Music News & Comment

What fascinates me about the relationship between rock and roll and the internet is this: it is now possible for artists to have profitable music careers which take place mainly - or exclusively - online.

Using the net, bands can now conduct significant PR and marketing campaigns, organise global distribution, get airplay, sell merchandise and even do virtual gigs. Things that used to be the preserve of signed acts are now, thanks to the internet, real possibilities for independent artists. And as CDs disappear and record companies go bust, the idea of an 'online career' is not just an option for musicians - it may come to be the only option.

Despite the power of the internet, using it effectively is not as straightforward as bands like to think: it's not cost-free, and it involves a lot of work. But there are a lot of tools - many of them free - to help you, and in this blog post I thought I'd share some of the best ones I've found. You should find them extremely useful.

Getresponse - allows you to capture data and send e-newsletters to fans (automated if you like).

Stubmatic - allows you to sell tickets for your gigs and events, using Paypal.

Ping - a tool that allows you to update multiple social media profiles at once, either online or just by sending an SMS to a number.

Tweetdeck - another tool that allows you to simplify how you update a bunch of social networks in one go.

Tweet for a Track - really simple way of distributing music in exchange for an email address and a tweet.

Feedburner - a tool which lets people subscribe to your blog via email and in a host of readers. Doubles up as a simple way to capture email addresses and send newsletters.

Google Analytics - no band website is complete without Google Analytics installed on it. It gives you vital insights into how people are finding your music online.

Screen-resolution.com - lets you check how your website looks in a wide range of screen resolutions. This sounds boring, but it's actually incredibly useful and important.

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What's Rupert up to?

There's a bit of a buzz going round the newspaper industry right now which involves, rather predictably, Rupert Murdoch. He's been intimating a lot of late that free online news content might soon become a thing of the past, at least where his News International titles are concerned.

Well, good luck to him. Rupert may have been pretty shrewd with regard to his business dealings in the past - and this is possibly why the press are taking this idea seriously - but in the long run, I can't possibly see this idea of paying for news content working. Here's why:

Firstly, the internet doesn't respect copy protection. Once one person has content, countless other people do, because copying and distributing a file is insanely easy. There has been much energy expounded and cash spent by record companies to copy-protect their content - and all in vain: getting free albums is easier than ever (legally or illegally). There is nothing to suggest that the newspaper industry would be any more successful in putting a wall around text, which from a technical viewpoint is even easier to copy than music.

The second reason that copy-protecting newspapers will not work has to do with something that - somewhat ironically - Murdoch is very fond of: competition. Even if he finds a viable way to protect his content, where will that leave him? Competing against a bunch of other news organisations that are all offering their content for free. He's partly aware of this, which is why his titles are attacking the BBC so much for publishing free news content...but even if the Beeb was forced to remove or scale back its online news (not entirely unthinkable if the Tories get in next year), there would still be thousands of alternatives delivering quality, free, online news output. And that's before you even consider the blogosphere, an increasingly trusted source of news and comment (if all the big newspapers were to put their content behind a wall, bloggers would have a field day).

Before charging for his content, Murdoch would do well to check out a book called 'Free: The Future of a Radical Price' by Chris Anderson. In it Anderson shows how companies are increasingly using the power of free services or content to access new markets and generate profit. The classic example he cites is Ryanair: it gives its flights away for free in order to sell a bunch of other stuff: car hire, travel insurance, accommodation, train tickets, bus tickets, scratch cards, credit cards...the list is endless. But to date it has worked, albeit at the expense of horrible flights for its customers. And the reason that it has worked is that in truth Ryanair is not actually an airline but a provider of travel services (and anything else it can flog). The free flight is the turnkey that unlocks other - and very big - markets for the company.

And digitally, the power of free content is even more pronounced. Because of its cost-free, copy-and-paste nature, digital technology effectively creates unlimited supply. And as any economist knows, when there's unlimited supply, the price of what's being supplied will drop to zero; it cannot but become free.

Murdoch - and any other digital content provider - can try to fight this; but it's a losing battle. Whether you're a rock band, a filmmaker or a journalist, you simply have to face the fact that the internet is going to make your content available for free, whether you like it or not. Content creators have a choice: to restrict content, and put themselves at a massive disadvantage, or to think creatively as to how they can unleash the power of free content and distribution. It amazes me that somebody as savvy as Murdoch isn't aware of this, and it makes me wonder if there is some ulterior motive behind his floating of his idea of charging for content. It'll be interesting to see how it pans out.

The death of the MP3
Posted: 06 Oct 2009 03:26 PM PDT
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As many of you know, I've been quite an advocate of independent artists giving music away for free. Not because I don't value music, but because I don't think that indie musicians - and many established ones - have much of a choice around this. Digital technology and the internet has created an unlimited supply of recorded music, which means the real cost of it is rapidly approaching zero.

I've tried to take advantage of this as much as I can, by giving away MP3s in exchange for data. The idea being that you get my album free, but I can contact you about other stuff that you might want to pay for, like gigs or t-shirts (I've yet to do the latter: I find the idea of somebody wearing an item of clothing with my face on it hilarious). It's working fairly well, with thousands of people now owning a digital copy of Twisted City, and more and more strangers - yes, strangers! - attending my gigs.

But I'm increasingly aware that this 'business model' is slowly - or perhaps not so slowly - becoming of limited use. This is because like the wax disc, vinyl LP, 8-track cartridge, cassette, minidisc and CD that went before it, the (downloaded) MP3 is going to die out...and soon.

Why is the MP3 in its death throes? Because a combination of streaming and increasingly sophisticated mobile devices connected to the net are starting to give people instant access to vast, online music libraries. Soon, there simply won't be a need for people to store MP3s or carry them around on iPods (believe me, these currently hip devices are going to look very in the not-too-distant future). The humble MP3 represents the last incarnation of paid-for recorded music; and soon it will be a relic of the past.

What this means, of course, is that the current practice of artists giving away downloads in exchange for email addresses is also going to come to an end, and fairly soon. Which is a shame in many ways, as this has created an opportunity for musicians to generate large fanbases, and a cheap means to sell stuff direct to listeners, without record company involvement. If the MP3 is no more, with it dies the incentive for people to submit data for music; they'll just turn to Spotify to listen to stuff instead.

And where will this leave the record companies? It's an interesting one. Obviously if there is no recorded music left to buy, then they can hardly sell it. What they can sell though is concert tickets: there is still a profit to be made from is live performance: you can't make a digital copy of that. The result: record companies are going to have to become concert promoters if they want to survive.

So I think in about 5 years time the de facto model for the industry will be this:

1. Record company signs artist.
2. Record company advertises artist on TV, radio etc., encouraging people to stream their music on Spotify (or whatever the streaming service du jour is in 2014).
3. Fans do what they're told and stream Lady Gaga's new single (or whatever the electro-pop-cum-performance-artist sensation du jour is in 2014).
4. Record company puts on shows for the artist and sells tickets for them, taking a huge cut of sales.
5. If artist doesn't shift enough gig tickets, he or she is dropped, which means, yes, you got it...the artist is beholden to the record company again!

So if I were running a record company right now - and technically with my small label, Brownpaper Records, I suppose I am - I'd be turning it into a promotions company and looking for ways to get as much of the ticket sales pie as possible. And a cut of of everything else that's going too - publishing, sync rights, merchandise and so on. The buzz term for that is the '360 degree' model. I call it the piece-of-everything-you-ever-make-or-I'll-sue-your-ass model.

Chris Singleton's Blog

Spotify
Posted: 28 Apr 2009 01:08 PM PDT
A while ago I wrote about the future of rock and roll. The future, in my view, was that that rather than being bought, music would either be swapped for data (email addresses), or would be provided through an on-demand streaming service where listeners stream tracks for free so long as they listen to ads.

The 'music for data' half of that future arrived a while ago, with Radiohead's 'honesty box' release, In Rainbows; the second half has now arrived too, with the release of Spotify.

Spotify is a program which, once installed on your computer, allows you to legally stream pretty much any song you want (using an iTunes-style interface). But every three songs or so, you have to listen to an advert before you can play another track. Alternatively, you can pay £9.99 a month to listen to as much ad-free music as you like (about the cost of a newly-released chart cd).

Spotify represents a revolution in how we consume music - and if this way of listening to music becomes the norm (which I'm pretty confident it will), the implications for the music industry are enormous. There are three areas which I think will be particularly affected.

First, I've got a feeling that Spotify will slowly spell the end of the line for iTunes and other digital download services. Ok, so you can't currently download anything from Spotify on to an MP3 player - you have to play tracks through a computer that's connected to the internet. But that scenario is likely to change quite quickly, thanks to mobile broadband connections. If people can start streaming music from the internet onto their mobile phones using Spotify and 3G connections, then the need for MP3s becomes redundant (indeed, a Spotify application for the iPhone is already being discussed).

The second big impact is going to be on radio stations that primarily broadcast music. If a mobile phone version of Spotify comes along, you can pretty much take any music with you, anywhere. I'd be amazed if this didn't have an impact on the likes of Radio 1 and Radio 2. They might have to change their content somewhat to attract new listeners - I can imagine a lot more chat or documentaries about particular artists becoming a part of their schedules, to compensate for the fact that people are getting their music on the go elsewhere.

Finally, it's going to impact artists. If Spotify or a similar service becomes the de facto way to listen to music, then the whole idea of physical album sales is finally dead. Musicians will generate income from each play on Spotify - the PRS will make sure of that - but I doubt it will be as much as the income that physical cds used to bring in. Also, if the number of people who listen to radio stations falls, then so will royalties, so it will be hard for us rock and rollers to make money that way too.

Ultimately what all this spells for artists is that in future, the real money is going to be in gigging. Instead of record deals, we'll be looking for promoters to put us on a tour - in fact, I think the record companies are slowly morphing into promoters.

That's because a live performance by your favourite band in a real venue is one thing that the internet can't yet provide...but watch this space.

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YouTube beats radio for music discovery, survey claims YouTube is replacing traditional radio as the “discovery medium” of choice for young consumers, according to the fourth annual Convergence Consumer Survey from media law firm Olswang.

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

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."

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."