A few days ago I posted a short piece about how fitness clubs were now getting hit with higher fees to play music – a jump from 96.8 cents a class, with a cap of $2654 a year, to the new fee of $15 each class or $1 per attendee of each class. While most fitness clubs can afford this without any real issue, my concern is that it now adds ammunition in their fight to increase fees in other areas. And while I’m a big supporter of bands getting the money they deserve, sadly the money doesn’t always go where the intentions dictate they should.
For a bit of background, the Phonographic Performance Company of Australia (PPCA) tried this back in July 2007 (My bit, Mess & Noise, SMH, PPCA has removed the release from their site), when they tried to push the cost of playing music from 20c a song to $3.07 a patron. Based on the capacity of the venue rather than how many people are inside.
For example, a venue with a capacity of 500-people would be billed $1500+ just to be licensed to play music. If only 100-people turn up that night, tough, the price still stands.
Now if that venue has to pay extra for licensing, they won’t pay for it out of their pocket, they will pass that on to the punters. If you run a club, you will have to cover that cost as well as the bar cover. And for most of the clubs I go to, that will mean free nights will become $10-$15-nights, and the rest will need to double the entry fee just to open the door. That cost will stop people from coming to the club, and, well you can guess where that will end.
We can only hope the PPCA learnt from they bollocking they copped last time they tried this, and are happy to just siphon off money from the fitness clubs. If they do try again… all that promotion given by clubs playing music, will disappear. Along with most of the clubs.
Friend and fellow DJ/muso Pete from Shiv-R/Plague Sequence/The Crystalline Effect has just made The Crystalline Effect’s latest tracks, an ode to Ada Lovelace, available for free to celebrate Ada Lovelace Day (March 25th). Here’s what Pete (and Elenore) have to say.
March 25th is Ada Lovelace Day. We are currently working on the 3rd full-length album for The Crystalline Effect and have just written a song about Ada Lovelace. When we found out that it was Ada Lovelace day, it felt like more than a coincidence. So to celebrate the occasion we have decided to upload our song as a free download
From singer/lyricist Elenor Rayner:
“In the mid 1800s Charles Babbage invented the first programmable calculating machine, called the Analytical Engine. He could see it could be used to make mathematical calculations. A useful device indeed, and it became the forerunner of the computer.
His good friend Ada Lovelace, also a mathematician and scientist and daughter of the poet Lord Byron, understood his machine – but she could see something he couldn’t. She suggested to Charles that his Analytical Engine could be used to compose complex music and so she wrote a program for it and became the first person ever to write music on a computer.
I think all of us owe her big time.
I have a framed photo of Ada sitting next to my computer and when I heard the electro leanings of a new track Pete had sent me for TCE, I thought it would be a perfect homage to her. I loved recording those vocals with her watching me.”
Another story by Mike Masnick at TechDirt, this time looking at the fact that, surprise surprise, if the price of music dropped, more people would buy it.
Having talked with a bunch of music execs recently, as well as a few different companies that do analytics in the music space, one thing became clear: unlike most other industries, record label execs tend not to be particularly data or analytics-driven. Let’s just say they didn’t get into the recording industry because they were good at math. There are a few exceptions, obviously, but getting many industry execs to think logically and examine data isn’t particularly easy. This isn’t that surprising, given how many examples of actions by big record label execs that make little to no sense when thought about analytically.
Yet another study has come out suggesting that the industry has pricing all wrong, pointing out that the increase in sales from dropping the price of music would increase profits [Wired]. And yet what has the industry been trying to do? That’s right: trying to raise the price. The study suggested that the “optimal” price for music might be closer to $0.60 per track. That still seems way too high to me when you look at how people flocked to services like Allofmp3.com, but in general I think the basic concept makes sense. You can maximize revenue by dropping prices, but it doesn’t seem like many record industry execs have realized that.
The math behind this is simple: shift more product = make more money. And when you are talking about a product that is cheap (CDs) or almost free (online music) to manufacture (once the recording process is finished) then it all makes sense… the kinda sense even a record exec can understand.
IT gadget company Apple singled out the Australian market for an honourable mention while announcing its record quarterly profit of $3.8 billion. A pat on the head for our increasing i-with-everything habit is the least we should expect given the on-going iTunes rip off.
With Apple to announce another major i-product tonight – a “slate” e-book reader/video viewer/iTV/web watcher/personal vibrator/whatever – Australia’s love affair with the brand continues to lock customers into Apple software.
And the cost of that is nowhere more obvious than the massive iTunes store, the world’s biggest digital music shop which routinely charges Australians 40 per cent and more than it does Americans. And that’s after allowing for the addition of the 10 per cent GST to the American prices.
Even for something as universal as the Hope For Haiti Now fund raiser album, Apple charges Americans just $US7.99. With the current dip in our exchange rate to about 90.5 US cents, that’s $8.83 in local coin. Adding GST would make it $9.71, but Apple slogs Australians $13.99 for the thing – a 44 per cent mark-up on the US price. Or 44 per cent rip off, depending on your point of view.
This has always been a bugbear for me, and one of my main arguments for why music piracy exists. A product is released in multiple locations, and instead of pricing them equally, the price is elevated in areas where there is no competition. As soon as competition arrives, then the price suddenly becomes competative.
“Supply and demand” I hear you say? Well if the demand is there, and it can’t be supplied at a fair price… I can see why people will take the easy (and cheap/free option) and obtain the product – albeit at a reduced quality – online via filesharing sites.
Mike Masnick at TechDirt delves deep into the future of the music business, taking a look at the artists who have broken free from the old business-models used by the indiustry, and discovered that you can not only release music for free, you can make money doing so. Nine Inch Nails, Josh Freese, Jill Sobule and Jonathon Coulton have all embraced the new way of thinking, and there is a lot to learn for any new bands wondering just how they can make a living in the industry.
Trent Reznor, the man behind the band Nine Inch Nails, has done so many experiments that show how this model works that it’s difficult to describe them all. He’s become a true leader in showing how this model works in a way that has earned him millions while making fans happy, rather than turning them into the enemy.
Reznor has always reached out to his fans, and has an amazingly comprehensive website, with forums, chat rooms and many other ways of interacting. He encourages fans to better connect with each other as well. While companies like Warner Music forced all the music videos of their artists off YouTube for many months, Reznor actually aggregates all the videos his fans take at concerts (he encourages them to bring cameras) on one page on his own website. He does the same for photos. He released a (free) iPhone app that allowed fans to locate each other, and communicate with each other, while sharing photos and videos as well. It’s all about connecting with those fans, and helping them better connect with each other, so they feel like a part of a club.
From there, he gives fans real reasons to buy. Lately, he’s taken to releasing everything he records for free online, knowing that the music will show up on file sharing sites anyway, so he sees no reason to fight it. Yet, he adds many other options that people might want to buy.
Looks like Too Much Joy are having a little issue with their label over income from digital earnings.
“I got something in the mail last week I’d been wanting for years: a Too Much Joy royalty statement from Warner Brothers that finally included our digital earnings. Though our catalog has been out of print physically since the late-1990s, the three albums we released on Giant/WB have been available digitally for about five years. Yet the royalty statements I received every six months kept insisting we had zero income, and our unrecouped balance ($395,277.18!)* stubbornly remained the same.
Now, I don’t ever expect that unrecouped balance to turn into a positive number, but since the band had been seeing thousands of dollars in digital royalties each year from IODA for the four indie albums we control ourselves, I figured five years’ worth of digital income from our far more popular major label albums would at least make a small dent in the figure. Our IODA royalties during that time had totaled about $12,000 – not a princely sum, but enough to suggest that the total haul over the same period from our major label material should be at least that much, if not two to five times more. Even with the band receiving only a percentage of the major label take, getting our unrecouped balance below $375,000 seemed reasonable, and knocking it closer to -$350,000 wasn’t out of the question.
So I was naively excited when I opened the envelope. And my answer was right there on the first page. In five years, our three albums earned us a grand total of…
$62.47
What the fuck?”
Follow the link to read more of this “if it wasn’t so painful it would be funny” problem, something a lot of bands signed to major labels seem to come up against.
The interesting thing is that the author of the post, Tim Quirk (ex-singer in Too Much Joy), is currently an executive at RealNetworks’s (RNWK) Rhapsody. So he kinda knows all about digital media, plays, royalties and so forth.
Not a lot I can, or need to, say with this. The words have already been said.
Arstechnica: For the last hundred years, rightsholders have fretted about everything from the player piano to the VCR to digital TV to Napster. Here are those objections, in Big Content’s own words.
It’s almost a truism in the tech world that copyright owners reflexively oppose new inventions that do (or might) disrupt existing business models. But how many techies actually know what rightsholders have said and written for the last hundred years on the subject?
The anxious rhetoric around new technology is really quite shocking in its vehemence, from claims that the player piano will destroy musical taste and the “national throat” to concerns that the VCR is like the “Boston strangler” to claims that only Hollywood’s premier content could make the DTV transition a success. Most of it turned out to be absurd hyperbole, but it’s interesting to see just how consistent the words and the fears remain across more than a century of innovation and a host of very different devices.
So here they are, in their own words—the copyright holders who demanded restrictions on player pianos, photocopiers, VCRs, home taping, DAT, MP3 players, Napster, the DVR, digital radio, and digital TV. [Read the full story here]
One of the given features of an online music store is that you can sample what you want to buy. Some sites are useful and allow you to hear the whole track, while others, such as iTunes, give you a 30-second preview.
It gives you an idea of what it is you are buying; because let’s face it, buying anything blind is a stupid idea.
But earlier this week it was reported [cnet][electronista] that music royalty groups ASCAP and BMI have begun harassing online music stores such as iTunes to cough up performance fees not only for the songs that they sell, but for the short clips that they use to entice you to buy.
The thinking of these groups is that by clicking a button to hear 30-seconds of music, in order to decide if it is what you want to buy, you are hearing a performance, and the artist is entitled to payment for that performance (after the usual admin, processing, shipping, drug and hooker fees are taken out by the royalty groups). They want the online stores, that are there to sell the artists product, to also cough up for the tiny bit you hear as a sample.
In an age when the online stores are fighting the ease of use of bittorrenting, the organisations “helping” the artist are trying to add further cost and administration. ‘coz that makes a whole lotta sense.
As a punter, I can hit a bittorrent site and have the music downloaded almost immediately, and be able to play it on any device, or I can attempt to purchase it, possibly pay just for the privilege of hearing a sample, then pay for the track, then find out it can only be played on certain devices, and that I don’t actually own anything anyway.
Every genre of music warrants fusion, and with that fusion comes act after act with a new direction or interpretation. In the late sixties a movement began known as industrial that would change the face of the musical landscape forever by pooling elements of installation art, punk rock, and electronics. This new genre encompassed philosophical extremes inspired by great minds like William S. Burroughs or The Marquee De Sade, and the train did not stop as more artists were drawn to a rising demand for abrasive anti-establishment dynamics found in thrash metal and house music.
Thus, industrial metal was created, and here on the year of Ministry’s disbanding and Nine Inch Nails’ possible retirement from touring, we explore this rather complex culture of static, taboo, distortion and drums. The unfortunate truth becomes “Where does one begin, exactly?”, as digging deep enough into any musical genre will no doubt reveal unexpected influences or endless avenues of related acts. Being that industrial music takes a very DIY approach, the list of acts becomes almost infinite and constantly overlaps. It is for this reason we decided to focus on specific persons responsible for this phenomenal movement.
Welcome to the Top 11 Influential Minds of Industrial Metal… and please, don’t focus on the order.
If you are in a rush, here is the list; otherwise, head over to read their reasoning.
11. Danny Lohner (Renholder)
10. Brian Warner (Marilyn Manson
9. Kevin Ogilvie (Skinny Puppy
8. Justin Broadrick (Godflesh
7. Al Jourgensen (Ministry
6. Sascha Konietzko (KMFDM)
5. Atkins/Rieflin (Pigface)
4. Till Lindemann (Rammstein)
3. Klayton (Celldweller)
2. Genesis Breyer P-Orridge (Throbbing Gristle)
1. Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails)
