music labels to bands: "Social network - or else!!"

That's the basic gist of this reformatted press release over on CNET.

Skip about halfway down the article to read quotes that make Daniel Glass sound like a class-a jerkface. His tone is indignant and borderline self-righteous as he describes how he skipped signing a band to his label because they wouldn't tweet their every stage move. Seriously, check this quote:

"There may be some indie hipper-than-thou artists who want to let the music speak for itself . . . they are probably not for us."

How dare these impudent punks deny the all-powerful marketing tool of social media and slow the flow of dollars into Glass' pockets?!

Wait . . . huh? Money? Pockets?

Well, yeah. Think about it. How does the band's effort to promote itself through social media pay off for them? An active facebook, myspace or hosted webpage will result in some extra people showing up to see your band when you roll through town. If you set up an e-commerce store you might sell some tee shirts or cds direct and make some cash.

But I'll bet you a Motorola Cliq that's not what has Glass hot and bothered over your twitter account. He's hoping your online activity will generate music sales that put dollars in the label's coffers, and pennies in yours. Because in today's internet world social media = marketing = sales. Theoretically, at least.

Don't get me wrong; none of these things are bad by themselves. Maintaining a prominent profile with its online fans is important for most bands. Making it easy for its fans to support and follow them is a good thing. Bands deserve to get paid for their music, the same way doctors gets paid for their medicine. But making social-media-savviness a prerequisite for a record contract is ridiculous.

In fact, if social media is going to start having an influence on record contracts, the flow of influence and dollars should be going the other direction. If a band chooses to utilize the internet to promote itself, the label should pay them for their marketing efforts the same way they'd pay an in-house marketing staffer or a&r rep. Let's see a band's manager or lawyer bust that point of view out during contract negotiations and see how Glass reacts.



Afterthought:
I'd also like to see some analysis of the time a band spends promoting itself online through social media and compare the payoff against the time spent doing other work with its music (concerts, recording, practice, etc.) to see which is the more productive.

Ha-YUGE News From Pitchfork

Pitchfork is starting a 24-hour, internet TV music channel for independent music! Launching April 7, Pitchfork.tv will be an on-demand, high-resolution video channel dedicated to covering indie musicians in news-documentary style through Pitchfork-original segments. According to the press release they've got really cool stuff cued up like video of basement gigs and jams, full concerts, interviews, and the tried-and-true music video. In addition to the original content, they're also going to show full-length feature music films. Obviously, you can read the press release for all the details, but as a fan of independent music and musicians, I'm really, really excited. I hope this is as cool as it sounds.

Rainbows Remixed

The remix album is nothing new. Since the '80s artists have been letting producers and other artists remix their music. Of course, the whole idea came from the clubs, where it's been going on a lot longer. Used to be, it was done to add a more dance-friendly beat to a song, or make it more club-oriented.

Over the years, DJs and remixers have slowly put more and more of themselves into these new versions. Sometimes in very cool ways, sometimes in ways that caused some head scratching. In the '90s the art of the remix was taken to whole new levels, with DJs and producers not just remixing, but in some cases re-imagining a completed album. To some, this was blasphemy. To others, it was exciting. Some say that DJs are simply stealing other artists' music and screwing it up. Obviously the people on the other side of the process feel very, very differently.

I think what both sides should admit to themselves and each other is that the creative process can be funny thing. We don't always choose what we are inspired by, or even sometimes what we are inspired to do with our ideas. On top of that, "borrowing" ideas in music is nothing new. Hell, borrowing ideas in art is nothing new, much less music. Art is nothing more than a human being's interpretation (or re-interpretation) of life; usually a physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual object or aspect of their environment. The best art—and also music—reflects all four. Pieces of reality combined with figments of our imagination and filtered through our own, unique creative process.

This is the modern remix. A musical artist hears a piece of music created by another musical artist and is inspired to create/interpret/alter/experiment. The end result may not be something the original artist or their fans even like, but I think it's time for everyone to back down and realize that, yes, it is art.

With that, listen and consider Amplive's Rainydayz Remixes of the Radiohead album In Rainbows.

Last.fm Is Cleared To Stream

According to an entry on the Last.fm blog, the company has gotten clearance to stream full tracks—for free(!)—from their website. Every single stream of a song will result in a payment directly to the artist, no middle men and no b.s. Pretty cool. The only downside is the streams are not unlimited.

There are a lot of details in their blog post, but basically they got all the record labels involved--majors, minors, and independents--to agree to it based on a subscription service they're going to roll out soon. During the interim you can stream each song three times and then a message is supposed to inform you about the subscription service. I'm not sure what is supposed to happen after that, but I tried it and no message about the subscription popped up and it definitely wouldn't let me listen a fourth time. I just got the old "Oops, we had a problem connecting" error message.

Anyway, when the subscription service is up and running, you'll get unlimited streams for a monthly fee. No word on what the fee will be or if non-subscribers will still be able to get three free streams. I'm pretty sure the standard scrobbling will continue. It would be suicide for them to dump that.

I like Last.fm and use it a lot, along with the desktop scrobbler. If you like music--and if you're here it's reasonable that you do--you should check it out.

Are You Tone Deaf? Let's Find Out

Ever been called tone deaf? Prove you aren't. Or conversely, you can prove someone else is.

This cool test for tone deafness comes straight from the labs of Harvard Medical School.

Cool new internet resources for musicians

I just found this article over at Reuters that lists several new web-based services aimed at helping independent musicians. The best part? They're all free. Free is such a nice price.

Fanbridge is another cool (and free) service not listed in the article that musicians might want to know about. It basically brings mailing list management for your fan base into the Internet era.

Good stuff abounds.

Stolen Thunder

I've been quiet for a few reasons. The first of which is that I wanted to leave the Internet Radio brouhaha at the top of my blog so anyone who came here would see it and (hopefully) respond. The second is that I was doing some research to put up a big, long post detailing exactly who and what SoundExchange is. A bit of investigative journalism, if you will.

In the course of that research, I found this post on Daily Kos, which pretty much took all the wind out of my sails. In just a few paragraphs Douglas Giles—a.k.a. DJ ProFusion—turns the heat lamps on SoundExchange and illuminates the entire situation Internet radio currently finds itself in.

So instead of listening to me ramble on for eight or nine paragraphs, you can just click over and read the article Save Internet Radio From Corporate Money Grab for yourself.

Internet Radio Royalty Rate Due Date Pushed Back

FMQB posts that the Copyright Royalty Board has delayed the deadline for royalty payments from web-based radio broadcasters. The date has been moved from May 15 to July 15, giving Internet radio stations and other interested parties (like, maybe the 57 million weekly listeners) an extra 45 days to get their act together and appeal this despicable thing. NPR already has their appeal in the works, and will reportedly be filed soon.

Just as crucial is the need to contact your Congressional Representative to show your support for the Internet Radio Equality Act. You can easily find out who your representative is by going to the Act Now page on the SaveNetRadio.org website and clicking on "Call your members of Congress" link. Enter your zip code, then just dial the phone number and follow the instructions provided on the page. Just think of it as one more way of sticking it to the man. In this case, the man happens to be an 18-member board of trustees formed by the RIAA and instructed to crush Internet radio: SoundExchange.

And if you're feeling especially generous with your time, drop an email to Representatives Jay Inslee and Donald Manzullo to say, "Thanks," for their effort in introducing this important piece of bipartisan legislation.

Use your phone to save music

As I noted in the previous post, the future of Internet radio is in immediate danger. A crippling royalty rate increase for webcasters—which is also retroactive to January 1, 2006—is due to go into effect on May 15. A large chunk of internet radio stations will be forced to shut down on that date, but there is still time to act.

Representatives Jay Inslee (D-WA) and Donald Manzullo (R-IL) have introduced H.R. 2060, The Internet Radio Equality Act, which if passed will save the Internet radio industry. Please call your congressperson to ask them to co-sponsor H.R. 2060.

I called this morning after I was informed how to take action in an email from SaveNetRadio.org. It was very easy. The aide who answered the phone was very non-threatening and it took less than a minute to say my piece. Don't be afraid to call, and don't think it will take a long time. It's painless and the possible payoff is huge.

Call Your Representative!

Find out who your representative is by going to the Act Now page on the SaveNetRadio.org website and clicking on "Call your members of Congress" link. Find who your representative(s) is by entering your zip code, then just dial the phone number and follow the instructions provided on the page.

And if you're feeling especially generous with your time, drop an email to Representatives Jay Inslee and Donald Manzullo to say, "Thanks," for their effort.

Can you save Internet radio?

Internet radio has had a stake driven through its young heart by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board. To make a long story short, the Royalty Board—spurred on by hacks and lawyers at SoundExchange (an RIAA front)—decided to raise the royalty rates Internet broadcasters must pay to broadcast music. While the rate raise is only pennies per song, it adds up to a nearly 150% increase in fees. That's a lot. Increase your rent by 150% and see how quickly you have to move.

To make it worse the fees are retroactive, meaning a lot of Internet broadcasters will have to immediately shell out a lump sum payment for music they've already played. I'm not going to sugarcoat it: things look bad. An appeal of the decision has already been denied.

SaveNetRadio.org is a website that's trying to spread the word and also offers fans of Internet radio a chance to contact their representatives and have them ask for a Congressional appeal of the decision. Take a few minutes, click over to SaveNetRadio.org and use their extremely easy to use website to contact your Congressional representative(s) and ask them to help save Internet radio.

Internet Jamming Part Deux

In the interest of competition, Sonoma Wire Works offers a similar service through their excellent RiffWorks software. The technology, called RiffLink, is built into RiffWorks. Although still in beta, I've heard second hand that it works pretty well.

The excellent Line 6 Guitar Port RiffTracker comes with a version of RiffWorks as well as a passel of Line 6's famous amp and effects models. In addition to hosting RiffLink, RiffWorks is an excellent computer recording and practicing platform developed especially for guitar and bass players.

Update: Apparently, RiffLink works really, really well because it's already inspired a band. I'm proud to present to you the RiffLink Junkies. Enjoy, people, enjoy.

Jamming comes to the Internet age

Tired of playing with the flaky musicians in your home town? Thanks to eJamming now you can play with flaky musicians in other cities, too! No, seriously, eJamming is a cool new online service company which uses peer to peer technology and good ol' fashioned MIDI to make playing with other musicians online a reality.



The technology is being demoed at the appropriately named Demo conference to generate interest and show off what they've accomplished. Which, if it works as advertised, will be pretty liberating for musicians. I mean, I would imagine that if you're a huge post-rock fan living in Tuscaloosa, you've probably had a hard time finding four or five other mates to come over and jam on the latest Sigur Ros record. eJamming to the rescue! The computer requirements seem reasonable so if you're MIDI and Internet equipped—and looking for new people to jam with—you should check it out.

If you're in need of a computer and MIDI-savvy instrument, you can pick up something small like the M-Audio Axiom 25, or the E-Mu Xboard 49. If you've got a keyboard with MIDI, you can just get the M-Audio USB Uno or the Yamaha UX16 and you're ready.

For guitarists, check out the Switch Wild IV MIDI electric guitar or the Brian Moore i8.13 MIDI electric guitar. You could also simply buy a special pickup like the Shadow Quick Mount guitar-to-MIDI converter.