Ambulance LTD

I woke up this morning and checked my news to see any interesting developments in the world of the record and music industry. I came across this article from The Harvard Crimson where the band Ambulance LTD discusses their inability to release their new record because their label has declared Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.

The label is TVT Records (which had success with early Nine Inch Nails).

I can understand if the label cannot afford to record, release, and market their new album, but when the band was interviewed in the article, they said they weren’t even allowed to leave to go another label! Their label is effectively closed for business, yet the band cannot leave to pursue another label or release independently!!

I know you can say it’s the band’s fault for not taking that line in the contract seriously before signing. I also do understand a label’s business interest to keep a band (if they are spending all this money on them, they want to see a return on investment). However, not letting a band go its own way after you’ve filed for bankruptcy and effectively can’t do anything to get your Return on Investment?? I don’t understand the logic at all. Maybe I’m missing something.

The days of intense control (as displayed by this article) are soon to be over (unless bands think 360 deals are worth it) . I’m so glad record labels who practice like this are on the way out.

As for Ambulance LTD, they could just break up and re-form with another band name. James Brown did it to get around crap recording deals. The label probably has some clause in their contract about this too I bet!

When you hear stories like this, I’m so glad the internet is here.

Let’s cheers to the Internet bringing artists closer to their potential fans.

Let’s cheers to independent acts being able to really have a go at it without Major Label involvement!

I leave you with a video for the “Stay Where You Are” single by Ambulance LTD.

Make Great Music,

Hoover

The New RockStar Philosophy

There is constant debate and questions on the future of recorded music.

Will Record Labels become all-in-one music service shops (recording, touring, artist management, publishing, merchandising) and take a piece of every piece of revenue an artist generates? In other words, will the 360 deal triumph?

Sadly, I think these deals will continue at least for a short while longer. Nothing is set in stone, things are still in flux. However, the models below will definitely have an impact.

Will music be “purchased” like a utility where you pay a monthly fee for access to all the world’s music and artists/labels’ will be paid on the popularity of their downloads (there will be a very big pie of money)? Will everyone agree to this?

I first read about this in Dave Kusek’s and Gerd Leonhard’s fantastic 2005 book, “The Future of Music”. I think it has merit, however I have my doubts on everyone agreeing to this.

Will the Telecommunications/Internet companies bundle a music fee into their packages to give users (who want music) access to “seems-like-free” downloads?

This I could see happening anytime now (if it isn’t already happening). I can see music fans who are sick of getting crap downloads on torrents and peer-to-peer networks pay a nominal fee (2-3$/month) to have ready access to quality downloads. If it’s bundled in a package, it also feels like free. It could be a great marketing tool for the first company to really push it.

Will the Artist and Manager work together to build their own music company where they go direct to consumer and license their masters to Music Marketing Companies (the new record label) to generate revenue directly from physical products (cd’s) or Digital sales for a set period of time in various territories (countries)? Man, that was a long sentence!

There are more and more artists doing this. They have their own record label, own the masters, own the copyrights, manage their own merchandise, and license their work to be marketed and distributed by record labels. This will continue to gain popularity and the record label will evolve into a music marketing company (which it was, but without the recording costs)

Will their be more and more competition to Itunes like MySpace Music, Musicane.com, and AmieStreet.com who will force price competition and change the $.99 standard?

It’s happening and more will come. If music fans want to buy a song or album, but don’t want or need access to everything, these sites are ideal.

Will Ad Supported models where you can download as many tunes as are available on a site as long as you can spare a few seconds to see an advertising message?

I think this will be the domain of the niche music sites where content and music will be given “free” but will be paid by advertisers. The site will cover a niche, and offer music from the niche. The artists offering their music on these sites will get paid from a percentage of advertising including the promotion. Advertisers looking to market to that niche, will find these sites highly focused and appropriate for their products/services.

Long story short, there will be a popular model, but all the others will be able to exist and flourish. I personally like the inclusion of a fee into a telecommunications/ISP package. People don’t have to be force fed anything. They can find what they want when they want, it seems like free, no quality or virus worries, and the artists can get paid for it!

I love the internet.

I leave you with the video from Guy Leonhard, co-author of the Future of Music Book. You can visit his blog at mediafuturist.com

Make Great Music

Cheers,

Hoover

The New Rockstar Philosophy

Have you heard of The Fray or Snow Patrol??

Chances are you have because of a show called Grey’s Anatomy. You may not have watched the show yourself, but you probably did hear the song on radio or you’ve seen the videos. A major reason those bands ended up on commercial radio was because of the popularity of the show (Snow Patrol did have minor hits from their last album) .

The person behind the music is Alexandra Patsavas, the music supervisor who finds the music for Grey’s Anatomy and a host of other TV shows. I recently found a CNBC interview with her on YouTube which you can find below.

She is becoming a strong presence in the music industry, she loves independent bands, and she seems very humble.

Enjoy the vid.

Hoover
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The New Rockstar Philosophy

Trent Reznor’s war against the major labels continues today as protege Saul Williams releases his new album direct to the public. Similar to Radiohead’s latest album, if you don’t want to pay for “Niggy Tardust“, you can still get it legally. However, if you’re willing to part with a mere 5 US dollars you can get it at a massive 320Kbps.

Earlier today I laid my money down via my PayPal account and can report that the record is a “Ghetto Gothic” masterpiece. Reznor’s involvement is perfectly obvious throughout. He contributes music, vocals, and production to the record that ends up having an industrial hip hop feel very similar to Year Zero.

It’s great to see the Reznor / Williams partnership blossom in this way. I remember the spectacle of Williams and his DJ winning over a Nine Inch Nails audience in Manchester with his powerful aural / poetic assult. He amusingly introduced one song by saying “This is a song about when at the end of the day, you take off your black shirt, and your still black”.

“Niggy Tardust” is an excellent record available extremely cheaply. I hope the gamble pays off and we start seeing a lot more records released this way.

Just to make it clear that although I downloaded the Eat Me, Drink Me leak, I do not advocate stealing music, here’s a picture of me enjoying my legally purchased copy of that very album:

And what did Interscope come up with to encourage us in the UK not to settle for the leaked version? Two utterly abysmal lounge /dance remixes of Heart Shaped Glasses.

In a recent interview Trent Reznor has expanded on his eariler comments about the behaviour of record labels and gone as far as to indicate an intention to leave Interscope as soon as possible. He says that he is contractually obligated to deliver one more album to Interscope, but if he could he would cut out the labels altogether and sell the next Nine Inch Nails record online for a meagre $4. (He went as far as to note that consumers would be able to download the record at “as high a bit-rate as you want”, a detail I greatly appreciate.)

Since MySpace and Snocap teamed up to allow artists to sell DRM free music direct to consumers I’ve been disappointed with the uptake. I was looking forward to being able to buy tracks from all those great unsigned bands I’ve come across on MySpace, but months later, it’s still a rarity to see the Snocap player on a band’s profile. Hopefully Reznor’s stand will encourage more artists to go down the direct to consumers route.

A few days ago Trent Reznor lashed out against record labels he believes are ripping off fans. (The statement was originally post on the official NIN website, but has since been removed, so I’ve appended it to this post.)

I entirely agree with him, particularly on the “Maxi Single” point. I’m a sucker that bit of extra content they tack onto releases to get you to buy the same thing twice, and to discourage you from buying cheap imports. In the vast majority of cases this exciting extra content is under produced filler bollocks that you’ll watch once and forget about.

It’s this kind of attention that makes Reznor such a worthy rock star. Here’s the origional post from Reznor:

Posted on [05_13_2007]

As the climate grows more and more desperate for record labels, their answer to their mostly self-inflicted wounds seems to be to screw the consumer over even more. A couple of examples that quickly come to mind:

* The ABSURD retail pricing of Year Zero in Australia. Shame on you, UMG. Year Zero is selling for $34.99 Australian dollars ($29.10 US). No wonder people steal music. Avril Lavigne’s record in the same store was $21.99 ($18.21 US).
By the way, when I asked a label rep about this his response was: “It’s because we know you have a real core audience that will pay whatever it costs when you put something out – you know, true fans. It’s the pop stuff we have to discount to get people to buy.”
So… I guess as a reward for being a “true fan” you get ripped off.

* The dreaded EURO Maxi-single. Nothing but a consumer rip-off that I’ve been talked into my whole career. No more.

The point is, I am trying my best to make sure the music and items NIN puts in the marketplace have value, substance and are worth you considering purchasing. I am not allowing Capital G to be repackaged into several configurations that result in you getting ripped off.

We are planning a full-length remix collection of substance that will be announced soon.

I discovered recently that a petition has been created on the 10 Downing Street website to get Iron Maiden founder and bassist Steve Harris included in the next round of honours to be handed out by the British government. It seems that after Ozzy Osborn’s appearance at the Queen’s Golden Jubilee celebrations in 2002, some metal fans have developed a taste for royal recognition of the subculture. However, the obvious question seems to be, why should metal fans care if the governing classes recognise the achievements of the genre or not? While I don’t dispute the importance of Steve Harris’s contribution to music, I don’t see what purpose is served by chasing after a handshake from the monarchy. Thus far only around 1,500 of the Iron Maiden faithful have seen fit to sign the petition, so maybe they don’t either.

One of the reasons I continue to buy CD’s and haven’t yet switched to buying music from download services is that I love album art. One of the reasons the replacement of vinyl with CD’s and cassette tapes is so lamented is the fact the packaging is so much smaller and therefore the art work printed on it can’t be as detailed. Now that with have distribution of music through Internet downloading, which of course requires no packaging, then I guess that’s the end of album art altogether, right? Well… hopefully not, as with a little bit of imagination, the opposite could be true. Computers, as digital photographs would agree, are actually very good at displaying graphics. Why not use this capability to provide vivid and detailed artwork to accompany the albums we buy on-line?

Currently, a lot of media software is capable of associating a small thumbnail of an album cover with the tracks in that album. The approach is generally to have a record of what the CD packaging is like. Why not cut out is CD packaging middleman, and produce graphics that take advantage of the rich graphical capabilities of modern computers? Then we could begin to enjoy album art as high resolution graphics suitable for viewing at full screen.

My point is that the end of physical music packaging doesn’t have to mean the end of album art; on the contrary, it could spell its return.