8Sided Blog

the scene celebrates itself

Dream Within A Dream: The Story Of Propaganda (and ZTT)

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This online article I ran across about ’80s electronic pop outfit Propaganda also serves as a short warts-and-all early history of ZTT, Trevor Horn’s always intriguing imprint:

(Paul) Morley had begun his career as a music writer. Famed for largely spearheading the career of Joy Division through his coverage in the NME, he had, however, in January 1983, immediately prior to receiving Propaganda’s demo, abandoned journalism so that he could concentrate on establishing ZTT (or Zang Tumb Tuum to give it its full title), together with producer Trevor Horn and Horn’s wife, Jill Sinclair.



While Jill Sinclair concentrated on its day-to-day management, and Horn produced the bands on its roster, Morley was ZTT’s publicist. Responsible for its carefully-crafted image, he designed most of its early record sleeves, often adorning them with secret messages and symbols, and became eventually involved in creating a clothing range for it. He also manufactured slogans for the label and in florid prose wrote manifestos and missive statements for it and its bands.



“ZTT’s main aim is to re-establish the glory of pop records as one of the fanciest and most fascinating ways of communication in the 20th century,” Morley proclaimed in a 1983 agenda in an early example of the exhibitionism, bluster and ambition for which his label would become renowned. “And to make ZTT the most interesting, provocative, crazy, and unpredictable record label of the ’80s.”


There’s a lot more of interest here for fans of ZTT, Propaganda, or tales of massive label / artist falling-outs. Here’s Part 1 and here’s Part 2.

While you’re at it, check out more of Paul Morley’s visual (and textual) influence on Art of ZTT … and Zang Tuum Tumb And All That is an impressive archive of all that pertains to the label.

8D Projects: Syntax Erik – I Can Feel You EP (Beatservice Records)

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Beatservice Records is long-running label out of Norway solely focusing on that country’s rich pool of talented producers and their distinctive Scandinavian takes on electronic music. The Oslo-based Syntax Erik has unveiled the imprint’s latest release, the four track I Can Feel You EP. There’s some melodic and expansive techno-tinged sounds within, peppered with just enough quirk and experimental flourish to keep things really interesting. Fellow Norwegians De Fantastiske To are also on hand for a groovy-ass remix. This release is one of our latest projects at 8DPromo … check it out:

The Elaborate Charade to Obfuscate Who Writes Pop Music

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This fascinating article from The Atlantic reads like an episode of Black Mirror:

Impressionable young fans would do well to avoid John Seabrook’s (new book) The Song Machine, an immersive, reflective, and utterly satisfying examination of the business of popular music. It is a business as old as Stephen Foster, but never before has it been run so efficiently or dominated by so few. We have come to expect this type of consolidation from our banking, oil-and-gas, and health-care industries. But the same practices they rely on—ruthless digitization, outsourcing, focus-group brand testing, brute-force marketing—have been applied with tremendous success in pop, creating such profitable multinationals as Rihanna, Katy Perry, and Taylor Swift.



The music has evolved in step with these changes. A short-attention-span culture demands short-attention-span songs. The writers of Tin Pan Alley and Motown had to write only one killer hook to get a hit. Now you need a new high every seven seconds—the average length of time a listener will give a radio station before changing the channel.


Orlando’s Lou Pearlman apparently has a lot more to answer for than the criminal schemes he’s presently serving time for.

Side story: in the mid-’90s I once wandered into a downtown Orlando pizza place to grab a quick slice and noticed Pearlman at a table with a large pie in the middle, and four teenage boys sitting across looking wide-eyed and attentive. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall.


Update: Vox interviews John Seabrook about his book and the ‘mega-producer’ phenomenon:

When you’re talking about the Swedes, and to a certain extent the Norwegians, there you’re dealing with a different set of cultural influences. There’s this whole concept, from a novel in the 1930s, called Jantelagen, the laws of Scandinavian restraint. The idea is that individual success is to be frowned upon in Scandinavian culture, and it’s really about the group and not the individual. That particular set of influences was very instrumental in shaping Denniz Pop and his group of disciples, of whom [leading mega-producer] Max Martin was obviously the most successful. It’s a major force in Max Martin’s career.



What’s the difference between the Beatles and Max Martin, really? You could say the Beatles’ songs are maybe a little bit better, but that’s a very subjective judgment. The real difference is that the Beatles perform their own songs and that’s why the Beatles are universally recognized as geniuses, whereas Martin never performs his own songs, and that’s why outside the music industry, nobody knows who Max Martin is. It’s a hard thing for most Americans to wrap their minds around, but if you look at it in a Swedish context, it makes a little more sense.


Update 2: Bob Lefsetz reviews Seabrook’s The Song Machine: Inside The Hit Factory:

They don’t sit in studios with guitars and pianos, writing melodies and lyrics together. At best, they do that in Nashville. Rather producers come up with beats and then they have their favorite topliners create melodies and hooks on top. And if there aren’t enough hooks in the track, they start all over. They’re in the business of hit singles, not album dreck. And they know one hook is not enough, that you’ve got to grab the public instantly and continue to thrill them.



And this formula is working.



I’m not judging it, just telling you how it is.



All the people truly driving popular culture are in this book. That’s why you should read it. And that’s why you’re gonna hate it.

The Audience Problem

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Cuepoint:

Previous generations were forced to group themselves by geography. We now do so based on interest, by way of the web. What we’ve learned is, just like the real world, the natural state of behavior on the internet centers around small communities. Unlike the past though, these communities are based on a common interest, not on the location in which you were born.



That’s why solving your Audience Problem by focusing on a core group is actually a more natural way to do it. It’s never a good bet to align yourself against human behavior. It seems better to open your sails behind a growing wind, instead of trying to swim upstream against the current.


This article is more ‘pep talk’ than anything, providing some positive encouragement for cultivating fans to help the artist make a living. The paragraphs above may seem obvious at first glance, but the important, underlying message is that one should not look at the ‘Audience Problem’ through a traditional lens. There are new communities forming thanks to the web, and seeking creative, previously unimaginable approaches for music exposure is a winning pastime.


Another quick quote I’ll pull from the piece, in case you need reminding:

The free distribution and cheap means of production that the web provides is only bad for the “middle men,” not the creators themselves.


And this Venn diagram the author references is worth meditating on for a few moments:

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Action → inspiration … it’s most often not the other way around.

Hitting The Links

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It’s time for our semi-regular round up of articles and links that we found particularly interesting over the past week. And, yes, I do need a better title for this section.


A History of Female Afrofuturist Fashion

The term Afrofuturism might only have been coined in 1993 by author Mark Dery, but the black cultural experience of freedom achieved through sci-fi, ancient African cosmology and magical realism has been underway since the middle of 20th century. Time, for an Afrofuturist, is a fluid concept, and the terms past, present and future aren’t necessarily linear.


A Plea for Metadata for Music. What’s Wrong with You Label People?

I’ll just be blunt: why can’t you get metadata right? What’s keeping you from tagging digital song files with all the information I and everyone else needs? This is important data. And supplying everyone with this data is your job!


I Accidentally Convinced Voters That Donald Trump Hates Pavement

It’s just funny to imagine Donald Trump listening to Pavement. Trump has written real tweets praising stadium acts like Taylor Swift and Aerosmith. What if he heard Pavement? He probably wouldn’t like them very much! I imagine a man of such extreme wealth and ego being repelled by the uncompromising, lo-fi aesthetic of early Pavement recordings.


Finally, It Will Be Possible To Flip Someone Off Via Emoji

It appears that when Apple ships iOS 9.1, iPhone users will have access to a key symbol of human communication. In a beta posted yesterday, Apple greatly expanded the number of supported emoji, including multiple new hand gestures. Of course, there’s one gesture that all have been waiting for, and it looks like we’ll be getting it at long last.


The 8 Hipster Districts of Orlando to Explore Like a Local

Orlando is known around the world as a theme park playground for children and adults alike. Yet visitors often miss out on the relatively undiscovered sections of Orlando, cherished by locals as up-and-coming cultural havens. In our humble opinion, these neighborhoods—your friends may not have heard of them yet—are a destination vacation in and of themselves.


Chess Player Caught ‘Using Morse Code To Cheat’

Mr Ricciardi did not get up at all during hours of playing and kept his thumb tucked in his armpit. The 37-year-old player was also “batting his eyelids in the most unnatural way”, (referee Jean) Coqueraut said. “Then I understood it. He was deciphering signals in Morse code.”

The Price Ceiling For Music

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Hypebot:

Most streaming services keep their price fairly low—Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal have all set the bar at $9.99 per month—which, considering what comes with that subscription fee, isn’t actually too bad. That may be the case, but for many people, it’s still more than they want to pay. The IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) reports that at the height of the music business in 1999, the average music-buying person in the world spent around $64 on recorded music per year. Re/code points out that the $64 figure is only taking into account those who actually bought music. When adding in the millions of adults who never contributed a dime to the industry, that figure goes down to a surprising $28 per person.



That $64 figure was at a time when people had to spend a premium to get the music they wanted. There was no iTunes, and even singles could cost several dollars. If a person was a fan of a certain artist, they were much more likely to rush out and purchase the album before the creation of digital downloads and online piracy. Now that we’ve gone to the end of the spectrum where songs were $0.99 and nobody needed to purchase an album, it’s tough to convince many to fork over $120 a year—twice what they were paying just a decade and a half ago.


I feel a stumbling block is the burden of presenting streaming services in the context of traditional formats (singles, albums, featured artists). The author above notes that $10 “isn’t actually too bad” considering what one gets, and I am sure he’s referring to the convenience, the wealth of choices, and (depending on the service he’s using), a ubiquitous access to the music. These points should be stressed so much more by the services rather than available artists and albums … and we’re starting to get there. Though Netflix is now pitching original content, initially there weren’t specific examples in their offering that were pushed to get folks on board. What sold it was the overall concept, its library in total that was assumed to be massive, and the convenience of loading up a new movie at any time. The value for the service was perceived by many as appropriate to its fee. Of course, movies are very different from music (with movies seen as more valuable), and pricing them equally – or not, as Netflix right now is $7.99 a month – may be problematic.


Linked in the piece quoted above is this interesting 2014 article from Re/Code:

So, the data tells us that consumers are willing to spend somewhere around $45–$65 per year on music, and that the larger a service gets, the lower in that range the number becomes. And these numbers have remained consistent regardless of music format, from CD to download.



Curiously, the on-demand subscription music services are all priced the same at more than twice consumer spending on music. They largely land at $120 per year. This is because the three major record labels, as part of their music licenses, have mandated a minimum price these services must charge. While it may seem strange that suppliers can dictate to retailers the price they must charge end users for their service, this is common practice in digital music. The services are not able to charge a price they believe will result in maximum adoption by consumers.



My experience with the major labels when I was CEO of eMusic was that they largely did not believe that music was an elastic good. They were unwilling to lower unit economics, especially for hit music, to see if more people would buy. Our experience at eMusic taught us that music is, in fact, elastic, and that lower prices lead to increased sales. If the major labels want to see the recorded music business grow again, I believe the price of music must fall.


Getting streaming to the point where a lot more people are hooked, and artists exploit this using their own independent revenue streams, is sounding like the place to be.

8D Projects: Tom Appl’s “Badibidab” Licensed To Vallarta Adventures

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Licensed through 8DSync, Tom Appl’s “Badibidab” is a deleriously upbeat earworm of a tune, and it makes a fine soundtrack for Vallarta Adventures’ new video advertisement showcasing the tourism company’s ‘beach hideaway’ at Las Caletas (once the private home of film director John Huston, as pointed out in the YouTube description). We’re loving how the music drives the video and gives some enhanced expression to the gorgeous imagery. You can check out more songs by Tom Appl on our 8DSync web site.

Watch on YouTube

The Residents – One Minute Movies

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Revisiting a wonderful and influential moment from ‘North Louisiana’s Phenomenal Pop Combo‘ The Residents:

Watch on YouTube


“Perfect Love” – both the video and song – really are quite perfect.

Pitchfork:

More immediately influential are the “one-minute movies” the Residents made for songs from 1980’s Commercial Album. These illustrative clips were among the first to show how the music video could be its own form– not just a song or a movie or an ad, but something in between. That point was made all the more profound by the album, which includes a set of 40 one-minute songs that sound like concentrated extracts of larger tunes (liner notes actually suggest that each track should be played three times in a row to form a full pop song). They sound like jingles– and to further point out the blurry lines between art and advertising, the Residents bought 40 one-minute spots on a San Francisco Top 40 station, airing the entire album over a three-day period.


When I actually lived in North Louisiana there was a bit of Residents lore floating about (if you spoke to the right people) … that there were two core members from Shreveport, and that one had a rich stepfather who, frustrated and at odds with his increasingly weird stepson, gave him a bunch of money to move to San Francisco and buy recording gear. Or probably not. It’s sort of amazing that we still don’t really know their story.

The Quietus:

The band have strived to keep their identities a secret, employing all manner of conceptual subterfuge and sleight of hand to misdirect attention away from any singular version of the truth. When discussing conceptual art in the realm of pop music, people always talk about the KLF, but it’s worth pointing out that Bill Drummond would have been a young man of 21 when Meet The Residents was released.

Future Of Music Coalition On Political Campaigns and Music Licensing

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Here’s some more on this subject, as it seems to be quite the hot topic in my social media circles. The Future Of Music Coalition has released a factsheet on music licensing and political campaigns that explains a songwriter’s rights much clearer than I was able to in my previous post. One thing I was unsure about was whether a politician’s campaign could have a compulsory license that travels with them … the factsheet clarifies:

Anytime a campaign plays a song at a rally, they must ensure that they have a public performance license covering the composition’s use. Most major public venues such as convention centers and arenas typically purchase blanket licenses from performance rights organizations or PROS (ASCAP, BMI, SESAC) allowing campaigns to “publicly perform” any song in their repertoire, which includes the vast majority of compositions. However, these licenses may not cover all uses, so most national campaigns also purchase their own blanket licenses covering all campaign events; an additional benefit is that if they have a whistlestop event on the campaign trail at a factory or in a park and they throw a playlist on the P.A., they’d still be covered.


An ASCAP document specifically concerning music use in political events is linked, which is quite useful. That document also details other avenues that a songwriter could pursue to seek retribution, including a claim of ‘false endorsement.’ I’d like to know if that has been successfully used in a lawsuit against a political campaign under circumstances similar to the recent R.E.M. and Survivor cases. I bet it hasn’t. A judge would have a certain regard for the intelligence of the public … it would be seen as pretty obvious, from a legal standpoint, that playing an R.E.M. song as walk-on music doesn’t equate endorsement of a candidate.

8D Projects: O.O.R.S. – Les Deux Villes EP (Lucky Sun Recordings)

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We’ve taken on Lucky Sun Recordings, a relatively young label helmed by Londoner Tom Lown that promises a diverse set of forward-thinking electronic music. The releases do lean on the deeper, traditional house music side of things, and this single by the curiously named O.O.R.S. is a fine example. His two tracks here exhibit a keenness for the space between the sounds and a hypnotic use of rhythm and melody. The remix by Leeds-based producer Howard Sessions electrifies things just a bit, but remains as classy and refreshingly restrained as the rest of the single. Our 8DPromo campaign is currently in progress.