Longing for the day ...

Worrying trends in Australian music

What does this graph tell us?

It's taken from the APRA annual report and shows the 5-year trend of money coming into and out of Australia for music royalties. You'll note that the annual amount of money coming into Australia (the green line) is increasing at a much lower rate than the annual amount of money being sent overseas (the yellow line).

Coupled with other data from the annual report about where this money came from, it's brutally clear that overseas artists are making much more from being played in Australia than Australian artists are from being played overseas. I would bet that most of that music is American and that it's mostly powder pop - Hillary Duff, Britney Spears. This trend is being driven by marketing bucks providing access to airplay, not by quality material. In fact, it acts to exclude quality material in favour of mediocre material made by people with deep pockets.

Anyone who claims Australian music doesn't need protection from the forces driving the FTA needs only to look at this data ...

Post-Arias discussion

Well, the Aria Awards have been handed out for another year. It's good to see the majors get together and congratulate themselves as an industry. Well done to the winners - that's a reward for all the hard work you've put in over the years. Speaking of which , John Harley Weston got in the top 5 volcalists at Singer Universe.

There's an interesting discussion of the Aria Award prospects (it started before the ceremony and has continued after it) on the Sydney Morning Herald entertainment blog. It started out on the rather trite subject of "independents vs mainstream" but has ranged over some quite interesting territory. I'm not interested in discussing anything to dowith independent vs mainstream because I realised when REM started having hits that the difference was one of marketing. I find it's much more useful to think of the industry in terms of a contiuum from totally independent to totally owned by the major labels.

Some very interesting comments thrown in there (the oldest ones are, rather annoyingly, at the bottom of the thread) including ones that "Aussie music stinks". This is quite to the contrary of the views of Derek Sivers, founder of CDBaby.com, who sang the praises of Aussie music in an interview on Appletalk. It's not a view I'm going to dignify with a response ...

I find it amazing that people can claim to "hate" certain artists. There are a lot of artists whose music I don't find particularly rewarding or interesting - I've already nominated Pete Murray (Baaad choice for the NRL grand final, BTW) and you can add most of Delta Goodrem's stuff - but I tend to just ignore them. They work hard at what they do and a lot of people like it, apparently, so there's no point "hating" them. What a waste of energy! Focus on what you like and ignore the rest ...

There's a good point about what might have happened had Bob Dylan or Nick Cave tried out for Idol. They would almost certainly have been ignored. Ditto plenty of other acts that have changed the industry they entered the hard way. But, then, Idol is about the dream factory for mass-appeal music. It's not about good art or even good entertainment - I've not even watched this series.

Speaking of which, I didn't watch much of the Arias - mainly because I got fascinated by switching back to the 50-year celebration of the Eurovision Song Contest, which was on SBS. What a contrast! I can't believe Sir Cliff Richard got beaten by people who didn't have a fraction of his career. So much for the views of judges.

I can't think of any hugely successful music act that won competitions to get where it got - ABBA excepted ...

Common problems for performers

It was interesting to read in The Weekend Australian an extract from Chrissie Amphlett's autobiography in which she wrote about her initial difficulties being outrageous on stage. The most interesting bit was the part about the difference between playing her own songs as opposed to those of other writers - she felt a lot more vulnerable and exposed playing her own songs, which were reflections of her own feelings. That's something I've heard from other performers and I know how it feels.

So, what to do for my shows?

I dunno. It's something that I know from my previous originals gigs is an issue. Even my darling wife commented on how different I was playing originals from covers. There's also a confidence issue in that, as much as I like the songs and feel that they're good enough, they're unproven. That puts a dampener on the performance, too. Only one way to turn THAT around, of course.

However, if Chrissie Amphlett can turn into that schoolgirl, I can become something else. The whole Huge persona is adopted to help with that aspect so I guess I just have to define the details. Not sure what form they'll take, though - especially for the Genre Benders, which is deliberately varied and various.

The other thing I want to avoid is the thing that brought Chrissie unstuck: retaining the persona off-stage. In her case this was helpful for her promotions but ultimately destrcutive for her career. Too many problems caused by offending fans and industry contacts through her insecure antics. I'm too old for second chances ...

Besides, I don't think I could adopt quite such an outrageous persona. It wouldn't work for my songs or my show. It's just not me and I think the crowds would see straight through it. Something more spiritual, perhaps ...

We shall see.

The faceless Dream Factory

BTW - I've decided that from now on I will refer to the major record company approach to the music business as "the dream factory". It seems appropriate, since that's exactly what they offer: dreams. When you wake up it's all over and it's all gone ...

Why stick to just one approach?

Watched the final episode of The Hit Game last night and it drove home to me yet another aspect of what's wrong with the music industry: The fixation with making artists stick to one "brand" of music. I thought the Unplugged phenomenon had thrown that notion out years ago ...

Last night Bazz, the music producer, was faced wih a conundrum. He had these three incredibly talented girls who could sing in harmony like angels and had produced a techno-R&B-ish demo. But he heard them singing together around the piano and wanted to showcase their ability. What a perfect solution!! Show them doing it the way they learned (and they were good!!).

But the faceless dream factory executives were confused. What was this band about? Were they an R&B/pop act or an accoustic act? Since they obviously had no comprehension of how music works (much less what makes it good) they just didn't get it! And, worse, they assumed the fans wouldn't get it either.

I got it, the girls got it, Bazz the producer got it ... but the people who held the future of this act in their hands simply got confused when faced with the genuine article ...

What's wrong with the girls doing it both ways? That's the greater musical challenge and appeals to twice the market. I think it's brilliant they can do it - Lush had the opposite problem, being unable to perform away from the studio. The gentle irony here is that these people obviously haven't learned from the one of the great successes of the 1990s: the Unplugged album. Clapton, Nirvana, Kiss and more, all unplugged their instuments and played accoustic versions of their hits, proving that a great song is a great song no matter how it's played.

Let them sing their songs as many ways as possible. That's what I'm working on! First demo coming out soon.

Never a truer word

Got some fairly sombre e-mails from my mate Phil Graham yesterday. He's in Canada for work but has had enough and wants to return to sunny Brisbane.

Among other things, I suggested there was a song in one of the things he said ("Wish I was there") and he wrote back that

"There is music in the gaps between language"

I thought about that a lot and thought it might be also (better?) expressed as

"Art falls in the gaps between language."

A quick Google of those expressions turns up no famous quotes, so I guess we can claim them for ourselves. Which one do you think is better?

Stay tuned for some songs using them, too ...

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The wierdest feeling in sport

OK, after almost a week I think I've got a handle on it.Sunday's NRL grand final produced the wierdest feeling for me because I was wearing an old Balmain Tigers jumper but cheering for the Cowboys.

Up to the moment of kick-off I wasn't sure who to cheer for because I had been a Balmain supporter until Balmain ceased to exist and morphed into the Wests Tigers. Actually, to be fair, I really became a Broncos fan after they won their second premiership, but I retained the Tigers as my second team for a long time.

But shortly after kickoff I found myself cheering everything the Cowboys did and remaining eerily quiet when the Tigers had the better of the game. The feeling afterwards was very odd ... I was wearing he winners' jersey but felt like I'd lost the game.

Not sure what to make of it but I think the Balmain Jersey will now be consigned to the training paddock ... or I might keep it in case the Tigers play Manly in the final soon ...

Go Broncos!

Hits and misses

I've been watching The Hit Game on the ABC for the past two weeks. Last night's episode was a brilliant expose of exactly what's wrong with the music industry. A talented, beautiful and experienced young Belinda-Lee Reid hangs her entire future on the opinions of a small group of people with only their own best interests - as they can predict them - in mind?? Wouldn't happen in any other industry and shouldn't happen in this one.

This is why I have to develop and publish my model for sustainable business for independent performers. To take away the narrow-minded, high-risk focus that this industry pursues to its own detriment. Belinda-Lee Reid and Bazz Palmer and the collaborators should be encouraged to release her music independently and grow her act and art organically rather than repeating the mistakes of an all-or-nothing gamble to hit the big time immediately.

As it turned out, the legacy of Lash make her unatractive to the gamblers - even thought her material sounded just as good to me as a lot of the crap the gamblers release. Consequently, the lifeline thrown to her by MGM's Sebastian Chase amounts to exactly what she needs - to work and tour and grow. I just hope she can take advantage by selling her music in the places she can reach.

Less risk, more work, better reward for effort. That should be the focus ...

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