rock business

The Indies are now completely screwed, with the brilliant idea in the 1990s of leaving the distribution to the majors and handling A&R themselves they thought they had it made

The world of Music Labels got dramatically smaller when Universal bought EMI and the result is here at last for all to see. Not simply that all ten songs on the singles charts belong to major labels, that goes with the territory, but that they all belong to one label is unheard of.

The next largest streamer on Random Access Memories was streamed 15 Million times aka $90,000. So now what? How high can the highest get to?

Remember when John Hammond was discovering Bob Dylan and Ahmet Ertegun was finding Aretha Franklin and Led Zeppelin, and working out their albums and Clive Davis was making Janis Joplin the face of Columbia. Well, forget about it, man. It doesn’t happen any more

The Friday October 30th general Admission ticket prices have been crucified from a buck 65 to sixty six bucks. That’s a saving of 40% on the nose.

The point is Barclay Center sold the most tickets and made the most money in the first half of 2013.

Soundhalo allows you to buy recent concerts for around ten bucks and Atoms For Peace are allowing them to film and sell the bands upcoming London shows

The artists are saying that if you go to a concert you have to watch the show and not be distracted by cell phones, but if it is true of cell phones it must be true of everything

This is a strange,wild, thrilling, messy, bizarre time for music, so hail a taxi

Streaming is more complicated than they thought, too many people are using too many things, it is complicated.

Ever since the advent of vinyl with its ease of distribution, music has been a recorded experience. Look at it this way. How many people have listened to the Beatles? Now how many people have seen them live?

It comes with the fan who goes to concerts a lot job description, get an AMEX Card. Look at it this way, 5% of the possible audience may have Amex cards getting a crack at 35% of the tickets.

“Really ?? Over two hours late and not so much as an apology, the concessions closed before the act even came on ! How is this tolerated ? People spend a lot of money to see an act and have to work the next day, it is the acts responsibility to be on time.”

Other formats sound like an annoying frequency if listened to repeatedly, whereas vinyl has a much fuller organic sound. Also I think the sleeve and artwork on some records are just amazing and nice to have as a collection

I forgive him his Romney endorsement even though I haven’t forgiven Springsteen his Obama endorsement. This is capitalism with a conscious, capital that appreciates that you can price yourself out of the business with $150 tickets for mid-level seating.

I ran right home, recorded it onto a cassette tape, went to a bar called “Uncle Sam” and the bartender played it all night long while me and my friend Jean Jacques got trashed on Almaza beer and shots of Southern Comfort while chain smoking Gauloise and Marlboro Reds, sometimes dosed with hashish

But where does that leave those of us (wrongly, perhaps) who see music as an XTreme sport with winners and losers, or, to put it another way, how do we know what people are actually spending money on?

‘We’ve been doing this a few years and in the course of buying stuff at our trade counter we’ve found some amazing vinyl artifacts that, [we’ve discovered] through our research, are not available digitally’.If most of the material is licensed, the problem is that Henderson has admitted that some is not.

He probably realizes he is the only one doing this, every band in the world is posting a song or two for free download on their website, every album can be previewed on many websites before being streamed on Spotify, but you have to buy Prince’s stuff if you want to listen to it!

Why am I being conned into doing business with Jann Wenner? Why should I have to cancell anyuthing? This is horrible and disrespectful to LiveNation’s clients, doesn’t the company make enough money without hoodwinking customers iinto subscribing to a magazine they have expressed ZERO interest in?

It was a busy Tuesday morning by anybody’s standards. 16 new releases, all some degree of major, all important for your music fan to have an idea about. And if he it wasn’t for Spotify, very very expensive.

There are no limits to what Morrissey could do, he could build the cost of the album into the cost of a ticket. Can you imagine if Morrissery started a kickstart account? He could handle the US deficit singlehandedly. But Moz is an old fashioned fellow and he balks at changing his ways. More is the pity.

“I think at some time I kept pushing myself to a success or glory and it didn’t really exist. I just knew that it was over, I would never get any bIgger than this and… I am nearly 30, I am not sure I felt it was ALL RIGHT… I CAN LIVE WITH IT. But can I?”

Neither of the songs are all that but neither are disasters either. But were helped tremendously by a campaign of silence, the new meme: Say Nothing.

Some small pop up place with Mercury Lounge size bands performing three sets a day, Saturday and Sunday 10a, 12p, 2p, separate admission. I can’t think of a better idea than getting out of bed Sunday morning and rushing to a concert I really wanna see.

Because in Europe there is a “Use it or lose it law” that states if you own recorded music and haven’t released it within 50 years, you never will release it and so it becomes public property.

So what is ex-Soul Coughing’s Mike Doughty supposed to do? Selling personalized versions of unreleased songs,… for $35,335.53. According to the AV Club, Doughty has fixed himself the price to record ‘Dogs/Demons’, a never-played-live song, with some personalized message!

I found these figures rather surprisingly low. The order of value even more confusing Who would ever imagine that selling headphones for $110 million bucks. All he had to do was swing a pen around for that wad. Poor Adele.

Metallica’s Lars Ulrich said in a statement: ‘It’s always been about control for us as a band. Forming Blackened Recordings is the ultimate in independence, giving us 100% control and putting us in the driver’s seat of our own creative destiny.’

He changed U2’s Fanclub into a cash machine, making presales available to fanclub members,w hich is OK business as usual, but also making the live from their 360 degree tour available only thru the Fanclub. It is easy to do the math her

And to finish with that, there will be listening parties all over the country, the same evening,… All right, I understand that these are remastered albums but people will really meet to listen to … the Beatles?

According to Future of Music co-authors David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard, who I guess know this kinda stuff, here are the top ten truths of the music biz. After running a blog for nearly four years, all I have to add isI am fucking exhuasted… However, here is the top ten and here is my opinion of them

The platinum edition contains a number of exclusive items that won’t be available to buy separately. It includes a copy of the album, along with a 2GB credit card-style USB, a unisex T-shirt with a Michael Muller photo printed on, and seven art print 12×15 lithographs

If you wanted to buy a Keith Morris doll, a Stone Throw poster or a Diplo t-shirt, this was the place to be on Saturday! In this day and age when music is downloaded (or stolen), streamed and does not have a physical life anymore, this was a way to restore this loss of identity, this was a way to restore a contact between the consumers and the producers