we’ll excuse the “Risk” album) and Marty Friedman leaves. As a fan of Megadeth and a fan of Marty Friedman’s solo work, I didn’t want it to happen.

Friedman reinvented himself by describing it as the best decision he has ever made, because, he was looking at the music that was making up the Top 10 in Japan and he liked it. Then he compared it to the music that was making up the Top 10 in America and as a musician he felt that Japan was the scene that he should be in.

It takes guts.

I can’t say I was a fan of the music he did while in Japan, however a musician needs to follow their muse. And that is what Marty Friedman did.

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

Price, Piracy And “The Stealing vs Copyright Infringement” Argument Again

Australia (where I reside) is always mentioned as a leading country that specialises in copyright infringement.

So it comes as no surprise that the latest Attorney General, George Brandis flush with lobbying dollars from Village Roadshow (Village was part of a failed court case two years ago against iiNet, in which the High Court ruled that iiNet as an ISP had not authorised copyright infringements) is pledging to do something about these “pirates”.

You see, Brandis and Village Roadshow are two such entities that have grown up with the notion that because they have made a profit out of the public for a number of years, that it is the duty of the government and the courts to guarantee that such profit remains the same in the future even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest.

If Australia does have a massive problem with piracy, one way to solve it would be to provide a legal alternative that is like “The Pirate Bay”. The evidence is right there in front of the content industries. People like to download content. So why don’t they run ads and allow people to download content for free.

Instead Village Roadshow chief Graham Burke just keeps on lashing out against Google for not doing enough to curb piracy. He lashes out at Google for not doing enough to protect his profits. He keeps on emailing the Attorney General for a graduated response scheme funded by the ISP’s even though evidence from all over the world clearly show that these schemes do not work.

On the point of prices, there is a war going on in Australia right now in relation to the prices that Australian audiences need to pay for movies, software, mp3’s, ebooks and devices. Our consumer watchdog even took the drastic step to tell Australian consumers to use a VPN so that they could alter their IP address.

The main talking point doing the rounds the last few weeks is the price of a movie ticket. In Australia, the main cinemas charge $16 to $20 a ticket while Independent cinemas are charging between the $8 to $12 price range.

Graham Burke (yep that same person mentioned above from Village Roadshow) is on fire. Check out some of his quotes;

“In Australia we pay approximately $23 an hour for our people; in America, where we operate cinemas, it’s $8 an hour.”

Umm, the last time I was at the cinema I was served by 16-year-old workers, who are earning nowhere near the $23 an hour figure. More like $15 an hour.

“It’s like going into a bookshop through the back door, and taking all the books out. It’s something that needs to be addressed and is being addressed in democracies throughout the world.”

No, copyright infringement is nowhere near the same as taking all the books out of a book store. Once the book is taken out of the book store, it is gone forever and no one can use it again. When music is infringed, the copy is still there for others to download and share. No one has taken anything away. All they have done is made a copy.

To put Burke’s argument misleading quote in context, Copyright Infringement is going into a bookstore, copying the book you want and then walking out, leaving the original book still there for others to use, share and copy.

The problem with recorded music is the supply vs demand argument.

Let’s use 30 Seconds To Mars as an example.

Their music is available for downloading, both legally and illegally. Their music is available on YouTube, on official channels and unofficial channels. Their music is available on streaming sites like Pandora, Spotify, Beats, iTunes Radio, Rdio and many others. Their music is available on vinyl and CD.

There is a large supply chain there and the demand is not centered in the one place anymore.

Streaming is the future because consumers want music to be free. This is the cold reality and artists need to accept that.

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

If You Want To Succeed In 2014

I was listening to Fuel’s new album “Puppet Strings” today.

Fuel was one of those rock bands I latched onto in the late nineties, early two thousands.

Why call it Fuel without Carl Bell?

Why did Carl Bell call it Fuel without Brett Scallions for the “Angels and Demons” album cycle?

Keeping a band together is a job in itself. No one tells you how hard it is. Read about the making of “The Wall” from Pink Floyd. Watch, “The History Of The Eagles” documentary. Read, “The Dirt” or “Face The Music” or “Lifting Shadows” or “Enter Night” and you will see countless examples of bands trying to hold it together.

Listening to the Fuel album got me thinking about the current state of the music business.

We live in an age where only blockbuster albums make serious money.

The income gap divide between the bands that release blockbuster albums and the ones that don’t is growing wider and wider.

The days of paying your dues and breaking through are over.

Now it is all about being great 24/7.

The internet noise has made it almost impossible for messages to rise above it and new releases come out one week and if they are not great, they are forgotten the next.

It’s a cold hard truth. In 2014, you have to be great.

Five Finger Death Punch. Great.

Volbeat. Great.

Avenged Sevenfold. Great.

Skillet. Great.

Gemini Syndrome. Great.

Halestorm. Great.

In This Moment. Great.

All of the bands mentioned above have had albums out for at least 10 months and more, and they are still part of the social conversation.

If you are one of those people who uses sales as a metric of success then all of the above bands are still moving units. However sales are not the only measures of success these days.

If you want to succeed and make money from recorded music in 2014, understand how streaming royalties work.

If you want to succeed and make money from recorded music in 2014, stop bitching about streaming royalties and re-negotiate with the record label.

Ever heard the story of Loreena McKennitt, who is a Canadian Folk/Celtic/World music artist.

She couldn’t get a record deal. She spent a long time networking and building a connection with her audience. Eventually she created a substantial fan base that started to purchase her music and she was getting 70% of it. When Warner Bros. came knocking, she showed the label what she was making and the “crap contract” that the label came with got torn up and she negotiated a new deal with the label that benefited her as well as the label.

In the end a harp playing harpist had enough bargaining chips on her side that she was able to negotiate a real deal. And then you have people like Scott Ian and other metal heads complaining about piracy and the state of the industry.

If you want to succeed and make money from recorded music in 2014, know that it is a relationships business with the fans first and foremost.

If you want to succeed and make money from recorded music in 2014, know that the press doesn’t matter. It might make you feel great and it might please your vanity, however it is the fans that break acts.

If you want to succeed and make money from recorded music in 2014, you only get ONE SHOT to make a first impression.

If you want to succeed and make money from recorded music in 2014, you need to know how to write, play and sing.

If you want to succeed and make money from recorded music in 2014, take a note from the Dave Matthews band. They are huge because they have fostered an audience that is more or less a cultural movement.

If you want to succeed and make money from recorded music in 2014, you need to keep creating hits. The biggest songs of a band’s career are the ones that didn’t rise up the charts. The fans made them hits in their cultural universe. Seen a recent set list of Metallica or Megadeth. None of the songs ended up as Chart Hits, but they are still hits.

If you want to succeed and make money from recorded music in 2014, know that streaming revenue is just going to keep on rising. If you are on a label and an old contract start re-negotiating right now. Otherwise you will be left behind.

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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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Music, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Queensryche and The Voice Of Queensryche

Queensryche is a band that really influenced me. The vocal melodies, the song construction and the various ways the twin guitars connected, inter-played and complemented each other.

So it was sad to see that all of the news items on the split, the dirty laundry, the sub-par musical releases, the court battles and the private agreements have had more views and reads then the combined Queensryche recorded output since “Hear In The Now Frontier”.

Geoff Tate is now “The Voice Of Queensryche”. Let’s put it this way. That title is not going to bring in any extra fans for Geoff Tate. The only way new fans will invest in him is if the music “The Voice of Queensryche” releases is undeniable.

But Tate is not interested in winning new fans with great music. All he wanted was “Operation Mindcrime” so that any future exploitation of the album into a movie will be all of his to keep.

In relation to “The Voice” moniker, this is all about maintaining an income. It’s all about marketing a tour so that at least a 1000 people attend a show at $50 a ticket.

It’s got nothing to do with pleasing fans and it has nothing to do with gaining new fans.

What about the Todd LaTorre fronted version of Queensryche? That version will more or less recreate similar sound recordings of Queensryche’s past.

And how does Chris DeGarmo’s Queensryche legacy fit in with this “amicable” settlement?

David Lee Roth was fired from Van Halen and billed himself as David Lee Roth. Vince Neil left or was fired (depending on what version you believe) from Motley Crue and billed himself as Vince Neil.

Bruce Dickinson left Iron Maiden and billed himself as Bruce Dickinson. Ozzy Osbourne was fired from Black Sabbath and billed himself as Ozzy Osbourne. Even Ronnie James Dio billed his solo career under his own name without any references to Rainbow and Black Sabbath.

Because the fans know about their heroes musical roots and backgrounds. Because the fans just want their favourites to keep on creating. The fans don’t need a court order. The need great music.

Granted the court order is also in place for financial reasons and trademarks. And that is what music should not be about.

But that is what happens when music is held hostage to money. That is what happens when music comes second to maintaining the status quo.

The best “amicable” settlement/revenge that Geoff Tate could have given his ex-band mates was an undeniable album or song under his own name.

Nothing drives an enemy more insane than seeing that someone they hate winning.

Instead Geoff Tate delivered a crap album, with a crap mix and started ranting on stage about smartphones. As John Wayne once said, “life is hard and it’s harder if you’re stupid”.

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