There's a flag flying high in the castle of my heart

Spotify - What's in it for us?

2009-11-24T21:03:00.000-08:00

There has been some interesting discussion amongst the music community of late about Spotify. Specifically the focus is on it's role as a new model for delivering music to the consumer and the impact it is having on artist royalty returns. An interesting comment was made recently by the Bass Music Blog in terms of how Spotify is great for the user but not so great for the actual creators of music.

We decided not to put our Label's music on Spotify because there really is no benefit for us in that relationship. Whilst our ideal would be to have consumers buy directly from us and receive 100% of the royalty, we do have a distributor that helps us get our content into online stores such as iTunes for a small fee. Now according to them "the revenues paid by Spotify are 50% of what the service generates globally divided amongst artists based on their number of plays and includes revenues from both advertising-funded 'free' accounts, and subscriber accounts". If, as many people are pointing out, Spotify is losing millions, where the hell is the other 50% going?

As an independent it's hard to get enough people to hear what we're doing, get people to buy it and make any money without having a huge marketing budget behind it (which, clearly, we don't have). And being pretty much unknown means that people aren't going to find our music without specifically searching for it or paying people like spotify or myspace or iTunes to feature our releases (something which only major labels seem to be able to secure).

We have to find our own ways to market/distribute our content using social media channels, directing people to our content in places that we have control of. The reality of doing this is that right now we won't actually need Spotify until the point that we enter the mainstream and people will know enough about us to just want to find our music on their platform (which might never happen).

We are using Twitter as a marketing platform, directing people to our website where they can buy music direct from us. Ultimately we want people to support us by buying our music so that we can continue doing it, not listen to it for free on Spotify. Even more so if 50% of every play is being siphoned off by the major label shareholders.

The music industry is endorsing a model that encourages people not to buy music but get it for nothing. Whilst they are clearly making money from the millions of plays and channel adverts, they are paying the artists next to nothing in return for using their product. So the consumer is getting product for free and the artist is getting nothing which, correct me if I'm wrong, is awfully similar to piracy. Basically the music industry is legitimising and endorsing this model because it is something they can make money from, which they couldn't with good old fashioned piracy.

So once again it's the people that actually make the music we all listen to that are being well and truly shafted. Only this time it's not just the music industry doing the shafting but also their previous arch enemies the digital industry.

Personally, I'd rather people shared our music through good ol' fashioned file sharing because it means that at least one person has bought it and that's 59p in the bank, which is more than we'll get from Spotify.

Maybe they should think about sharing some of the revenue from their ads with the artists because, let's face it, without the music there would be nothing to interrupt with their shitty ads.

'ere boss, you like that dance shizzle don't ya? Yeah, me too.

2009-11-06T09:00:00.000-08:00

Ctrl Z vs The Freestylers -

This be a mash up that needs to be played on a large sound system - http://tinyurl.com/yhphjv6

And the A-Trak Remix of Yeah Yeah Yeahs

More french electronic stuff from france. It's Playbic. Flavour is great but I really like Mandrag
http://www.myspace.com/playbic

And the Ben Simms remix of Marco Bailey's 'Vision' is really rather strident.
On Juno

You don't have to be a looker to work here... but it helps!

2009-11-04T12:41:00.000-08:00

I never thought anyone could knock The Pogues off the top spot as one of the ugliest bands in the world. But then came Razorlight, setting the standard for the shallow new wave of guitar brit fop, with cliff sized teeth and hair from a poorly shot 80's sex flick.

But by god, even they have been beaten.

Can anyone actually look The Enemy in the face without screaming? Seriously, their singer has a face like an badly fitted bin bag. And don't get me started about haunted, wonk haired La Roux.

There was a time when to be a chart topping band you had to have the sort of looks that could deftly fill the pages of Smash Hits, making make girls swoon and have boys furiously sweating off a handy one when mum wasn't looking.

Apparently "it's all about the music" these days. But is it, is it really?

I grew up in the 80's where there were two prerequisites for getting a record deal - Talent & Looks - Neither of which seem to be a requirement or criteria for success when looking for the next big thing. What on earth do A&R get paid to do if it's not signing bands, sacking the ugly ones or just totally blanking them and forgetting to tell them about photo shoots. Didn't it used be referred to as 'doing a Craig Logan'?

I mention the examples above, all of whom are fairly successful artists, however the substance of their material is somewhat dubious and actual talent questionable. The fact is, I'm not sure how much of a cultural impact they're going to have without meeting at least one of the criteria.

Let's have a quick think about some people who have their faults:

Richard D James - a fairly unattractive man and ginger to boot. But his incredible pioneering experimentation created a genre of music that paved the way for the electronica sound infused in almost every pop song today.

Radiohead - not lookers but they've written a few songs haven't they, some of which may have inspired a generation of young indie kids to looking further afield for material.

Duran Duran - they had it all didn't they, the looks, the production, the songwriting skills, the swooning chicks. Super talented men.

Robbie Williams - A total arse, but the ladies love him, he's a great performer and he also happens to have co-written the most played song ever

Bananarama - Hot, mad, great pop songs. Did I mention they were hot?

So the thing is, if our pop stars are getting uglier and less talented you have wonder why none of the real talent out there is getting noticed and rising to the top. Maybe we've all become less discerning over the last few years and consider talent and beauty as a bit too flash - we are after all a nation that revels in the disappointment and failure of others. Mind you, that doesn't explain pop dwarfs '911' who, for some inexplicable reason, were hot shit back in '96.

Perhaps then it might be that music industry marketing campaigns have become so adept at pushing the hype that people believe they might actually die if they don't do as they're told and just BUY EVERYTHING BECAUSE IT'S NEW AND EXCITING AND THAT'S WHAT YOUR DULL MEANINGLESS LIFE NEEDS RIGHT NOW.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is if the Music industry wants to force us to endure a chart full of utter horse toss then they could at least make an effort to disguise the fact that it's shit by blinding us with sheer beauty.

Next up - Is La Roux haunted?

2009-10-22T06:19:00.000-07:00

Let's face it, stupid people that vote for the BNP will always be stupid and therefore are generally wrong.

When the clever people (that tell the stupid people how to think) do stupid things like, oh say, restricting the freedom of speech of stupid people then it just makes the stupid people right and the clever people look stupid. You get me?

Another recommended Album

2009-08-10T07:16:00.000-07:00

If you like the Flaming Lips then you'll like Stardeaths and White Dwarfs. It's got Wayne Coyne's brother it it.

'The Birth' is a kinda epic album.

http://www.stardeathandwhitedwarfs.com/

Esser Album out

2009-04-28T10:06:00.000-07:00

You need to check this album from Ben Esser & co, it's pretty awesome electropop awesomeness. Below is the vid for the single Headlock. It's got some girls doing a dance routine in it and I'm always up for a bit of that.

It's a london thing. Isit?

2008-12-12T15:11:00.000-08:00

I've never been one to turn my nose up at anything free but when it comes to the free papers, given away as part of London transports 'welcome to hell' package, I have a bit of a problem. By the very nature of them being free means the content is written predominantly by lazy journalists that have blatantly cut and pasted paragraphs of news from an earlier edition of another free paper or egregious pisscranes that are simply awash with their own sense of somebody else' opinion.

Take the London Papers' Chantelle Fiddy. I'm confused.

She speaks with such an air of authority about the hottest new dubstep nights, or the latest trending tide of UK Funky clubs in South East London's answer to Hoxton, or the kids that are doing the Socashakalac in a 'recently pissed in by a tramp' corner of a kings cross car park. However her face says "I have no idea what all of these words mean, the nearest I've been to an underground club is when I accidentally got caught up in a large crowd on a platform of the tube. I just keep writing down what that office assistant girl keeps talking to her friends about on her phone. My hair is stuck like this. Help. I wish I had friends too". Baffling!

Luke Blackall can fuck off as well.

Stop moaning and get with the prog

2008-02-04T13:55:00.000-08:00

A highlight at this years MIDEM was a keynote speech by Paul McGuiness - manager of twangly guitar ponces U2 - focusing on how the digital industry is single handedly destroying the music industry by allowing people to steal music from poor downtrodden artists, like twangly guitar ponces U2. Bo hoo!

I admit as an interested observer I have been somewhat expectant of this speech. Important and influencial industry figures have been grumbling about it for ages whilst completely missing the point of what digital distribution could actually be for them if managed correctly.

For a business that's existence is purely down to thieving away mechanical rights for "...any other physical format not yet in existence in perpetuity" it was pretty slow on the uptake when it came to digital audio format distribution. And when the digital industry went to talk to the music industry about it they was far.too.busy lolling around in fruit and flowers to see that 'technological advance' would one day make a truly accessible format for the masses.

Mr McGuiness spoke of the great CD scam of the 80's where the industry asked artists for a larger royalty cut to develop the new format. However he conveniently skipped past the fact that when the artists refused to pay up, the cost was simply passed on to the consumer, raising the price of an album to around £15 quid. You know, given the opportunity, I reckon they might try the same thing with digital formats. After all, consumer is there to be brainwashed by god awful dirge and then totally rinsed financially.

No surprise then that the consumer might be a little tired of being financially raped by pretty much every single part of the biz and thinking that helping themselves is ok. But whilst there may be a slight element of payback you can't ignore the fact that if there's free shit to be had, people will have it. It's human nature, you can't control it.

So I buy a track on iTunes, make an MP3 version then share it with my missus via email/cd/memory stick. No point in me putting it on a P2P network because she, like the average consumer, have no idea what that means (and she works in digital). So who's monitoring me effectively breaking the law? And who, other than me, is accountable? This is just good old fashioned home taping. It's quick, uncomplicated and immediately accessible to all. If there is a threat to the financial stability of music sales then it is this.

Except it isn't is it. As single sales consistently rise year on year it is apparent that, despite protestations, home taping isn't actually killing music. If anything the industry has become more profitable from the creative freedom that digital technology offers the world of music. The global market has not only become bigger but has come closer to hand for both the majors and the independants.

Social media has created an audience that is easily accessible and totally exploitable for all, meaning that far more independents can grow organically outside of the confines of a major label deal. The only thing keeping the majors in profit is the fact that artists don't know enough about how to exploit these tools without it costing the earth. But they are learning... Fast!

I'd like to believe in some sort of utopia where, rather than moaning about piracy and blaming the ISP's, the music industry invested in a platform that assisted artists in their independence, working together towards fairer controls on distribution, pricing and financial returns. But that's never going to happen.

So I say to Mr McGuiness, it's not the ISPs and the software manufacturers that are your main concern. When anyone can create their own global market, sell their music themselves and retain 100% of the royalties, whose going to need the Record Companies, the Distributors, the Managers, the Lawyers?

My Favourite Ever Python

2008-01-30T05:41:00.000-08:00

I think that all right thinking people in this country are sick and tired of being told that ordinary, decent right thinking people in this country are fed up with being sick and tired. I'm certainly not, and I for one am sick and tired of being told that I am.

Awesome!

Friend or foe.co.uk?

2007-12-15T06:46:00.000-08:00

Our studio is next door to the headquarters of Friends of the Earth. When they're all out of the office, i.e. when they've all gone home, they leave their office lights on. All night.

I've called the Daily Mail.

Alright Now? Well no actually!

2007-12-07T09:22:00.001-08:00

On hearing that Lily allen was thinking about retiring after making one more album I felt it my duty to post this message on her website.

Hey Lily,

I heard that you're going to retire. Shame. My neighbour had a party last night, she put on your album at about 2am. I genuinely thought there was a fox "giving it round the back entrance" to a badger in my garden, so I let the dogs out of the lab.

Any chance you could fuck off like... now?

Goodbye Morning Runner, they didn't deserve you

2007-10-13T10:57:00.000-07:00

I am saddened, very saddened indeed to learn that one of the UK's most talented yet underrated bands have split this week after being unceremoniously dumped by Parlophone.

The split of Reading based Morning Runner is, in my opinion, a loss to a music scene that is struggling to give the consumers anything of outstanding quality and substance - something MR had in abundance.

Wilderness Is Paradise Now is a an exciting, heartfelt album that's not only well considered but deftly executed. One of the best debuts from a band in a very long time. Not only does it equal acclaimed releases from their peers (Coldplay & Keane) I would say it surpasses them greatly in terms of structure and depth.

So the reason for the split is being cited as the commercial failure of this album saying "Having been encouraged by the label to go away and experiment with what we were doing they made a u turn and decided that the music wasn't commercially viable and that they didn't want to put it out". Hmmm, maybe Parlophone should've tried a bit harder to sell the record and a little less time licking the balls of Chris Martin and his rapidly becoming 'concept band'.

One day I'll write a post about what being "commercially viable" actually means in the real world, in the meantime I have a theory about this demise.

Interestingly, MR were managed by the same person that managed Coldplay and who was sacked earlier this year, around about the same time Morning Runner were dropped by their label, the very same label that Coldplay are signed to.

I leave that for your consideration.

You should buy Wilderness Is Paradise Now. Have I said that it's a great album? Much better than Coldplay.