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

Fragile Attention

If the stories are true, then Netflix has a debt problem. And we all know Spotify hasn’t turned a profit and neither has Pandora. Meanwhile, Soundcloud is for sale or closing up shop, depending on which stories you believe.

Will Netflix survive long enough to turn a profit?

I hope so. Their own catalogue keeps growing but does the money spent on original content turn into profits or is their debt due to infrastructure and network costs. The ISP’s charge Netflix (and all the other streaming providers) a lot of money and then they charge us to you use the internet and access Netflix. It’s a double dip of epic proportions. Netflix also has investors and shareholders that it needs to placate.

Radio is a perfect example of how it went from a format that broke acts and drove culture to a format that focused on profits to please shareholders.

Gyms make their money from customers who pay and never use the facility. However, the customers who are at the gym for 4 hours a day end up costing the Gym in the long run.

Is this the same deal with Netflix?

Streaming services might have 100 million subscribers, however they might have only 2 million subscribers accounting for 95% of the usage.

Then again it’s been proven that the type of user you want is the person who uses the service daily instead of once a week.

Netflix lives in the current world, where everything’s instantly available, just a click away. But they have the same issue every other service and artist has. People can’t slow down their lives long enough to immerse themselves in their content at a rate they would like. If Netflix has this problem, imagine every up and coming musician.

And sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do. If someone doesn’t want to hear from you anymore, you’ve lost the ability to reach them. For a brief time, an artist or a service might have a person’s attention. However attention is fragile. In a monoculture, when we had 5 channels and gatekeepers, attention could last longer. However it today’s world, it’s gone within an hour, sometimes even a week.

Attention is fragile. We give it and then we take it away only to give it to something or someone else.

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Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

The Message of 1983 Appeared Again Between 1990 and 1992

What do “Photograph”, “Cum On Feel The Noize”, “Rainbow In The Dark”, “Looks That Kill”, “You Can’t Stop Rock’N’Roll”, “Bark At The Moon”, “Rebel Yell”, “Every Breath You Take”, “Lick It Up”, “Tell Me What You Want” and “Sister Christian” all have in common?

Man, 1983 was quite a year, maybe the most revolutionary year since the 60’s and The Beatles invasion. It’s also the year that metal and rock music became a commercial force and a massive influence on society. Along with the rise of MTV, culture changed dramatically.

Metal and rock music made governments introduce censorship stickers on new releases. Leaders and their wives thought they knew better, so they lobbied hard to make sure we knew if the album had rude or vulgar or violent lyrical themes. Preachers and TV evangelists became rich and famous when they condemned the art form and told their followers the devil is on the loose, only to be caught with their pants down in seedy motels.

The satanic panic might sound funny today, however back then it was real. Lawyers took artists to the civil courts because suddenly when records got played backwards some scientist found they had subliminal messages telling kids to kill themselves.

Band T-shirts had been around before, but nothing like the 80’s. A whole new billion dollar industry came about, because of the imagery. We wanted the T-shirts. It told the world we are a member of the club. It was like being sworn in at a bikie gang and getting your patches. Today, the same T-shirts are found in Kmart and Target stores. Hell, one of the Jenner girls put her face on em for publicity. But back then, you had to go to the concert or to a specialised record store that sold them to get them.

And as the genre became more popular it became a part of pop culture. And people in the know keep telling us it became diluted because popular doesn’t mean it’s the best. It just means popular. And the more popular it got, the more dumbed down the music and the lyrics became. Everyone keeps on saying that hard rock and metal committed suicide because the lyrics that addressed society got hidden in the background for lyrics about having a good time, rock and roll and having a good time.

Maybe that was the case for a certain between 1986 and 1992 for some bands, but in my view,  rock and metal music got some popularity credibility back both musically and lyrically, with the excellent “Slave To The Grind” from Skid Row, Metallica’s self-titled black album, “Empire” from Queensryche, “Seasons In The Abyss” by Slayer and “Countdown To Extinction” by Megadeth.

These five albums released between 1990 and 1992 addressed a lot of issues lyrically and it also foretold the rise of a new scene that would address similar lyrical concerns like depression, anxiety, paranoia and dark thoughts.

“Foreclosure Of A Dream” is about predatory banks foreclosing on people’s houses, while “Della Brown” is about poverty/homelessness in an advanced society. Guess not much has changed in the 25 plus years.

“The Unforgiven” is about parental control of the infant, who is growing up in a family with views out of touch with reality. We are all products of our tribes. The viewpoints of people who are around us, rub off on us. There is no escaping it.

“Countdown To Extinction” addresses our quest to destroy the food chain for trophies which in the end leads to our extinction while in “Resistance”, Geoff Tate is singing about the environment and how this is our world, we all share it, we need to stop abusing it, we need to stop neglecting it and we need to co-operate in trying to save it. “Skeletons of Society” address the aftermath of nuclear war as the fools become the wise and the rich become the beggars as nothing here remains because the end came so fast.

Climate change and extinction of certain species is a divisive topic. You either believe the evidence or you don’t. Corporations that stand to lose money are doing their best to hijack the conversation to suit themselves and the environmentalists are seen as roadblocks to human advancements.

What is clear to me is that nature always win. As much as humans try to control nature, nature always strikes back with storms, cyclones, rains, earthquakes, rising sea waters, tsunamis, heat waves, wild fires, cold fronts and hurricanes. Believe what you want, but remember, nature is forever while we are not.

“Architecture of Aggression” and “War Ensemble” address war while “Ashes in Your Mouth” addresses the aftermath of war. And in 2017, war is still present. Budgets for war and counter terrorism teams is more than education and health.

“Slave To The Grind” is about working 9 to 5 and not wanting to do so, but fearing if you don’t do it, you will get left behind in the rat race. Even more so today. With our lives in so much debt that we cannot pay it back while we are alive, the rat race is becoming a race to the bottom of the bankruptcy barrel. People lie about how much they earn just to be a member of an exclusive club.

“Best I Can” addresses gun control and how accidentally discharging a gun at home can lead to serious consequences. “Hallowed Point” also addresses guns and what guns can do the body. In the words of Araya, guns can turn flesh into confetti.

This is a controversial topic in the U.S as the Constitution gives the people the right to bear arms and the gun lobby is powerful in Washington and leaders are too scared to pass/support laws because they would lose the support of the Gun lobby in their own electorates. So every President is faced with doing press conferences after a massacre and no President has passed laws to reduce the deaths of gun violence.

In Australia, we had the Port Arthur Massacre and after that gun ownership laws got changed and a lot of automatic weapons got banned and surprisingly the Government leaders stood firm against the lobby groups.

“Symphony Of Destruction” is basically summing up a simple man’s rise to become a leader of a nation which is run by a faceless government and then letting that power get to their head as they destroy the world as we know it.

“Quicksand Jesus” addresses a person losing faith in their God and then feeling lost without that layer of support they believed they had in God. Then you have “The God That Failed” which James Hetfield wrote about his Mum’s belief that God would cure her cancer instead of science and medicine.

“Monkey Business” addresses street social life.

“In A Darkened Room” addresses child abuse.

“Captive Honour” addresses doing time for crime.

“Don’t Tread On Me” addresses U.S pride while “Wherever I May Roam” addresses the human spirit of travel/adventure and having no place to call home.

“Wasted Time tackles the effects of drug use on people close to you. “Skin o’ My Teeth” addresses suicide by wrapping your car around a tree while “My Friend Of Misery” addresses depression.

“Get The F Out” and “Riot Act” tackle censorship. “Blood Red” is about supporting citizens in their fight for freedoms and rising against totalitarian regimes.

“Creepshow” addresses how people put it all out there for fame, which more or less is summing up Facebook and other social media sites 15 years before they happened while “Mudkicker” is basically about what trolls do on the internet today.

“Empire” address gangs and their rise to societal power while “Expendable Youth” addresses inner city gang violence.

Cycles come and cycles go in music. It was just unfortunate that the record labels abandoned musicians who got classed in a record label genre for a new record label genre called Grunge.

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A to Z of Making It, Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Promised Land – Sweet and Lynch

I’ve been listening to “Promised Land”, the new single from the Sweet & Lynch project. For those that don’t know, Michael Sweet from Stryper joined forces with George Lynch to create Sweet & Lynch. They are supported by one of the best rhythm sections in the business in James Lomenzo on bass and Brian Tichy on drums. Underpinning it all is melodic rock label Frontiers.

Their first album, “Only To Rise” was released in 2014 and I must say it’s an excellent listen and a great throwback to a style I remember well, but with modern touches and production.

Well, here we are, 3 years later and “Promised Land” is the first single released from the upcoming “Unified” album.

The first thing that hooks me is the feel of the song. It’s basically a speed metal song and the double kick throughout the whole song adds to the frantic feel of it.

And the pedal point riffs make the song.

To me, it’s a cross between Dokken’s “Lightning Strikes Again” and “Tooth And Nail” in some sections and Stryper’s “The Way” in other sections. Reading some of the comments on the YouTube video, people are linking it to Dio, Iron Maiden, Ratt and Aerosmith. That’s the beauty of music. It’s subjective and I love the way people attach past influences to something new.

Lost on a sea of unreality
Searching for what we don’t know
Too many times we are blinded by fear
And locked in a box down below

We have been conditioned to reside in what’s familiar. We work with people who are familiar, doing jobs that are familiar and we will remain in these careers because it feels familiar. And we feel competent doing it. Change on the other hand is unfamiliar and it makes us feel incompetent.

Don’t let the devil rob your soul
He’ll always try to take his toll

In all forms of life we need to have a baddie, an entity that scares us so much, that we obey a certain way/rule so we don’t come across this entity.

Take my hand, the promised land
Is just where you want it to be
It’s all around, only to be found
Open your eyes and you’ll see the promised land

What is the promised land these days? Do people expect because they worked hard and did their best, something great will happen in the end? What are we seeking here?

Once you lie down it’s so hard to get up
That’s when the birds fly above
Eat from the table and drink from the cup
The glory of what you’re made of

Life is short and the world is forever. What we do while we are alive determines how long we live in the conversation after we are gone.

Don’t let the light go out in you
Look past the problems you pursue

Sometimes the things that mattered in our youth don’t matter as much when we get older. That’s what getting older means. We are able to not give a fuck about things.

The lead break is one of Lynch’s finest metal moments in 2017. It’s got melody, hammer ons, pull offs, sweep picking and string skipping. All at 140 plus clicks a minute.

It’s a crazy chaotic world we live in and a lot of good music is lost in the noise. “Promised Land” will probably be just another song lost in the 30 million plus songs on streaming, along with other Sweet & Lynch gems like “Love Stays”, “Me Without You” and “Recover”. But not to me. I’m streaming it and I’ll keep on streaming it.

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

Copyright Lawsuits 

Ed Sheeran writes songs and they become popular. Then he gets hit with lawsuit after lawsuit because his songs are making money and the family members of a departed artist, or the business entity that owns the copyright of an artist who is departed or is not creating anything worthwhile anymore wants a cut. 

If Copyright terms remained how they were originally, this would not be a problem. First, the creator had a 14 year monopoly, with a chance to renew for another 14 years for a total of 28 years. However, once the creator died, all of their works became public property, free to be used by any other artist/creator to create derivative versions. So if the creator passed away during a term, the works ceased to be under copyright and went straight into the public domain.

How do you think the British 60’s invasion happened?

Copyright maximalists and corporations would like you to believe because of strong copyright laws giving the creator an incentive to create works in a vacuum and free from any sort of influence. However, it happened because of the blues songs in the public domain which Keith Richards, John Lennon, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and many others used to create new works. In some cases, similar works.

But then the Copyright laws started changing. On the backs of lobby dollars from the corporations the laws changed to last for the life of the creator and then the laws changed again to last for the life of the creator plus 70 years after the death of the creator.

So who is copyright benefiting once the person who is meant to have the monopoly (the creator) to create works has passed on?

The corporations and estates who control the copyrights of long-dead artists. That’s who.

And because of these non-creative entities controlling copyrights, inspiration is now interpreted as infringement. Music and culture worked because people write songs inspired by past heroes. When I heard “Lift Me Up” from Five Finger Death Punch, I went back and listened to “The Ultimate Sin” from Ozzy Osbourne. When I heard “Kingmaker” from Megadeth, I went back and listened to “Children Of The Grave” from Black Sabbath.

It’s these inspirations from the past that keeps the past relevant.

However due to copyright lawsuits, labels are now even asking the artists to give them a list of songs that might have been used as inspiration, so they could check the possibility of future copyright infringement claims.

So how is this good for music and music creation.

And what about music created by AI machines. Does that fall under copyright or is that copyright free?

And YouTube is still a punching bag when it comes to payments. 

While the labels and publishers took over 3 years to negotiate with Spotify about operating in the U.S, YouTube became the destination for people seeking out music. And while the recording industry patted themselves on the back when they got a percentage stake in Spotify and allowed it to operate in the U.S, YouTube was busying doing what the recording industry should have been doing.

Spreading the love of music to the masses.

So of course, the millions the recording industry gets in licensing isn’t enough and via their lobby group, the recording industry needs to get more in ad supported royalty payments. The musicians are also screaming for a change however it’s their copyright owner that has let them down.

But is YouTube really such a problem. 

Its popularity is overtaken by Spotify for music alone.

Give people what they want and watch it grow. I still reckon Spotify is priced too high. It’s the same price as Netflix and Netflix spends millions on creating its own content and licensing content. Music production is in the thousands and for DIY artists it’s in the hundreds. But a music streaming service charges the same price as a video streaming service. Ridiculous. But that’s the greed of the labels and the publishing companies.

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

Frequency

Frequency. It’s a bad word for rock and metal artists. Release music frequently. 

It’s still a concept artists are struggling with. It’s even more troublesome for bands. The singer/songwriter can make it happen, but for bands it’s a different story.

Do you think Netflix would get 5.2 million new subscribers in the last quarter, if they released one tv show every two years?

Of course not. 

And their programming rocks. Don’t like this show, don’t worry we have another new show coming in two weeks.

While HBO might have “Game of Thrones”, its old school business model of releasing an episode each week will prove its downfall. 

While content is what brings people in, distribution is king! 

The oldsters did a great job selling the story of platinum records and chart placement = success. While rock gods lapped it up, hip-hop and grunge came to to fill the void and the danger that rock occupied. 

The new world demands more, while the rock and metal heads are still worrying about the chart placements and that build up to the one time release date, where money is supposed to rain down. 

The day of release is when the hard work really starts. You want a story that lasts and if you release a new song, wait for the reaction. 

If you get none, be smart and create more music. Forget the album, you’re looking for a reaction, and if you get none, it’s back to the drawing board. 

It’s an online streaming world. 

And to be in a band, it’s not about the payday so much as access and attention. Metal and rock needs to realize it’s best to have a continuous stream of new tunes being released and making news.

The money will come. But you need to control your copyrights so you get maximum royalties. 

It’s a new world and if you play metal/rock you’ve got to be in the streaming game and releasing frequently. 

The youngsters, the ones who replenish the music base are signed up to streaming. And artists who don’t want to be part of the streaming group are still debating the payouts.

Publishers and labels bitch about YouTube payments however those organizations are purely responsible for YouTube’s growth.

Because of greed, the labels and publishers negotiated with Spotify for over 3 years before it entered the US market. During this time, people turned to YouTube for their music fix. And it’s still number one when it comes to streaming.

The paradigm is different. Your musical output lives online and the money is in what lasts. Success is based upon cumulative streams, not sales of albums, and the streams go on forever.

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Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

In The End Nothing Really Matters

Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington, I guess we’ll never know the why and maybe those lyrics you guys wrote are very close to home than we believed. 
Adored by your fans but it wasn’t enough. Somewhere in the far reaches of your minds, a dark sliver of a thought was growing with such ferocity that both felt it was better to leave their world than live in it. 

Does it get to a stage where the people who make money from these artists need to be held responsible? 

Ivan Moody is battling addiction. He’s in and out of rehab, quitting the band on stage when intoxicated and apologizing the next day when he’s sober. It’s very public. 

So does FFDP stop everything, so Ivan Moody recovers properly or do they still roll forward with their schedule. And when Moody comes back from rehab, it’s back on tour like nothing happened. 

And then the new album release cycle starts again and another tour. 

Managers and all the artist hangers on make their money when the artist is on the road and earning. If things are not doing well, its the managers that set the tone of the conversations. If those millions become thousands, it means the manager cut is reduced. Managers used to care. It was personal. Most managers are now corporations. It’s all about schedules and percentages. It’s borderline negligence. 

The show must go on but there is no show when there is no artist. 

All death is tragic. 

David Z is a bass player and not a household name like Cornell and Bennington. For a lot of people, they’ve never heard of him. To me, he was one hell of a worker and an inspiration to all musicians, that you can have a career in music. 

He never made millions, but he recorded and toured. And when you strip it all away, music is basically that. Write a song, record it and play it live. 

And he had a career because of his never say die work ethic and all round good guy attitude. From his many different gigs, he built up a network of musician friends. And it’s because of that network, he got so many different gigs. 

So when a truck lost control on a Florida highway and slammed into the Adrenaline Mob RV parked on the side last week, David Z lost his life. 

All death is tragic.

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

Jungle Giants

In an era that’s so far removed from the monoculture I grew up in, there are artists popping up everywhere. 

The Jungle Giants is a band I’ve never heard off but they are an unsigned band that’s racked up 36 million streams on Spotify. Those stats are impressive and way more than band stats on label deals. 

It goes to show if you are invested and operating in the modern world, well the skies are the limits. Ask any artist on a label deal to tell you what percentage of profits they’re making and they won’t be able to tell you. Ask any independent artists and they know. 

The band is confident for the future of digital music and they know economies of scale. The bigger Spotify gets, the bigger the pool of money grows to start paying artists. As long as the record labels and publishers don’t kill it off with high licensing fees. Because it’s artists like these the labels hate. 

“It’s not a perfect world for them (majors) any more… People can do it on their own.”Sam Hales – Jungle Giants Frontman

The labels don’t want artists to do it on their own. The labels don’t want artists controlling their own catalogues. The labels want to control it all. It’s because of this past control, the labels hold the power seat in negotiations. And they can put up roadblocks. If they take over the streaming companies, then bands like Jungle Giants will need to play by the record label rules.

“Every now and then we get something like eight grand, we get cash, and all our streaming revenue goes straight back into the band.”
Sam Hales – Jungle Giants Frontman

It’s hard work controlling your own destiny. With so much freedom, you are free to decide what path to take. 

And for those that think Jungle Giants just wrote one song and racked up millions of streams. Think again. Album number 3 just came out. They have skin in the game and momentum. 

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Copyright, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Stupidity

A Life’s Shadow Hangs

When is inspiration/influence just that and when is inspiration/influence copying? 

“Hallowed Be Thy Name” has six lines similar to “Life’s Shadow” from Beckett. 

Mark my words my soul lives on 
Please don’t worry cause I’ve have gone 
I’ve gone beyond to see the truth
When your time is close at hand
Maybe then you’ll understand
Life down there is just a strange illusion
– Beckett, “Life’s Shadow” (1974)

Mark my words, believe my soul lives on
Don’t worry now that I have gone
I’ve gone beyond to seek the truth
When you know that your time is close at hand
Maybe then you’ll begin to understand
Life down here is just a strange illusion
– Iron Maiden, “Hallowed Be Thy Name” (1982)

In a song that has many verses, is six similar lines copying or influence?

The fact both songs have similar themes about a person dying is irrelevant. There are thousands of songs that have that same theme.

In every case of copying, I am sure people could find hundreds of other songs that have something similar. Everything, in any artform, are ALL inspired by something or someone who touched on the same matter, subject or concept.

It is possible and part of music history to borrow without “stealing”. When ideas appear in ones mind, quite often they are unconsciously inspired by a piece of music the artist has heard. And it’s perfectly okay and very common to take an existing idea and turn it into something new. 

In the liner notes for Miles Davis “Star People” album, he mentions how the bass line in “Come And Get It” is taken from an old Otis Redding lick. And he even mentions how the chord sequence from “It Gets Better” was taken from a Lightning Hopkins song. Miles Davis basically took ideas from early blues recordings and turned them into something modern. What a brilliant concept.

Metallica took a progression and a feel from “Tom Sawyer” and used it for the Bridge section of “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)”. Plus they took the whole intro/verse section from a Bleak House song called “Rainbow Warrior”. And the Metallica song sounds nothing like Rush or Bleak House in the end.

In the outro solo of “Runaround”, Eddie Van Halen quotes a piece of Paul Kossof’s classic solo from Free’s “All Right Now”. No biggie. This is seen as paying homage to his influence.

Michael Schenker took a David Gilmour lick from “Hey You” and used it in “Lost Horizons”. But the song and lead break sound totally different to what Gilmour did, and it’s the same notes and same phrasing. Exactly the same.

Black Crowes Rich Robinson took his Keith Richards influence “Twice As Hard”. The song is in Open G tuning, a staple of the Keith Richards rhythm guitar sound. The opening riff in the song is generic Keith and the end of the phrase is lifted right off “Can’t You Hear Me Knockin” from the “Sticky Fingers” album. I can just predict people bringing lawsuits against artists for using a certain tuning in the future.

Artists should be free to use their imaginations to recreate a song to suit their own vision.

Like Miles Davis, Steve Harris used his influences to create something new and modern and perfect for the era his band was in.

And here is a mash up of the two songs lyrics from me? 

Is it copying, stealing or unique enough to be original or original enough to show inspiration?

A Hallowed Shadow Of Life

See the people walking past
While I wait in my cell
And the bells begin to chime
On a life that doesn’t have much time

As I look in the mirror
A fallen angel is getting clearer

As the sands of time run low
One by one, people pass me by
Strangers of a world that has gone very wrong for me

Some breakdown and start to cry
When the priest comes to read me my last rites

Somebody please tell me I’m dreaming
As I walk, my life drifts before me
I’m trying to be strong
After all I’m not afraid of dying

Hear these words
For I have seen
My soul lives on
In your dreams
And even though I’m gone
I live beyond
For the truth is easy to see
When I am free

And I finally understand
The invisible hand
Turning life
Into a strange illusion

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

In The Courts Of The Streaming King

Legal streaming music is hurting. 

Streaming companies need to license music from the legacy players for a substantial fee and then pay royalties to these organizations when the songs are listened/viewed. And these organizations keep the bulk of these payments and pay cents to the artists they represent. 

Netflix has no problem growing its subscriber base and making profits, however it has its own content, which earned it over 90 Emmy nominations. And it’s monthly fees are identical to music subscription services, even though it costs a lot more to create a TV show or a movie than a song/album.

I don’t know what Spotify, YouTube and even Apple are waiting for. They need to get into finding their own artists and get them creating some kick ass tunes. While that will take years to come to fruition, investors of these companies want results now. There is no room in the investor mindset about profits 10 years from now. 

Recently Spotify has been hit with two more lawsuits about unpaid royalties. For a company that has licensing agreements in place with the record labels and performance rights organizations, they are still blamed for not doing enough in ensuring they have all the correct details of who wrote what song. The fact that the labels licensed songs to Spotify and didn’t have the song writer details properly recorded is totally okay to the song writer. Because to them, it’s Spotify’s fault. 

Spotify should just remove the music from latest complainers from the service and seek compensation from the label, because in the end, it was the label who took the licensing money and gave Spotify access to the songs in question. 

Or Spotify should seriously consider shutting up shop in the U.S. 

And the labels/publisher’s believe people will just return to purchasing physical music. 

They won’t. 

There was a reason why Napster was popular and close to 20 years later, the mega corporations who get rich off government granted monopolies still haven’t figured it out. 

And speaking of music not on services, here are a few more albums I tried to listen to recently that I couldn’t find on Spotify. Is it Spotify’s fault or the labels fault or the artists fault? 

David Coverdale

His three solo albums “White Snake”, “Northwinds” and “Into The Light” are not on Spotify Australia. 

Beckett

The band that Maiden borrowed from is not on Spotify, albeit two songs on a British prog album collection.

Adrenaline Mob

After listening to their new album, “We The People”, I wanted to listen to the debut album “Omerta” and found it’s not on Spotify Australia. Another great decision by record labels from denying paying customers music.

Kansas

Their albums with Steve Morse on guitar are not on Spotify, Australia. I have “Power” and “In The Spirt Of Things” on LP, however I was at work and I wanted to listen to the albums.

Scorpions

There is a lot of Scorpions music missing from Spotify Australia. “In Trance”, “Take By Force”, “Tokyo Tapes”, “Lovedrive”, “Animal Magnetism”, “Blackout”, “Love At First Sting” and “Savage Amusement” are all missing. Their 90’s output looks a bit hit and miss as well, however I don’t know all of those albums enough to comment if they are all there.

Frankie Miller

His 1982 album “Standing On The Edge” is not on Spotify and it’s one of my favourites. A few songs appeared in Thunder Alley, the movie about a farm boy who wanted to be a rock star but needed to work on the farm. So he goes to watch his ex-bands gig and their guitarist is passed out, so he grabs the guitar and plays.

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

Streaming and Distribution 

I believe that it’s an excellent time (on the current state of the music scene). I feel that there’s so much out there for people to pick from and choose from its phenomenal. I mean and guitar playing is at such a high level right now. I mean these younger generations are just taking it to a point where you know it’s beginning to explore places that people have never gone before, it’s just fascinating. And the music itself too, you can pick a genre and find so much great music in every genre. People are just pushing the envelope in all directions, so I think it’s very gratifying and satisfying. It’s a little challenging to pick through I mean from this thing back in the day when I was growing up there’s like a half a dozen or 10 big giant great bands that are super groups you know. Now it’s like there are thousands of bands. Picking through everything is hard. It’s stressful trying to find all the right music you know.
George Lynch 

Today, noise reigns supreme. For the ones who have financial backing, they surround us with their nuclear blast marketing. And in most cases people ignore them.

But it’s still a good time for an artist to get their product out. Actually it’s the best time.

For the record labels, they are still trying to get control over the distribution chain after losing it to Napster and other peer to peer file sharing programs. At the moment, technology companies have it and if the labels kill the streaming grape vine, they hope to bring the distribution chain under the record labels. 

Streaming has three main players. Spotify, Google and Apple.

Spotify is losing money each year and relies on investments. The record labels owe a piece of it but they are not investing in it. YouTube is owned by Google (well their parent company) and the record labels hate Google, blaming it for all of their ills. The “take it or leave it” deal with YouTube is not what the labels want, so they lobby hard to get laws passed which can cripple Google. Apple uses music to push sales of wares. However, even Apple is going to the table to get a lower payment rate back to the labels.

Going back to Spotify.

Since it has money woes and it cannot make a profit, it’s offering payola terms back to the record labels to have their music chucked into playlists for a fee. Because taking in money from users and advertisers is not enough to make money in music if you don’t have your own popular content bringing in money. And the labels are getting paid handsomely twice from each streaming provider.

  • Spotify pays them for licensing their music catalogues and then pays them again as royalty payments based on listens.
  • YouTube pays them for licensing their music catalogues and then pays them again as royalty payments based on listens.
  • Pandora pays them for licensing their music catalogues and then pays them again as royalty payments based on listens.
  • Apple pays them for licensing their music catalogues and then pays them again as royalty payments based on listens.
  • Tidal pays them for licensing their music catalogues and then pays them again as royalty payments based on listens.

I think you get the drift. Maybe that’s why Spotify is paying producers to be fake artists and play popular songs on piano for people to listen to.

And to top it off, the record labels are still using the 100 year old rule of geo restrictions when it comes to streaming. So music available in the U.S doesn’t necessarily equate to being available in Australia. Here is a quick list of albums I tried to call up in the last two weeks on Spotify Australia which are not available;

  • Heaven And Hell – The Devil You Know, released in 2009
  • Stryper – Murder By Pride, released in 2009
  • Three Days Grace – Life Starts Now, released in 2009
  • Night Ranger – Midnight Madness, released in 1983
  • Europe – Europe, released in 1983
  • Helix – No Rest For The Wicked, released in 1983

Isn’t it nice how record labels treat legitimate paying customers?

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