When Burning CDs Always…

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Thursday, May 6th, 2010

When I get a CD submission from a songwriter, and I put it on the computer, it should give me the song title for every track. When I go to save the songs to my harddrive, I CANNOT save more than one Track 1 mp3 into a file. So if I am saving YOUR music from a CD, I convert YOUR wav file to a 128kbps to upload at the Songs2Share website and then another 320kbps to upload at Music Dealers - but guess what?

If you don’t put the titles on your songs, I cannot save two Track 1s into the same file. I have to make separate folders. & then I’m not sure what song is what track & I have to take the time to RENAME your song tracks.

& anyways, it always, ALWAYS looks much more professional when any music person opens a CD of songs and sees all the titles on their computer instead of Track 1, Track 2, Track 3 and so on.

Take the time songwriters = and do it right. Put your titles on each track, and your band’s name or your name. Composer and performer’s names. CD title. All the reference information. You will then come across as a music professional

Cheers~

Tags: burning CDs, song submissions, songs to license
Posted in How To Write Songs, Music News | No Comments »

Rolling Stone’s Archive Going On-Line Re-post

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Monday, April 19th, 2010

Rolling Stone’s archive going online — for a pricet

AP – In this screen shot provided by Rolling Stone magazine, the RollingStone.com website is shown.(AP Photo/Rolling …

By ANDREW VANACORE, AP Business Writer – Fri Apr 16, 6:52 am ET

NEW YORK – For the first time Rolling Stone is inviting its readers on the long, strange trip though the magazine’s 43-year archive, putting complete digital replicas online along with the latest edition. But you’ll have to pay to see it all.

With a new site launching Monday, Rolling Stone will become one of the most prominent magazines to decide that adding a “pay wall” is the best way to make money on the Web.

To many publishers and media analysts, charging for Web access is the fastest way to drive readers to free competition, where advertisers will follow. But even free sites with lots of readers haven’t been able to charge the kind of rates for advertising that print still commands. As one of the few major consumer magazines now asking readers for an online fee, Rolling Stone is likely to get a close look from the rest of the industry.

The magazine’s revamped home page will remain mostly free. The kind of material that seems to work best on the Web — quick updates on who’s breaking up, slide shows of popular bands on tour — won’t cost readers anything.

But there will be reminders planted throughout the site that full access to Rolling Stone’s latest issue is just a few clicks and a credit card number away.

A one-month pass will cost $3.95 and annual access is $29.99. Online subscribers will automatically get a print subscription, which normally costs $19.95 a year. But print subscribers don’t automatically get Web access.

The magazine has never put a full issue online except to tease an article here and there. On the new site, readers can flip through, search and zoom in on a complete replica of the print edition.

The same goes for every issue since the magazine launched in 1967. If you’re willing to pay, you can peruse a big grid with thumbnail views of every cover.

In an interview, Steven Schwartz, who is heading the revamp as chief digital officer for the magazine’s parent company, Wenner Media, referred to the archive as “the collected history of everyone who’s grown up over the past 40 years.”

So is there a touch of mid-life crisis in all of this? A music magazine that planted itself in the countercultural zeitgeist of the 1960s now trying to prove that it’s still relevant? The first thing a public relations representative pointed out to a visiting reporter recently was that the average age of Rolling Stone’s readership is 30. It’s not just old hippies!

Like every print product these days, Rolling Stone faces an array of Web-savvy competition. Young music fans are as likely to find new bands or artists on sites like RollingStone.com had about 1.3 million unique visitors in March but only 9 million page views. Pitchfork had 906,000 visitors but 19 million page views.)

But while Rolling Stone and the rest of the publishing industry had a painful 2009 — it sold nearly 20 percent fewer ad pages than the year before — it can still boast about its print readership. It had an average paid circulation last year of about 1.5 million, up from 1.3 million in 2000, and it is still profitable.

It also ran one of the most widely cited stories of last year — Matt Taibbi’s excoriating look at Goldman Sachs, “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

Rolling Stone’s relative health could give the magazine more flexibility than most publications to experiment with a new business model online.

“We’re taking control of our digital destiny,” Schwartz said.

The whole look of the site is being updated. The layout is getting broader and features more and bigger photos. The Rolling Stone masthead, which occupies a small corner at the upper left-hand side of the existing site, is ballooning across the top of the page.

Schwartz said the magazine’s reporters will produce daily updates on music, culture and politics for the site’s blogs. He wouldn’t reveal how big of an editorial staff is devoted to the Web, but he said, “there is a commitment to it and it is growing with the launch of the new site.”

It will also take advantage of Rolling Stone’s access to musicians for a Web video series called “Live at RS.” One segment already prepared features a performance by singer-songwriter Jason Mraz that was shot in the magazine’s New York offices.

Album reviews will include audio samples.

Implicit in Rolling Stone’s approach to the Web, however, is a major bet on the future of print. The magazine’s feature articles are available online in a way that appears exactly as they do on paper. And the new digital subscriptions are bundled with the kind that come in the mail.

“This is not, let’s rush to the Web because print isn’t strong,” Schwartz said. “This is our brand’s ability to tap into a new medium.”

Source: AP

Tags: Music News, rolling stones magazine
Posted in Music News | No Comments »

Who Runs The Record Labels Now?

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Monday, April 19th, 2010

So who runs the record labels now?

Stars like Jack White, and Kings of Leon, and many cult acts, are starting labels. Why? Are their signings better than those to traditional companies? Elisa Bray looks at the small print

Friday, 16 April 2010

Label chic: The Drums, whose Jacob Graham set up Holiday

It was once the preserve of rock and pop giants, but now even members of newer indie-rock bands are trying their hand at starting their own record labels. It makes sense. You are in a successful rock band, you love music, and you have a sense of how the music industry works. Why not release music by new bands? It worked well for The Delgados, whose Chemikal Underground is the most successful example. Set up by the revered Glasgow indie band in 1994 to release their first single, husband and wife team Paul Savage and Emma Pollock went on to break many Scottish bands, including Mogwai and Arab Strap, and to release early demos by bands including Interpol.

Could indie bands fare better at the job than starry failed attempts before them? After all, Noel Gallagher’s Sour Mash Records, launched in 2001, failed to take off with its releases from Shack and new band Proud Mary, as did George Michael’s attempts to sell music online via his label, Aegean. Mariah Carey’s Crave label lasted less than a year. Perhaps Lily Allen, the latest star rumoured to be launching a label, will buck the trend.

But record labels from less publicity-courting rock-band members look to be more promising, if recent and upcoming releases from labels set up by Jack White, Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor, The Drums’ Jacob Graham and Kings of Leon are anything to go by. For a start, look at the newest releases on Jack White’s label Third Man Records, also home to his myriad of bands The White Stripes, The Raconteurs and The Dead Weather and the country-pop singer-songwriter and model, his wife Karen Elson. Founded in 2001, in Detroit, Third Man’s newest discovery is Smoke Fairies, a female duo from Sussex whose intoxicating swirling blues-rock licks and haunting folk harmonies have already garnered much attention. With a single for sale on the Third Man Records site, White will put out their debut album later this year. It adds a certain cachet to a new band to be taken on by a label set up by a hip act, and both the new act and the music-buyer would hope that, with musicians behind the labels, making a quick buck is less on the agenda than with many major-label deals.

“It’s not to make money. It’s to put out good stuff,” says Grizzly Bear bassist Chris Taylor, who put out the first release on his new label Terrible Records last November with Ethan Silverman. In February it released the female-fronted Brooklyn synth-pop trio Class Actress’s excellent debut EP Journal of Ardency with singer-songwriter Elizabeth Harper’s ethereal, dreamy vocals against New Order-esque Eighties synth beats. The band have since performed at SXSW and their music has been heard on the hip television drama Vampire Diaries.

Having been in Grizzly Bear for five years, and produced their last three albums as well as records by Department of Eagles, Jamie Lidell and Dirty Projectors, Taylor knows his way around the industry. “I just thought it would be a place I could put out music by artists on better terms. I want to keep an honest relationship with my bands. I know my limitations as a label – I find a lot of labels promising things they know they can’t actually do. I keep it open and honest and that way everyone feels satisfied and not duped or taken advantage of. If I had bigger resources to do bigger things I’d keep the same policy. I record people for free so I pick very carefully.”

These are artists whose main intention is to cultivate new bands, and give them a platform to be heard. Such is also the case with Kings of Leon. Their first release, in February, Some Kind of Salvation, the debut album from fellow Tennessee band The Features, has already already caught the attention of radio DJs Jo Whiley and Steve Lamacq.

Surprisingly early in their career trajectory – so far they have released only limited edition 7in singles and their debut album is not out until June – New York band The Drums have launched an online record label. It was their October-released Summertime EP boasting the single “Let’s Go Surfing” that created the initial buzz around the New York band. But setting up a label was a long-standing plan for their guitarist Jacob Graham. After waiting to secure funds to start the label, he and his brother finally launched Holiday Records after they realised it was pointless waiting for something that might never happen. They launched website Holidayrecords.net and decided to put out a free MP3 every Friday. To find the artists, they trawl MySpace globally.

“My brother and a couple of friends of ours have just always wanted to start a label”, explains Graham. “We knew of a lot of bands we liked that no one was hearing. It seemed like it was time to take matters into our own hands. We are constantly working with new bands. We only work with artists that we’re crazy about. A few that seem to stand out are The Young Friends, Golden Glow, The Hairs and Two Wounded Birds.”

They have also found that the more attention that comes their way – and there will be a lot more to come with an appearance on Jonathan Ross later this month and a new single to follow in May – the more traffic is driven to their online record label.

“Being in The Drums does help to attract like-minded individuals to us. Ever since The Drums have been in the public eye, I’ve received more and more demos from artists that are doing the same sort of thing as us… which is of course trying, above all else, to write the perfect pop song.”

Indie folk band Mumford & Sons are known for their musical community which includes Laura Marling and Noah and the Whale. Their keyboard player Ben Lovett set up the club night Communion, with his friend Kevin Jones, alongside producer Ian Grimble (Siouxsie and The Banshees, Marc Almond, The Manic Street Preachers) to provide a platform for new artists’ early live performances . This year they expanded to launch the label, Communion Records, offering a similar ethos to its club nights, giving a first outlet for the new artists that they have been championing live.

Their first release, a double gatefold 12in vinyl, compiled the best of Communion to date, featuring folk-leaning rising stars Johnny Flynn, Jeremy Warmsley, Broadcast 2000, Alessi’s Ark, as well the first recorded material released by newcomers Elena Tonra. Matt Corby and Marcus Foster, and they are now preparing to release individual EPs and singles.

“I do like how we’ve earned the opportunity to help musicians to release a record now as well as play live,” says Lovett. “There’s a lot of music that never leaves people’s bedrooms or home studios. I’m certainly no A&R scout, I love music as much as the next person, but I am fully immersed in the crazy circus that is the live music and record industry and often have the great pleasure of hearing, by recommendation or sheer luck, new music.

“A perfect example would be Matthew and the Atlas, billed as local support for a Mumford & Sons show at the very start of 2009 and who just blew everyone away. He has since been in the recording studio and made an EP which we have released through Communion.” Fans should also look out for the upcoming debut EP from the talented folk newcomer Pete Roe which Communion will release in June.

So watch out – these band-members-turned-A&Rs might just be getting it right.

Tags: artists need original songs, Music licensing, record labels, songs
Posted in Music News | No Comments »

Music Matters, Especially On-Line

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Monday, April 12th, 2010

Music matters, especially online
Established services such as Spotify and We7, and newcomers such as mflow, are music sites built for the needs of web users A new campaign, Music Matters, launched this week to remind people of the power of music and to encourage them “to consume music in an ethical way”. Backed by artists, retailers, record labels and others from the music industry, the campaign will provide a Music Matters Trustmark to websites that offer legal music.

If the attempt to combat illegal downloading of copyrighted music and illicit filesharing is taking a “carrot and stick” approach, then the Trustmark is the carrot. The stick will be provided by the Digital Economy Bill, which is likely to be rushed through Parliament before the election. The Bill proposes powers to disconnect people from the internet for persistent filesharing and to close down sites that are offering copyrighted material illegally.

The limited opportunity for a Commons debate on the Bill has angered many, including some internet service providers and several consumer groups. The Open Rights Group says that more than 10,000 people have written to their MPs to complain about the disconnection plans, which they say are disproportionate and open to misuse.

The music industry says nobody would be disconnected without several warnings and the right to appeal and dismisses such concerns as “scaremongering”. The fight against music piracy has been going on for more than a decade with limited success. The pirates had the web to themselves at first because the music industry was slow to wake up to the potential of the internet and hampered by the need to clear legal services with a huge range of rights holders. It took Apple to drive legitimate internet music into the mainstream. By combining the massively popular iPod, the iTunes music store and some tough negotiating with record labels, Apple built an online music service that still dominates the market today.

However, it’s a service that simply replicates the offline world. iTunes is a music shop: you pay, you receive, you own – just like buying a CD at the shops. More recently a range of music services have started that use the internet for more than just delivering files. Streaming services, such as Spotify and We7, remove the need for you to own and store the music.

The music is stored on a server – in ‘the cloud’ – and users can stream it to their computer without charge in return for having their listening broken up by adverts. Subscribers can turn the ads off and access their music from a mobile phone. Demand for Spotify is so great that Daniel Ek, its founder and CEO, says “on certain days we are consuming more internet capacity than Sweden as a country”. Spotify deals with this by using peer-to-peer technology. Peer-to-peer services don’t require all of the data to be streamed from a central server but instead spread the load to other users on the network. It’s an approach that has been taken by illicit filesharing sites, in part because it makes it harder to track down filesharers.

The use of the word ’sharing’ is important because that’s an intrinsic part of the appeal. People naturally want to share things that they find interesting and that includes music. Instinctively the music industry wanted to prevent that at first. If your business model is based on selling songs then you need to ensure that everyone who wants your song has to come to you to get it. Daniel Ek says that the new version of Spotify, which is due for release some time in the next few months, will make sharing much more integral to the experience. Next month a new service, mflow, will be launched that puts sharing at the heart of the service. Without its community element mflow is just like the iTunes music store. You can search for tracks, listen to 30-second snippets and then pay to download them.

However, the service has a Twitter-like element that allows you to follow people and for them to follow you back. You can “flow” music to your followers, which allows them to hear the entire song – not just the 30-second snippet. If they buy it you get 20 per cent of the price, which you can use to buy more music. Once you begin following a few people on mflow your in-box soon fills up with shared tracks, each accompanied by a short message – of 140 characters, like Twitter – from the person who shared it. Pretty soon you have your own personal radio station, programmed by your friends. It’s the first internet music service I’ve come across that has no real offline equivalent.

The key will be getting enough people on board to make it work. Legal online music services are now clearly better than their illicit competitors. However, many in the industry are concerned that streaming services cannot attract the numbers of listeners required to replace lost revenue from retail. Most people would agree that ‘music matters’. The industry is about to find out just how much.

Source:Telegraph

Tags: Music business news, Music licensing, music services, songs
Posted in Music News | No Comments »

Music Matters, Especially On-Line

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Monday, April 5th, 2010

Music matters, especially online

Music matters, especially online Established services such as Spotify and We7, and newcomers such as mflow, are music sites built for the needs of web users A new campaign, Music Matters, launched this week to remind people of the power of music and to encourage them “to consume music in an ethical way”. Backed by artists, retailers, record labels and others from the music industry, the campaign will provide a Music Matters Trustmark to websites that offer legal music.

If the attempt to combat illegal downloading of copyrighted music and illicit filesharing is taking a “carrot and stick” approach, then the Trustmark is the carrot. The stick will be provided by the Digital Economy Bill, which is likely to be rushed through Parliament before the election. The Bill proposes powers to disconnect people from the internet for persistent filesharing and to close down sites that are offering copyrighted material illegally. The limited opportunity for a Commons debate on the Bill has angered many, including some internet service providers and several consumer groups.

The Open Rights Group says that more than 10,000 people have written to their MPs to complain about the disconnection plans, which they say are disproportionate and open to misuse. The music industry says nobody would be disconnected without several warnings and the right to appeal and dismisses such concerns as “scaremongering”. The fight against music piracy has been going on for more than a decade with limited success. The pirates had the web to themselves at first because the music industry was slow to wake up to the potential of the internet and hampered by the need to clear legal services with a huge range of rights holders. It took Apple to drive legitimate internet music into the mainstream.

By combining the massively popular iPod, the iTunes music store and some tough negotiating with record labels, Apple built an online music service that still dominates the market today. However, it’s a service that simply replicates the offline world. iTunes is a music shop: you pay, you receive, you own – just like buying a CD at the shops. More recently a range of music services have started that use the internet for more than just delivering files. Streaming services, such as Spotify and We7, remove the need for you to own and store the music.

The music is stored on a server – in ‘the cloud’ – and users can stream it to their computer without charge in return for having their listening broken up by adverts. Subscribers can turn the ads off and access their music from a mobile phone. Demand for Spotify is so great that Daniel Ek, its founder and CEO, says “on certain days we are consuming more internet capacity than Sweden as a country”. Spotify deals with this by using peer-to-peer technology.

Peer-to-peer services don’t require all of the data to be streamed from a central server but instead spread the load to other users on the network. It’s an approach that has been taken by illicit filesharing sites, in part because it makes it harder to track down filesharers. The use of the word ’sharing’ is important because that’s an intrinsic part of the appeal. People naturally want to share things that they find interesting and that includes music. Instinctively the music industry wanted to prevent that at first. If your business model is based on selling songs then you need to ensure that everyone who wants your song has to come to you to get it.

Daniel Ek says that the new version of Spotify, which is due for release some time in the next few months, will make sharing much more integral to the experience. Next month a new service, mflow, will be launched that puts sharing at the heart of the service. Without its community element mflow is just like the iTunes music store. You can search for tracks, listen to 30-second snippets and then pay to download them. However, the service has a Twitter-like element that allows you to follow people and for them to follow you back. You can “flow” music to your followers, which allows them to hear the entire song – not just the 30-second snippet. If they buy it you get 20 per cent of the price, which you can use to buy more music.

Once you begin following a few people on mflow your in-box soon fills up with shared tracks, each accompanied by a short message – of 140 characters, like Twitter – from the person who shared it. Pretty soon you have your own personal radio station, programmed by your friends. It’s the first internet music service I’ve come across that has no real offline equivalent. The key will be getting enough people on board to make it work.

Legal online music services are now clearly better than their illicit competitors. However, many in the industry are concerned that streaming services cannot attract the numbers of listeners required to replace lost revenue from retail. Most people would agree that ‘music matters’. The industry is about to find out just how much.

Source:Telegraph

Tags: Music business news, music services
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Musicians Look For Corporate & Product Sponsorship

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Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

This music is sponsored by …With the music industry in free fall, musicians turn to corporate advertising and product placement to promote their work.

In the music video for Lady Gaga’s hit single “Bad Romance,” the pop diva vamps across several nightmarish tableaux wearing a variety of barely there lingerie get-ups. The flashy clip caused a sensation when it debuted in November and has racked up 85 million views on YouTube.

But perhaps its most striking aspect is the unabashed product placement — conspicuous visual shout-outs to Nemiroff vodka, Nintendo Wii, Burberry and other brands.

Back in the proverbial day — say, the Woodstock era, punk rock’s ’70s heyday, the slacker-era ’90s — a song was a song and a jingle was a jingle and rarely the twain did meet. But now, with CD sales in free fall and opportunities for radio or television airplay increasingly rare, the rules governing the interplay between pop music and advertising are being rewritten.

It’s no longer possible to “sell out” — at least, not within a certain time-cherished understanding of the term. Rockers, rappers and up-and-coming pop titans of all stripes are licensing music and image as an integral part of brand-building, which largely has usurped selling music and concert tickets as many musicians’ professional end goal.

Consider Chris Brown’s smash hit “Forever,” which cracked the Top 10 in seven countries in 2008 (before his career-derailing assault on Rihanna) and went double platinum. At the start of the song’s video, Brown is shown sliding a piece of gum into his mouth before heading out for a night on the town. On “Forever’s” chorus, he croons: ” ‘Cause we only got one night / Double your pleasure, double your fun.” Turns out the song was commissioned by Wrigley to promote — you guessed it — Doublemint gum. Three months after releasing the single, the chewing gum conglomerate aired its “reveal”: a TV commercial version of “Forever” featuring Brown singing about gum and dancing with a pack of Doublemint. The spot generated outcry among music purists, but marketers greeted the spots with awe.

“When the reveal happened, some people got upset,” recalled Steve Stoute, founder of the firm Translation Consultation & Brand Imaging. “But the number of spins went up and Doublemint went up in awareness.” Stoute, who was behind “Forever,” also is responsible for Justin Timberlake’s “I’m Lovin’ It” spots for McDonald’s as well as Beyoncé’s endorsement deal for Tommy Hilfiger’s True Star perfume and the career game plan to treat Lady Gaga “like a brand” in her own right. “Using entertainment assets to introduce products is a platform that needed to get exploited,” said Stoute, a former executive vice president of Interscope Records. “The lines needed to be blurred. When done correctly, there’s consumer acceptance.” Stoute said his marketing company gets several calls a week from “major artists” in pursuit of their own “Forever.

” It’s not selling out, he argues, if there’s an authentic relationship between the music and the product being hawked. “Marketing isn’t successful if the consumer feels he or she is being sold something,” Stoute said. Personal favorite products Mariah Carey’s most recent CD, “Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel,” was accompanied by a 34-page mini-magazine bearing the R&B diva’s image and emblazoned with an Elle magazine logo. It’s a co-production between Carey’s label Island Def Jam Music Group and Elle that features such brands as Angel Champagne, Elizabeth Arden and the Bahamas Board of Tourism intermingled with lighter-than-air Mariah-based editorial featurettes: “VIP access to her sexy love life,” “Fantasy: the five-time Grammy winner goes behind the scenes of her new drama.” Carey pointed out she is personally or commercially invested in everything advertised.

“Angel Champagne, I guess I’m part owner. The Bahamas, we have a house down there,” Carey explained, between bites of caviar at the Polo Lounge. “It all has to do with things that are organic to me. And honestly? I’m a big kid. I thought it would be cute.” Island Def Jam is exploring similar branded CD booklet deals for artists including Kanye West, Rihanna and Bon Jovi. It all makes the Who’s rollicking 1967 concept album “The Who Sell Out” — which featured faux commercials and cover art depicting band members shilling for deodorant and baked beans — appear prescient. (In further irony, the Who’s epochal 1965 single “My Generation” is currently featured in a commercial for Flo TV.)

Scott Lipps, owner and founder of the New York modeling agency One Management, recalls a time not long ago when indie rock acts would sooner pack in their skinny jeans than appear in fashion ads. But now, Lipps has augmented the success of his agency (which represents such A-list glamazons as Bar Refaeli and Claudia Schiffer) with its offshoot One (M), dedicated to help place rock and pop stars in precisely such commercial environments. Among them: Alison Mosshart of the Kills and Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode, who were featured in ads for the fashion line J. Lindeberg, and the New York pop-rock band the Virgins, who were photographed for a Tommy Hilfiger campaign.

“People’s views on endorsements, doing magazine stuff — any way to reach fans — it’s all changed. It’s not taboo anymore,” Lipps said. Lipps, formerly drummer for ’80s rock group Black Cherry, remains attentive to the alliance of brand and band. “I’m never going to ask a very cool band to do business with a brand that they would never associate with,” said Lipps. “It’s about finding that right fit.” After the rock quartet OK Go broke into mainstream consciousness with the homemade video for its 2006 single “Here It Goes Again” (featuring the band members performing a synchronized routine on exercise treadmills), they were bombarded with offers to re-create the sequence for TV commercials.

The group developed what frontman Damian Kulash calls OK Go’s “hell-no criterion”: “If it’s a product we feel is demeaning or that cannibalizes the meaning or artistry of our song,” he explained. Still, the band has remained receptive to overtures from corporate America. Last year, the musicians appeared in print ads and billboards for Banana Republic — its spring fashion line campaign that also included such artists as Liz Phair, Dashboard Confessional’s Chris Carrabba and Sara Bareilles — attired in natty suits, playing their instruments.

“The recording industry has so entirely bottomed out, advertising is one of the only distribution methods that still works,” Kulash said after returning from Japan, where he did a photo shoot for the fashion brand Uniqlo. “The music side has a deep ambivalence. It’s a pretty major paradigm shift that requires a rethinking of how we see what we do.” He added: “I wish we never had to get in bed with that stuff. It doesn’t feel particularly good to wear the marketing hat. But our record label isn’t paying to put up billboards across the country.” It’s become fashionable Fashion designer John Varvatos faced a similar reluctance when he approached Ryan Adams about appearing in print ads and billboards for his streetwise clothing line in 2005.

But after convincing the alt-country singer-songwriter that there would be “nothing fakey about him appearing in the clothes,” Varvatos went on to land Iggy Pop, members of Velvet Revolver and Cheap Trick, Perry Ferrell of Jane’s Addiction and Aerosmith’s Joe Perry for subsequent ads. Varvatos said attitudes toward commodifying stardom have changed. “I was besieged by people wanting to hook up with us,” Varvatos said. “There are a lot of people coming after us now. It’s almost the opposite problem now. We have to filter out.” The designer was quick to dispel the notion, however, that the performers in his ads were selling out their images in return for some hefty payday.

“We don’t pay the artists much of anything,” Varvatos added. “They’ve got to really want to do this.” Katie Vogel certainly has no regrets over her decision to star in Sprite’s online series “Green Eyed World,” a digital marketing push that aired last year. The series used YouTube clips, social networking interfaces and the promotion of soda to help the London native launch her career; she brandishes a Sprite-green guitar in the clips and at times people around her are seen quenching their thirst with a certain lemon-lime-flavored refreshment. Asked if she was concerned that the association with the brand might limit her career prospects, Vogel, who now goes by the professional moniker Katie V., insisted there were no downsides. “My music, it’s being heard,” Vogel said. “Even if one person says, ‘She’s the Sprite singer,’ they’ve heard my music. So I’m happy either way.”

Source: LA Times

Tags: music sponsorship
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Download Growth Boosts 2009 UK Music Royalties

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Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

Download growth boosts 2009 UK music royalties
Category: Music

Download growth boosts 2009 UK music royalties LONDON Mon Mar 15, 2010 6:31am EDT (Reuters) - British songwriters, composers and music publishers earned 623 million pounds ($944.8 million) in royalties in 2009, up 2.6 percent on 2008 and the first time the growth in digital revenues outperformed the drop in CD and DVD earnings.

TECHNOLOGY | MUSIC | MEDIA But PRS for Music, the group which compiled the figures and which is responsible for collecting and distributing royalties for 65,000 musicians and publishers, said it was too early to talk of a turning point in the industry.

“The global music business has been shrinking steadily in recent years, hit by online piracy and the rapid decline in physical format sales like CDs, which have more than made up for the rapid growth in legal digital revenues. “2009 was the first year in which the growth in revenues from the legal digital market compensated for the decline in revenues from traditional CDs and DVDs, though we remain cautious as to whether this represents a true turning point,” said PRS for Music chief executive Robert Ashcroft.

“The next decade does, however, promise further growth in earnings from the legal digital market as well as the use of British music overseas.” And despite the growth in digital revenues last year, they still represent a small proportion of the overall market. In 2009 online revenues grew 73 percent, or 12.8 million pounds to 30.4 million pounds, while earnings from CDs and DVDs fell by 8.7 million pounds.

The overall increase in the market was largely due to a sharp rise in British music use abroad, increasing 19 percent to 166.9 million pounds. The UK music market fell slightly, hit by a drop in advertising revenues and the ringtone market among other factors. (Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

Tags: UK music download growth in 2009
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George Wein Produces First CareFusion Jazz Festival in NY

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Thursday, March 18th, 2010

Old Hand Tries New Approach to Jazz Festival..

..By BEN RATLIFF..Published: February 24, 2010
..The concert promoter George Wein, now 84, has been getting out to clubs lately.

Enlarge This Image

Willie Davis for The New York TimesThe CareFusion Jazz Festival lineup emphasizes up-and-comers like Mostly Other People Do the Killing, with Peter Evans on trumpet, Jon Irabagon on saxophone and Moppa Elliott on bass.

Astrid Stawiarz/Getty ImagesTalib Kweli of the jazz-hip-hop collective Revive da Live.

“More than 20 times in the past year,” he said in an interview on Tuesday. In Brooklyn, which he reckons he hasn’t visited more than two dozen times since 1960, he’s been to Zebulon and Barbès and the tiny Puppets. He’s been spending time at the Jazz Gallery, on Hudson Street in the South Village. And there he was last month during the crammed, chaotic Winter Jazzfest, settled in for a long night at Kenny’s Castaways on Bleecker Street.

“I’ve got to change my way of listening,” he said. “I’ve got to listen to what the musicians are trying to tell me and whether they’re doing it well.”

Some of what he has heard will be found in the first CareFusion Jazz Festival, a major jazz festival in New York this summer, produced by Mr. Wein. It will run from June 17 to 26, and its schedule is to be released on Thursday at carefusionjazz.com.

All this reconnaissance is a change of course. For a long time Mr. Wein ran the fairly formulaic, big-ticket JVC Jazz Festival in New York and relied on employees of his production company, Festival Productions, for programming ideas. The festival imploded under debt last year after Mr. Wein sold Festival Productions. But now he has a new (if smaller) company, New Festival Productions, and he’s taking on much of the programming himself.

The sponsorship by CareFusion, a medical technology company, amounts to about a half-million dollars, said Mr. Wein, almost comparable to what JVC provided. That will cover severalCarnegie Hall bookings that are his predictable standby hits: the pianists Keith Jarrett and Herbie Hancock, the bossa-nova pioneer João Gilberto, the trumpeter Chris Botti. But the schedule also includes a lot of club concerts by jazz’s younger challengers: Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society; the quartet Mostly Other People Do the Killing; a large ensemble culled from the jazz-hip-hop collective Revive da Live, including the rapper Talib Kweli; a new trio of the pianist Jason Moran, the guitarist Mary Halvorson and the trumpeter Ron Miles; and bands led by Eric Revis, Matana Roberts and Craig Taborn, among others.

“What is jazz today?” Mr. Wein ruminated. “It’s a different world. As a producer I have to recognize that. I don’t have a lot of older people in my festival now, except at Carnegie. I don’t want the old names this year. I’ll do them another year.”

The new festival’s emphasis on clubs is significant. In the JVC days Mr. Wein concentrated his bookings in larger theaters: Carnegie, the Beacon, variousLincoln Center rooms. As an add-on, in some years he approached Manhattan clubs like the Village Vanguard, offered them free festival advertising and let them book their own rooms as usual. In return, the clubs would hang the festival’s banner on their stages.

“JVC became basically a Carnegie Hall festival, with a few little side things,” he said.

But this year Mr. Wein is consulting with the club owners, paying the musicians and letting the clubs keep the door money. In one case — the Jazz Gallery — he’s helping book the club throughout the festival and putting on a larger concert at Symphony Space by an ad-hoc band called the Jazz Gallery All-Stars: a crew of excellent musicians associated with the small club, including Roy Hargrove, Claudia Acuña, Ambrose Akinmusire and Gerald Clayton.

The focus on clubs is a good sign for the festival: it is an investment in jazz’s daily working life. Because clubs are where jazz culture lives, this move seems likely to benefit everyone — musicians, clubs, audiences and maybe even Mr. Wein.

“But we won’t make any money,” he cautioned. “If I break even I’ll be very happy. I’m just doing things to do them. I’m not finished, and I’m not tired anymore. I got a burst of energy.”

Source: NYTimes

Tags: george wein, jazz festival, new york music
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Steve Lamacq Defends BBC 6 Music

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Thursday, March 18th, 2010

Steve Lamacq defends BBC 6 Music Tuesday, March 9 2010, 17:33 GMT
By Mayer Nissim, Entertainment Reporter

Steve Lamacq defends BBC 6 Music

Steve Lamacq has urged the BBC to reconsider plans to close radio station 6 Music in 2011.

The digital channel is due to cease programming next year along with Asian Network as part of an overhaul of the broadcaster.

Writing on his Going Deaf For A Living blog, Lamacq accused BBC audio and music director Tim Davie of a “sleight of hand” in his recent backing of the plans to close 6 Music.

Lamacq said: “Davie maintains that having nine standalone BBC radio stations is too many (when I think what he means is there’s ‘too many brands’ and losing a couple will make it easier to market what they have left - while also putting on a show for people who are demanding the BBC’s blood. We are a radio station up for a public flogging!)

“The inference from Davie is that they are considering moving some 6 Music shows, possibly to Radio 2, to give them ‘a bigger audience’. But given that Radio 2 has recently been told to become ‘more distinctive’ and create more programmes for the over-60s, that doesn’t look particularly practical.”

He added of the station: “Don’t scrap it now before its fully discovered its true identity. Instead, in five years’ time, take the praise for what it will have grown into and achieved: an independently-minded station on the periphery of pop.

“A station which understands and celebrates our musical history - while always looking to the future You might be surprised.”

Source: Digital Spy

Tags: BBC 6 Music, radio, steve lamacq
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Free Ad Supported Music … With a Twist

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Friday, March 12th, 2010

Guvera details their service
Category: Music

Free, Ad-Supported Music … With a Twist

By Eliot Van Buskirk
February 19, 2010 |
4:53 pm

Following a beta in its native Australia, Guvera aims to offer a new twist on the pure, ad-supported music service in the United States: a velvet rope policy it hopes will prevent it from failing due to licensing costs, as other ad-supported efforts have in the past.

Music fans in the United States don’t have many options for free on-demand music, although YouTube, Vevo, Vimeo and other video sites offer a great selection — so long as you don’t mind a little video with your music.

Guvera CEO Claes Loberg, COO Finbar O’Hanlon and head of content Dan Thompson plan to bring their Australian ad-supported music service to the states on March 30. Photo courtesy Guvera.

For starters, a maximum of 100,000 American users will be allowed to join the free audio streaming and downloading site Guvera when it launches on March 30. If there’s no advertiser to pay for your streams and downloads, you can’t register. Advertisers during the Australian beta included Dominos Pizza and Johnson & Johnson, although advertisers for the U.S. launch have yet to be announced.

Here’s how it works: Advertisers tell Guvera the key attributes of the music they want associated with their brands, and Guvera’s Pandora-like algorithm filters those songs into those channels. The end user will have access to millions of songs through a typical search box, but will end up playing or downloading within one of those channels.

Instead of interrupting the music experience with pre-roll ads or any other delays, you can proceed directly to the stream or download, Guvera CEO Claes Loberg told Wired.com.

By way of analogy, imagine music as a sporting event. Would you rather that on-field commercials interrupt the game before each play, or that the stadium be named after a brand while play continues as usual? Guvera takes the latter approach, setting up these branded areas but otherwise not tampering with the action on the field, so to speak.

“What we’ve done is reverse the advertising concept,” said Loberg. “Instead of advertisers trying to figure out which channels their [targeted] people are listening to and watching, and how to get onto those, and how to measure how many people actually saw it within the target demographic that we have, the Guvera concept is that the brand actually becomes the channel … [which removes] the need for content-disruptive-based advertising. We don’t have to disrupt the flow.”

The user pays nothing, and gets to stream music for free or download it as plain-old MP3s with no branding attached. And because the Guvera website never creates a one-to-one relationship between a band and a brand, it hopes to avoid implications that bands have “sold out” by endorsing particular products. In the event that an artist’s song is available in multiple branded channels, users can choose which one they’d like to enter.

Unlike iTunes or YouTube, Guvera does not have deals with every label, so you won’t be able to find every song you can think of. But its catalog is large and growing, thanks to deals for the U.S. launch with EMI, Universal Music Group, IODA and INGrooves, as well as major performing rights organization and the Harry Fox Agency, which represents 46,000 publishers. Guvera will pay the labels a percentage of revenue, from which labels pay publishers.

Of course, you’ll need an invite, and Guvera will only give out as many as it thinks it can support. If the company has a hard time selling ads at a high enough rate to cover its download and streaming costs, invitations could be scarce. After this music service launches, Loberg said, Guvera plans to offer a web-based television service utilizing a similar business model.

Guvera wouldn’t give us access to the beta version of the service from the states, and we tired of looking for Australian web proxies, but the below screenshots depict a slick-looking service that appears to live up to Loberg’s claim that it stays out of the way. And if Guvera’s Thursday night New York launch party — featuring Alice Cooper, The Bravery, The Donnas and a 45-foot ice sculpture of the word “Revolution” — was any indication, it means business. Guvera reportedly received $20 million in financing from a group of private Australian investors, after attracting $10 million in 2009.

Source: Wired

Tags: ad supported music, music sales
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