8Sided Blog

the scene celebrates itself

Today In History: MC5 – Kick Out The Jams

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On This Deity:

“The duty of the revolutionary is to make the revolution. The duty of the musician is to make the music. But there is an equation that must not be missed: MUSIC IS REVOLUTION.” – John Sinclair (MC5 Manager)



“Brothers and Sisters, I wanna see a sea of hands out there. Let me see a sea of hands. I want everybody to kick up some noise. I wanna hear some revolution out there, brothers. I wanna hear a little revolution. Brothers and sisters, the time has come for each and every one of you to decide whether you are gonna be the problem, or whether you are gonna be the solution. You must choose, brothers, you must choose. It takes five seconds, five seconds of decision. Five seconds to realize that it’s time to move. It’s time to get down with it. Brothers, it’s time to testify and I want to know, Are you ready to testify? Are you ready? I give you a testimonial: THE MC5!” – Brother J.C. Crawford

BTW – Dorian Cope’s On This Deity is an essential daily read. Check it out.

Revenue Neutral

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Slate:

In a new working paper, University of Minnesota economist Joel Waldfogel and Luis Aguiar of the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies in Seville, Spain, estimate how Spotify has affected both music sales and piracy during its fast expansion across the globe. Their method: comparing countries where the service grew rapidly between 2013 and 2015, and those where it didn’t. The upshot? According to the authors’ calculations, Spotify does seem to have put a damper on piracy, but it’s also displaced some digital sales (neither is exactly a shocker). Add it all up, then factor in the payments Spotify itself is sending to labels, and the effect appears to be roughly “revenue neutral” for rights holders. They don’t make any more money. They don’t make any less.



If these findings hold up (again, it’s just one working paper), it should put the ongoing debate about Spotify’s treatment of artists into some new perspective. If the platform’s business model hasn’t shrunk the total pie of cash being divvied up by rights holders, but some artists really are seeing their paychecks shrink, it suggests the problem (insofar as one exists) has to do with the way record labels are distributing the cash.

Music Break: Cluster – Zuckerzeit

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FACT:

Core members Dieter Moebius and Hans Joachim pioneered the industrial, electronic side of krautrock, the two genies utilising a drum machine for this recording, adding more textures whilst maintaining kraut’s hypnotic nuances. Produced by Michael Rother, the LP features the incredible ‘Hollywood’, which I imagine was a strong influence on early Detroit techno producers.

Your Favorite Label In The Age Of Streaming

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Hollywood Reporter:

Amid some big changes in the music industry, new RCA Records CEO Peter Edge and longtime colleague Tom Corson, who was promoted to president and COO in August, have officially shuttered historic labels Arista and Jive. J Records, launched by Clive Davis in 2000 as an “instant major,” will also see its artists bequeathed to RCA.



In the digital age, one might think these closures mean there is little value, awareness or loyalty to a label by name, but the execs insist it’s quite the opposite. “The concept is that there is value in branding RCA and not having it confused or diluted by other labels,” says Corson.


That’s an odd quote in answer to a statement about label identities not having value, as, of course, there is no real identity to the RCA ‘brand.’ The writer’s statement is perceptive, and brings up a good point. Labels seem to matter less and less as we rely on proprietary software for streaming music. Apple Music and Spotify only mention the label of origin on a release’s ‘page’ as a required copyright line in fine print at the bottom. One certainly can’t search for a favorite label and listen to a streaming ‘playlist’ of its new offerings, unless it is a pre-packaged playlist that someone put together to focus on that label. Spotify at least lets labels have profiles, which come up if you search for the label name. But these don’t offer much information beyond label curated playlists … not even a list of the latest releases.

I’ve written a bit about the problems with curation on streaming services, and removing label identity could be seen as a part of that issue. The labels that inspired me when I was young (Factory Records, SST, 4AD, and so on) had attraction as a type of curator, in that I knew what I was getting into – for the most part – if, for example, I listened to a 4AD release in the ’80s. There are certainly some great indie imprints active now that benefit from a closely moderated identity, sonic and otherwise. Or, at least, they could benefit, if the streaming services would give labels some credit.

But the quoted article above may reveal the problem. The major labels, being the ones that shout the loudest at the streamers, don’t need or care to foster this sonic identity. One could say Jive had a sound … there are a group of classic dance records that come to mind when I think of the label, and it could be argued they were identified by a certain pop style in recent decades. But that’s hardly important in the age of streaming, so it’s fine to make things less complicated and throw it all under the RCA blanket. And that makes sense for them … label identity, and having streaming services highlight labels and their intrinsic sounds, can only benefit the independents.

Hey Google, That’s Not Me

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As a roundabout way to admit that I don’t ‘Google’ myself too often, it was brought to my attention today that something odd happens when one does a search for ‘Q-Burns’. The info panel that comes up on the right side of the Google search page looks like this:

OK, that’s not my photo. That’s a picture of my friend Brett Johnson, who I have worked with many times but that’s no reason for him to inadvertently take over my identity.

I put a call out to Twitter for theories on this mishap. Pete Dafeet helpfully pointed out that the photo is sourced from a YouTube still on my Reverb Nation page. No offense, Reverb Nation, but I haven’t touched my page there in over five years, and it seems odd that this is where Google’s robots would choose to grab my ‘artist photo.’

On Pete’s advice, I deleted the video from Reverb Nation (which you can watch here if you’d like … it’s for my remix of Brett Johnson’s “Missing You”) which in turn deleted the offending photo from my Reverb Nation page. It will be interesting to see how long it will take Google to change my default image in its search results and, even more interesting, what its robots might replace it with.

So, if you’re like me and don’t ‘Google’ yourself that often, and are a musician or are in a band, you might want to do so to see what image is attached to your results.


Update: It looks like deleting that video from Reverb Nation did the trick.

EDM After The Drop

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I’m not one to complain about EDM – it’s sort of like complaining about the weather on Mars to me – and SFX’s troubles just give me a headache, so I usually avoid posting here about either. But this article on NPR regarding the intertwined futures of the two is a great read.

This section gave me a giggle, and seriously makes some sense:

Few acts today stand with one foot in SFX’s world and another in the underground, says Marea Stamper, who DJs and produces music as the Black Madonna and works as a creative director and talent buyer at Chicago club Smart Bar. “It’s like comparing Kiss to the Clash,” she observes. “They’re just not related.”



[Music journalist Philip] Sherburne agrees with Stamper’s comparison between SFX-scale acts and vintage pop-metal bands. “Just sonically, Avicii or mainstream EDM sounds to me like Van Halen’s ‘Jump,'” Sherburne says. “It’s the same synthesizers; it’s the same pleasure centers. You could say that Alesso is Bon Jovi. Bon Jovi took metal or hard rock and aimed it squarely at a very mainstream, middle-American public. That’s exactly the same thing: These artists have taken what was once a subculture and redesigned it along a pop format. I don’t know the economics of hair metal, but it seems to me pretty clear that [with EDM] we’re in the era of the Wingers and the Whitesnakes.”


Drew Daniel of Matmos and Soft Pink Truth is also perceptive and a bit nostalgic:

“There were always limits and doubts that I had about the utopian ambitions of the rave era, but there was still a feeling that raving could mean cutting ties to business as usual,” Daniel says. “It’s epitomized in that kind of hilarious gatefold drawing inside one of those early Prodigy LPs.”



The artwork for the 1994 album Music for the Jilted Generation shows a long-haired raver cutting a bridge that connects the toxic, heavily policed city to an idyllic meadow.



“That exemplifies this idea that radical forms of dance music could also lead to radical forms of creating community,” Daniel says. “There’s always been a spectrum, so I don’t want to say there used to be a good thing and now there’s a terrible thing — that’s overly simplified.”


Be sure to check out the full article.

Full Stack Music: 1 Trillion Streams, 200 Million Tickets

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TechCrunch:

Going back to 1999, the record company would use radio as a way to get fans to discover a new act, then monetize that investment, primarily via selling “on-demand” access in the form of CDs and, finally, drive additional discovery by subsidizing touring (known as “tour support;” a label would underwrite some of the cost of touring to help build an audience to whom to sell CDs). Touring represented a small percentage of artist income.



[Fast forward to 2015:] Over the next few years we will see [the] connection between streaming [i.e. “on-demand” access] and ticket sales become completely explicit. Streaming services will increasingly make it seamless for fans using their services to see when the artist has a local show; Songkick’s existing API partnerships with Deezer, SoundCloud, Spotify and YouTube are hints at what this could look like. It’s not impossible to imagine a time when you could possibly buy tickets directly from your favorite artist right inside your streaming service.



When that happens, artists will finally be able to see a connected picture of how their music is distributed and monetized. An act who gets 100 million streams will see that 10 million of those were monetized via paying subscribers, 90 million by ads and another 5 million fans via ticket purchases. The outcome will be a more seamless experience that results in casual music fans attending more concerts.



The key point across all of this is that the central, most valuable asset of streaming music services will be the listener data they generate. As we shift from offline radio to online streaming, artists will know how those 1 trillion tracks of music were streamed — which fan listened to them, where they were based, which concert tickets they purchased in the past — and be able to tailor personalized and richer experiences to their fans.


The TechCrunch article quoted above was published three days ago. Seems a bit prescient, as the same site revealed this breaking story earlier today:

[Pandora] just announced it will purchase Ticketfly, a Ticketmaster-type site, for $450m in cash and stock. Pandora says in a press release that Ticketfly’s service will allow Pandora listeners to better find live music events.



“This is a game-changer for Pandora – and much more importantly – a game-changer for music,” said Brian McAndrews, chief executive officer at Pandora, in a released statement today.



It’s likely that Pandora will use this extensive data set to attempt to sell tickets through Ticketfly to events it knows listeners will enjoy.

Some Podcast Recommendations

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On the latest episode of Road Work, John Roderick has some deep thoughts about a culture where we are all artists and the difficulty of filtering the truly great works in a society where everyone is creating. The Peaches record store chain even gets mentioned. This particular discussion starts at around 23:00 … listen here via Overcast..



I also enjoyed this incisive discussion on The Talk Show about advertising, the philosophy of content blockers, and attitudes towards piracy … Marco Arment and John Gruber get into these subjects pretty much straight away. Listen here via Overcast..

The “Blurred Lines” Verdict And Dance Music

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Thump:

The [“Blurred Lines”] verdict has, perhaps unintentionally, shifted the interpretation of music copyright beyond composition, towards sound itself. This poses an interesting problem for electronic music producers whose personas are, through hours spent toiling over oscillators and EQs, often linked to intentionally crafted sonic characteristics. How much can these artists legally grasp for to protect the sound that they have created from a deluge of imitators?


In this piece Thump speaks with UK Music Lawyer Ben Challis who, like me, feels this verdict was wrong-headed and has troubling implications for creators (and not just in music, or dance music, when you really think about it).

Ben Challis: My personal opinion was that the jury got it wrong. It’s a very grey area and everyone made those puns about “blurred lines,” but it is a very grey area and judges have always struggled to define what is inspiration and what’s appropriation. Yes, the two recordings sound pretty similar, but the whole case is about the song, and in my own personal opinion the songs are not similar. If the case had been brought by the company that owned the sound recording I might have supported the decision.



Thump: What’s the difference between an electronic musician hearing another contemporary track and saying “I want to make that sound,” and Pharrell Williams saying “I really like that aural quality, that sound that Marvin Gaye had.” In both cases, you are trying to replicate a specific quality, a specific sound, correct?



Ben Challis: Correct. I don’t think there is a difference in what you’re saying or the question you’re asking. It’s the same question and of course again you can be influenced by someone, you can be inspired by someone, that’s fine in legal terms. What you can’t do is appropriate someone else’s work or copy their work, or at least copy a substantial amount of their work.


Update: I also ran across this fine article for WIPO Magazine by Ben Challis that goes into greater detail about the “Blurred Lines” verdict and gives some historical, legal background.

As Time Magazine put it, the decision would have a “chilling effect” on future song writing. Some went further, arguing that sampling should be recognized as an integral part of modern music creation, and that the case showed that copyright law was out of touch with current methods of music production. There are only a limited number of notes on the standard musical scale and surely it was now generally accepted that certain expressions cannot be subject to copyright, they said. Others argued that one of the purposes of copyright is to encourage creativity, not stifle it – hence the position that copyright only protects the expression of ideas, not ideas themselves. And yet others contended that transformative use can, at least in the United States, be protected as fair use. The general feeling seemed to be: “some protection is good – too much protection is not good”. As ever, it’s all down to where you draw the line.



Unsurprisingly, an appeal in the Blurred Lines case has already been formally announced.