Nicola Slade looks into today’s report by a government select committee into the Licensing Act 2003 - and notes what a welcome relief it is....In the wake of the introduction of the Licensing Act 2003, which subsequently came into full force in 2005, Dave Gelly, musician and jazz critic for the Observer, commented: “It looks as though the Government has deliberately set out to strangle any kind of live music at all, not just in pubs, clubs and restaurants but everywhere - church halls, schools, wedding parties in stately homes, a marquee on the vicarage lawn, or even in your own back garden. Nowhere will be exempt from persecution.”
His comments were echoed by a raft of people and organisations, particularly the Musician’s Union, who foresaw that the Act would reduce the number of venues/pubs which would be prepared to host live music. Among other points, the law namely required that there be a license for the playing of live music in any venue, no matter how small, therefore disbanding the old ‘two-in-a-bar’ rule which had allowed two musicians, playing unamplified music, to perform without seeking a license. The fee for applying for a premises license (covering a number of elements, not just music) cost between £100 and £635.
To deal with any concerns raised over the new bill, the Live Music Forum (LMF) was set up, headed up by now UK Music chairman, Feargal Sharkey. LMF issued a report in 2007, studying the ramifications of the Act, in which it claimed that “(it) has had a neutral effect on the UK’s live music scene”, but recommended there should be more flexibility of the application of the Act on smaller premises.
News comes this morning (Thurs 16 May) that a crossparty Select Committee is now seeking to reverse some of those decisions relating to music, embodied by the Act. In fact, you might go as far to say that the committee is recommending a complete u-turn. “To encourage the performance of live music we recommend that the Government should exempt venues with a capacity of 200 persons or fewer from the need to obtain a license for the performance of live music. We further recommend the re-introduction of the two-in-a-bar exemption, enabling venues of any size to put on a performance of nonamplified music by one or two musicians,” it states. It’s welcome news indeed, but why has this u-turn come about? Given the LMF’s original claims that the Act showed nothing other than a ‘neutral effect,’ we presume that the introduction of London’s Met Police’s Form 696 might be one of the driving factors. Form 696 has been one of the most contentious demands set by the capital’s police and we count ourselves among those who completely oppose it.
Form 696 is billed as a ‘risk assessment form’ that venue owners and/or promoters have to submit to the police two weeks in advance of any planned music event. 696 has become controversial due to its stipulation that names, stage names, private addresses, and phone numbers of all promoters, DJs and artists be listed. The form also asks for a description of the style of music to be performed and the target audience. The original form also asked for details of ethnic groups likely to attend the performance, but that version was revised to omit those parameters in December 2008.
Form 696 has naturally come under fire by various groups and former LMF chief Feargal Sharkey himself. The report this morning suitably criticises 696 and even goes so far to suggest that it should be scrapped: “We are concerned at the linkage of live music and public order issues by the Licensing Act and its accompanying guidance, and we emphasise that music should not automatically be treated as a disruptive activity which will inevitably lead to nuisance and disorder. We therefore conclude that...Form 696, goes beyond the requirements of both the Act and its Guidance to impose unreasonable conditions on events and that it should be scrapped.”
“As with the restrictions on small venues, Form 696 is a wholly unnecessary impediment to live music... UK Music has been vocal amongst musicians, civil liberty campaigners and members of the public who want to see this counter-productive and morally questionable risk assessment form scrapped. I am delighted the Committee feels the same way,” Feargal Sharkey told RotD.
It’s a bizarre set of circumstances. We can’t help but wonder why limitations on live music were included in the Licensing Act and secondly, how the Met Police was able to implement 696 without consultation in the first place. If the UK government really had an understanding of music and the business itself, why are its decisions in such disarray? Maybe that says more about the Labour Party that it does its relationship with our industry?
We also couldn’t help but be amused at the irony of the timing of this news. Only earlier this week, culture secretary Andy Burnham opened a new rehearsal facility in Liverpool for young, aspiring musicians as part of a programme to open up similar spaces across the whole of the UK – with no less, financial stimulus from the government. If this report doesn’t succeed in reversing the problems with the Licensing Act, then it’s highly probable that many of those rehearsing in such spaces will continue to have limited venues to perform in.
However, The DCMS has 12 weeks to respond to the concerns of the select committee and we trust that it will see the error of its ways.
Tuesday 19 May 2009
Wednesday 6 May 2009
Record of the Day Twitter Directory: Call for entries
We asked our Twitter followers if there was a definitive or even just good directory of music industry twitterati. We found that there is already a pretty good google spreadsheet which is fairly wide-reaching.
As you can see, there's plenty of categories in this directory, and some interesting finds.
Although it's a great resource built up by Gabriel Nijmeh (gcn1) it seems a bit U.S focused, and we'd like to build a directory (not only to add to this great list, but also to have a stand-alone RotD webpage) which focuses on Music Industry professionals who we feel provide insight into the business we work in.
We know sites like Twellow and WeFollow already provide a great resource, but we find they are too broad in scope for our world:
We're a UK-based service (kind of like a village newsletter to the music industry), so our entries would have a UK/European slant, but no location is barred. With our daily email, weekly magazine and messageboard serve record labels, journalists, radio/tv producers and presenters PRs, managers, promoters as well as a host of industry bodies and many other music professionals.
We'll embed their tweets on a standalone page on our site so that RotD readers can track the most knowledgeable and useful music industry twitterers.
Tuesday 28 April 2009
The media fall-out from the Pirate Bay trial
Even now, the fall-out from the Pirate Bay trial continues to dominate headlines across music and technology websites and blogs.
There have been a number of twists and turns, most recently that the judge in The Pirate Bay trial has been accused of bias. Sweden's national radio station revealed that Thomas Norström was a member of the same pro-copyright groups as several of the main entertainment industry reps in the case. Four days after the trial, The Pirate Bay lodged their appeal and claimed in a blog post, "We are more determined than ever that what we do is right. Millions of users are a good proof of that."
Two other related stories also came to light, namely a new research report from the Norwegian School of Management, which suggested that P2P users are likely to buy ten times more music than someone who doesn’t file-share. The Norwegian study looked at almost 2,000 online music users, all over the age of 15. On the other side of the coin, various reports suggest that torrent sites across Europe are closing in the wake of the news, while some suggest that they are merely going more underground and are harder to track.
Regardless of the fall-out, we were particularly interested in watching how the press (including technology sites and blogs) dealt with the news that the founders would be sentenced to a year in jail and fined by way of compensation to rightsholders.
The Times, Telegraph and Music Week handled the news of the verdict in a similar fashion. Rather shockingly, the first paragraph on Music Week’s back-slapping front page this week read: “The music industry has sunk the aspirations of future pirates after claiming its biggest scalp to date.” Marcus Oscarsson and David Charter in the Times on Friday went with the line, “In a big victory for the entertainment industries..,” while the Telegraph opted for a less bombastic, but equally strange, “Four Swedish men were jailed for a year and fined nearly £2.5 million on Friday after they lost a landmark internet piracy court case against some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry.” “Sunk the aspirations?” “Big victory?” “Landmark case?” We beg to disagree. Each time the entertainment industries have sued file-sharing services (Napster, Kazaa, Grokster), we’ve been told the outcome is ‘landmark’, so why then does the desire for litigation keep on raising its ugly head?
Rather ironically, the Telegraph and Times, in separate comment pieces, took an entirely different line altogether. “There seems little chance that the verdict will change anything in the long war between copyright owners and internet users.” (Times - Tom Whitwell). “The fact remains, though, that The Pirate Bay is simply the latest in a long line of filesharing websites against whom legal action has been taken, and yet the levels of online piracy shows no signs of abating.” (Telegraph – Claudine Beaumont)
As we might have predicted, both the Guardian and Independent approached the story sensibly, with the Guardian’s Emily Bell probably making the most sense out of all writers on the national papers. “The Pirate Bay flouted the law, daring the authorities to do something about it and so the outcome was not much short of inevitable, albeit disproportionate and ineffectual. But The Pirate Bay is not the beginning of the end for copyright infringement. That ship has already sailed, carrying more than just pirates.” Pat Pilcher in Monday’s Independent highlighted the real ongoing problem with file-sharing and the fact that the Pirate Bay trial will do little to stop the problem. “Future victories for copyright holders are looking increasingly shaky as Bitorrent tracking sites such as The Pirate Bay are about to be replaced by applications such as the Tribler. Where the current crop of Bit Torrent file-sharing applications need to be pointed at torrent tracking sites such as The Pirate Bay to find files, Tribler's searches are done over the networks of fellow Bit Torrent users, sidestepping centralised torrent tracking sites altogether.”
Of course, the story on the tech blogs was far more anti-music industry. One blogger ran the headline: “Why the Pirate Bay trial is bullsh*t”. Even the Christian Science Monitor had something to say about the whole affair (hardly surprising given where its funding might come from – namely Hollywood!), “The Pirate Bay case: Not necessarily a victory for Hollywood,” said its headline. The NME dealt with the story by giving Paul McCartney a platform to express his views, where he stated that the ruling was ‘fair’. We’re not entirely sure why it defaulted to Paul McCartney – he’s hardly the spokesperson for today’s NME generation, but maybe that was the point!
The Register’s Andrew Orlowski shed an interesting light on the events: “Any recording business executive celebrating the court victory over The Pirate Bay should have been in San Francisco this weekend for a reality check. Attending CodeCon 2009 would have brought them swiftly down to earth, and emphasised the futility of trying to prevent P2P file sharing. What's the point, when you can make money off it instead?” Even the Wall St Journal approached it all with caution: “The operators of a notorious file-sharing Web site were found guilty of copyright infringement by a Swedish court, a key legal victory for the entertainment industry that nonetheless may do little to stem the piracy of entertainment on the Internet.” (Sarah McBride)
What can we learn from this? We’d sound a note of caution to some publications: look beyond the press statements from the IFPI and certain other trade bodies. This was not an out-and-out triumph, it was yet another costly case, while the effects of the ruling simply can’t be measured. It hardly brought P2P networks crashing down. The word that copyright infringement is illegal might be stronger as a result, but is that really going to stop them? Probably not. Certain publications might be wise to take a more balanced view in future.
Nicola Slade
There have been a number of twists and turns, most recently that the judge in The Pirate Bay trial has been accused of bias. Sweden's national radio station revealed that Thomas Norström was a member of the same pro-copyright groups as several of the main entertainment industry reps in the case. Four days after the trial, The Pirate Bay lodged their appeal and claimed in a blog post, "We are more determined than ever that what we do is right. Millions of users are a good proof of that."
Two other related stories also came to light, namely a new research report from the Norwegian School of Management, which suggested that P2P users are likely to buy ten times more music than someone who doesn’t file-share. The Norwegian study looked at almost 2,000 online music users, all over the age of 15. On the other side of the coin, various reports suggest that torrent sites across Europe are closing in the wake of the news, while some suggest that they are merely going more underground and are harder to track.
Regardless of the fall-out, we were particularly interested in watching how the press (including technology sites and blogs) dealt with the news that the founders would be sentenced to a year in jail and fined by way of compensation to rightsholders.
The Times, Telegraph and Music Week handled the news of the verdict in a similar fashion. Rather shockingly, the first paragraph on Music Week’s back-slapping front page this week read: “The music industry has sunk the aspirations of future pirates after claiming its biggest scalp to date.” Marcus Oscarsson and David Charter in the Times on Friday went with the line, “In a big victory for the entertainment industries..,” while the Telegraph opted for a less bombastic, but equally strange, “Four Swedish men were jailed for a year and fined nearly £2.5 million on Friday after they lost a landmark internet piracy court case against some of the biggest names in the entertainment industry.” “Sunk the aspirations?” “Big victory?” “Landmark case?” We beg to disagree. Each time the entertainment industries have sued file-sharing services (Napster, Kazaa, Grokster), we’ve been told the outcome is ‘landmark’, so why then does the desire for litigation keep on raising its ugly head?
Rather ironically, the Telegraph and Times, in separate comment pieces, took an entirely different line altogether. “There seems little chance that the verdict will change anything in the long war between copyright owners and internet users.” (Times - Tom Whitwell). “The fact remains, though, that The Pirate Bay is simply the latest in a long line of filesharing websites against whom legal action has been taken, and yet the levels of online piracy shows no signs of abating.” (Telegraph – Claudine Beaumont)
As we might have predicted, both the Guardian and Independent approached the story sensibly, with the Guardian’s Emily Bell probably making the most sense out of all writers on the national papers. “The Pirate Bay flouted the law, daring the authorities to do something about it and so the outcome was not much short of inevitable, albeit disproportionate and ineffectual. But The Pirate Bay is not the beginning of the end for copyright infringement. That ship has already sailed, carrying more than just pirates.” Pat Pilcher in Monday’s Independent highlighted the real ongoing problem with file-sharing and the fact that the Pirate Bay trial will do little to stop the problem. “Future victories for copyright holders are looking increasingly shaky as Bitorrent tracking sites such as The Pirate Bay are about to be replaced by applications such as the Tribler. Where the current crop of Bit Torrent file-sharing applications need to be pointed at torrent tracking sites such as The Pirate Bay to find files, Tribler's searches are done over the networks of fellow Bit Torrent users, sidestepping centralised torrent tracking sites altogether.”
Of course, the story on the tech blogs was far more anti-music industry. One blogger ran the headline: “Why the Pirate Bay trial is bullsh*t”. Even the Christian Science Monitor had something to say about the whole affair (hardly surprising given where its funding might come from – namely Hollywood!), “The Pirate Bay case: Not necessarily a victory for Hollywood,” said its headline. The NME dealt with the story by giving Paul McCartney a platform to express his views, where he stated that the ruling was ‘fair’. We’re not entirely sure why it defaulted to Paul McCartney – he’s hardly the spokesperson for today’s NME generation, but maybe that was the point!
The Register’s Andrew Orlowski shed an interesting light on the events: “Any recording business executive celebrating the court victory over The Pirate Bay should have been in San Francisco this weekend for a reality check. Attending CodeCon 2009 would have brought them swiftly down to earth, and emphasised the futility of trying to prevent P2P file sharing. What's the point, when you can make money off it instead?” Even the Wall St Journal approached it all with caution: “The operators of a notorious file-sharing Web site were found guilty of copyright infringement by a Swedish court, a key legal victory for the entertainment industry that nonetheless may do little to stem the piracy of entertainment on the Internet.” (Sarah McBride)
What can we learn from this? We’d sound a note of caution to some publications: look beyond the press statements from the IFPI and certain other trade bodies. This was not an out-and-out triumph, it was yet another costly case, while the effects of the ruling simply can’t be measured. It hardly brought P2P networks crashing down. The word that copyright infringement is illegal might be stronger as a result, but is that really going to stop them? Probably not. Certain publications might be wise to take a more balanced view in future.
Nicola Slade
Thursday 9 April 2009
Music Week Awards - full list of winners
Winners at last night's Music Week awards were: Amazon (retail service), Rough Trade East (store), Lost Tunes (digital achievement), Sony (sales force), Alison Wenham for 10 years of AIM (special achievement), Proper (distributor), Radio City (regional radio station), Radio 2 (national radio station), Columbia (regional promotions), Atlantic (national promotions), Rachael Paley, Mercury for Stereophonics (catalogue), Barbara Charone (PR for Duffy), Boots (sync), AEG (promotor), O2 Brixton Academy (venue), EMI/Universal (publisher), Kobalt (independent publisher), Xenomania (producer), Liz Godwin, Polydor for Elbow (marketing campaign), Jim Chancellor (A&R), Bacardi/Groove Armada (music & brand partnership), XL (independent label), Polydor (record label), Jeanette Lee (manager), Chris Blackwell (music exec of the last 50 years), Rob Partridge (Strat)
Tuesday 7 April 2009
Record of the Day Innovators Award
A £500 prize & the inaugural RotD Innovators Award for the best Spotify App.
- We want to encourage the smartest developers to come up with the smartest ideas, not just in this instance for Spotify, but so that we can find room to work with them in the future.
- Read the libspotify page and see if you're interested in taking part. And read their T's & C's too.
- You have until 23:59(GMT) on Friday 17th April to get your ideas together. Send them via email to info(at)recordoftheday(dot)com with a one page summary (word doc) of what your application does, and any other information/examples too.
- Winner announced by Record of the Day on Friday 8th May
- Prize awarded at judges discretion. Contact info(at)recordoftheday(dot)com if you have any other questions.
- This isn't about ownership for us, it's about getting to know the smartest developers out there.
Friday 20 March 2009
CMW 2009
Often a staple on the conference calendar for Europeans on their way to SXSW, the 27th annual CMW made the news in its own right this year for a clash of egos between commentator Bob Lefsetz and Kiss’ Gene Simmons, who agreed to a last-minute interview that became the centre stage event for the conference.
That this so-called 'cage-match' was more talked and written about than anything else at the event should remind conference organisers that no matter how many interesting speakers you book or the ground-breaking topics you cover, it's the ego-driven bitch-fests that will win out.
The tone of the clash had been previously set with Lefsetz's email response to Simmons' opening day keynote. Lefsetz described Simmons' speech as “a full time commercial...a product promotion for the latest iteration of Simmons Records.” And indeed it was. We're told that this joint venture between Universal Canada and Simmons Records is bankrolled by a Canadian multi-millionaire's daughter. Simmons responded publicly to the email shortly after it was published, then over dinner later that night, CMW president Neill Dixon proposed the hastily-organised 'cage-match'. Lefsetz's assertion that Gene setting up a label in Canada (rather than in his own backyard) seemed suspicious was neither here nor there but it led them to a packed conference room to set out both their arguments.
“What is your track record behind the scenes?” asked Lefsetz, “I discovered Van Halen and managed Liza Minnelli, what have you done, bitch?” Simmons fired back before continuing to plug his JV with Universal Canada. Lefsetz continued to soapbox the opinions he'd already blogged about: why bands shouldn't sign to majors, how Gene was thinking like a dinosaur and shamelessly promoting instead of 'giving back'. The low blows came from Simmons, but Lefsetz was able to put him in his place, drawing upon facts such as the way in which Simmons’ solo album bombed.
It might be the only panel we've sat through where a rock star was accused of being “an asshole” to his face. Simmons was brave and/or foolish to take up the offer for take part in the face-off: he was never going to come off well. In a room full of people who get The Lefsetz Letter and appreciate his rants, the last word would always be left to Bob. Within a couple of hours after the 'debate' Lefsetz had sent out his impressions of his meeting with Simmons to his subscriber list. Game over.
This public spat may have been an entertaining diversion from dry panels about mobile music, but it was also a childish argument and a depressing glimpse of lowest-common denominator debating. CMW and other conferences like it would do well to have more confrontation on their schedules, but not like this.
The recent Canadian Radio, Television and Telecommunications new media hearings threw up a few hot topics for debate, which gained relevance for us in the light of industry reactions in the UK towards the interim Digital Britain report. The question of the role ISPs will play going forward was in sharp focus on one panel led by IFPI chairman John Kennedy and featuring Canadian Recording Industry Association president Graham Henderson, as well as representatives from Canadian indies, publishing and the broadcast industry. Henderson said Canada has lagged behind other countries when it comes to setting anti-piracy initiatives, and was hopeful that ISPs and labels could work more closely in future, despite his reckoning that there would not be any financial incentive for the ISPs to engage meaningfully with the industry.
The SOCAN-sponsored (the Canadian collection agency) 'The Life Of A Song' panel proved particularly interesting and spelled out the life-span a hit song can potentially achieve. Randy Bachman (ex-Bachman Turner Overdrive) told the audience the story of the conception and recording of his hit 'Takin' Care Of Business'. What was fascinating was the connection the song had made with the public and the money it had made in all its various uses over the years. The songwriter's complete integrity in brokering deals on those uses was also evident. Bachman peppered his speech with fantastic anecdotes throughout: turning down $1m from a beer brand as he didn't want to be associated with alcohol promotion, then holding out for a longer-lasting and more lucrative relationship with Office Depot, which made the song both its signature tune and slogan. The session offered a sweet reminder that all you need is one hit to set you up. And that you can be an ageing 70's rocker and still work hard with dignity – Gene Simmons, take note.
CMW is a dependable and useful conference. In a year when slightly fewer of the international delegates were joining festivities in Austin, this was a manageable and relaxed atmosphere to do business in. At the very least, the value in conferences like these lays in the thrashing out of new ideas and discussion of hot topics. Even if it wasn't genuinely agenda-setting, CMW keeps apace with its competitors with a mixture of interesting debates. Perhaps the sideshows like Lefsetz/Simmons are best kept to the playground in future, though.
Tuesday 3 March 2009
No Eyeliner on the Horizon: Nicola Slade owns up to being a massive U2 fan and ponders the kerfuffle over the band’s new release in the last week.
I am a massive U2 fan and I’m not ashamed to say it. In 1989, my uncle gave me a copy of Rattle ‘N’ Hum on cassette and on the long drive back from London to the Hampshire countryside listening to it on my Walkman, my life changed. Up until then, at the ripe old age of 13, I only had three albums: two Now compilations and the best of ELO, which my father bought me for Christmas aged four when he realised that every time they came on the radio, I danced around the front room like I’d drunk too much squash.
U2 are partly responsible for me wanting to be in the music industry – them and the Motown label. By nine, I’d decided to become a journalist, by the time I was 13, on hearing U2, I decided I wanted to be a music journalist. In 1991, when the band released Achtung Baby, I won a pre-release copy on Simon Mayo’s show and owing to my ‘huge enthusiasm’, Radio 1 asked if I would review the record live on air the next day, which I did. Rather amusingly, I couldn’t get my head around the change in direction and partly slated it. It later became my favourite U2 album. However, all of this set my plans in stone: I would head to London as soon as possible and get myself a writing job about music.
When I was 17, I spent all the money I had in the world (earned by working three jobs while doing my A Levels) on following the band around the UK and Ireland throughout the summer, sleeping in the back of a car. Bono pulled me up on stage to dance with him at Wembley Stadium, which was knee-shakingly exciting. I once spent £100 (a lot for a 15-year-old) on buying the stolen Achtung demos at a local record fair. Even when the PR sends me a free copy of the album, I still go out and buy it, just for the thrill. I have a special U2 box with everything they have ever released in a locked box under my bed. Yes: that’s the level of my fanaticism. How uncool must this seem to a bunch of music industry types?!
Watching all the kerfuffle about the release of No Line On The Horizon has consequently been particularly interesting for me, given my ‘obsession’. There have been a couple of comments on our message board this week which have stirred my thoughts - complaints are circulating in the media that the BBC has handed Universal untold amounts of free publicity in the run-up to the release and secondly, because the band decided to stream the album upfront on Spotify, some people seem to think the album sales will be affected.
If you click here, you can see the BBC U2 coverage: a Culture Show exclusive, two slots of R1, one on R2 and a R4 Front Row show. There will also be another announcement by tomorrow which involves the band and the BBC, but I’ve been sworn to absolute secrecy and can’t reveal what is. As a U2 fan, I’m loving it. Lauren Laverne certainly did a fantastic – and enviable job – in interviewing them for the Culture Show. I’m even at that stage where I have temporarily forgotten my gripes: Bono parading himself in the limelight with world leaders, the band switching their cash to Dutch tax-free accounts from Dublin, just in time for the economic meltdown which to-date has been felt more painfully in Ireland than other European countries, the Boyzone ‘moment’ in Sweetest Thing, the hairweave, the ‘re-applying for the job of best band in the world’ and so on ad infinitum.
As a working member of the music industry (or should that be ‘serving’ the music industry?), I am slightly miffed by the BBC’s unprecedented coverage of U2’s new release. The BBC’s level of support towards the music industry is good, but by no means great – look at the debacle over TOTP for a start. The BBC is great when it’s delivering coverage of one-off events: Glastonbury, for example, or Summer Sundae on 6Music. The playlisting on R1 and R2, in my opinion, leaves a lot to be desired, but on the other hand, without Steve Lamacq, Colin Murray, Mark Riley and Gideon Coe, in particular, many new bands wouldn’t get the national coverage they deserve. Overall, I would argue that the industry’s relationship with the BBC is hit and miss. However, Universal’s relationship with the BBC is quite obviously alive and kicking. One can't help but wonder if the label group’s dominance in recorded music extends to influence over the Beeb? Maybe I’m being cynical, but if a very healthy relationship exists (and no doubt with the arrival of Lesley Douglas that relationship continues to flourish), then perhaps Universal could use its power for good? Lobbying for the return of some more music TV programming would be a good start.
With regards to the fellows who see technological advances as damaging to album sales, I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest it’s all nonsense. No doubt the album sales figures will tell the full story, but No Line On The Horizon’s pre-release streaming on Spotify will not stop the fans, heading out in hoards, snapping up every available format there is. As my brief re-telling of my teenage U2 obsession reveals, I would have bought anything on offer and my first album by U2 was a copy! What was interesting about the U2/Spotify deal was that Apple seems to have been sidelined: no limited edition iPods and iTunes exclusives this time around. It’s undoubtedly interesting to see how the band uses the latest ‘killer app’ for their own purposes: a freedom which isn’t open to all bands, that’s for sure.
Anyway, turn off your TV and radio now if you’re sick of the sight of Bono’s face. The machine is in mid-flight and there’s some time to go before it lands.
U2 are partly responsible for me wanting to be in the music industry – them and the Motown label. By nine, I’d decided to become a journalist, by the time I was 13, on hearing U2, I decided I wanted to be a music journalist. In 1991, when the band released Achtung Baby, I won a pre-release copy on Simon Mayo’s show and owing to my ‘huge enthusiasm’, Radio 1 asked if I would review the record live on air the next day, which I did. Rather amusingly, I couldn’t get my head around the change in direction and partly slated it. It later became my favourite U2 album. However, all of this set my plans in stone: I would head to London as soon as possible and get myself a writing job about music.
When I was 17, I spent all the money I had in the world (earned by working three jobs while doing my A Levels) on following the band around the UK and Ireland throughout the summer, sleeping in the back of a car. Bono pulled me up on stage to dance with him at Wembley Stadium, which was knee-shakingly exciting. I once spent £100 (a lot for a 15-year-old) on buying the stolen Achtung demos at a local record fair. Even when the PR sends me a free copy of the album, I still go out and buy it, just for the thrill. I have a special U2 box with everything they have ever released in a locked box under my bed. Yes: that’s the level of my fanaticism. How uncool must this seem to a bunch of music industry types?!
Watching all the kerfuffle about the release of No Line On The Horizon has consequently been particularly interesting for me, given my ‘obsession’. There have been a couple of comments on our message board this week which have stirred my thoughts - complaints are circulating in the media that the BBC has handed Universal untold amounts of free publicity in the run-up to the release and secondly, because the band decided to stream the album upfront on Spotify, some people seem to think the album sales will be affected.
If you click here, you can see the BBC U2 coverage: a Culture Show exclusive, two slots of R1, one on R2 and a R4 Front Row show. There will also be another announcement by tomorrow which involves the band and the BBC, but I’ve been sworn to absolute secrecy and can’t reveal what is. As a U2 fan, I’m loving it. Lauren Laverne certainly did a fantastic – and enviable job – in interviewing them for the Culture Show. I’m even at that stage where I have temporarily forgotten my gripes: Bono parading himself in the limelight with world leaders, the band switching their cash to Dutch tax-free accounts from Dublin, just in time for the economic meltdown which to-date has been felt more painfully in Ireland than other European countries, the Boyzone ‘moment’ in Sweetest Thing, the hairweave, the ‘re-applying for the job of best band in the world’ and so on ad infinitum.
As a working member of the music industry (or should that be ‘serving’ the music industry?), I am slightly miffed by the BBC’s unprecedented coverage of U2’s new release. The BBC’s level of support towards the music industry is good, but by no means great – look at the debacle over TOTP for a start. The BBC is great when it’s delivering coverage of one-off events: Glastonbury, for example, or Summer Sundae on 6Music. The playlisting on R1 and R2, in my opinion, leaves a lot to be desired, but on the other hand, without Steve Lamacq, Colin Murray, Mark Riley and Gideon Coe, in particular, many new bands wouldn’t get the national coverage they deserve. Overall, I would argue that the industry’s relationship with the BBC is hit and miss. However, Universal’s relationship with the BBC is quite obviously alive and kicking. One can't help but wonder if the label group’s dominance in recorded music extends to influence over the Beeb? Maybe I’m being cynical, but if a very healthy relationship exists (and no doubt with the arrival of Lesley Douglas that relationship continues to flourish), then perhaps Universal could use its power for good? Lobbying for the return of some more music TV programming would be a good start.
With regards to the fellows who see technological advances as damaging to album sales, I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest it’s all nonsense. No doubt the album sales figures will tell the full story, but No Line On The Horizon’s pre-release streaming on Spotify will not stop the fans, heading out in hoards, snapping up every available format there is. As my brief re-telling of my teenage U2 obsession reveals, I would have bought anything on offer and my first album by U2 was a copy! What was interesting about the U2/Spotify deal was that Apple seems to have been sidelined: no limited edition iPods and iTunes exclusives this time around. It’s undoubtedly interesting to see how the band uses the latest ‘killer app’ for their own purposes: a freedom which isn’t open to all bands, that’s for sure.
Anyway, turn off your TV and radio now if you’re sick of the sight of Bono’s face. The machine is in mid-flight and there’s some time to go before it lands.
Sunday 15 February 2009
Pondering Spotify
Each week in the RotD magazine, we run a comment piece, drawing inspiration from the top stories affecting the UK music industry. This week we look at Spotify and the media excitement surrounding its launch.
Reproduced from Record of the Day's Weekly Magazine. To Subscribe, go to recordoftheday.com
Read on....
Where the Spotify moniker sprung from we don’t know, but if one thing is for sure, spotting Spotify’s name in the vast array of media outlets, from Twitter to the Guardian, to Facebook and the NME, has been virtually unavoidable in the past couple of months. Given this week’s coverage: the turning over the Letters page in NME to discussion about the streaming service, and today’s Guardian, where each and every column on page 13 beamed Spotify’s praise, anyone would have thought that the £7m investment in the media’s favourite new toy had been entirely spent on the wizardry of a PR guru. One person wrote into the NME saying, “Anyone who says they didn't cry: "F*ck me, this is amazing!" when they booted up Spotify is lying.”
Spotify’s offering (for those who do not yet know: a two tier, ad-funded and paid-for on-demand streaming ‘jukebox’), while not being unique, is what those Silicon Valley types might deem a ‘killer app’. Its owners, two Swedish gentlemen called Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon, have been shrewd about the manner in which it was launched: for the past few months you could only get access through an invitation, therefore giving you membership to what appeared to be a private club. And there’s nothing the music and media industries like more than the feeling of belonging to a private club. Meanwhile, what better than a club that allows you to listen to (most) of your favourite songs and build collaborative playlists direct from your PC, for nothing!
Spotify isn’t the first company to offer such a service: We7, Qtrax in the US, Deezer in France and even Last.fm to some extent are still pushing on with their free streaming offerings. Even the vast array of online radio stations must be quaking in their boots right now, as might MySpace. What sets Spotify apart however, is how the media has fallen head over heels for it.
Naturally, with such backing, the news that Spotify had been ‘forced’ to remove content mere days before opening its UK service to the public at large (without the need for a ‘private’ invite), was bound to be met with howling criticism – at the labels, of course. In a statement the company said: “The changes are being made so that we implement all the proper restrictions that are required by our label deals. Some tracks will be restricted from play in certain countries, this means that if you share tracks with friends who are in other countries it’s possible that they won’t be able to listen to them.” We suspect that this was not a case of the major labels throwing their toys out of the pram (as we know they have a tendency to do on occasion). Rather, we suspect it was a technical glitch in that some tracks which hadn’t been cleared for worldwide usage had been given such freedom on the service. If one is tempted to apportion blame, doesn’t it seem most likely that Spotify had failed to implement clear and transparent licensing conditions? Sure, in a perfect world, the labels would have cleared all tracks for use the globe over, but for now, this simply isn’t the case and Spotify’s owners must have kicked themselves for not drawing such distinctions on the catalogue in the first place. We find it shocking that certain quarters of the national press had failed to do their research and pick up on this, proving once again that the music industry suffers at the hands of journalists who often seem simply unwilling to ask even the most basic of questions about the stories they cover. On the other hand, it was a PR master stroke, setting Spotify up as the good guy fighting the ire of the bad guy labels.
To maintain its newly-found status, the Spotify guys have been hard at work. On Friday it announced a deal with physical online retailer CD Baby. By Monday it added a further of 1600 albums (including Lily Allen's on the day of release). On Tuesday came the news it was opening up to the whole of the UK. Six thousand new releases were added on Wednesday (this is starting to sound like a Craig David song, isn’t it?), featuring a host of content from Universal Music India (perhaps an indication of where their efforts to build audience might turn to next) and today Spotify writes that it has signed a deal with the Alternative Distribution Alliance in the US to add another truckload of music. On Friday it chills apparently (sorry, couldn’t resist). Jokes aside, the timing of all these announcements is impeccable.
So, where’s the catch? As Chris Salmon in the Guardian enthused today, “The ad revenue ensures artists make some money out of your listening and that Spotify can continue to boggle music fans' minds with this amazing service.” The assuredness of his words: “The ad revenue ensures...” is a little presumptuous. Go speak to anyone dealing in online advertising and the scenario is not pretty. The payable rate on an average CPM (cost per thousand) delivery of banner ads for example is roughly 8p, according to some companies. You need to be hitting a serious number of page impressions to keep the money flowing in and who knows how many people are paying the 99p day rate for ad-free music on Spotify right now?
In 2004 I was given a year-long free subscription to Rhapsody – the US paid-for streaming and download service. It bowled me over and remains the best music service I have ever used. Then, they took it away and I was bereft. I switched over to Napster because it was the only other similar service available in the UK at the time. The free access lasted a few months, then they took it away and I was bereft, so I signed up for £15 a month. I’m willing to pay, but what is wonderful about the explosion of Spotify is that it will hopefully encourage the average UK customer to realise that there’s life beyond iTunes and there are genuine alternatives to illegal P2P.
Nicola Slade
Thursday 5 February 2009
Comment piece from RotD Magazine 05/02
Reproduced from Record of the Day's Weekly Magazine. To Subscribe, go to recordoftheday.com
It has been a watershed couple of weeks for Twitter in the UK. Whether it be Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross discussing it on TV, numerous Radio 1 DJs using it live on-air, or just the sheer volume of your business contacts who try and cajole all of us into using it (today's Daily Mirror even had a 'What Is Twitter?' piece on p3), it would appear you're best off just surrendering to its current surge in usage.
If you're not quite sure what it is, then you are probably very reticent to engage in yet another social networking tool. Difficult as explaining it in one sentence might be, let's have a shot: Twitter is a mixture of short status updates to a network of people you're signed up to following.
Traffic on Twitter has grown by a staggering 974 % in the last year, so if you're not already using it for your music business needs, the window of opportunity to join while it's getting hotter is open now. As your daily social networking tasks (update Facebook groups/ check MySpace/ upload to Flickr etc) threaten to overshadow your actual proper work tasks, you might understandably approach yet another network with some cynicism or trepidation, but fear not - the beauty of Twitter is its simplicity.
As we started using Twitter regularly for RotD business last October at In The City, we were instantly attracted to it as a tool of letting other industry folk where we were, which gig we were at, any breaking news and whatever good quotes from panels we could express in 140 characters. It's no surprise to learn then that Twitter's initial explosion in the US happened just before another conference, SXSW 2007 where hordes of tech-savvy visitors to SXSW Interactive used it to swap details of where they were and answering Twitter's founding question: 'What are you doing?'.
As the crowd has shifted from tech-pioneers to mass-market take-up, it would be a shame if industry missed the boat on Twitter. Given how slow the industry has been to utilize the full extent of Facebook as a music service in its five years of existence, Twitter's short, quick, yet personal style of communication cries out to be taken advantage of – in a smart way – by the music industry. The seeds have already been sown by many of the professionals, labels, musicians and media outlets we've seen flock to Twitter in recent times. Some use it successfully, while others are clearly not 'getting it'. So, what are the potential best uses?
Patrick Clifton, in charge of social networking strategy for Darling Social Services, told us that Twitter has the potential to be the first point of communication with an audience or potential market. "Imagine a hotly-anticipated tour being made available exclusively by posting a link first on Twitter then everywhere else, for example."
Artists are using Twitter to open a channel of conversation with their followers, but one which they can control. Lily Allen, for example can tell her fans her fears of appearing on GMTV, Calvin Harris can bitch about his label as he makes his difficult second album and Tinchy Stryder can let us know about his housing situation.. But it's not all trivial updates: we've found artists that interact with fans directly promote an interest in their music. Imogen Heap is one such artist who uses it well, documenting her recording process but also linking to her fresh content elsewhere on the web. Coldplay don't use it themselves (yet), but a web-savvy employee of theirs posts Tweets as he follows their radio sessions and breaks competitions and web exclusives. And, in a sign that the service is crossing over to an increasingly mainstream audience, Jimmy Eat World have launched a tour site which combines concert-specific Tweets into a chat-stream.
Ritch Ames from Online PR and digital PR firm Tomorrow Never Knows advised us that the key approach for music industry users of Twitter is to keep it personal, "Simply spamming the service every now and again will actually see the amount of followers you receive fall - unlike many other social networks, people will decide to break up your friendship…Twitter is based on a quick, precise and to-the-point messages, and they have to come from the person themselves, not a PR and not an office intern."
The labels we currently enjoy on Twitter have the potential to take followers, not just as potential customers to new releases, but also as investors in their brand and ethos. Simply blasting out a stream of feeds to your followers won't gain you an audience, particularly not as that audience explodes and people become more selective about who they follow.
Likewise for media outlets, simply hooking up an RSS feed to Twitter to let them know about new articles won't curry any favour, but engaging with your followers will. One of our favourite online music publications, Popjustice, is also one of our favourites to catch on Twitter, simply because Peter Robinson's updates share the personality and humour of the website – it allows the reader to consume more of what they like, with little extra effort on the publisher's behalf.
To those who had dismissed Twitter as a passing fad, or to those who haven't quite got their heads around it, we urge you not to doubt its potential power and to get on there and give it a shot. We'd add the caveat that, as with any social-networking site, it is not the be-all and end-all of any business strategy. But you should be there as Twitter grows - not just through its main site, but also as an eco-system of applications and sites growing around it will too.
Related Reading:
While you’re there, check out editor Nicola Slade’s (@mislaid) – particularly for the 9am ‘top story’ update.
@drownedinsound have set up MusicTwitters, a feed of musicians and music sites, blogs and labels who use Twitter.
Heather Macdonald has compiled some tips for the best use of Twitter for industry people.
Gerd Leonhard gives seven reasons why everyone in the music industry should try Twitter.
And might endear yourself to your Twitter community by donating your artist's music to Twestival
