Category Archives: Treating Fans Like Shit

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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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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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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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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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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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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