Rebel%20America%20Presents...Quantcast

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Webcasters Welcome House Vote On Royalties Negotiation



Internet radio stations can extend their negotiations with labels and artists over performance royalties following a key vote in the House Of Representatives.

The legislation, H.R. 7084, was passed on Saturday night (Sept. 27) and now moves to the Senate.

The legislation authorizes collecting society SoundExchange to negotiate new royalty agreements on behalf of copyright owners and performers for internet radio through Feb. 15, 2009.

The Digital Media Association (DiMA), SoundExchange, National Public Radio (NPR) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) welcomed the vote.

"Everyone is grateful to the sponsors of the bill and to Chairman Berman for getting this through the House last night," said SoundExchange executive director John Simson in a statement. "This bill favors all webcasters and simulcasters - large and small. It paves the way for SoundExchange to use the coming months to pursue helpful solutions that allow all services to focus on business development. And, although there are no agreements yet, I am hopeful."

The modification to existing legislation was introduced because Congress will be out of session as discussions between both sides continue. Negotiations are set to resume when the bill is enacted.

"This legislation benefits all music webcasters and excludes none," added Michael Riksen, NPR VP of policy and representation in a statement. "Passage will facilitate closure of an agreement to enable all public radio stations to continue their public service through the webcasting of music."

The bill does not affect any underlying copyright law.

Personalized Internet radio service Pandora had said it could shut down as a result of the new licensing fees due SoundExchange, under the recent Copyright Royalty Board licensing system.

Monday, September 29, 2008

MySpace new Music service for UK music industry


News Corporation has just started its new MySpace Music service in the United States this week. Almost all the major record labels and a retail partner (in the form of Amazon’s DRM-free MP3 store) co-operated with News Corporation for this launch. However, it is somewhat essential to know what good it will bring for the consumer and the music industry.

Nicola Slade, who is editor of UK music industry news service Record of the Day, said: “No doubt, it’s a great move for consumers as it will help them listen to far more songs than they could listen before.”

Slade added, “The association with Amazon’s MP3 download store would serve as a key that will be there as a serious competitor for Apple and iTunes.”

“It is, indeed, the very first download store that has the ability to reduce Apple’s MySpace share.”

“The service will make consumer realize that there is another world outside of iTunes and the services like 7digital and other smaller services can pick up more business from them as well.”

Joe Wilson, who is lecturer in Popular Music at the University of Gloucestershire, said: “This move from MySpace to offer music through its network is to promote it as a radio service for free music, but you have to pay to transfer to MP3 players,”

Friday, September 26, 2008

Artist of the Week


"It's much too late to do anything about rock & roll now ..."

Jerry Garcia

Thursday, September 25, 2008

MySpace Music Launches with Notable Upgrades



MySpace will flip the switch on its long-anticipated MySpace Music service on Thursday, completely revamping every element of the music section of the social network and bringing several elements of the music industry to the table with the launch.

In order to win favorable licensing terms from the major labels, MySpace created a joint venture to oversee the music initiative, which is partially owned by the four major record labels. While Universal Music Group, Sony BMG, and Warner Music Group were known participants for some time now, EMI Music Group joined the joint venture as a stakeholder at the eleventh hour, on the eve of the service's launch.

And while a slight bit of controversy bubbled around the lack of independent labels or digital aggregators involved in the joint venture, MySpace also unveiled licensing deals with not only the Orchard, but also such independent distribution groups as ADA, Red, Fontana and Caroline.

The new music service, while operated as a separate joint venture from the greater MySpace service, is tightly woven into the fabric of the social networking site. Artists with profiles (as well as licensing deals) on the service may now stream their entire catalog in full from their pages, whereas previously MySpace limited it to six tracks.

Other features at launch include:

-Fans can post up to 10 songs on their profile for others to stream when visiting, and up to 100 songs for their own personal enjoyment via a playlist building function.

-When any MySpace member (artist or fan) adds music to their playlist, their entire friend list is notified via the “Friend Updates” feature, which will contain a link to the song added.

-Wherever a song link appears on the service, there is also an “add” button that allows any member to add that song to their playlists, as well as a “buy” button to purchase and download the song via retail partner Amazon.com. Additionally, members can search for ringtones available via MySpace sister company Jamster (parent company Fox Interactive Media owns both companies).

The MySpace Music homepage has also been revamped, including a more robust “featured artists” section and the addition of a celebrity playlist section.

Noticeably missing at launch are several features promised when MySpace first unveiled its music plans this spring. They include:

-The ability to buy concert tickets and artist merchandise. Ultimately, MySpace hopes to add these sales opportunities to every artist profile in a future update.

- Content: Due to the lateness of the EMI deal, as well as the ongoing negotiations with independent labels and their representatives, music from artists other than UMG, Sony BMG and WMG is not yet available. However, new music will be ingested on a regular basis.

-Music recommendations: While friends linked through MySpace will learn of each other’s music additions and recommendations, there is no function to recommend new music to users based on either listening history via some kind of algorithm or by matching members who don’t know each other but who have displayed similar music tastes.

-A syndication strategy. All the playlists created on member profiles are limited to those profiles only. Users can’t post their playlists to other blogs, websites or in any other way take advantage of widget-based distribution.

However, MySpace representatives stress that it will upgrade the music service with these and other features over the course of the next year.
Aside from the features, the model behind the MySpace Music service is generating the most attention. It is by far the most ambitious attempt to profit from free full-song streaming based on advertising.

Officials at both MySpace as well as the various record labels believe the majority of activity and revenue will come from the free ad-supported full-song streaming throughout the network. As part of the streaming feature, MySpace created a music player that pops up in a separate window, both so users can enjoy music while navigating to other areas of the site and also to display banner ads that monetize the service.

All labels and artists licensing music to the site will receive a share of the service’s ad revenue based on the number of times their music is played. The major labels involved in the joint venture will also share a portion of all underlying revenues.

Neither MySpace nor the labels involved will discuss the exact terms of the venture deal, but insiders have speculated that the labels collectively own 40% of the venture, and in return dropped the standard penny-per-play licensing fee for music streamed online.

Also notable is MySpace’s decision to outsource all a la carte sales to Amazon.com. Ringtone sales are outsourced to Jamster, and expect future ticket and merch sales to be outsourced as well.

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Digi-Indie Labels


The Major Labels have been known to be unfair to artists. Many Major Label artist are now speaking up about, Major Label shady accounting practices, non-disclosure clauses and delayed payments.

On the postitive side, Major Labels have a great promotion and distrbution structure. This means that if your project is released, the the chances of it being properly promoted and makes money increases greatly.

Although, many talented artists signed to a Major Label, have had projects put on hold, or, “shelved”. It’s been reported that Alicia Keys was shelved by her first record company because the A&R staff couldn’t hear a market for her material(WTF!??).

Major Labels are not the way to go (IMO).

Many Indie Labels fail within the first three years (like your average business). Although Indie Labels are dedicated to the creative proccess,they often lack the capital or connections to compete with and beat the majors at selling records.

There is a third way - a better way that allows you to control your own works. I call it a Digi-Indie Label. A Digi-Indie Label is an Independent Label that is digital based.

A Digi-Indie Label has it’s headquarters in your inside of your computer. With a Digi-Indie Label, you can record your material, manage the administrative, promotion, marketing, distribution and sales of your material all from your computer.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Merchandising 3.0


Merchandise sales have emerged as an important component to a successful career in the music business. Selling CD’s, shirts, stickers, hats and posters is a great way for an artist to get free advertising from the people who buy and can be a real moneymaker when done correctly.

It does take up front money to get the merchandise designed and printed. The first step to getting a merchandise effort established is to get a screen print set up for the design or designs that will be used. Once the screen print is set up it is time to get price quotes from multiple screen printers. The variables that determine the cost of getting merchandise made include the type of merchandise ordered, quality (100% cotton vs. 50/50 t-shirts for example), quantity and number of colors used in the printing.

A 50% profit margin is a good benchmark for setting a retail price (if it costs $10 sell it for $20). Bundling items together is a good way to increase sales, for example if CD’s and shirts are both $12 bundle both together for $20. Keeping tight records of the merchandise sales and inventory level can be the difference between making and losing money in this effort. Make sure to only give merchandise away for free to people who might help create a buzz by wearing it or are very influential in the music business.

The standard deal for the person manning the merchandise section of the club is 10% of all sales. If $200 worth of merchandise were sold $20 would go to the person selling the merch as a courtesy. Some venues will provide a merch person if the artist doesn’t have their own for the show.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Atist Quote of the Week


“When I hit that note - if I hit it correctly - I'm just as important as Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, or anybody. Because when I hit that note, I hit the umbilical cord of anybody who is listening.”

-Carlos Santana

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Digital Mobile



- Sony BMG's Commercial Music Group unveiled a licensing Web site for filmmakers called MovieTunes. The site allows filmmakers to submit the music criteria they need, which a Sony BMG staffer will then use to help find the right song.

- Warner Music UK agreed to license its music to an MP3 store operated by British supermarket chain Tesco. The deal includes custom album bundles, remixes and interactive booklets.

- IODA has agreed to offer RightsFlow's accounting and business management music licensing system for mechanical and DPD licensing to its label clients.

- RoyaltyShare is expanding its digital media management tools to mobile, through a series of deals with mobile content providers. They include LiveWire Mobile, Moderati, SendMe Mobile, Thumbplay, and Zed.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

7digital Signs Sony BMG To MP3



U.K. download service 7digital.com has signed a deal with Sony BMG to sell around 250,000 tracks from its catalog in high quality MP3 format.

7digital says it is now the largest DRM-free store in the U.K., with a total of four million tracks. It has now signed up all the majors to the MP3 format following an agreement with Universal Music this month.

The London-based digital music service launched the Sony BMG catalog (Sept. 16) on its site today, in addition to launching new stores with localized content in Italy (it.7digital.com), Austria (at.7digital.com) and Portugal (pt.7digital.com). A pan-European store also launches today featuring catalog that has been cleared for the whole of Europe; 7digital has existing services in the U.K., Ireland, Germany, France and Spain.

CEO Ben Drury also announced plans to launch in North America in the fourth quarter of 2008. No date is confirmed, although Drury told Billboard.biz they will open an office in San Francisco.

"We already operate in the U.S. in a small capacity on the business-to-business side," said Drury at a London press conference today. "As the market moves to MP3, the U.S. has become more interesting to us and we have been getting more [web] traffic in the U.S."

Drury says the American launch will focus on building through partners such as social networks and other companies. As well as selling tracks direct to consumers, 7digital also delivers audio and video on behalf of record labels, artists, film and TV companies, as well as retail and brand partners.

The download store has been a major advocate of MP3 and Drury says he believes the U.K. launch of an MP3 service by Amazon "will promote choice" for download formats and he predicts a "backlash" against digital rights management.

Around 200,000 customers who previously purchased Sony BMG music in the WMA format from 7digital.com will be able to upgrade the tracks to MP3. "I think that's a very consumer friendly thing for Sony BMG to do," said Drury.

He contrasted the 7digital approach to MP3 with the protected music files sold on Apple's iTunes store and other mobile and subscription services. "People are a lot more likely to purchase albums in MP3," said Drury, adding that the format has helped boost the average transaction on 7digital.com to £4.50 ($8.03).

"Consumers see DRM as somewhat of a hindrance when purchasing legal digital music," said Drury in a statement. "The availability of all of the big four music labels in high-quality MP3 is fantastic news for the UK music fan - everything they now buy from us they can be sure will work on all their devices. We've seen a huge increase in sales since making MP3 downloads available on 7digital.com."

The company also outlined plans for a new partner program and application programming interface (API).

The API platform will allow third-party developers to create their own download and streaming services. The partner program is designed for non-developers who can use widgets that can play music on Web Sites and blogs and provide a link for fans to purchase tracks at 7digital.com. Partners will earn commission for tracks and albums they sell.

The announcement follows U.K. supermarket chain Tesco's partnership with Warner Music U.K. to sell MP3s via www.tescodigital.com.

Tesco's service has all the majors on board and currently has 3.3 million tracks in total. Around half of them are sold in MP3 format.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Music business is still game amid the gloom


What the popularity of games such as SingStar and Guitar Hero show is how games have matured, moving from teenagers’ bedrooms into the living room. Just as Doctor Who reinvented family viewing, the new generation of games reinvented family entertainment.

What the music games also reveal is a route to revival for the beleaguered music business.

The appeal of music has always been far more than listening to recordings or the radio; it involves going to gigs and festivals – and singing into the shower head. While only a minority can play or sing well enough to be taken seriously as performers, music games tap into the desire of the rest of the population to be rock stars. And because people cannot pirate the technology easily, the games and the songs can be priced to generate a sustainable income.


The interest is clear from the number of songs that people are prepared to download – 20 million in the case of Guitar Hero. The most frequently purchased download by SingStar customers is Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart. Both games are racing to announce tie-ups with familiar bands – SingStar will release a Queen-themed game next year, a few months after Guitar Hero’s Metallica special edition.

Computer games will not be enough, in isolation, to solve the structural problems facing the music industry but by tapping into people’s true relationship with music, it demonstrates that the day the music dies is a long, long way off.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Artist Quote of the Week


“Going out and playing music - that's what I do. I don't do much else.”

- Dave Grohl

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Promoting Your Band 2.0


A website is always a safe bet for getting ur name out there. Simply buy a domain name (or use a free web space provider - however yourname.com looks more serious than geocities.com/yourname) and build the website yourself or pay somebody else to do it. It may cost but it really is worth the time and money if you make it good and advertise it right. Some good things to include on your website are MP3's, biography, gig dates (no matter how small and low key) and any other information you can think of. Then get it into as many search engines as you can. Its amazing how many people will look at your website simply by stumbling across it in Yahoo or Google. A website is always a worthy investment if you're serious.


If you already have a few fans, or even friends who like your music, its always a good idea to get them to do the promotion for you. Print flyers, stickers, make demo tapes, anything, and get people to hand them around or give them to their friends. Its a very effective way of spreading the word, through a Street Team. It is how Linkin Park started out and look at how successful they are today. If your friends and fans are willing, also get them to post on message boards or go in chat rooms of music websites. Promotion teams are very effective.


Go into chat rooms and message boards on the websites of other, already well known bands and tell the whole internet about you. Most message boards of well known bands have 10 000 + members, so just imagine how many people will see your name and check you out. It works, again, it is a method often used by signed and unsigned bands who need more recognition. It works for other bands and it will work for you, try it out.


Like anything, you won't get anywhere without a little hard work from yourselves. You won't get yourself recognised by sitting there waiting for it to happen. Spread the word about yourselves, pin up flyers wherever you can, advertise your gigs in newspapers, basically anything you can think of. If people like your music they will soon spread the word themselves and you will quickly get a loyal following which will keep growing as long as you are willing to put in the work yourselves.

You can't rely on other people to do everything for you and you can't expect things to just magically take off for you overnight. It may take a while but in the end its worth all the hard work.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Amazon Launches Music Wiki


Wikipedia is an undeniably helpful resource for researching bands, with fairly accurate data that tends to be updated in near real time. Amazon hopes the same sort of thing will happen on its new SoundUnwound site, which borrows a page from Wikipedia's playbook by allowing users to edit information about any band, label, album or song.

To get the ball rolling, Amazon has included music information from its retail site as well as data from the Internet Movie Database and Musicbrainz (an open-source Gracenote-style database that can associate metadata to CDs and digital files). Amazon staff and a Mechanical Turk group built upon this data before the site launched on Monday.

As with Wikipedia, users can edit this information, but not directly. All changes must be vetted by Amazon staff before appearing on the site, so you can forget about retroactively joining Run D.M.C. Rankings charts list the users with the most approved edits for the day, week or of all time, offering a bit of motivation to those want to amass that sort of authority.

SoundUnwound is well laid out and already offers a wealth of information. For example, the page for The Fall -- a notoriously difficult band to cover, given all of their releases and lineup changes, includes lots of ex-band members, an accurate date of formation, and information on no less than 153 releases, including 28 studio albums. There's plenty of room for fans to add trivia as the site expands.

Discographies can be sorted by studio album, single, live album, compilation and EP. And once you drill down to an album page, links appear to purchase the band's songs on Amazon MP3. Relevant YouTube videos are embedded throughout the site as well. But one of the most attractive elements are the Flash-based, scrollable and zoomable timelines that depicts bands' history graphically.

Picture_2 Using The Fall as an example again, to the right is the section of their timeline where guitarist Craig Scanlon, bassist Stephen Hanley and drummer Simon Wolsencraft left the band. By mashing up the band member information with its discography, SoundUnwound lets users draw conclusions about how a band's sound changed as a result of personnel shakeups.

Amazon has taken a bit of heat for not including a way for all of this data to be used on other sites. "I am skeptical about any wiki-style site that doesn't make the user-contributed data freely available," wrote Paul Lamere of Duke Listens. And he has a point; it'd be nice of Amazon to allow this data to flow elsewhere on the internet.

Monday, September 8, 2008

EMI Slashes Operations in SE Asia


EMI Music is shuttering its operations in a string of Southeast Asian markets, handing its distribution and marketing over to Warner Music Group (WMG).

The move, which was announced today and is effective immediately, followed several weeks of industry speculation that EMI might be scaling down its operations in Asia. Described in a statement from EMI as a "multi-year license agreement," it will see WMG market and distribute EMI's worldwide repertoire in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and Thailand.

In Indonesia alone, Warner will handle marketing and distribution while a dedicated EMI office will continue to deal with A&R tasks for domestic repertoire -- including new signings. EMI declined to comment on whether new local signings would be made in the other territories, but Billboard understands it is unlikely.

WMG will exclusively handle exclusive all physical and digital distribution of EMI Music releases.

Lachie Rutherford, Warner Music Asia Pacific's president, said in a statement: "EMI's artists will now be able to fully leverage our South-East Asian operations, specifically our marketing teams and vast distribution network of traditional retail, wireless and online partners, through which we've seen great success in recent years."

EMI says it still plans "to develop global digital partnerships" in the territories covered by this new deal. According to EMI's London-based president of Asia Pacific/Latin America Adrian Cheesley: "In Southeast Asia, EMI will retain a small regional team in Hong Kong to oversee the local marketing and distribution of our artists' music, working closely with Lachie and his team."

It is as yet unclear how many job losses are involved; however, it is understood that EMI is currently in consultation with all its employees in the affected markets. An EMI spokesperson would not disclose the staff numbers involved.

The two majors already have a partnership in place covering India, the Middle East and North Africa, where EMI has marketed and distributed WMG physical products since 2005. The new agreement is expected to have no impact on other Asia/Pacific markets -- India, Japan, Australia and New Zealand -- where EMI will continue its wholly owned operations.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Artist Quote of the Week


Art is a way to express yourself and through that you can escape a bad situation
-Russell Simmons

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Majors Ink O2 Concert Distribution Deal



Digital content provider New Stream Media (NSM) has inked licensing deals with the four majors, allowing it to record and distribute concerts at London's O2 and indigo2 venues.

NSM -- the venues' digital content partner -- has signed deals with Universal Music, EMI, Warner Music Group and Sony BMG in the U.K. to transmit recordings of concerts via digital TV, mobile networks and the Internet. The deal with Sony BMG also includes distribution in continental Europe.

NSM's contract with AEG, operator of the O2 Arena and indigo2, already gave it first option to provide digital platforms for events at the two venues. It has previously recorded live shows by the likes of Elton John, Keane, Kaiser Chiefs and the Sugababes, making them available to download via O2 Active, a mobile service from the venues' mobile carrier sponsor O2.

In June, NSM teamed with U.K. content-production company Spin TV to produce "Live at indigo2," a series of events transmitted on commercial digital-TV network ITV2, and available for audio and video download through online retailer 7digital.com.

And the major-label licensing agreements will create further digital opportunities, according to NSM's managing director, Abigail Hemingway.

"It gives us a stronger platform from which to propose ideas to artists performing at the O2 [Arena] and indigo2, and to create better content from the events," she tells Billboard.biz. "It allows us to be more creative."

Hemingway says deals with several indies are also in place. Future plans include streaming events live.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Outsourcing


The name for this might not be so appealing, but it’s actually a very effective method of collaboration. It is especially useful when multiple musicians are involved. One person is the primary writer, arranger, or producer, who works with other musicians possessing particular skills (instruments, arranging, mixing, production) that contribute specific parts to the piece. An excellent example would be a producer of dance music laying down an instrumental track, then asking a vocalist to write and record a vocal part, or a country writer recording piano and vocals but working with a guitarist for acoustic and electric lines.

Outsourcing can be done either on or offline, and should not be confused with simple session playing (work for hire). In this case, though the primary writer can be doing the most work overall, they are not actually writing every part. Other musicians are still writing, performing and contributing, and their level of involvement can extend past their own parts. A vocalist can help craft the arrangement and instrumentation of a given section, for example, to make their vocal part fit in well.

This method of working is really the only viable one for larger collaborations, where it would be impractical to use either of the first methods of collaboration due to time, geography, or technical restraints. It enables multiple musicians to work on the same piece simultaneously without stepping on each other’s toes, provided the primary arranger maintains clear perspective of the “big picture” for the song.

Despite the name, outsourcing does not necessarily mean that the primary arranger is doing the most work overall, or that they have the most important role. They may simply be crafting a basic arrangement, while other musicians flesh out the instrumentation, add new writing, and then finally produce and mix the track.

courtesy of soundtempest.net

Monday, September 1, 2008

Co-Publishing Deals




1. Typical Scenario. This type of agreement is typically used for writers who are in groups already signed to a record deal. This type of agreement covers the original material on the group’s records. Normally all of the members of the group who are songwriters will be signed to this type of agreement with the same publisher.

Just to be clear here, I’m talking about a publishing deal with a publishing company not affiliated with the record company. Today, it is much less likely than it used to be that a record company will demand a publishing deal as part of a record deal.

2. Material Covered by the Deal. All of the original songs on the group’s first record, then the publisher will have the right to options on the original songs on anywhere from two to four of the follow-up albums, hence for a total of 3 to 5 albums, with the exact number depending on what the parties negotiate.

3. Copyright Transferred. The songwriter normally transfers one-half of the copyright ownership to the publisher and retains the other one-half ownership. In other words, the song is co-published (and the copyright is co-owned 50-50) by the third party publisher and the writer’s own publishing company.

4. Income Sharing. Normally, the third party publisher will collect all income and then pay to the songwriter and the songwriter’s publishing company 75% of all publishing income.

5. Term. As already mentioned, co-publishing agreements are usually for a certain specified number of albums.

6. Advances. Advances are almost always paid to the songwriter in the case of co-publishing deals. For groups newly signed to major label record deals, the initial advance from a major music publisher is typically in the $150,000 - $500,000 range and sometimes higher, with additional advances being paid if and when the publisher exercises its options for the follow-up albums.