8Sided Blog

the scene celebrates itself

How ‘Playola’ Is Infiltrating Streaming Services

by // Leave a Comment

Billboard:

Like social media, playlists are viral in nature: A track’s streams will spike after it’s added to a popular playlist; listeners will add the song to their playlists; their friends will do the same. Getting a song onto a hot playlist almost ensures awareness will spread from one social network to another.

Multiple insiders allege that the major music groups have paid influential curators to populate their playlists with their clients’ music. Some third-party users are known to request money to include songs on their playlists. Pay for play “is definitely ­happening,” claims a major-label marketing executive, one of several who say that popular playlists can and have been bought.

According to a source, the price can range from $2,000 for a playlist with tens of thousands of fans to $10,000 for the more well-followed playlists. And these practices are not illegal, although it would be difficult to find an official policy in the fine print.

In a statement to Billboard, Spotify head of communications Jonathan Prince says its new terms of service, hitting the United States next week, prohibit selling accounts and playlists or “accepting any ­compensation, financial or otherwise, to influence … the content included on an account or playlist.” Yet policing, let alone enforcing, these terms could be difficult.


Everything old is new again, eh? But then how is aggressively promoting an artist to a playlist different than, say, promoting that artist – through bribery or otherwise – to a music blog? Playlists are sort of becoming ‘the new music blogs’ to streaming fans, so it makes sense. A blog (or a radio station in the ‘old days’) that relies on promoted or paid content gets noticeably watered down in its taste-making reputation, but that probably doesn’t matter to the mainstream targets here. Pay-for-play stinks, but as it is nearly-impossible to enforce (though not difficult to spot by savvy music fans) it’s probably going to be a permanent thorn in the side for these services. When it used to affect your local radio station you didn’t really have elsewhere to go … at least with playlists and blogs there are many other alternatives out there to turn to when the ones you are following start suspiciously including the same lackluster songs at the same time.

This Company Is Selling A “Record Label In A Box” For £249

by // Leave a Comment

FACT:

Ditto Music’s label in a box comes in three flavours: the £249 “Premium”, the £399 “Professional” and the eye-watering £3,499 “Enterprise” packages. Each box does most of the paperwork for you, including PPL license for claiming performance rights as well as IIRC codes for registering releases.



You also get certificates, a USB pen loaded with all your company data and personalised management suite software for monitoring and managing royalties. Each package also comes with a business bank account, label web domain and registration as a limited company with Companies House. You’ll still have to find decent music to release by yourself however.



You can find out more at the Ditto website, but it’s worth pointing out that you can achieve most of what the basic package offers for no money, so long as you have the time to spare.

The Argument For Streaming Services To Adopt ‘Subscriber Share’

by // Leave a Comment

Cuepoint:

If you subscribe to a subscription music service such as Spotify or Apple Music you probably pay $10 a month. And if you are like most people, you probably do so believing your money goes to the artists you listen to. Unfortunately, you are wrong.

The reality is only some of your money is paid to the artists you listen to. The rest of your money (and it’s probably most of your money) goes somewhere else. That “somewhere else” is decided by a small group of subscribers who have gained control over your money thanks to a mathematical flaw in how artist royalties are calculated.

There is a better way to approach streaming royalties, one which addresses all of these problems, and it’s called Subscriber Share.

The premise behind Subscriber Share is simple: the only artists that should receive your money are the artists you listen to. Subscriber Share simply divides up your (subscription fee) based on how much time you spend listening to each artist. So if you listen to an artist exclusively, then that artist will get the entire (share of the fee), but if you listen less they get proportionately less.


I bet a lot of music fans – and artists – will be surprised that this is not how streaming royalties are presently calculated. Indeed, the ‘money pool’ method that’s currently in place divides the money that’s available among total plays for all artists. Thus, a hair salon running Spotify on ‘random’ 24/7 decreases the amount paid out to the independent artist who gets repeated plays from dozens of diehard fans.

Sharky Laguana makes some great points in his article – as well as in this earlier article he wrote for The Kernel which I think explains Subscriber Share even better – but I’m wondering how the ad-supported ‘free tier’ that Spotify relies on to attract new adopters complicates things. Would Spotify be able to maintain two tiers of royalty calculation: the pool for ad-supported plays and Subscriber Share for subscribers? Is that necessary?

Of course, the question is whether the services would even consider this change. Sharky is correct in that once music industry folks have something set in stone it’s going to take some really big chisels to get it changed. His idea for ‘Silent September’ proposed in the article is interesting and worthy of conversation, but unfortunately seems a bit quixotic. The idea’s purpose of poking at the major labels carries one big truth: the majors will have to be on board for Subscriber Share to become a possibility. Regardless, I’ll probably still participate to some degree … I’m mainly listening to independent artists anyway.

I feel the best way a change like this could come about would be if a new service adopted this royalty method and made their policy overtly public, attracting artist support and in turn shaming the other services. I assume Tidal uses the ‘pool’ method of calculation … for all their talk of supporting the artist, this would seem like pushing on an open door for them. What about the newly launched Baboom? This service names their payout method Fair Trade Streaming … “we want your fan’s subscription to go directly to you” is a sentence found in Baboom’s press material to potential artists. I assume this means they are adopting some form of Sharky’s Subscriber Share method. I’ll look for confirmation, and this story will certainly continue to develop.

8D Projects: Urian Hackney – The Box (Cold Busted)

by // Leave a Comment

The Los Angeles-based Cold Busted label is another imprint I’ve been working with for a while, since its humble beginnings in Denver, Colorado. Cold Busted has been focused on the funkier, often downtempo, edge of breakbeat music, with a visionary ethos that has allowed it to branch out into cool releases such as this forthcoming single by Urian Hackney.

The Box is a meticulously recorded solo effort from Hackney, whose father and uncles were members of cult Detroit proto-punk band Death, as profiled in the acclaimed documentary A Band Called Death. With The Box – named after his studio in Burlington, Vermont – Urian Hackney presents two songs intended to send the listener back in time to the smooth, funky sonic realm of the ’70s. All instruments were played by Urian, multi-tracked one-by-one to a tape machine through microphones aimed at amplifier cones and drum heads. It comes together sounding like some rare 7” that might be found in DJ Shadow’s record bag.

A Radical Plan To Save The Big Music Labels: Shrink The Big Music Labels

by // Leave a Comment

Re/code:

The late Dave Goldberg had (an) idea: He wanted to radically reinvent the modern music label, by cutting its staff and expenses dramatically, focusing almost entirely on digital and moving away from making new music.



Over the years, Goldberg would offer his prescription for the industry to anyone who would listen. Now the world can see it, via a memo he wrote to Sony Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton last summer. The memo surfaced earlier this year via the Sony hack, and some industry folks have referenced it since then. I’m re-printing here because it’s relevant for the music industry, and any other business that is struggling to reinvent itself (that is, most industries).


The memo is an interesting read. Most of the recommendations are not quite applicable to smaller, independent labels — in fact, it’s suggested that Sony’s new release strategy emulate an independent label’s. But the take-away for non-major label operators comes from the memo’s emphasis on back catalog and publishing. Too many independents downplay both at their own peril. Even a mere few weeks after an album or single has been released I see most labels wipe it from the drawing board, with no more mention of it on their news feeds or social media and no attempt to repackage or rekindle interest in past releases. Goldberg was correct that not only is a strong back catalog valuable when it comes to licensing and synch, but past releases with a nurtured fan interest can earn consistent income in the world of streaming.

(h/t Jon Curtis)

Metal In Motion: The Story Of UK Industrial Pioneers Test Dept

by // Leave a Comment

FACT:

Test Dept feel remarkably contemporary. This was a group that grappled with politics, but also recognised that such a message was meaningless if it didn’t come as part of a deeper and broader artistic vision. Test Dept didn’t preach: they provoked, agitated, challenged and sent up. Perhaps their approach feels resonant today because here is a group for whom music, politics, and life were tightly intertwined.



Formed in London’s New Cross in 1981, Test Dept developed a rhythmic industrial sound employing the cheapest materials they could get their hands on – oil drums, springs, canisters and piping, salvaged from local scrap yards. Despite this, they were hardly basic or primitive. Their visual iconography was striking, drawing on the bold geometries of Russian constructivist and suprematist art, while their live performances, often held in site-specific locations were theatrical and fully multimedia affairs.


I nabbed a copy of The Unacceptable Face Of Freedom at some point in the late ’80s (cool fold-out cover, btw) and listened to it quite a bit. But, as with most of the experimental industrial bands, I found Test Dept so much more interesting for their views and pronouncements expressed in interviews. This new interrogation by FACT with founding member Angus Farquhar is no exception.

I especially love the short bit about touring internationally … as the band couldn’t bring all their individually constructed metalworks with them across the ocean, apparently they’d have to arrive a few days early to scour scrapyards for road gear:

If you went to the States on tour, of course, you couldn’t bring anything – so you had to spend two or three days scrapping before starting a show. It piled on all this pressure, because sonically you never knew what you would be dealing with. But there were certain generic things you could always find. You could always find a water tank. You could always find springs on a juggernaut lorry, they had a very good sound. Gas bottles of different sizes would give you the high registers. And if were on a big stage, we could get hold of these three or four ton tanks – which would take 13 or 14 people to maneuver into position. Some of the bass we were getting off those – you could resonate an entire room.



FACT: So the scrap yard was your guitar store.



Exactly.

Universal Music Cuts Deal With Soundcloud, Reported Equity Stake Could Hurt Artists

by // Leave a Comment

Hypebot:

Soundcloud is in the final stages of a licensing deal with the Universal Music Group, sources tell MBW. The deal would reportedly give UMG a substantial stake in Soundcloud.



While details of the deal are not yet known, many in the industry question the efficacy of similar label deals with other music streamers which exchange potential revenue for artists for an equity stake for the corporation which artists often do not participate in.



That leaves Sony, the second largest player after UMG, the missing deal in Soundcloud’s monetization strategy; and given Sony forced takedowns earlier this year, a deal may not be imminent.

“You Don’t Own Your Fanbase. You Rent Them.”

by // Leave a Comment

5 Magazine:

It’s been said that we live in an era of “access” – a kind of golden age of artist communications and marketing. Rather than rely upon the faulty medium of the journalist or the tabloid, artists can now talk “directly” to their fans without any intermediary. Well, except for SoundCloud, or Twitter, or Facebook, or…



The reality is that you don’t own your fanbase. You just “access” them. You rent them in exchange for your data. And at moments like this – when you want to end your lease and move to another block – it becomes incredibly clear what the distinction is.



The important thing to realize is that these barriers between fan and artist are entirely artificial. There’s really no reason why they need to exist, other than to impede you from doing exactly what SoundCloud’s frustrated producers want to do: leave.


Terry Matthew’s insightful piece could almost serve as a thesis statement for our blog here. Musicians now live in an incredible time, when autonomous promotion, presentation, and distribution are all completely attainable. But why are so few artists choosing this? As I’ve opined here before, these tools (Facebook, SoundCloud, etc.) are useful, but should compliment the artist’s subservient infrastructure rather than serving as that infrastructure.

New Pressing Plants, Old Vinyl Presses

by // Leave a Comment

Discogs:

Anyone who knows about the current record industry knows that vinyl presses are hard to come by. There are a limited number of functional machines on the market, and none are currently in production (at least for the moment, although you will occasionally hear rumors). In order to locate and purchase presses, the founders of Cascade had to go on what Lanning describes as an “epic quest to locate equipment.”



As demand for vinyl continues to increase, old record presses have rapidly been escalating in price. The Cascade crew searched for equipment, while watching their dream of record production sky-rocket in cost. Finally their epic quest led them to Canada where Cascade was able to acquire six presses from the former Rip-V plant. Originally those six presses were used by the Hub-Servall Record Manufacturing Corporation in New Jersey.



However, there were still many challenges ahead, as their “new” presses were 43 years old, and needed considerable maintenance and set-up. Lanning jokes that the presses are “like tanks”; sturdy and well-made, just in need of some TLC. Amazingly, Rainey, Gonsalves, and Lanning were able to convince Dave Miller, one of the original builders who worked on those presses in the early ‘70s, to help with the project. Miller flew out to Oregon in November of 2014 to help with the set-up and repairs.


It’s heartwarming to see new vinyl pressing plants opening up, like Cascade Recording Pressing in Oregon, as profiled here on Discogs. I’ve known that an impediment to opening a new plant is the limited number of working presses available and I’m intrigued by these intricate tales of quest, like searching for the remaining Valyrian swords (Game of Thrones reference, watch out). It’s also nice how the plant aims to serve labels in their region foremost … in a perfect world, every part of the country would have its own pressing plant.


Update: Here‘s a great tale of the discovery of ten record presses in Mexico City. (via Analog Planet)

So What Is Mastering Anyway?

by // Leave a Comment

LinkedIn Pulse:

There are many definitions of audio mastering. Most commonly, though, the term mastering is used to refer to the process of taking an audio mix and preparing it for distribution. There are several considerations in this process: unifying the sound of a record, maintaining consistency across an album, and preparing for distribution.


I’ve had clients ask me why mastering is necessary, stating things like, “my mixdown sounds great … why would I need to master it?” This article is useful in explaining the need and reasons for mastering, as well as giving an interesting historical timeline of the practice.

I feel mastering is as important (and underrated) in the recording and release process as having a good studio monitor set-up. If you intend to stick with ‘the music thing’ then you will someday look back with deep regret if you allow an unmastered (or improperly mastered) release out into the world, I assure you. It’s important to keep in mind that mastering can’t fix a bad mixdown, but it will provide a sonic cohesion that will help make sense of your mix, both in context of its own sounds as well as among other professionally regarded releases.

I’m of the school of thought that you should not master your own music, though I do know some people who do this with good results. I believe you can get a much better master from someone who listens to your songs without bias (or who hasn’t heard the music a thousand times like you have). You also have an advantage when using a mastering engineer who does this as an area of focus, rather than as a side-job.

It’s a huge bonus if you can sit in with your mastering engineer and observe the process. You’ll learn much not only about the art of mastering, but also how your music and mixdowns are perceived by a professional. I once was lucky to have a three day mastering session on my music with the renowned Bob Katz who is based here in Orlando. It was like audio bootcamp … illuminating. The experience definitely shaped the way I think about sound.

Update: