Longing for the day ...

Playing to 20,000 people

The other night I went to see Kaki King play at the Powerhouse in Brisbane. She was interesting, though a little wet for my taste. The girl can certainly play guitar ...

Anyway, in the midst of a huge name-dropping exercise she mentioned becoming addicted to red wine and playing on stage with Dave Grohl while in Europe. The punchline to this story was a great quote that I think explains why everyone who's serious about playing music does it:

"It's highly addictive, more than red wine, to hear 20,000 people screaming your name."

Never a truer word spoken ... and the biggest crowd I've played for was only about 2000. I can only imagine what 20,000 people must be like.

Vale, Matt Price.

It's a sad time for Australian politics and journalism. One of the most entertaining, fair-minded and insightful political commentators died of brain tumours on the weekend.

Matt price was the beacon of reason in a sea of right-wing nonsense in The Australia, and his sudden death at the age of 45 leaves a big hole in the field. I'm sure his family will miss him even more.

Awesome Olyroos!

Great to see the Olyroos have qualified for the 2008 Olympics with a draw over Korea. Keep it up boys, and bring home the big prize ...

Go Tah! Go Tah! Go Tah!

Just heard that my best Brooklyn Buddy, Tah Phrum Duh Bush was voted "Favorite Male Hip Hop Performer" at the first Annual Upper States Awards at the Palace Theater in Syracuse, NY. Excellent and well deserved - Tah's a legend.

This comes on top of his recent "Aluminium Party" to celebrate CD sales of ?5000? or something ... it's an achievement for an indie and Tah's one of the best.

Anyway, do the guy a favour and check out his stuff. I wanna be there for his "Gold" party ...

Radiohead's "success"?

Comscore have issued a report that estimates the rate of paid downloads from Radiohead's pay-what-you-like experiment. In a nutshell, they found that in the first 29 days of October, the album was downloaded about 1.2 million times and paid for by only 38% of downloaders. Average price for all downloads was US$2.26, netting them a cool US$2.715million in October. The response to these findings has been interesting.

First, within the press release, "Fred Wilson, managing partner of Union Square Ventures and well-known music aficionado" is quoted as saying:

"But, this shows pretty conclusively that the majority of music consumers feel that digital recorded music should be free and is not worth paying for."

That's a load of shit to start with. This event has been an unusual one, so its findings can't be generalised in this way at all. I, personally, downloaded the album for nothing just to see what all the fuss was about. Had it been just another Radiohead album released conventionally, I'd have ignored it. Had I been expected to pay for it as a download, I'd have ignored it - mainly because I have no interest in Radiohead's music. I would bet that a lot of people downloaded it for free just to see if they could. I imagine many downloaded it for nothing with the intention of paying for it if it was any good (that was my intention but I hated the album so I paid what it was worth to me and deleted it from my library). This singular result proves nothing about the feelings of music consumers - it doesn't even prove anything about the feelings of Radiohead fans because lots of non-fans downloaded it as well. Coolfer agrees.

Bob Lefsetz responded differently:

I’m sick and tired of the constant debate about Radiohead’s business model. It WASN’T a business model. It was a one time stunt that is not the future of the music business and will only be replicated by fools.

He's quite right at that point but, as Bob usually does, then takes it too far and misses the point.

If name your price was such a good business model, why doesn’t GM employ it? Or Time Warner? Marketing is about establishing VALUE!

Gee, I dunno, Bob. Perhaps because music is different to cars??? Besides, marketing isn't about creating value, it's about persuading people to see value whether it's there or not. That, as you so often and correctly point out, is why the major labels are stuffed in the first place.

Digital Music News was also down on the figures, arguing that

"The result deflates the excitement surrounding the effort, heralded by many as a groundbreaking model. It also challenges the levels of loyalty that established bands can expect from longtime fans."

Hmmmm ... I'm not so sure. It's certainly not the result many people would have wanted, but another explanation might be that Radiohead doesn't actually have nearly as many fans as their critical success would seem to indicate. Perhaps that's the real reason? Or am I just reflecting my own jaundiced assessment of their music?

State of the Mind of the Art pulled DMN up on their stupidity at not expecting the album to be P2P traded despite being available for free:

“Elsewhere, large numbers of fans continue to grab the album outside of the Radiohead website on free file-sharing networks, another unexpected development.” Unexpected? How can anyone who follows the current industry trends see file sharing as an unexpected development?

Indeed, and Hypebot quoted Big Champagne's explanation in Forbes for this effect:

"People don't know Radiohead's site. They do know their favorite BitTorrent site and they use it every day," he says. "It's quite simply easier for folks to get the illegal version than the legal version."

That's another point Coolfer agrees on and I think it's probably the most interesting result of all of this. At least Hypebot saw the cup as half full, pointing to some nice earnings and a publicity coup:

Despite the P2P numbers, the Radiohead "experiment" should still be considered a resounding success - at least for Radiohead.

Finally, Idolator also sees some positives, quoting Comscore analyst Gian Fulgoni pointing to the double-digit conversion rate in the Chicago Tribune:

He noted that an e-commerce Web site typically converts about 5 percent of its traffic into sales in a given month. The conversion rate for the Radiohead album will be "substantially higher," he said. "You can see this getting up into the millions of dollars."

And the last word should probably go to Hypebot, who sum the whole issue up nicely:

Surely this model won't work for every band. But as Music 2.0 unfolds it is becoming clear that bold experimentation will often be rewarded.

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for the victims of the Bangladesh cyclonic floods, their families and their communities.

Wot an awesome weekend!

The Netball girls are World Champs, the Socceroos had a win V Nigeria and the Olyroos had a win over Iraq. Also, the Aussie cricket team are slowly massacring Sri Lanka and the Volleyballers have started well in their World Cup with a win. Awesome stuff, Aussies!

To top it off, the Roar posted another win, the Bulls are up in their Pura Cup match and the Bullets and Blaze both scored wins in the NBL. Could a Queensland sports fan have asked for more?

Update: Congratulations to Liz Ellis on a fantastic career and retiring on the highest possible note as World Champion. Well done, Liz. And thank you.

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... for the victims of the Jokela high school shooting in Finland and their families.

What we'd be like if we were monkeys

My darling showed me this really cool video.

I think it needs no comment. Pretty much says it all. Well said, Ernest Klein!

Vinyl and MP3 vs CDs

Occasionally I come across articles like this one, which talk about the return of vinyl as a force for music sales and another "nail in the coffin" of the much-criticised CD.

Oh, come on! It's a crock!

Look at all the sources talking up the vinyl thing in that article. What do they have in common? They are all from indie labels trying to differentiate themselves from the others to gain traction in the marketplace (except for the guy who owns the "country's largest record pressing plant"). The statement "And now demand for vinyl is on the rise. Pressing plants that were already at capacity are staying there, while others are cranking out more records than they did last year in order to keep pace with demand" is not supported by any evidence at all ... it's just asserted. Crap journalism!

The history of technology tells us something very important here - a technological discontinuity brings a substitution effect that is almost never total, and almost always irreversible. (There are still people who prefer horses to tractors.) In other words, the "Golden-eared audiophiles" and DJs will keep buying vinyl (which is why these guys are talking it up!), so it will be a small and lucrative niche, particularly for certain types of recordings, but the vast majority of music sales will remain digital. Like yo-yos, vinyl will fade into and out of fashion in terms of their place on newspaper (or news website!) pages and that's as much as vinyl can expect. News is about what's NOT normal. Talking up vinyl in the digital age is going to be de rigeur for the occasional news hack trying to make a mark ...

Look at the reasons CDs came to dominate: more portable, more robust, easier to maintain - more *convenient*. None of that has changed. Look at the reasons vinyl albums are preferred: "superior" sound quality (not in my experience, BTW - I can never get past the static and scratches), better physical experience via larger artwork, etc. Has any of that changed? No! But was it enough to stop CDs from taking over? No.

What's changed? Major label CD sales are down - Derek's data tell us this does NOT include all CDs. What else? There's a surge in the number of small-to-medium indie labels looking for traction in the market. Uh-huuuh ... Sales of turntables (analog and digital) are up. Guess what? Sales of ALL instruments are up (http://www.futureofmusicbook.com/2007/02/06/the-tail-wags-the-dog/)! What are people gonna put on those turntables ... ?

Radiohead released their new album in all three formats with a strictly limited edition of vinyl ... wonder why they limited that? Probably because they know there's a demand from a small number of hard-core fans who will pay what it's worth to make the vinyl available. Doing some market research by offering it on a pre-order basis was very clever in terms of managing demand and supply. But I would think that if you have a fan base of less than, say 100,000, it will NOT be viable to press vinyl. Good luck to The Society of Rockets transporting their vinyl to gigs and trying to sell them.

Giving music away or making it available??

An interesting point came up on the MusicThoughts list yesterday and it peaked my interest - especially in light of an article from Andrew Dubber that I'd read earlier. Here's the original meme and my response:

>> When you give your music away you are saying
>> "My music is worthless".

>Mmmmm I think that depends on the context.

I've been thinking long and hard on this one and a coupla things occurred to me after I read Andrew's account of a public discussion about it. To put this in perspective, Dubber is a UK-based New Zealander who comes from a radio background, not an artist's background - so you have to filter his views accordingly. But the perspective of the girls at the forum was clear and informative and I think it represents this conundrum quite clearly.

A couple of things are clear, and a couple of things are not very clear. Let's start with the clear stuff:

1) Artists need to make their music as widely available as possible away from their live shows and other places where their influence over potential fans is strongest but the scope of their contact with potential fans is severely limited. That's the only way to compete in the attention economy. At that point, making the recordings available online at no cost seems essential.

2) The "Free as in speech" vs "Free as in meal" thing is a wank. No fan or music consumer is going to pay attention long enough to read it, let alone think about it. It's a cute semantic separation for people like us, whose lives depend on understanding it, and for commentators whose lives depend on having something to say about it, but the fans/downloaders don't make their "buy" decisions on this basis. Either they have free *access* to the recordings or they don't ... and they base their decisions on the effect the recording/show has on their hips/libido/vocal chords/tear ducts.

3) Whatever music you present to the public has to be the best it can be - either live or recorded. Recording on an out-of-tune axe of any kind is not your best work unless that's your distinctive feature, upon which you build your sound. Several singers have taken this approach and a lot of punk guitarists (in particular) regard it as a badge of honour to finish a set out of tune.

These three points are underpinned by the realisation that the value of your music comes through the value your fans place on their relationship with the music and its source. As the girls in Dubber's article showed, they will not place much faith in disposable music or care where it came from. Of course, teenagers are not famous for the strength of their relationships with anyone, so perhaps one of the biggest problems the majors in the industry face is their reliance on selling disposable music to people who have little money and are barely capable of forming a relationship, let along maintaining one. At least that thought gives some hope to us older artists whose music speaks to people with more experience and a firmer basis for building a relationship (I hope so, anyway :-)

What's not so clear:

1a) Letting the music run free (as in speech) is no good to its creators unless it draws fans back to its source. As the girls in Dubber's forum show, even if they like the songs, they may or may not care where it came from and want more. If they don't care where it came from, the artist gains nothing. The classic example of this is UK-based model/DJ Allan Van D'Arc, whose "Ode to the bottom" about Kylie Minogue's ass was downloaded worldwide in 2003 but, because he had no followup, presence or plan, gained him nothing. (see http://www.kylie.co.uk/newsroom/00000117.html). Hence, if you're going to give the recordings away you have to use it to draw clear lines back to your other efforts - live, recorded, whatever. So, every CD and its cover needs to have a central URL (tips for beginners: don't use MySpace for this purpose!); every MP3 must be tagged with as much info as possible; and so on. At that point it makes very little difference whether you give people a stream to listen to (which fans can very easily e-mail to each other - one click you're there) or an MP3 download - which they may or may not relate back to the rest of your site.

2a) Free and convenient *access* is the key. Giving away your CD after your gig is DUMB. You have just had your best shot to blow these people away with your performance - if you didn't they won't care about your CD - and giving it to them costs you production money; if you did they will value your CD enough to pay something for it. You can be flexible in price but remember that the value they place on your relationship will be influenced by the value you place on it - the very fact that you take the time to approach them after the show can tip them into a yes. Similarly, it's one thing to allow people to copy/rip/distribute your music but it's another thing again to *do it for them*. If you make it clear that "this is a gift to you", that adds value to the relationship. If you make it clear that payment is an option (as in Radiohead/Issa) that retains value. But for God's sake don't just say "this is free and I don't care what you do with it" because that indicates that you, the artist, don't value it.

3a) Personal and performance development is the goal. A bunch of kids who've written 6 songs and played 5 gigs in backyards are not going to be able to afford a week in The Power Station to make en EP - but they can use their school facilities to make something that demos their music. In fact, the process of making it will make them more focused and hopefully when they listen to it they'll say things like "that lyric sucks" or "the bass is playing too many notes in the verse" or "none of this is catchy" or something that will help them to do it better next time. It might be good enough that their mates will buy a few copies and spread them all over the school. It might be good enough that a venue manager will back them into a residency that will help them write better songs, perform better and then afford a better recording ...

I can't speak for anyone else who writes or performs music but every time I write a new song, play a show or make a recording I learn something about myself and music that makes me a better writer or performer. I don't believe that development ever ends and Janis Ian told me that it never has for her ...

These points are underscored by another important realisation that's not discussed much: musos have TWO audiences - their fans and the industry professionals who may decide to give them a gig, or spin their single, or manage their finances, or something. It's vital that artists realise this and play to a very clear understanding of which audience is before them. The two have very different relationships with the artist and giving your music to one at no cost does not carry the same implications as giving it to the other.