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The MCPS-PRS Alliance has joined the chorus of approval backing the decision by ISPs to work with the UK music industry to encourage legitimate music downloads.

The Alliance says that encouraging legitimate online activity could bring back the equilibrium to the UK’s music industry, helping to generate more royalties for its 60,000 composers and songwriters and their music publishers.

“This joint industry initiative is significant as a way of redressing the balance between unlicensed and legitimate online music downloads,” said Alliance CEO Steve Porter.

“Together with our delivering effective online licensing solutions this provides a way to enable the growth of a wide range of attractive music services whilst at the same time ensuring the creators of music are paid for their work.”

MCPS-PRS claims that the vast majority of songwriters and composers - around 90% - earn less than £5,000 per year from royalties and the Alliance is concerned that continual erosion from unlicensed music usage could deter talented people from remaining in and entering the industry in the future.

But the pact signed between ISPs and the music industry could alleviate those concerns by significantly reducing the levels of illegal file sharing in the UK.

Facebook – 123.9 million
MySpace – 114.6 million
Hi5 – 49.6 million
Friendster – 38.1 million
Orkut – 32.2 million
Bebo – 25.1 million

Cuba said on Friday it will allow all Cubans to buy and use mobile telephones for the first time in the latest step by new President Raul Castro to improve access to consumer goods.

Warner embraces MP3s in Europe

Music sales vs film/games

To listen to Taio Cruz, you'd think it was easy to write a hit single, says Neil McCormick in The Daily Telegraph. The British R&B star was responsible for Umbrella, a song that topped the charts in the UK and the US last year. He had trouble getting it made (he submitted it to Britney Spears and Mary J Blige before it was taken on by Rihanna) but he always knew he had a hit on his hands. "The sentiment - 'When the sun shines, we shine together' - is something any girlfriend or boyfriend would want to hear. The melody is really strong, but simplicity and repetition is everything. The audience can be distracted quite easily, so you want something they can sing along with immediately. 'Under my umb-er-ella, 'ella, 'ella, 'ella, eh, eh, eh' is so simple it's like a playground chant. If you look at the most successful songs, they are choruses of four or five words, three notes, repeated. It's not rocket science."

Maybe ears get too much credit. What about the inner ear's basilar membrane, which triggers millions of neurons that set off a psychedelic light show of electrical impulses in the brain?
As long as Nashville has been a songwriter's town, there's been a lot of talk about exactly what makes for a great demo. Some say all they need is a rough work tape - just a voice backed by a single instrument - to spot a great tune. Others say a fully produced demo is the key to understanding if a song or an artist is worthwhile. It turns out the answer could be more physiological than either side suspects.

"How a demo is perceived may lie at a sensory encoding level as opposed to a cognitive level," said Jeremy Federman, a researcher and Ph.D. candidate at Nashville's Vanderbilt University who specializes in audiology and music perception and cognition. As a former L.A.based songwriter, Federman brings more than one perspective to this discussion.

"When I was pitching a song to Bonnie Raitt's producer, he said they didn't want fully produced demos because they like to do whatever they want to songs, with no preconceived ideas," Federman related. "But all of my demos were fully produced because of an intuition that a lot of people don't really know what they are listening for."

Federman cautioned that "music perception and cognition is a brand new area of research and conclusive results are just emerging." However, experiments have revealed that more electrical impulses occur, while listening to or performing music, in the brains of musicians than non-musicians because more brain areas are activated, and that the basilar membrane within the inner ear, which converts vibrations from sound into signals in the brain, is more stimulated by a full band than a solo performance.
"Other factors - the skill level of the musicians, the mood and emotional state ofthe listener - can also affect perception,"Federman added."But more complex signals do generate more excitation in the inner ear and brain. So it's possible that a fully produced demo could get a better reception because it causes more neurons to fire."

Meanwhile, the debate continues on Music Row...
"As a producer, I prefer getting work tapes," said Rivers Rutherford.
"That gives me an opportunity to hear my own interpretations." But in addition to producing albums for Montgomery Gentry, Jamie O'Neal and other artists, Rutherford has penned smashes for Brooks & Dunn, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw, Brad Paisley and Gretchen Wilson - and in submitting his songs for consideration, he has learned that sometimes a solo demo just doesn't do the trick.
"I've had it work both ways," he attested.

Rutherford has also found that the process of recording a full-band demo might even improve a song's structure. Nine years ago, he and co-writer Tom Shapiro had a guitar-and-voice work tape of a tune they believed in. "But it didn't get any interest," Rutherford recalled. "Then we went to demo it in the studio, and I realized while hearing the band play that the work tape was six to eight beats a minute too slow. So we sped it up." The result was Brooks & Dunn's NO.1 single, "Ain't Nothing 'Bout You."

At typically $800 to $1,000 per song, recording a demo with a band in a Nashville studio is an expensive lottery ticket. But if it hits, the payoff can be big.

Tom Hambridge won an ASCAP Song of the Year Award in 2007 for co-writing Keith Anderson's Top 5 hit "Every Time I Hear Your Name," which was shopped as a fully produced demo. Although he's had tunes recorded by Rodney Atkins, Billy Ray Cyrus, Joe Nichols, Montgomery Gentry and many others, Hambridge is, like Rutherford, also a solo artist and producer, with albums by Susan Tedeschi, George Thorogood and Johnny Winter among his production credits.

"Because I'm a songwriter, when I'm producing I can hear a good song whether it's just a singer with a guitar or a full band," Hambridge said. "But I always do full productions of my own songs that I'm going to pitch, including background singers. In Country Music, the bar is so high that you need to get your song across in the best way possible.The greatest songwriters in the world are here in Nashville, vying for spots on big Country albums every day, and not every decision maker hears things the same way."

This means presenting each of his songs in a form most likely to help a variety of listeners hear its particular strengths. "Some producers are wizards behind the board, but they need to know what a finished song might sound like," Hambridge said. "A&R staff may help pick tunes - or management or maybe even the president of a record company. If a label or artist is really going to bet on a song, the marketing department might be asked for an opinion on whether radio will play it. and chances are not all of those people are songwriters.

"Let's put it this way," Hambridge summed up. "If you really want to knock somebody out, do you give them a shiny new car or the old one that's back in the shed?"

In Country Music, the bar is so high that you need to get your song across in the best way possible - Tom Hambridge
All of my demos were fully produced because of an intuition that a lot of people don't really know what they are listening for. - Jeremy Federman

Get It Done: "A work tape is crucial," said Rivers Rutherford. "Specifically, it's a blueprint for demo studio musicians. Beyond that, with just one instrument, one voice, and a cheap digital recorder, it might be all you need to bring a tune to life. Just be sure you're got the structure of the song tight."

Hit Your Groove: "Make sure your tempo is correct for the song and that it's locked in," said Rutherford." The groove has to be on the money for a song to be convincing."

Sing It Pretty: "You need a believable vocal performance of a good melody," Rutherford noted. "You don't want to get too over-emotive. This is a song-driven market, not a record-driven market like rock 'n' roll, so you're just trying to get the spirit of a song across."

Buddy Up: A good studio crew can cut four or five songs in an afternoon session. Tom Hambridge suggests sharing sessions with other writers. "Sometimes there are five or more different writers at a session, all splitting the cost to get good demos of their best tunes."

Trust Your Musicians: "In Nashville the session musicians are the best in the world at getting demos done," said Hambridge. "Songwriters are not usually producers, but good musicians spend so much time in the studio playing on all kinds of songs that they often know exactly what you're going for. listen to their ideas."

Polish Your Sound: Hambridge likes the sheen added to his demos by a final run through the various compressors, EQs and other devices used in mastering. "My demos sound like commercial recordings," said Hambridge,"because that's what most people are used to hearing."

Get Personal: Once you've got demos to pitch, network through artists' rights organizations, publishers, showcases, parties, etc. - wherever you can find the industry people best positioned to help place your song. And make friends."There's no guarantee that artists, managers or label people are going to hear your demos," Hambridge said. "You've got to get out there and make them interested in you."