8Sided Blog

a zine about sound, culture, and the punk rock dream

Tony Wilson’s Three-Way Proposition

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Lest we forget, Factory Records impresario Tony Wilson was a digital music pioneer. Marking 13 years ago today since his untimely death, The Guardian profiled Wilson’s ill-fated start-up, Music33. This venture was an online MP3 store, launched three years before the iTunes shop (but, to be fair, a couple of years after eMusic). 

Wilson approached the majors, but they wouldn’t get on board. If you remember, the prominent record labels were, at the time, adamantly opposed to download stores and even more resistant to unbundling songs from their albums, a built-in feature of Music33. “People want to buy songs,” Wilson insisted. He did enlist some cool indie labels like Skam (home to Boards of Canada), Mark Rae’s Grand Central, and Blood and Fire. The latter was a dub/reggae reissue label that I adored and had no idea until today that Simply Red’s Mick Hucknall was partly responsible. 

Music33 didn’t go well, ahead of its time like a lot of Tony Wilson’s endeavors. Download speeds circa 2000 didn’t cooperate, users had to redeem their purchases via passwords, and the management of micro-payments was impossible. Music33 was doomed to fail. 

In just a few years, technology solved all of those problems for Music33’s successors. But there was one idea Wilson had that didn’t carry over to our modern paradigm. From The Guardian piece: 

Wilson conceived Music33 as an online record store. The price of a song would be split three ways – 11p apiece for the website, for the artist and for their record label. Wilson felt, as he told me in 2000, that “these shits” – the labels – “saying to the artists: ‘You can have so much per cent’ can go screw themselves.”

The three-way split is an intriguing proposition. That arrangement strongly favors the artist as, after recouping, the artist also gets part of that label split — or all of it, if self-released. That’s in addition to a mandatory third of the total proceeds. Of course, the artist would need to be in direct contact with the store to get her 1/3 share which is problematic. But, as we’re dreaming here, imagine that neighboring rights organizations like SoundExchange handle the artist’s portion. That direct relationship for artist payments already exists with SoundExchange, and gathering performers’ royalties from downloads (or streaming) isn’t that far from what the organization already does.

What if Music33 had taken off and set the tone for the structure of download payments, evolving into the standard rates for streaming payouts? With artists guaranteed to receive at least 33% of streaming royalty, today’s landscape would look quite different. 

Update: As I tweeted, songwriters and publishers would still get the short end of the stick in Music33’s alternate timeline.

🔗→ ‘You’ve been smoking too much!’: the chaos of Tony Wilson’s digital music revolution

Better Living Through Metadata

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Prague Library

I’m finally digging into Dani Deahl’s informative article on metadata from a couple of months back in The Verge. All of the quoted text is from that article:

In an ideal world, once a song is finished, the metadata would be crafted by the artist or the artist’s producer, and they would submit that data to the record label, distributor, or publisher(s) involved for verification and distribution. In reality, the process is frequently more rushed and haphazard — artists and labels hurry the process along in order to get songs out, and metadata is frequently cleaned up later as mistakes are noticed.

Traditionally, the producer wears administrative — and therapeutic — hats in addition to the more recognized sonic-shaping guise.1Check out Richard James Burgess’s seminal The Art of Music Production for an overview of all the job entails. I could see ‘metadata’ falling under the producer’s responsibility 25+ years ago if metadata was as important as it is today. Now, ‘producer’ mostly means something different and is often the same role as the artist. So, in this better world we’re imagining, who wears the metadata hat?

I vote for the mastering engineer. There’s already an ‘elite’ rung for mastering engineers certified by the Mastered For iTunes program. Let’s find a way to certify mastering engineers (and potentially producers, or studio engineers, and even record label managers) as Metadata Ambassadors. As an artist — or a label — you will be assured that if you use a certified mastering engineer, your metadata will be collected, organized, and accurately submitted to the appropriate parties.

Of course, more artists are mastering their own work2and I have strong feelings that they should not do this, but I’ll save that rant for another day. so the process of metadata submission would be open to all. But if you enlist someone certified — that is, a person trained in the dark art of metadata — then not only will you not have to deal with it (beyond providing requested info), you can rest easy. Metadata’s sorted.

Having a centralized database and set standards for music metadata — [Jaxsta rep Joshua] Jackson’s idea of an IMDb for music — sounds like a straightforward goal, but getting there has stumped many of music’s largest and most powerful entities for decades. There are many reasons for this, but the tectonic shift to streaming is a major contributor.

Again, let’s imagine a better world. In this one, the music industry actually bands together and puts some funding into mitigating the chaos. Discogs is the closest thing we’ve got to an IMDB for music. A light partnership and investment from the industry could implement other essential data to a Discogs listing and develop an API where this information is accessed and utilized by third-party platforms. There could be a ‘pro’ view for a Discogs listing that reveals ISRCs, publishing splits, rights holder contact information, and so on. It’s not a perfect proposal, especially as much of the data will remain crowdsourced, but it would be a million times better than what we’ve got. And, most importantly, this information would exist in a web interface that is accessible and understandable to the layperson. Much more so than an online spreadsheet on some PRO’s backend.

There isn’t much agreement on if any particular arm of the music industry should lead the way or be responsible for fixing music metadata. Some think digital music distribution companies like TuneCore or DistroKid could do more to educate artists, as it’s often an artist’s only touchpoint before their music is live on streaming platforms. Others think the streaming platforms themselves could set an example for better metadata by displaying more credits, which would encourage everyone involved to make sure the data is right.

I’m co-signing all of the above. The distributors can undoubtedly do more, and none of the distributors I work with ask for exhaustive metadata. By ‘exhaustive,’ I’m talking about no-brainer stuff like songwriter and publisher names. But I’d love to see distribution go even more in-depth, asking for information like the producers, the musicians, the studio and its location … liner note stuff. I know that the streaming platforms aren’t listing this info yet but why should they if the distributors don’t have it? It’s not like Spotify is going to add liner notes when that information isn’t already available for them to exploit.

I’d love to see a significant distributor lead the way and throw down the gauntlet on metadata. To say, “we’re taking metadata seriously and will start logging the info whether anyone uses it or not.” And, once all this data is in hand, they pressure the DSPs to include it. Admittedly, including these ‘liner notes’ is but a small competitive differentiator, but it *is* one and streaming platforms need any they can get.

Pie-in-the-sky stuff, I know. But we need to imagine that better world to draw us closer to it. So, how do we make these things — or alternate solutions that drive us in a positive direction — happen?

iTunes’ Death: Greatly Exaggerated

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Apple loves it when people talk about Apple. Conjecture and buzz about leaks leading up to an Apple event is free press coverage, free promotion, and creates attention just before something as inside-baseball as the WWDC. And the leaks are often vague and loose, allowing pundits — both professional and armchair — to argue and guess and give tons of thought-space to one of the world’s biggest corporations.

That’s what makes the aftermath of the iTunes leak so bizarre. The news wasn’t vague at all — in fact, it was refreshingly specific and unsurprising. Apple would strip iTunes of its video/TV, eBooks (why were those still in there anyway?), and podcast features to create a dedicated Music app. Just like on iOS. Even without the leak, we could see this coming.

Bloomberg was the first to report the leak. Admittedly, the expected clickbait headline reads ‘End of iTunes,’ but the piece’s content is specific:

The company is launching a trio of new apps for the Mac – Music, TV, and Podcasts – to replace iTunes. That matches Apple’s media app strategy on iPhones and iPads.

Twitter panic naturally ensued, with users thinking this meant the deletion of their years-in-progress curated playlists, the ability to rip the occasional CD, and even incompatibility with existing music file collections. Granted, Apple hasn’t exactly made iTunes better with each iteration, but it’s still not the type of company to throw its fans under the bus like that. But it’s fun to rant and worry for a minute.

And then, just as the flames needed fanning, the Los Angeles Times inexplicably publishes a news item with the headline ‘Apple will shut down iTunes, ending the download era, report says.’ The article (but not that headline) is now changed, but the original version made it clear the author was referring to the closing of the iTunes store and thus ‘the download era:’

The iTunes store is a dead service walking.

On Friday afternoon, social media erupted after Bloomberg News reported that Apple was set to announce the end of its iTunes store, which transformed the music business when it was launched in 2003.

Keep in mind, the Bloomberg article referenced doesn’t mention the download store at all.

And then, The Guardian picked up on the story with the headline ‘Apple expected to close iTunes after 18 years:’

It was once heralded as a possible saviour of the music industry in the digital age, famously annoyed fans by forcing a U2 album on them, and its 20,699-word terms and conditions have even inspired a graphic novel, but now Apple is to replace its iTunes download service.

Technically, true. The download store will likely lose its iTunes branding. However, the article (which remains unchanged at the time of this post) goes into great detail about the history of the iTunes store and paid music downloads. Also citing Bloomberg, The Guardian only mentions the actual news — the introduction of the Music app — in one sentence of the whole article.

People started losing their shit. Debates on Twitter, debates on LinkedIn, debate all over social media about what Apple’s abandonment of paid downloads means for the industry. Some artists and labels openly admitting they still made some decent cash from iTunes sales. Music fans saying they prefer to stream but would like iTunes to remain as a download option. This discussion — and its growing dissemination — was fascinating.

We’ve been down this road before. It seems like Digital Music News has an ‘unnamed source’ announcing the shuttering of iTunes once a year. And many people are openly hostile towards iTunes — usually the app, not the store — so it’s a polarizing brand name. When the news arrived, it was emotionally spread far and wide by haters and defenders.

Apple had no comment which fueled things further. But, remember — Apple loves it when people talk about Apple. Why extinguish the fire?

There’s a deeper story about the commodification of our attention. I’m not saying The Guardian and the Los Angeles Times purposefully twisted the news of the leak. My estimation is that in a rush for new content and tweet-able breaking news the original Bloomberg piece became a Rorschach test — quickly interpreted and summarized, the writers spun the leak to their wishes. And those wishes were for something dramatic like the death of paid downloads.

I don’t mean to pick on the writers. This rapid environment is the news culture we live in. It’s instant and impermanent. I can’t even imagine the constant pressure from publishers and editors. There’s nothing sexy in a story about how the only thing Apple is killing in iTunes is the name. On a similar note, I’m surprised there weren’t big stories last week on how Warner Bros. Records was killed off.

We have the power here. Chill on the up-to-the-minute hot takes and think before you retweet. Read — really read — the sources. If you’re writing about these things (and there’s not minute-by-minute pressure from a publisher or editor), follow M.G. Siegler’s lead. And maybe wait until after WWDC to comment on how everything is awful now that Apple is going to turn your MP3 collection into dust.

As for iTunes, Bloomberg was correct. Here’s Pitchfork:

A press release issued after the live announcement said that “users will have access to their entire music library, whether they downloaded the songs, purchased them, or ripped them from a CD.” So again, take a deep breath—contrary to speculation, no one’s iTunes collections were “killed” today. Further questions about keeping personal playlists and play counts intact haven’t been answered as of press time.

The press release [also] said, “For those who like to own their music, the iTunes Music Store is just a click away.” In other words, the iTunes store—which was launched two years after its namesake app and transformed the music industry by allowing the purchase of individual songs—is still very much alive.

And, in fact, iTunes lives on. Pitchfork again:

Outside of the Mac ecosystem, it’s still an iTunes world after all. “Windows users will see no changes in their experience,” an Apple rep confirmed to Pitchfork.

🔗→ Apple Plans End of iTunes, to Reveal Glimpses of Its Next Era of Apps and Devices
🔗→ What Apple’s iTunes Shutdown Means for Music Fans