Category Archives: Treating Fans Like Shit

Copyright, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

There Is A Reason Why Copyright Terms Are Very Long

There is a reason why Copyright terms are very long.

Yep, older recordings are outselling newer recordings. So instead of those older recordings being in the public domain as they should have been, they are locked up for terms that seem like they will never end.

So what does this tell us about people and music consumption?

We don’t mind purchasing music, especially music recorded a long time ago which has shown itself as enduring and forever. Hell in twenty years’ time, don’t be surprised if “Hail To The King” and “The Blackening” are outselling all before them. But in 20 years’ time, who would benefit from those catalogue sales.

Would Robb Flynn from Machine Head (or the rest of the guys that played and performed on the album) benefit from those catalogue sales?

Same deal for Avenged Sevenfold.

“Hamlet” by Shakespeare is the biggest seller when it comes to books. The book was written in the 16th century, in the public domain for centuries after that and people still could make money from it. So is the public domain such a bad thing.

Would Hamlet be as popular today if it was locked away under copyright protectionist practices.

Think of all of the people who have made money from longer Copyright terms.

  • Lawyers (from all of the lawsuits)
  • Record Labels (from signing artists to one-sided contracts)
  • Publishing/Licensing Agencies (set up by the record labels, so they could double dip)
  • Collection Agencies (set up the record labels, so they could triple dip)

Each song I write has two separate copyrights. One for the sound recording and the other for the musical work.

If I sign a record deal, the label will licence the rights to exploit the ‘sound recording’ copyright from me (and then own it for a long time) and the publisher (an agency set up the label) will take care of my ‘musical work’ copyrights. Who benefits from this arrangement in the long run?

If I write a song with other people, I would need to put a contract in place that agrees on the percentage splits.

If I write a song and I have a session musician or just a friend who comes in to play an instrument, I would need to have an agreement in place (via writing, which means lawyers) about what payment they will get for playing on the song and how does that transfer over to royalty payments down the line on the sound recording.

Because Copyright Laws are written to suit the interests of the Corporations who licence (in other words, own) copyrights, we live in a world where copyright is a mess.

A court decided that Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams are guilty of copyright infringement for their hit song “Blurred Lines,” because of a “feel”. The court ordered the duo to pay $7.4 million to the estate of Marvin Gaye.

Yes, that’s right, the children of Marvin Gaye, who have contributed nothing to the musical industry have a secure pension fund set up because copyright terms changed to include another 70 years after death. The Corporations give them a bone, while they take in the gold.

The bigger the song, expect the lawsuit to come.

Even when people do get clearances to use the music of another artist, they still get sued. The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft negotiated a cost to use a sample from the Rolling Stones ““The Last Time” for “Bitter Sweet Symphony”. The Stones sued after, when the song became a hit, because the sample that was cleared was the song.

In the end, Copyright is important for a creator, however the current mess that is known as Copyright, benefits the Corporation, otherwise known as the Record Labels, the Movie Studios, the Publishing and Collection Agencies and of course, the Lawyers more than the creator.

John Fogerty said something similar like “Get yourself a lawyer to look over the contract and then get yourself another lawyer to look over the contract and what the other lawyer said” after he was duped out of his Creedence songs;

For those that don’t know, I will let Wikipedia tell his story about being sued for copyright infringement because he copied himself;

John Fogerty was the lead singer of the popular rock group Creedence Clearwater Revival. In 1970, while part of the group, he wrote the song “Run Through the Jungle.” Fantasy Records, the record label to which Creedence Clearwater Revival was signed, eventually acquired the exclusive publishing rights to the song.

Creedence Clearwater Revival disbanded in 1972, and Fogerty began a solo career with another music label. In 1985, Fogerty published the song “The Old Man Down the Road”, which he released on Warner Bros. Records.

Fantasy sued Fogerty for copyright infringement, claiming that “The Old Man Down the Road” was essentially the music to “Run Through the Jungle” with new words.

So I end this post, the same way I started it; there is a reason why Copyright terms are very long.

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

In Copyright Corporations Trust

I have a Google Alert set up called “Copyright Music”. Each day, I get five to ten alerts about Copyright stories.

Let’s not kid ourselves about Copyright in 2015. It is a monopoly that is controlled by greedy corporations who contribute nothing of value to the public domain or to the music industry.

A lost Beatles concert film from February 1964 (51 years ago) has been stopped from getting released because Sony and Apple Corps (The Beatles label) took the film makers to court screaming copyright breaches.

The breach is due to the film containing eight songs out of twelve that are still under Copyright.

So who is Copyright benefiting here?

You need to remember that it was due to a lack of copyright on standard blues and folk classics that benefited the British Rock invasion in the Sixties and Seventies. I can tell you that between 1955 and 1975, no song recorded 51 years ago, in other words from 1904 to 1924 was still under copyright. And look at the music we got.

It is due to copyrights expiring that we have a song from the 19th-century by a little known guitarist called Francisco Tartego now known as “The ‘Nokia tune”.

Who knew back in the 19th century that when he wrote the song called “Gran Vals” would end up being one of the most-played songs in music history.

So what we have here is a situation where corporations who hold the copyrights to old songs, fighting tooth and nail to keep these copyrights. And these greedy corporations are changing laws to suit their business models.

Copyright exists to create incentives for artists to make new works. Extending the rights for recordings made in the 1970s and earlier doesn’t encourage new music. At best, it might generate some income for the small number of “oldies” labels and rights holders whose recordings still have commercial value.

There is no greater Copyright sin than the case against Men At Work. The band lost a court case in 2010 because a judge found that a 10 second flute riff in the 1981 song “Down Under” copied parts of a song called “Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gumtree” from 1934.

As the article states;

“Kookaburra is a simple, four-bar tune. Men at Work were found liable for copying two of these bars. The Court found that this copying was sufficient to award Larrikin Music Publishing – the current owners of Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gumtree – 5% of Down Under’s royalties from 2002 onwards.”

The disconnect here is that people/company who didn’t even write the song “Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gumtree” suing the Men At Work writers almost 30 years after the release of their song and 67 years after the “Kookaburra” song was released.

So who is Copyright benefiting here?

Remember copyright is designed to promote creativity. The writer of the song has passed away. On death, all copyright used to cease and the works would fall into the Public Domain. It hasn’t been that way for at least 60 years.

Led Zeppelin who are no strangers to infringement lawsuits have another one on their hands, albeit 43 years later from when “Stairway To Heaven” was released.

Expect Metallica to cop a few lawsuits in the future once the copyrights to some obscure NWOBHM songs end up with Corporations. Just think of the songs “Welcome Home” and “Enter Sandman”. If i was Metallica Inc, I would be the ones purchasing the rights to the NWOBHM songs they copied otherwise a lawsuit will eventuate.

If you need further evidence about how important Copyright is to corporations (instead of artists) look no further than the donations these corporations give to politicians.

Since Copyright became a financial windfall for the Corporations that hold the rights to songs, we have those same corporate entities via their lobby groups donating to political parties in the name of Copyright.

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

The Copyright Hijack

“What’s going on right now is a total conspiracy amongst all of the record companies and the music society, ’cause so many of those records, samples were done with no law around it. They took care of each other under the table. They took the money from the rappers, they charged them, told them they was paying me. They were splitting it amongst themselves.”
George Clinton

There is a common music quiz question, “Who wrote “This Land is Your Land”?

Woody Guthrie is credited as the songwriter. However, Guthrie is famous for writing lyrics to melodies of other songs, so in this case, the melody came from a song called “When The Worlds On Fire” by the Carter Family. So in 2004, the holders of Guthrie’s Copyrights, threatened a website with a lawsuit, who more or less did the same thing as Guthrie. They added new lyrics to the same tune.

So who is Copyright benefiting here?

What about the story of “Happy Birthday To You”. In 1893, kindergarten teachers Mildred and Patty Hill, wrote a song called ‘Good Morning to All’ for their students. In the 1920’s, the melody from that song evolved and the lyrics kind of changed to ‘Happy Birthday to You.” The song’s publisher, Summy Co. copyrighted both the songs and in the 80’s Warner/Chappell bought the company. Since then, Warner/Chappell has been collecting approximately $2 million a year in licensing fees for a song that is 100 years old.

So who is Copyright benefiting here?

The best part of Copyright is when government bills extending the terms of copyright. In Jamaica, the copyright term is now 95 years from the death of the author, or 95 years from publication for government and corporate works. What is made worse, is that the term extension, also retroactively went back to January 1962, which meant “that works that have already passed into the public domain in Jamaica are now to be wrenched back out again” and put under Copyright.

So who is Copyright benefiting here?

In all instances, Copyright is benefiting a corporation.

But, wait a minute isn’t copyright meant to benefit the creator and then the public domain.

In the UK, the Government wants people to respect Copyright, so their answer is for the High Courts to make it illegal to rip music off a CD or put DVDs onto hard drives that you legally purchased while streaming services tell us “we don’t want to own content, we just want to access it”.

Meanwhile, when legal services are made available at a price point that agrees with people, something magical happens. Money is made from recorded music.

In the UK, there are on average 500,000,000 streams a week. In one year that figure has doubled. That is a lot of money coming into the recording labels coffers. Do the math!

In Spain streaming payments are proving to be the recording industry’s savior. Isn’t it funny when legal services are made available at a price point that the public likes, piracy becomes obsolete.

So who is Copyright benefiting here?

500 million streams a week is a decent amount of money going to the record labels.

But due to heavy lobbying from the film and music industries, the UK Government plans to raise the online piracy prison sentence to 10 years while artists thank piracy for bringing fans to their concerts.

“I just want people to have access to my music. If there was no piracy, why can I sell out 20,000 people every time in Brazil? Is it because of how many records we sold in the shops? Of course not.”
Dave Guetta

If the above sounds familiar, it should, as a lot of metal artists have said the same thing. Watch Flight 666 and see what the Maiden guys have to say about selling out Costa Rica, India, Mexico and other parts of Central and Southern America. Those ticket sales and merchandise sales came from people who obtained their music illegally.

The best answer to piracy is to accommodate it.

Look back to the book pirates in the 1500s. The printing press (new technology of the time like the Internet) came out in 1440. This led to the Governments of the time to give certain Publishers a monopoly (like Copyright) on printing books. This led to issues between the publishers that didn’t have any rights to print books. So their response was to become pirates.

Eventually, these pirates or idealists started to be accommodated and more legal licenses given to various Publishers. Piracy problem, solved.

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

Rockin In The Free World

I’m a great believer that information should be easily obtainable.

Just recently, I heard “Rockin’ in the Free World” again. The last time that I remember hearing that song was on some MTV awards show. It was the one that had Neil Young and Pearl Jam playing it together. Fast forward almost twenty years later and we have a megalomaniac that no one cares about, using the song for a presidential campaign.

If I associate the song with anything that is happening today, it will be about music and how it is free. Back in the nineties it would have had a different meaning.

But let’s look at the title, “Rockin’ In the Free World’.

What does “free world” actually mean these days?

Back in 1989, the free world to me came down to democracy “being free” and communism being “oppressive and restrictive”.

In 2015, Australia, the U.S and the majority of the democratic, free nations, are spying on its citizens for the perceived “greater good”.

In 2015, democratic nations are trying to pass secret bills that the people who voted them in cannot see or know about, however the Corporations that finance their campaigns are allowed to see the bills and ask for changes.

In 2015, democratic nations are imprisoning whistle-blowers who expose their secrets, labelling them as terrorists and dissenters.

In 2015, our courts of justice are overrun with requests for the courts to approve the handover of personal information to the ones who pay the most.

In 2015, copyright is used to suppress free speech.  If you don’t believe me, a court in France has ruled that a magazine violated copyright law.

What did the magazine do that was so bad?

They had an article that showed people how to access illegal sources of music and movie content online.

Isn’t it funny how on the one hand, the “free world” that we know has become restrictive and oppressive while on the other hand, a lot of the information or content that was once restricted, is now free because of people sharing.

People are sharing because they are infringing on a restrictive law called copyright. And the response by the industries affected is to pay politicians a lot of money to write and pass even more restrictive laws.

Even when technology companies like Spotify and Netflix or the pirate sites themselves show our governments that giving customers what they want is better than restrictive legislation, what do our governments do in response?

They pass legislation that is restrictive and oppressive. Australia has now joined other democratic “free world” countries in introducing site blocking legislation in order to keep media companies happy.

Copyright was designed to protect the creator.

However, as the Recording, Book and Movie Industries started to grow, business people came out from their corporate offices and stuck their claws into Copyright. So what we have today is business people defending the copyright monopoly, while they are robbing artists and their fans dry. These same defenders of the copyright monopoly are laughing all the way to the bank while exploiting the system in a legal way.

Seriously, would an artist need a copyright on their works 70 to 90 years after they have died. Of course not, but the companies that built their business on obtaining copyrights sure have a need.

Artists create not because they can make money off it as individuals, but because of who we are. We have been creative creatures from the start of civilisation.

Meanwhile, while the Australian government bends its backside to the legacy media companies, Netflix keeps on making huge inroads in the Australian market, with over 1 million users since its April launch this year. The reason why this number is staggering is that Netflix’s competitors in Australia have about 300,000 users combined.

Surely this is proof that Australians do pay for movies and TV shows if they are provided in a way that is convenient to them. And we are paying for a Netflix subscription that doesn’t have nowhere near the content that the U.S version has. But we still pay, because it allows us to watch their content, when we want to watch it, over and over again.

Not in a time slot like PayTV. Keep on rocking is what I say.

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

Recording Industry Dumb and Dumber – The Sequel

So the Recording Industry in Australia is welcoming new anti-piracy legislation. High fives all around for site blocking laws. Add to those Recording Industry high fives, Movie industry high fives and any other legacy content owner.

The question I have is this;

  • With site blocking now becoming law, what does the Recording Industry believe would happen to their businesses profits?
  • Would people suddenly return to buying CD’s?
  • Would people suddenly buy an expensive Foxtel subscription to watch ten episodes of “Game of Thrones”?
  • Would people who normally don’t go to the movies, suddenly start going to the movies?
  • Would people suddenly go out and buy books, or e-books?

Site blocking laws are designed to stop people from accessing websites that film, TV and music companies say are hosting their content without permission. Surely, our government officials would have looked at the U.K before deciding if site-blocking was the right way forward.

In the UK, The Pirate Bay has been blocked since 2012 however people have found ways to get around that block. Even though site blocking laws exist in the U.K, sales of music are still declining. However, if the industry puts more emphasis into their streaming business, then some different results could appear. Lucky for the U.K, they have a lot of popular artists right now and these artists are really pushing the streaming side of their music.

So in return the U.K have more people streaming more music than ever before. By 2019, streaming is expected to account for 49 per cent of music revenue in the U.K, compared to 22 per cent in 2014.

Digital music downloading (both legal and illegal) is a thing of the past. It’s history. Why would we want to pay for an mp3, when the history of music is at our fingertips with streaming and we, the fans, like it.

It’s easy and uncomplicated.

So since streaming is king, can someone tell me why we need the Entertainment Industries going to the courts to block websites based on their own evidence?

I think the catch-cry put out by the government is “the laws will protect the viability and success of creative industries while restricting the profitability of sites that facilitate piracy.”

Yep, Mr Government, as long as you and your financiers know what that means, it’s okay, we believe the shit you say.

I would be interested to see the model they used to show how the laws would protect the creative industries especially since Australia is a huge market for DVD and Blu-ray sales.

How can the entertainment industries explain the HUGE profits they get from DVD/Blu-ray sales in Australia?

Let’s use Game Of Thrones.

The TV show is hidden behind an expensive Pay-tv paywall in Australia. The actual subscriber numbers for that Pay-tv provider are lower than the sale numbers of the DVD/Blu-ray season releases.

Where did all of these extra fans come from?

The content owners need to be talking about lowering their licensing fees so that the monthly streaming plans are cheaper and that all content is available in the one place.

I have a Netflix subscription and a Spotify subscription.

The content industries should be pushing more people to these services. In return, the money pie will get bigger. It’s simply economics. These industries cannot pretend anymore that the old business models are coming back.

Let’s use Game of Thrones for another example.

If HBO wants to stamp out piracy, ensure that the show is available to everyone globally from the one HBO source.

Not from a reseller.

HBO makes, it, so they should sell it, to the people who want to watch it, when they want to watch it. I cannot for the life of me understand why people need to pay another company who paid HBO a fee to re-broadcast it. It’s a business model that is doomed.

Why do you think Netflix started to make their own TV shows?

Hell, why do you think HBO started their own TV shows? Remember, HBO was once a Home Box Office re-broadcaster.

Because re-broadcasting is not a viable business models. Same deal for music streaming services.

Expect Spotify to start to sign bands and really shake up the streaming world.

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

Another Episode in the Recording Industry Dumb and Dumber File

Seriously, how stupid can the recording industry get!

Why would the recording industry associations battle a Copyright ruling that allows people who purchase a CD to legally rip it?

First, CD sales are on the decline. The whole history of music is available on YouTube and Spotify and Pandora and (insert any other streaming service here).

So why does the recording industry still fight “ripping a CD” laws. No one with any common sense can believe what the UK Music and the British Academy of Songwriters claim.

That if people are allowed to rip the CD’s they legally buy, it would cost the rights owners tens of millions. So what they want is a tax on back up CD drives.

Are these recording industry idiots seriously that out of touch with technology?

Don’t they know that most computers don’t even come with a CD drive! My Apple iMac doesn’t even have a CD drive. In other words, CD drives are disappearing at the same rate that CD sales are disappearing.

But the recording industry, which the article incorrectly calls the music industry, still believe in some 1998 ideal of CD sales and ownership.

Even one of the largest tech companies in the world, believed that music was all about ownership and not access. For whatever reasons, Apple is very late to the streaming party.

When Steve Job’s introduced the iPod back in October 2001, the selling point was “this amazing little device holds a thousand songs, and it goes right in my pocket”. For millions upon millions of music fans, the iPod became a must and in return Apple continued to grow into a very powerful company.

However, Jimmy Iovine and Eddy Cue offer nothing amazing with Apple Music. They offer a music service with features that already exist in Spotify or even Soundcloud. But they hinder their music service by putting it behind a paywall. This new “revolutionary” product is mired in the past.

It’s like the record labels constructed Apple Music and not Apple itself. Maybe that is the truth as Jimmy Iovine’s background leans more to the recording industry than the tech industry.

Artists payouts has proven to be a contentious issue again. Transparency in the area is non-existent. Apple was not going to pay artists during the streams that happen during the three-month trial period. Then Apple did an about flip and said they would. On top of all that, Apple Music is being investigated for anti-competitive behaviour.  The last thing the labels would want is a government investigation.

Did anyone also notice that when Apple did its reverse flip on paying royalties during the free 3 month periods, it was Eddy Cue who went on the record. Meanwhile, the recording industry stooge Jimmy Iovine, remained silent, just like the label heads at Universal, Sony and Warner. However it was those idiots that created this mess in the first place.

If you are a musician this is what you should know;

• Music streaming revenue is surpassing sales of music downloads.
• Research from P. Schoenfeld Asset Management shows that there will be 250 million worldwide music streaming subscribers generating over $16 billion in streaming revenue.

Your challenge is to get people to listen to your music consistently. Forget about the CD sale, or that Vinyl sale or that download sale. They are memento products. Listens is your sale. Eventually, the fan base that listens will start to want your memento’s.

One last thing.

If your song is not on Spotify, it is on YouTube. Taylor Swift took her music off Spotify and saw her YouTube plays increase. Yep, that’s right. Sales of her music didn’t increase at all, but her YouTube stats went through the roof.

It’s because people want to listen.

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

The Age Old Problem Of Music

The recorded music industry has finally stabilised and it is competing with free. Whatever arguments are put forward for recorded music to go behind paywalls, the world we live in demands that music be free. Piracy of music is no more.

Why would people bother?

My kids are happy with free and putting up with a few commercials. I am happy with it as well, and on the occasions that some of my favourite artists release an album that has a super deluxe edition, I purchase it.

All of this low price points does lead to a mathematical outcome. Profits are tighter, which in turn means  large recording budgets go down. Who cares, right? With pro-studio equipment so cheap, 95% of musicians are DIY’ers’

But, are profits really tighter for the record labels. The whole Spotify/Sony contract highlights just how much money Sony is getting from being the holders of so many copyrights. Sony’s negotiating power is strong because of the artists that create musical works.

Unions have negotiating power because they have the workers behind them. Sony has negotiating power because they have accumulated the copyrights from artists that signed contracts with terms stacked against them. The unions fight for workers’ rights and better wages. Sony fights for a higher fee to their music catalogue and then fails to pass on the monies to its artists, both old and new.

The power of the labels has been accumulated by paying low dollars for a song. Take “Louie, Louie”. The song was written on toilet paper in 1955, recorded in 1957 as a B side and it did nothing. In 1959, Berry sold the rights to the song for $750. In 1963, the song became a hit. By 1987, Berry was living on welfare at his mother’s house. However, Berry did have some luck in a lawyer friend who managed to get his rights back just in time for the song to be licensed to an alcoholic drink commercial. Berry in this instance is part of the rare 1% that do have some luck. For the other 99%, no dice.

You know what the funny thing is, someone like Frank Zappa back in the early Eighties had the foresight to offer a proposal to the record labels to replace the LP model. Zappa proposed that the labels should store their recorded music vaults in a central location and offer the music via phone or cable TV straight to the user stereos via a subscription model. In Zappa’s words “providing material in such quantity at a reduced cost could actually diminish the desire to duplicate and store it, since it will be available any time day or night.”

The reason why Zappa was thinking outside the square back in 1982 was that the recording business was already in a state of bother, that the Internet and Napster brought to the forefront, 20 years later.

Change is constant. News used to be slow, we had three TV channels, music, books and films had gated/window releases, fewer people travelled and fewer people finished school. Not anymore.

You see, change for one side of the debate is always better and for the other side not so much. For the music consumer, the shift to access models over ownership models with lower price points is for the better. But it is far from perfect for the record labels and other gatekeepers. Even old school artists don’t like these changes. People have argued that it has led to unemployment or that creators have no incentive to create new music.

The age-old problem of music was always access. How do people hear it?

MTV broke down a lot of those access problems and made musicians into global superstars. MTV, P2P downloading and streaming are new approaches to age-old problems. While the record labels ignored the volcanic ash of Napster, the techies escaped the volcano blast and thrived.

The error of the record labels was in believing that what was familiar would not change. They got used to the high profit margins of the CD, so they found it hard to believe that in the space of a few years, those profits could disappear. Those marketing strategies and gated releases that have proven themselves over so many years, no longer bring in the sales the labels wanted. Instead it leads to an increase in P2P downloading.

Streaming has competed with P2P. Spotify has pumped millions upon millions into the recording industry. Money that was not there before. So what do the record labels, along with Apple and other misguided artists supporting Pono or Tidal want to do. Their solution to the age-old problem of access is to put it behind a pay wall.

Nice one. Let’s see how well that goes down.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Hard Working Musicians and Some Not So Hard Working Musicians

When I sit down to write a song, I write a song. That means, I have a vocal melody, chords and a certain feel behind it. In the bands I used to be in, I would then play the song for them. Now, my vocals are limited, so when I play the original song there are some notes I cannot hit. However the singer in the band can hit those notes.

Now according to Sebastian Bach, because he can sing better than Matt Fallon, he should get a song writing credit.

Come on man, this sense of entitlement that everyone has is getting downright stupid.

I love the Sebastian Bach era of Skid Row and I love Sebastian’s solo stuff. I saw Skid Row play at Eastern Creek in Sydney back in 1993. I purchased their debut album because I saw that Michael Wagener was listed as the producer. I remember dropping the needle and being blown away.

I remember also picking up a bootleg of the Matt Fallon era of Skid Row and being amazed at how good the songs sounded in demo form. Of course, Sebastian Bach is the better singer and he is the difference between a good band and a great band. Plus he is Skid Row. As good as Dave Sabo and Rachel Bolan are at writing the songs, people will always associate their band with Sebastian Bach.

But, in the case of getting a song writing credit just because he sang the vocal melody better, Sebastian has it wrong.

The Skid Row guys know the truth. History has always shown people trying to rewrite the past to suit a current point of view. But seriously, based on Sebastian’s definition, then guitarist Scotti Hill should also be credited as a songwriter for the Skid Row debut. Why not, hey?

Hill’s lead playing is all over the album and in “18 and Life”, the lead work is very definitive. But it doesn’t work that way. It never did, however in the new world we live in with plagiarism lawsuits everywhere, anything is possible.

Another person that keeps on getting it wrong is Yngwie Malmsteen. When is he going to realise that as good as a guitarist he is, without a great lead singer, his band and his songs are just average. Joe Lynn Turner and Jeff Scott Soto are the right vocalists for Yngwie however those bridges have burnt.

The problem with Yngwie and other artists like Kiss, is that they haven’t created anything worthwhile recently that would make us pay attention. So no one is interested in obtaining their new music. In Kiss’s case, they can still make good money on the road. In Yngwie’s case, he is playing clubs and bars.

You see, in music you work your ass off to get a break and to build an audience. Then you need to work even harder to keep that audience and to replenish it. The big dirty secret that eludes artists is that fans drop off, lose interest or just move on to other bands or different styles especially if the music coming out fails to connect.

If you want to listen to Malmsteen at his best, the first four albums are essential listening. Anything after that is for the hard-core fans.

These days it seems that the popular artists forget why they became famous. It’s because of the music, stupid. It amazes me when I read interviews with artists who don’t feel it is necessary to make new music. The latest is Paul Stanley. The reason why he is a somebody, is because he wrote music. And a lot of it.

Look at guys like Mark Tremonti or even Joel Hoekstra. Both guys are super hard workers.

Tremonti has two albums coming out within a 12 month period from his band Tremonti, plus another Alter Bridge album. Chuck into that mix the Fret 12 guitar instructional DVD’s that he has been doing for the last 10 years and you can see how hard he is working at releasing content on a consistent basis.

Hoekstra just released “The Purple Album” with Whitesnake, has a project called VHF that will be releasing an album soon and another project called Joel Hoekstra 13 that will also be releasing an album soon. In addition to that, he released music with Night Ranger just last year and toured with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. All of that hard work is paying off for him at the moment.

So what do we know?

It’s hard work being a musician. It always has been and it always will be. Tremonti and Hoekstra are perfect examples of hard work.

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

Certifications, Recorded Music and That Spotify/Sony Contract

I always have a decent laugh when I read music news. It’s always interesting to see how a news item gets copied across from website to website in my Google Alerts with no changes and no critical analysis.

Remember back in the day when all the rage was about how artists are struggling to achieve platinum certifications. All the commentary focused on the moment or within a 12 month period. It was like a platinum certification was the be all and end all.

Now, back in the Eighties, MTV made every act that got rotation into a platinum act. But that was not always the case.

“Ride The Lightning” was released in 1984 and it is my favourite Metallica album. It took five years to achieve a platinum certification. 28 years later, “Ride The Lightning” was certified 6x Platinum. Music simmers away and it just keeps on connecting. It’s not about corporate deals, or mega marketing campaigns. Metallica’s “Ride The Lightning” album is proof. It competed with piracy and it still sold.

Anyway, the RIAA recently re-classed a “sale unit” to be a paid download or 100 audio/visual streams. Based on this new re-classification, did you know that Shinedown’s “Second Chance” was just certified triple platinum?

Not bad for a song that is 7 years old.

So what does this say about recorded music?

If a song connects with an audience, expect it to sell and be streamed. The facts are out there. It doesn’t happen overnight or in a year. In happens over decades.

“Second Chance” on YouTube has 9,766,633 views on the official Atlantic Records channel. Another YouTube user called “McDrinkable” has a lyric video up of the song and it has 2,749,110 views, while another unofficial YouTube user called “Dushan Galappaththi” also has their own lyric video and they have 957,103 views.

“Second Chance” on Spotify has 21,845,406 streams.

So what do we know?

We know that music is not about the instant payola. Great music that connects with an audience will be listened too and purchased for a long time.

The beauty of Shinedown is that a song that wasn’t a single has more streams than the hit radio songs. That song is “Call Me”.

But the record labels still push an agenda that piracy is killing their business, while they make millions upon millions in licence fees from the streaming music services.

If you don’t believe me, read this article on “The Verge”. The advances paid to the record labels do not filter back to the artists at all. But hang on a sec, the record labels have this power to negotiate with the techies because of the artists. And the artists get nothing in return. That, my friends is the recording business.

Which leads me to the dumb journalists and artists that rallied behind artists who spoke out against streaming services. Let me say it again, the streaming services are not the enemy here. The record labels still are.

Looks like Roger Waters never got the memo. Even APRA’s Brett Cottle doesn’t get it. He wants the government to fight against pirates, however it is the labels that are holding back royalties.

Times are a changing people, but the record labels refuse to change.

 

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

The Lies Of The Recording Industry

Money in the recording business is getting more and more each year. Warner Music Group has seen streaming income overtake downloads.

While Spotify is struggling to turn a profit from streaming, the labels are not. The free ad-supported tiers of streaming still make the labels money. The paid subscriptions model will also grow as IT companies are all about scale. This is what WMG CEO Stephen Cooper had to say and to me it is an important quote;

“The rate of this growth has made it abundantly clear to us that in years to come, streaming will be the way that most people enjoy music. Not only that, we are also confident that streaming’s ongoing expansion will return the industry to sustainable, long-term growth.”

Of course the main issue here is how are those streaming monies being filtered down to the creators.

The labels have large market power to negotiate because they have accumulated a lot of copyrights over the last 40 years. However the same artists that created those works get sweet f.a. The reason behind that is that the artist has sold or signed away their copyrights to the record labels for a fee. This normally happens before a song is popular, so the fee and the percentages the artists agree to are not representative of the market power that song might have in the future. Of course years later, the artist can re-negotiate their terms however the contracts are still stacked in the labels favour.

Even Universal Music who is pushing for no “free-tier” streaming service has seen substantial growth from streaming monies vs download and physical sales. Seriously, piracy equals zero revenue whereas streaming regardless of free/subscription offers a revenue stream. The more listeners these services get, the more income the labels get.

But the labels are greedy. If they reduce their music license fees, the streaming services can then reduce their monthly fees and more people will subscribe.

My kids love Spotify. They have grown up with it. For them, there is nothing else. Of course they don’t mind getting nostalgic with me and from time to time they ask me to play some vinyl or a CD. My kids also love Apple products so when I told them that Apple is trying to shut down the free-tier on Spotify and on YouTube, the first thing they said to me is “THAT’S DUMB”.

The public likes to be legal however we also want the legal alternative to give us what we want conveniently and for a low price. And finally in music we started going in that direction. Then came the “EXCLUSIVES”.

Suddenly, fans of music couldn’t hear everything on for the price they pay. And the end result is always piracy. People will pay for music again however it will be a long process. The label execs only think about the NOW. They are not interested in the long-term.

Back in the Eighties, not everybody paid. The recording business was challenged. We listened to the radio and we dubbed cassettes from already dubbed cassettes. We watched MTV. Eventually, people started to pay for music and the recording business grew exponentially. Greed set in and then a grenade went off in 1999.

Remember Napster. It showed the recording industry that the majority of music fans favoured access over ownership. A compressed file was deemed worthy by billions of people around the world. While the recording industry fought tooth and nail to go back to the old ways, technology companies managed to drag them kicking and screaming into a new way. Here we are 16 years later and access to music is a legitimate business.

But the recording industry want’s to ruin it all again.

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