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Dear Lily - An Open Letter (in song) to Lily Allen
It’s absolutely brilliant and funny and awesome. Read the background on it here.
CWTV Music - Supernatural
This is exactly what they should be doing! Granted I think they should have links to Amazon too, not just iTunes. And I think they’re being half-assed about the songs they’re listing (dude, the episode titles tend to be song titles…put those songs up for sale too!). BUT! Putting up song lists with links to buy at all is a great idea.
They’ve probably had it up for months and I only now noticed, but wtfe, I think it’s nifty. :D
please be sure to read the whole article linked at the bottom of the quoted section
Image by Getty Images via Daylife
During the late 80s and early 90s the industry underwent a transformation and restructured, catalyzed by three distinct factors. Record companies no longer viewed themselves as conduits for music, but as functions of the manipulations of Wall Street. Companies were acquired, conglomerated, bought and sold; public stock offerings ensued, shareholders met. At this very same time, new Nielsen monitoring systems — BDS (Broadcast Data Systems) and SoundScan were employed to document record sales and radio airplay. Prior to 1991, the Billboard charts were done by manual research; radio stations and record stores across the country were polled to determine what was on their playlists and what the big sellers were. Thus, giving Oklahoma City, for example, an equivalent voice to Chicago’s in terms of potential impact on the music scene. BDS keeps track of gross impressions through an encoded system that counts the number of plays or “spins” that a song receives. That number is, thereafter, multiplied by the number of potential listeners. SoundScan was put in place at retail centers to track sales by monitoring scanned barcodes of units crossing the counter. A formula was devised whereby the charts were based 20% on the SoundScan number and 80% on BDS results. The system had changed from one that measured popularity to one that was driven by population.
Record companies soon discovered that because of BDS, they only needed to concentrate on about 12 radio stations; there was no longer a business rationale for working secondary markets that were soon forgotten — despite the fact that these were the very places where rock and roll was born and thrived. Why pay attention to Louisville — worth a comparatively few potential listeners — when the same one spin in New York, Los Angeles or Atlanta, etc., was worth so many more potential listeners? All of a sudden there were #1 records that few of us had ever heard of. At the time we asked ourselves, “Am I out of touch?” We didn’t realize that this was the start of change that would grow to kill, if not the whole of the music business, then most certainly, the record companies.
- Read the rest of the article
And that’s it, right there, the bolded text. The record companies have murdered their own industry. And if TicketMaster and Live Nation are allowed to merge, they’ll perform the same ‘service’ on the live music industry.
I’ve only just begun to fall in love with music again. To care about it as more than comfortable background noise. I would really, really appreciate it if the artists I enjoy are able to continue making music. I would love it also if I could continue to go see them in concert without having to take out a small loan.
In the United States, royalties for public performances are paid to songwriters, composers and publishers. But what about the person who performs the song?
Consider this. When you hear John Coltrane’s recording of ‘My Favorite Things’ on the radio in the US, the estates of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein - the composers of ‘My Favorite Things’ - are compensated through ASCAP. But the estate of John Coltrane receives nothing for this performance.
However, if you hear the same performance on XM or Sirius, or via a webcast, or on a cable music station - even on that terrestrial radio station’s webcast - both Rodgers and Hammerstein’s estates AND John Coltrane’s estate are compensated.
Why the difference? US terrestrial broadcasters are exempt from paying a public performance right for sound recordings.
- FACT SHEET: Public Performance Right for Sound Recordings (Future of Music)
Now, I don’t feel that someone who has been dead for 42 freaking years (the Mr. Coltrane mentioned above) really needs to be receiving even one penny of compensation for their work. But the psychotic (and grossly damaging) copyright laws that have been inflicted on this country are a bigger issue that I’ll deal with in a different post.
The fact sheet version of events do sound bizarre, for sure. It seems straightforward to say that artists should be paid a performance fee on digital, internet and terrestrial radio. In fact, most other countries in the world do pay artists for radio performances. But that’s not really the whole picture. To get a better idea of the complicated mess that this whole argument uncovers, read through the following article from Radio Ink Magazine:
Proponents point out that, as currently proposed, the fee would add just $5,000 to small stations’ budgets, while larger stations would pay heftier amounts (possibly as much as 20 percent of gross revenue). A “small” station is defined in the bill as doing under $1.25 million in gross annual revenues. All other considerations aside, anyone who has ever put together a radio station budget will probably agree that $1.25 million in gross revenues doesn’t go very far.
At the heart of the issue for broadcasters, however, is a relationship that has been both symbiotic and mutually beneficial. Airplay by radio stations offers exposure for new artists and continued promotion for those already established. But artists’ advocacy groups don’t see it that way — and so we come to the Performance Rights Act.
- Pay for Play? (Radio Ink Magazine)
Like I said, it’s a tangled mess. No one in their right mind would think it good to deny artists fair payment for their work (which explains a lot about the record labels’ sanity). But this issue isn’t that simple. This is another area where the entanglement/enslavement of the artist to the label really hurts the artist.
At this point, the Performance Rights Act has very little to do with giving the actual artists any rights, as far as I can tell. Instead, it appears to be a fight between huge corporations with dying business plans. And, quite honestly, I can’t bring myself to give a damn about a corporation that makes billions of dollars ripping off artists and fans alike.
Read the whole thing, or check out the quotes:
Trent Reznor’s thoughts on ticket re-selling / scalping
Here’s the rub: TicketMaster has essentially been a monopoly for many years - certainly up until Live Nation’s exclusive deal ran out. They could have (and can right now) stop the secondary market dead in its tracks by doing the following: limit the amount of sales per customer, print names on the tickets and require ID / ticket matches at the venue. We know this works because we do it for our pre-sales. Why don’t THEY do it? It’s obvious - they make a lot of money fueling the secondary market. TicketMaster even bought a re-seller site and often bounces you over to that site to buy tickets (TicketsNow.com)!
and later
My guess as to what will eventually happen if / when Live Nation and TicketMaster merges is that they’ll move to an auction or market-based pricing scheme - which will simply mean it will cost a lot more to get a good seat for a hot show. They will simply BECOME the scalper, eliminating them from the mix. Nothing’s going to change until the ticketing entity gets serious about stopping the problem - which of course they don’t see as a problem. The ultimate way to hurt scalpers is to not support them. Leave them holding the merchandise. If this subject interests you, check out the following links. Don’t buy from scalpers, and be suspect of artists singing the praises of the Live Nation / TicketMaster merger. What’s in it for them?
Two posts, the first one is from the BBC and is a series of quotes by artists over in the UK talking about why they want a union of sorts. It’s hard to read some of their comments because some of them seem very confused/misinformed about exactly why their income is suffering during this transitional time. However, I think it’s utterly vital that something like this union comes about because I feel that the healthy growth of the music industry is dependent on the elimination or extreme reduction of all the crap that stands between artist and fan/customer.
‘Why music artists need a voice’
By Ian Youngs, Music reporter, BBC News
Music artists ranging from big names to new acts have come together in London to launch the Featured Artists’ Coalition, a new protest group aiming to give musicians a voice in big deals and decisions in the music industry.
The next article is from the blog Juggernaut Brew, which I recently began reading. While I disagree with parts of it, I don’t in fact think it’s YouTube’s job to figure out how to create a new revenue stream for the music industry, overall I think it brings up some important points.
Blood & stones: Squeezing value from music video
Keith Jopling, Juggernaut Brew
The PRS-You Tube squabble isn’t trivial, it strikes at the very heart of the music industry’s commercial model and means to future sustenance. The debate over the value of music videos on the web is a pre-cursor to the future debate of music itself on the web, what with Spotify’s momentum signalling the true arrival of ad-funded streaming services.
The difference between the two of course (music video and music itself), is that music video has never had much in the way of transparent market value, ever. The term ‘promo’ is such for a reason. The original deal between the labels and MTV was as good as barter – license the content for nothing and broadcast it as a promotional platform for the on-sale of a transactional good – CDs. One business model: going, going, eventually gone.
I think that finding a way to turn music videos into a revenue stream is going to be a little more difficult than the music itself. Videos have always been (apparently) free to the customer. We only had to ‘pay’ by sitting through commercials. Getting customers to agree to pay directly for something they’ve only ever paid for indirectly is a HUGE challenge. Especially since there is no damn way to turn back the clock on the ease of sharing digital content for free.
When it comes to streaming video, getting customers to pay directly is going to be even tougher. And getting sites like YouTube, who bear the entire cost (monetary and practical) of hosting and streaming the videos to pay outrageous ad percentages is also going to be a hard sell. If someone else is doing all the work for you, you can’t make them give you most of the money. I mean, I know that labels are used to that idea because of how they enslave the artists, but in Netland that shit don’t fly.
I don’t have the answers, but I feel strongly that it’s vital that the people who actually create the content be directly involved in how their work is used and how the money that’s made from it is apportioned. And I truly hope that with less bureaucracy standing between artists and fans both groups will get more of what they want.
