Wednesday 27 January 2010, 11:29 | By CMU Editorial

This Festival Feeling appoints Bearded founder to edit digi-mag

Media

Online festivals publication This Festival Feeling relaunched its website ready for the 2010 festival season this morning, and has also confirmed the appointment of Bearded magazine founder Gareth Main as editor of its interactive monthly digital magazine, which sits at the heart of the site providing magazine-style feature content about all things music festivals. The first of those magazines for 2010 will be published online in March, and will feature an interview with Festival Republic big cheese Melvin Benn and Radio 1 DJ and Swn festival organiser Huw Stephens.

Commenting on Main’s appointment as editor, This Festival Feeling publisher Leon Wingham told CMU: “Gareth’s attitude, contacts book and skillset set him apart from the crowd. His devotion to old and new media, to the independent music sector and his understanding and knowledge of all parts of the musical landscape worldwide, as well as his determination and guile to grow a publication from the ground up, made him a perfect addition to take TFF by the horns and make us the best festival publication in the world”.

Main notes that today’s launch of Apple’s iTablet – which some reckon will kick start the long mooted growth of bigger-but-still-portable all-genre-encompassing digital content devices – will make the delivery of content through digital magazine style set ups, rather than traditional websites, all the more attractive.

He told CMU: “This is an amazing challenge for me. Given the sudden surge in interest in the digital magazine market, and Apple’s iTablet announcement this week, the prospect of taking such a forward-thinking publication headfirst into this exciting world is too good to pass up. With my heart firmly in print, the sheer possibilities of how a digital magazine can change music journalism for the better are simply endless, not to mention salivating”.

More at www.thisfestivalfeeling.com

This week’s Sub.tv playlist – w/c 25 Jan 2010

Artist News

Hey look, people, it’s the music videos that are playing this week on the Subtv network of video screens in students’ unions all around the god darn United Kingdom of Great Britain and whatnot. New additions marked with a *. More info on all things Sub.tv from DavidLloyd@sub.tv.

A List
Alexandra Burke – Broken Heels
Biffy Clyro – Many Of Horror
Calvin Harris – You Used To Hold Me
Delphic – Doubt
Editors – You Don’t Know Love
Example – Won’t Go Quietly
Iyaz – Replay
Kasabian – Vlad The Impaler (Live)*
Lostprophets – Where We Belong
Owl City – Fireflies*
The Saturdays – Ego
Sidney Samson ft Wizard Sleeve – Riverside (Let’s Go)
Simian Mobile Disco ft Beth Ditto – Cruel Intentions
Vampire Weekend – Cousins
You Me At Six – Underdog

B List
The Big Pink – Velvet
Cobra Starship – Hot Mess*
Empire Of The Sun – Without You
Fyfe Dangerfield – She Needs Me
Girls Can’t Catch – Echo
Hadouken! – Turn The Lights Out
Hot Chip – One Life Stand
I Blame Coco feat Robyn – Caesar
JLS – One Shot
Kid Cudi feat MGMT & Ratatat – Pursuit Of Happiness*
Miike Snow – Silvia
Mika – Blame It On The Girls
Phoenix – 1901

Tip List
Daisy Dares You feat Chipmunk – Number One Enemy
Gabriella Cilmi – On A Mission*
Girls – Morning Light*
Gucci Mane feat Usher – Spotlight
Groove Armada – Paper Romance
Kano – More Than One Way
Lil Jon feat Kee & Tinchy Stryder – Give It All U Got
Tinie Tempah – Pass Out

Richards quits drinking

And Finally

According to The Sun, Keith Richards has quit drinking, and has now managed to stay sober for four whole months. The Rolling Stones guitarist once famously said that he’d never stop boozing because he’d now outlived several doctors who said his hedonism would kill him, but seeing bandmate Ronnie Wood go off the rails with his drinking has apparently convinced him to give sobriety a try.

A ‘source’ said: “There’s no guarantees that he’ll stay off it, but he’s doing really well so far. He has always quite enjoyed the fact that he seemed to be able to carry on drinking as much as he liked with no real negative impact on his health, but he has watched Ronnie fall well and truly off the wagon last year and he doesn’t like what he sees. Plus, he has started to feel for the first time like it might do him some good to give up the booze for a while”.

I’m not sure I like this news; I’m going to need a stiff drink to get over it.

Approved: Mike Doughty

CMU Approved

Former Soul Coughing frontman Mike Doughty released his fourth solo album, ‘Sad Man Happy Man’, in the US last October. Like all his work, both with his former band and alone, the songs have an idiosyncratic charm and lyrical flare that you’ll struggle to find elsewhere. The fact that the latest album includes a cover of Daniel Johnston’s ‘Casper The Friendly Ghost’ and a song called ‘How To Fuck A Republican’ should be reason enough to check it out.

As you might expect, Doughty’s live shows are also something quite special, with engaging songs and banter keeping the attention up in a way that lone guys with acoustic guitars often struggle to manage. You can find this out for yourself next week, when Mike will be in London to play a one-off show at The Garage in Islington on 2 Feb.

www.myspace.com/mikedoughty

Q&A: LoneLady

Artist Interviews

Armed with a Telecaster, a four-track and a drum machine, electro-popster LoneLady emerged from Manchester in 2005 with the release of debut single ‘Hi Ho Bastard/Fear No More’, followed by the EP ‘Have No Past’. Singles on Filthy Home Recordings and Too Pure followed before she signed to Warp Records in 2009. She’s to release her debut album, ‘Nerve Up’, on 22 Feb, preceded by a single, ‘Intuition’, on 8 Feb. Ahead of her gig at Cargo in London on Friday (29 Jan), we spoke to the Lady herself to ask the Same Six Questions.

Q1 How did you start out making music?
From a very young age I remember announcing: “I’m going to be an artist”. I meant, actually, artist as in Van Gogh. Art, and drawing in particular, was always my main passion, and I pursued this, did an art degree, and painted alone in a little rented studio. Somewhere along the way I started to play instruments: Nirvana and Hole made me buy my first electric guitar. Though I’ve never sounded like those bands, their energy and anger propelled me. At eighteen I decided to learn the cello. I wanted to know and be able to do everything; I always had the need to create, not just spectate. I then played in a band when I was nineteen or so. But things really started to coalesce for me when I bought a four-track and started recording alone in my flat. I became fascinated by the recording process. Layering and juxtaposing one sound with another. The four-track demanded I be resourceful, economic; it stained recorded sound with a sort of enigmatic residue… I made artworked singles and an EP and started sending these to the outside world.

Q2 What inspired your latest album?
Well, everything. Being my first album, it has songs on there that have been with me quite a long time. Other songs were only months old. It’s a document of endeavour; it was important to me to record the album in a place that had personal meaning, so I had a room constructed. Rather than opting for the relative ease of a recording studio, I recorded my album with a combination of lo- and hi- tech equipment in a sort of breezeblock cell hewn into a crumbling mill in Manchester, because it felt psychically right to do so. As for what inspires the music? Half-known compulsions, inner symbols, pursuit of the impossible, aggression, space, wilderness, mystery, energy, a catchy tune, a great beat.

Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
Initial fragments come pretty easily; the drum machine is a useful companion as it never tires. I play along until something emerges. I compose songs in my head as I walk around a lot. The forward momentum of walking urges the song to develop; trains are also great for this. Honing and finishing a song can be protracted and torturous. Certain sounds fascinate; they have certain meanings or associations. To finish a song and feel it is successful is very satisfying. Writing a great, or even good song isn’t easy. (Very occasionally it can be. These moments are like gifts).

Q4 Which artists influence your work?
A lot of the bands that emerged after punk – the late 70’s, early 80s bands. The ebullience and intelligence in much of this music inspires me. The speed and rate of musical ideas that were flying around at this time makes for a rich period of music history. The – relatively – rudimentary technology of synthesizers and recording techniques lend this era a wonderful idiosyncratic sound. New discoveries? I’m not limited to one genre in particular, I don’t even really view music by ‘genre’. Judy Garland, JS Bach, Grace Jones, Colin Newman, Beyonce, and Joy Division all have fascinating things to say. A box set called ‘Extended Seventies: The 12-inch Era’ has been on high rotation of late and I am listening to Satie as I type. Tomorrow, I will listen to…?

Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
I don’t mean this in an arsy way, but making music …it’s an interior, egotistical world. I do it for myself. My first album only just exists ‘out there’, but for me it’s already gone; I am thinking about new songs. The music will always mean certain things to me, but the listener brings her or his own code of associations to it. I could explain the reason behind every strand of instrumentation, where every lyric derives from, but what would be the point in that? I can’t really tell someone how to experience my music… Having said that, when somebody seems to genuinely connect with the music, it is a strange, wonderful feeling. What would I say? Turn it up, loud.

Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
For me, a ‘successful’ album is a world you want to enter and return to again and again, each time uncovering some new insight or phrase or fragment you hadn’t noticed before. Also, longevity is important; there are a handful of songs in the world that I will never, ever tire of hearing. My favourite albums are like companions who grow with me through life. It’s a tall order to hope this for your own music, but those are my ‘ambitions’.

MORE>> www.lonelady.co.uk

Single Review: Marina And The Diamonds – Hollywood (Warner/679)

Single Reviews

If there’s one thing any mainstream pop blockbuster needs, it’s a chorus that sweeps away all thoughts of reality, inspiring only positivity, excitement and maybe a little bit of sweat. It’s what separated the likes of Florence and La Roux from Little Boots in 2009, and Marina and her Diamonds look set to take on the next leg of female fronted power pop reliant on that central hook, simple in structure but dynamic in its execution.

There’s a cynicism too shared with The Ting Tings’ Katie White (though without the silly indie girl annoyance) making verses crackle with a confidence of someone who wants this pop world for their own. One for the A-list. TM

Buy from iTunes
Buy from Amazon

LiveMaster approved

Business News Live Business Top Stories

America’s Department Of Justice yesterday gave the all clear to the Live Nation Ticketmaster merger after the merging live music giants agreed to some specific competition enhancing terms. This means the music industry now has a brand new skyscraper on its block, another major major which owns 140 venues worldwide, promotes 22,000 concerts each year, annually sells 140 million tickets and manages the careers of over 200 artists, including several a-listers.

As much previously reported, the proposed merger has garnered much criticism and press attention, especially in the US, with many artists, managers and booking agents fearing the unstoppable growth of Live Nation, while consumer groups venting more vitriol towards Ticketmaster, who some said were already abusing their market dominance even without controlling half the US’s major venues and concert tours.

The merging parties argued that while they’ll be very big within the live music space, in the context of the wider music and entertainment industry they’d be on par with a number of their competitors. They also countered that some of Live Nation’s big competitors may go elsewhere for their ticketing as a result of the deal, making the ticketing market more competitive.

Some positioned the merger as the first real test of Barack Obama’s government to stand up to big business. There were rumours that the US Department Of Justice was preparing for a court battle to block the deal when they couldn’t reach a deal with the two merging companies regard the divestment of some of their assets late last year. Though others pointed out that such preparation was par for the course, and not necessarily a sign regulatory approval was now unlikely.

The merging parties made two main concessions to satisfy the US regulator’s anti-trust concerns.

First, Ticketmaster will be required to licence its primary ticketing software to Live Nation’s biggest competitor AEG Live, currently a customer of the ticketing firm. This will enable AEG to basically bring their ticketing in-house with minimum disruption, so that they won’t end up sharing any of their consumer data with their chief rivals. Over the next five years AEG will have to option to buy the software outright, create its own, or move to another ticketing partner.

Second, Ticketmaster will sell off its ticketing systems unit Paciolan Inc, the ticketing giant’s acquisition of which, in 2008, led to anti-trust objections in itself. A division of cable TV giant Comcast has already formally expressed an interest in buying Paciolan, though if that deal fails LiveMaster will be able to sell the company to any Department Of Justice approved buyer.

Wall Street types seem to be of the opinion LiveMaster got off lightly in terms of forced divestment of assets, though Department Of Justice anti-trust chief Christine Varney told Reuters she was happy the merger would not now result in a dangerous reduction of competition in the live entertainment market, and that, in fact, it could result in a fall in ticket prices.

Varney: “I was prepared to litigate at any and all points, until a settlement was achieved that efficiently dealt with all our anti-competitive concerns. You can probably expect to see three competitors and generally when you see robust competition you see prices coming down. I will be keeping a very close eye on this settlement as we go forward”.

The people behind the Ticketdisaster.org website, who opposed the merger, said they were still unhappy about the deal, and that they would be watching the operations of the merged LiveMaster closely moving forward, on the look out for any anti-competitive behaviour.

As previously reported, the UK Competition Commission OKed the merger last month despite initially expressing reservations about the proposals. The merged company will be known as Live Nation Entertainment.

NME Awards noms out

Awards

Once positioned as an anti-BRITs affair, these days the NME Awards feel rather like the BPI’s big back patting session, but with some of the pop removed. Oh, and they do still have a few of those awards for bad things too.

Anyway, the nominations are out for this year’s NME Awards, and Muse are out front with seven nominations, although one of those is Matt Bellamy’s nod for being the world’s worst dressed man. Arctic Monkeys and Kasabian tie in second place, with six nominations each, although one of those on the Arctic Monkeys side is for Worst Album. So, I guess Kasabian are really out front, having somehow managed to appear in none of the negative categories.

This year’s brand new category is the ‘Giving It Back’ Fan Award, which recognises artists who went that extra mile to give their fans something more. Like Vampire Weekend, who gave away a free MP3. Yes, that apparently counts.

Anyway here is the list of nominations in full…

Best British Band: Arctic Monkeys, Biffy Clyro, Kasabian, Muse, Oasis.

Best International Band: Green Day, Kings Of Leon, Paramore, Vampire Weekend, Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

Best Solo Artist: Dizzee Rascal, Florence And The Machine, Jamie T, Julian Casablancas, Lady Gaga.

Best New Band: The Big Pink, Bombay Bicycle Club, Mumford & Sons, The xx, La Roux.

Best Live Band: Arctic Monkeys, Kasabian, Muse, Radiohead, Them Crooked Vultures.

Best Album: Arctic Monkeys – Humbug, Kasabian – West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Muse – The Resistance, The Cribs – Ignore The Ignorant, The Horrors – Primary Colours.

Best Track: Animal Collective – My Girls, Arctic Monkeys – Crying Lightning, Florence And The Machine – Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up), Jamie T – Sticks N Stones, The Big Pink – Dominos.

Best Video: Arctic Monkeys – Cornerstone, Biffy Clyro – The Captain, Kasabian – Fire, The Maccabees – Can You Give It, Oasis – Falling Down.

Best Live Event: Blur at Hyde Park, Jay-Z at Alexandra Palace, Muse at Teignmouth, Oasis at Heaton Park, The Dead Weather at Shoreditch Church.

Best Festival: Download, Glastonbury, Reading And Leeds Festivals, T In The Park, V Festival.

Best Dancefloor Filler: Dizzee Rascal And Armand Van Helden – Bonkers, Florence And The Machine – You’ve Got The Love, La Roux – In For The Kill (Skream Remix), Lady Gaga – Poker Face, Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Zero.

Best TV Show: The Inbetweeners, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Peep Show, Skins, True Blood.

Best Film: (500) Days Of Summer, In The Loop, Inglorious Basterds, The Twilight Saga: New Moon, Where The Wild Things Are.

Best DVD: Kings Of Leon – Live At The The O2 Arena, Flight Of The Conchords – Complete HBO Second, SeasonThe Killers – Live From The Royal Albert Hall, The Mighty Boosh – Future Sailors, Nirvana – Live At Reading.

Giving It Back Fan Award: Kasabian and Noel Fielding for free ‘Vlad The Impaler’ video; Danger Mouse for leaking ‘Dark Night Of The Soul’; Lily Allen for her Twitter ticket treasure hunt; Arctic Monkeys for their Oxfam golden tickets; Vampire Weekend for giving away ‘Horchata’ from the album ‘Contra’.

Hero Of The Year: Beyoncé Knowles, Noel Gallagher, Rage Against The Machine, Matt Bellamy, Alex Turner.

Villain Of The Year: Noel Gallagher, Liam Gallagher, Simon Cowell, Kanye West, Lady Gaga.

Best Dressed: Lady Gaga, Liam Gallagher, Noel Fielding, Florence Welch, Karen O.

Worst Dressed: Lady Gaga, Matt Bellamy, Katy Perry, Liam Gallagher, Elly Jackson.

Worst Album: Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown, Lady Gaga – The Fame, Jonas Brothers – Lines Vines Trying Times, U2 – No Line On The Horizon, Arctic Monkeys – Humbug

Worst Band: Green Day, Oasis, Jonas Brothers, Paramore, JLS.

Best Website: Muse.mu, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Greenday.com.

Best Album Artwork: Muse – The Resistance, Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown, Kasabian – West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum, The Cribs – Ignore The Ignorant, Manic Street Preachers – Journal For Plague Lovers.

Best Band Blog: Muse (Muse.mu and Twitter.com/muse), Radiohead (Radiohead.com/deadairspace), Noel Gallagher (Oasisinet.com), Los Campesinos! (Loscampesinos.com), Paramore (Paramore.net).

Scorpions to split

Artist News

German rockers Scorpions have announced that they are bringing their career to an end after more than 40 years together. The band are best, some might say only, known for their 1991 hit, ‘Wind Of Change’, which featured some top class whistling. They will release one more album and head out on a farewell tour for a “few years” before properly calling it quits.

In a statement, the band said: “While we were working on our album these past few months, we could literally feel how powerful and creative our work was and how much fun we were still having in the process. But there was also something else: We want to end to Scorpion’s extraordinary career on a high note”.

They continued: “We are extremely grateful for the fact that we still have the same passion for music we’ve always had since the beginning. This is why, especially now, we agree we have reached the end of the road. We finish our career with an album we consider to be one of the best we have ever recorded and with a tour that will start in our home country Germany and take us to five different continents over the next few years”.

U2 working on album #7002

Artist News

Good news, everyone, U2 are working on a new album. Some of the songs are super futuristic, while others are like traditional folk, but not really like traditional folk because they are so futuristic. Like every U2 album, it will push music forward by ten years.

The Edge told Entertainment Weekly: “We are working on a lot of new songs. Some of them are really, really happy. We’re convinced that we have something really special. Literally, within a day of getting off the road, Bono and I were working on new songs. On a roll”.

He continued: “We try and keep things moving forward. We are experimenting with a lot of different arrangements, and electronic [music] is one of the things we are playing with. But there are other songs that are very traditional, almost folk. In some ways, that’s the thing we haven’t figured out yet, is where this album is going to end up. [But] we’re having fun with the process”.

Good Charlotte scrap album

Artist News

Good Charlotte’s new album, ‘Cardiology’, isn’t good enough. Yes, I know you could have told me that. But actually, it’s the band who have decided that this is the case. So bad is it that they aren’t even going to let your cynical mocking ears hear it. Instead, they’re going to go back into the studio to re-record the whole thing.

The band had apparently completed most of the album with producer Howard Benson last October, and were in the process of mixing it. However, guitarist Benji Madden revealed on the band’s official website last week that he had got cold feet about the more commercial sound Benson had gone for. That’s right, more commercial. As a result, they’re going back to Don Gilmore, who produced previous album ‘Good Morning Revival’.

Writing on the band’s website, guitarist Benji Madden explained: “When we got back from the last trip to Australia, we had pretty much finished recording the record. I went into the studio to hear some roughs and it just wasn’t right. I couldn’t figure it out. I was so lost. I love the songs, I love the lyrics, so what was the problem? I was just so bewildered. Devastated actually. This had never happened. I felt crazy like this. I told our manager to just pause everything and I need time to think”.

He continued: “I called all the boys immediately and called an emergency meeting. Everyone sat down. And I just said: ‘Guys, we gotta start over’. I was expecting everyone to freak on me and say ‘What?!’ But [guitarist] Billy [Martin] was the first to speak, and right away he said: ‘I knew you were gonna say that. My gut is telling me the same thing. Let’s do it’. Everyone agreed”.

MGMT influenced by Lady Gaga and Kanye West

Artist News

MGMT’s Andrew VanWyngarden has said that the groovy duo’s new album ‘Congratulations’ has been partially influenced by Lady Gaga and Kanye West, though don’t panic, not musically.

No, the concept of fame and the pursuit of it is the theme that’s been running through the MGMT duo’s minds as they work on their second long player, hence them thinking of Gaga and West. Speaking to Spin.com, VanWyngarden admitted that he and bandmate Ben Goldwasser started living the life they were trying to mock with debut album ‘Oracular Spectacular’.

He said: “We were a group of guys in their mid-20s touring around the world and of course we are going to party. But after a while we all learned that you can’t just keep doing that over and over, and the new record addresses those issues”.

On fame and the new album he continued: “On some of the new songs, I found myself thinking about Lady Gaga or Kanye West, and what their ultimate goal is. This sounds cheesy, but for us it’s really just about the music and getting people to hear what we have to say. I’m sure it’s about the music for those people, too… but fame… it’s an interesting career”.

Florence and the tour dates

Gigs & Festivals

Florence & The Machine have announced UK and Ireland tour dates for May, which will include three nights at the Hammersmith Apollo. By that time, Flo will have re-released ‘Dog Days Are Over’ as a single on 22 Mar and performed a mashed up version of her cover of ‘You Got The Love’, re-titled ‘You Got The Dirtee Love’, with Dizzee Rascal at the BRITs. That last bit sounds like a very bad idea.

Anyway, tour dates:

2 May: Dublin, Olympia Theatre
3 May: Dublin, Olympia Theatre
5 May: Edinburgh, Corn Exchange
6 May: Edinburgh, Corn Exchange
7 May: Blackpool, Empress Ballroom
9 May: Blackpool, Empress Ballroom
10 May: Wolverhampton, Civic Theatre
11 May: Wolverhampton, Civic Theatre
13 May: London, Hammersmith Apollo
14 May: London, Hammersmith Apollo
15 May: London, Hammersmith Apollo

Dag för Dag in the UK

Gigs & Festivals

Swedish siblings Dag för Dag will be in the UK this week and next for a handful of UK shows ahead of the release of their debut album, ‘Boo’, on 22 Feb.

Listen to and download a track from the album, ‘Hands And Knees’, here: www.dagfordag.com/handsandknees/

Tour dates:

31 Jan: London, Old Blue Last
1 Feb: London, Pure Groove in-store
1 Feb: London, Barfly
2 Feb: Manchester, Deaf Institute

Williams tells new artists to start with marketing

Artist News Business News Education & Events Marketing & PR

So, MIDEM’s biggest celebrity booking on the conference side, Mr Pharrell Williams, reckons the internet age has seriously empowered artists, meaning his advice for new talent is this: set up a great website, hold on to your copyrights, and then get all synced up and chase the marketing man’s pound.

Asked by the BBC at the Cannes convention this weekend what he would do if he was starting out as an artist in 2010, Williams said: “I would probably build a site, a home for my music, a destination where people could come and see me and what I do and what I’m thinking about. And then I’d probably assemble a team of kids that would go and bug the hell out of advertising agencies and marketing companies to use my music”.

While he conceded a major label deal, and the money it delivers, still has an important part to play in launching many artist’ careers, he said that new talent should consider approaching advertising and marketing agencies as much as traditional music companies. He told the Beeb: “I would want to establish myself and show the world that I have interesting music, but I would create that world. The more dimension that you give your music and your website, the more creative it becomes”.

Williams was one of three big name artists appearing at MIDEM this year to basically speak out in support of the file-sharing community, despite many on the label and management sides of the industry being more hardline than ever about the evilness of the file-sharers.

As previously reported, Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien said in a video message to the conference that he had a problem with those who say file-sharing is killing the industry, arguing that file-sharers pump money into the business through ticket and merchandise purchases. Williams, meanwhile, said he thought of file-sharing networks as a bit preview service for music fans. He mused: “I think it’s cool that people [can] test [music] out. I think that’s a good thing”.

Fall Out Boy Pete Wentz, speaking about fan engagement, didn’t deal with the file-sharing issue quite so head on, but implied that he saw file-sharing communities as another tool through which artists can develop their fan relationships, which will in turn pay dividends. According to the BBC, he told the conference: “To me, the more the fan is interacting with you and feels part of the community, the more interested they will be in buying your music or coming out to your shows”.

He continued: “I think it’s a great time to be in music, and a horrible time to be in music, because a lot of things can go wrong. But it’s kind of the wild west, and as long as you’ve got a pistol and you’re ready to shoot somebody, it’s going to be OK”.

Talking of fan engagement and artist empowerment, artist manager Mark Wood of Radius Music made an interesting point in another session, when the conversation moved to the role of Twitter.

Referencing one of his artists, Imogen Heap, he said Twitter was a great tool for artists in that it gives them a real connection to and insight of their fanbase, which enables them to make better choices when entering into business relationships with labels, merchandisers or marketing partners.

According to Billboard, Wood observed: “[Thanks to Twitter] Imogen’s more in tune with her fans than I am. You can’t pull the wool over her eyes (not that I ever would) about a t-shirt design or something, because she’s already polled it and 5,000 people have said they don’t like it”.

Chris Morrison talks tough on file-sharing, down on brand alliances and all things Cowell

Business News Education & Events Legal Management & Funding

CMO Management boss Chris Morrison does not share Williams and O’Brien’s ambivalence towards file-sharing and the file-sharer community. Giving the key artist manager speech at MIDEM this year, Morrison said file-sharing “is not like taste-testing”, arguing that while file-sharers might introduce your artists to new fans, what they actually do is “like inviting new people into your restaurant and telling them to eat all the food you’ve got [without paying]”.

According to Billboard, Morrison continued: “I was ambivalent about illegal downloading until someone stuck one of our records up illegally [Gorillaz’s new single ‘Stylo’]. They [the file-sharers] don’t have any interest in it, they don’t even make money off it, but they undo all our hard work”. While conceding that such leaks often helped build an internet buzz around an artist or release, which could be beneficial, Morrison argued that file-sharing was affecting the investment that labels, artists and others would and could make into the emerging digital music market, and that that was bad news for everyone.

Morrison also challenged those in the industry who, while not necessarily supporting the rights of file-sharers, are of the opinion stopping the file-sharing phenomenon by force is an unwinnable battle. He concluded: “Illegal downloading can be stopped. We have to take the gloves off and say it has to be stopped”.

Morrison’s session, which also featured contributions from the aforementioned Mark Wood, also touched on Pharrell’s other suggestion that artists should be courting the advertising and marketing sectors as much as the record companies.

Morrison expressed concern about the often popular theory that artists could and should compensate for slumping record sales by eagerly signing up to brand partnerships. Duffy’s advert for Diet Coke was “abysmal” he said, while Robbie Williams’ appearances in ads for his big sponsor T-Mobile were just “terrible”. Though, strangely, Morrison had more time for one of the more controversial rock/brand tie ups of recent times, Iggy Pop’s alliance with insurance firm Swiftcover.

Sync right deals Morrison also had more time for, as he admitted that in the case of some songs – Blur’s ‘Song 2’, for example – the monies to be made from licensing a track to adverts and the like greatly exceeded those generated by actual record sales. Wood, meanwhile, spoke out in support of syncing music to TV shows – a growing phenomenon Imogen Heap has benefited from – and which delivers both promotional and financial benefits.

However, Morrison has no time at all for that other TV phenomenon having an impact on the music business, the big-bucks generating Simon Cowell empire. The power of shows like ‘American Idol’ and ‘X-Factor’ was not good news for music, he argued, adding that had Simon Cowell and his like been “in charge of the music industry in 1945, rock n roll would never have happened”.

Q&A: Lostprophets

Artist Interviews

Formed way back in 1997 by vocalist Ian Watkins and guitarist Mike Lewis, and taking influence from the likes of Pantera, The Cure and Metallica, Lostprophets have released four studio albums and thirteen singles. The band’s second album, ‘Start Something’, entered the UK album chart at number five, and they went on to grab the number one spot with their third album ‘Liberation Transmission’. With their latest album ‘The Betrayed’ out now, we caught up with guitarist Lee Gaze to ask the Same Six Questions.

Q1 How did you start out making music?
Originally, I wanted to be a drummer, but the trouble was that I lived in a small house and drum kits are noisy! So, I moved on to guitar. Someone actually gave me their old acoustic guitar to begin with and I was hooked from then on. It was a massive commitment, I put in eight hours a day when I started out, but that was cool, when you’re a teenager that’s all you want to do, you know?

Q2 What inspired the latest album?
It was wholly inspired by our personal experiences; everything we have learnt in the last ten years is in the new album, ‘The Betrayed’. This is the first time that we totally self-worked the album, used my own guitars, my own pedals – everything. This album is purely us, through and through.

Q3 What processes do you go through when you’re creating a track?
It’s a mixture really. I am constantly writing so I will write a large part of a track, play it to the guys who will have their own ideas and we pick and rearrange it all together. When we all get together ideas flow so we can create songs from scratch or continue to work on our existing ideas.

Q4 Which artists influence your work?
We like bands like Pantera, The Cure, Metallica, The Police, but although we like what they do we don’t want to be them. We always wanted to do our own thing, not recreate what someone else created.

Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
Our music can be full-on heavy, then border on a ballad and become Brit-pop, the variation in there is massive.

Q6 What are your ambitions for the latest album, and for the future?
We want as many people to hear it as possible and tour it around the world to as many people as we can. In the future, we want to keep being ourselves. We’ve had an amazing time so far, so we want to keep doing exactly that!

MORE>> www.lostprophets.com

Some collecting society rambling

Business News Education & Events Labels & Publishers Legal

There’s little love lost between the European Commission and the collecting society community, we all know that.

As much previously reported, the former have been pushing the collecting societies of Europe on various issue for a while now, including the need to provide digital music providers with pan-European licences, the need for more transparency in their operations, and the need for a more competitive market place. Some EC officials reckon that, until recently, European collecting societies were operating in a cartel fashion, with each society having a monopoly over music rights in their native territory.

The collecting societies, while generally conceding that there is a need for pan-European licensing in the digital age, reject many of the European Commission’s accusations, and argue that the EC’s plans for make the collecting society sector more competitive and transparent will make things less competitive and less transparent.

The outgoing boss of the global membership organisation for publishing rights collecting societies, CISAC, Eric Baptiste, made that point as he opened his session at MIDEM yesterday. He argued that the European Commission’s demands on his sector where contradictory, while the boss of French society SACEM, Bernard Miyet, added: “We have no clear picture of what the European Commission wants us collecting societies to do”.

As previously reported, a number of the bigger music publishers have struck deals with one or another, or sometimes several, of the European collecting societies which give said societies the rights to licence their catalogues in multiple territories, a move towards pan-European licensing. However, some argue that because different publishers do such deals with different collecting societies, it doesn’t make it any easier for digital service providers, who still have to acquire a number of different licences for Europe, they just do so on a catalogue by catalogue basis rather than country by country.

And, in fact, because the pan-European licences generally only apply to the Anglo-American catalogues owned by the big publishers, licensees still need to go to each national collecting society separately to secure local catalogues, meaning the total number of deals done increases. Plus, arguably, the smaller collecting societies lose out because they can’t compete to secure the more lucrative pan-European deals with the major publishing houses. And whatever happens the wider collecting society sector becomes more rather than less confusing.

According to Billboard, the boss of Belgian collecting society SABAM, Christophe Depreter, observed: “So far, we are totally unsatisfied. The only thing that is clear is that nothing is clear. In fact, not only is digital licensing not clear, so far, it makes life more difficult for everyone. It is more difficult for the user; life is more difficult for the collective management society, and of course life is much more difficult for our members [ie songwriters] because they have to wait longer for the remuneration”.

Of course, EC officials might argue that a lot of the current confusion is because the collecting society system is in a state of flux, as it moves from the old system (based around one society licensing music in each territory) to the new system (based around each national society offering pan-European services). If and when all European collecting societies offer both niche and all-embracing licences in all European territories, then things will be much clearer and much more competitive. Though whether that will ever happen remains to be seen.

PRS For Music’s Jeremy Fabinyi was more positive than most during the MIDEM session. While conceding the whole sector was in a bit of a mess at the moment, he said that the old way of doing things wasn’t much better, concluding that in the digital age: “You are either going to crash or crash through, we have decided to crash through”.

Kobalt reveals most transparent rights admin system yet

Business News Labels & Publishers

Talking of more transparency in music publishing, which we sort of were, publisher Kobalt used MIDEM to launch what it calls the Next Generation Portal 3.0, and which, the publisher says, is the most transparent online rights administration system yet. So transparent, I’m sure it’s actually see-through, you know, like the iMacs of 2001.

The system gives rights holders whose rights are administrated by Kobalt access to up to date and detailed information about their income.

Kobalt boss Willard Ahdritz says: “We’re taking transparency to the next level, deeper into different royalty streams. Offering the best digital collection platform available, our new and improved 3.0 digital system, which is in final stages of testing, is slated to launch this summer for Kobalt clients worldwide”.

Are ad-funded services viable? Can the industry upsell to subscriptions?

Digital

Much chatter at MIDEM this year about the sustainability of ad-funded free streaming services – so Spotify for those in Europe, or the likes of MySpace Music in territories where the green one is yet to launch, like the US.

The worry seems to be that ad-funded services alone are not big enough to sustain the digital music industry. Few seem confident such services will ever generate ad revenues significant enough to maintain what loss-making start ups are currently handing over to the record labels and music publishers (or what said labels and publishers are expecting to receive in the long term), and even if they do, they will probably only do so by stealing ad revenues off the radio sector, the traditional (but often not talked about) way that the ad industry’s pound reaches the record industry’s pockets.

Subscription-based streaming services are the future, everyone seems to agree, but the fear is that some of the free-to-use services are so good that it will now be hard to upgrade users to pay-to-use premium platforms. I assume when people say that they mean Spotify. I don’t think anyone would ever accuse MySpace Music of being “so good”.

According to Billboard, Warner Music digital man Stephen Bryan told MIDEM: “We want to do more as a music company to make the paid services as attractive as they possibly can be relative to free options. The ad-supported side needs to be engaging enough to provide the opportunity to up-sell. But we believe we should be doing more to ensure we’re not undermining the paid service by creating a service so compelling that they don’t see enough value in taking consumers to the paid service”.

Though Spotify boss Daniel Ek preceded such “concerned from Cannes” statements with his own MIDEM session, in which he said that while his company’s free-to-use PC-based service is pretty damn smart, and as a result the vast majority of his users are currently not paying for the service, the music industry needed to see the current Spotify offer as the first stage of something much bigger, ie the Spotify mobile app, only available to paying subscribers, which is just the first of a number premium services in the pipeline to aid upsell.

PaidContent quote Ek thus: “What you’ve got to realise – we’re really trying to drive people to create a library and use Spotify as the cloud-based service where they have their library. It’s early days for our platform so, for us, the most important thing just now is to drive consumer engagement through the building of that library. Then, when people want to drive that library to their mobile phone or XBox or Sonos, they’re paying for that access”.

As a case in point, the aforementioned mobile play facility launched last year has helped Spotify boost its paying subscriber base to 250,000, according to Ek’s UK-based colleague Paul Brown, also at MIDEM. It’s still very much the minority of Spotify’s overall user base, but it’s a sign the premium user base can grow. While stressing that the ad-sales part of his business was doing better than some doom and gloom types seem to think, Brown added: “The real aim for us is to grow a real strong subscription service as well [as the ad-funded model]. That’s becoming more of what Spotify is about”.

We7 to launch subscription service next week

Digital

Talking of subscriptions and streaming music and all that, UK-based Spotify competitor We7 confirmed it would launch its premium service next week during a MIDEM session this weekend. As with Spotify, the pay-to-use version of We7 will take the service into the mobile domain.

However, we7 boss Steve Purdham says that he, like Spotify’s Paul Brown, still believes the ad-funded free-to-use model has more to offer than just an upsell opportunity for subscription services.

According to MusicAlly, Purdham said: “I believe we can get to the point where the actual advertising rates we get cover the costs of the music, at a rate where the music is valuable – not at a point where it’s a revenue share that’s so small, it’s not even worth talking about”.

Deezer founder ousted

Digital

Perhaps illustrating the stresses of running a legit streaming music service, away from MIDEM but still in France, news that Jonathan Benassaya, the co-founder and CEO of that territory’s big streaming music offer, Deezer, has been booted out by investors. According to Tech Crunch, the service’s backers are hoping to install someone more experienced at the top of the company, which has reportedly struggled to generate serious ad revenue or get a premium service off the ground.

Rumours of Bessaya’s departure grew when he failed to show up for a panel at MidemNet on Saturday, although his name was still displayed on a screen listing the participants during the debate.

Soundcloud and Hype Machine offer new blog-targeted track preview platform

Digital

Back to MIDEM, and digital distribution platform SoundCloud has announced a new partnership with blog aggregator Hype Machine which will provide content owners with the facility to make new and pre-release music available to the blogosphere, so that bloggers can legitimately post said music on their webpages, and labels and artists can track where their music is profiled and listened to. Which all sounds rather swell.

SoundCloud top man Alexander Ljung told reporters: “We’re very excited to be working with the Hype Machine. They are a hugely important platform for bringing new releases to the attention of music fans across the web. Our latest partnership offers labels and artists a powerful way to engage with that vibrant, influential community, and gives bloggers access to official pre-releases straight from the source”.

Hype Machine CEO Anthony Volodkin added: “We are excited to help artists using SoundCloud to get even more measurable exposure across the web. SoundCloud’s friendly web API allowed us to develop this integration quickly and share the benefits with bloggers, musicians and fans alike”.

Total Rock World Album Chart – w/c 25 Jan 2010

Artist News

It’s this week’s Total Rock World Album Chart, as counted down on Total Rock last weekend – www.totalrock.com. New entries and re-entries marked with a *.

1. Muse – The Resistance (Warner Bros)
2. Them Crooked Vultures – Them Crooked Vultures (Sony Music)
3. Foo Fighters – Greatest Hits (Sony Music)
4. Bon Jovi – The Circle (Universal/Mercury)
5. Thirty Seconds To Mars – This Is War (EMI/Virgin)
6. Paramore – Brand New Eyes (Warner/Atlantic)
7. Nickelback – Dark Horse (Warner/Roadrunner)
8. Queen – Absolute Greatest (EMI)
9. Pearl Jam – Backspacer (Universal)
10. Fleetwood Mac – The Very Best Of (Warner Bros)
11. Daughtry – Leave This Town (Sony Music)
12. Mudvayne – Mudvayne (Sony Music)
13. Creed – Full Circle (EMI/Virgin)
14. Kiss – Sonic Boom (Warner/Roadrunner)
15. Billy Talent – III (Warner/Atlantic)
16. Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown (Warner Bros.)
17. Alice In Chains – Black Gives Way To Blue (EMI/Parlophone)
18. Guns n Roses – Greatest Hits (Universal/Geffen)*
19. Rise Against – Appeal To Reason (Universal/Geffen)*
20. Shinedown – The Sound Of Madness (Warner/Atlantic)*

GNR deny Slash fan ban

And Finally

A spokesperson for Guns N Roses has those denied allegations that the band asked security to stop anyone who was wearing Slash-related clothing from entering a gig in Canada last week. Well, I say it was a spokesperson for the band; it was Axl Rose’s PA’s son. But that still counts, right?

Anyway, to recap, TMZ reported that security stopped anyone wearing t-shirts bearing the former GNR guitarist’s face or sporting his trademark top hat, making them turn the t-shits inside out and leave their hats at the door. A security guard at the venue told TMZ: “The instructions were passed down from a producer for the band”.

However, the band’s sort of spokesman, Fernando Lebeis denied this was the case, saying: “We did not advise any security to ban any sort of apparel. If they did, they did it on their own accord, or under someone else’s order – from within their management”.

Approved: Caribou – Odessa

CMU Approved

Caribou, aka Dan Snaith, promised back in October that his next album would be more upbeat and dance music-influenced than previous work. And from the sound of this track, he told us no lies. The album isn’t released until 19 Apr (via City Slang), but you can get a free download of one track, ‘Odessa’, right now in exchange for your email address.

Snaith says that his aim with the new album was to make “dance music that sounds like it’s made out of water rather than made out of metallic stuff”, and he’s certainly come close. Erlend Øye-like vocals wash over the top of a track that ripples, rather than thumps. There are even synths and samples that sound like wildlife nesting around the edge. If this is an indication of the standard of the rest of ‘Swim’, then it’s time to be excited.

www.caribou.fm/swim_download

Eddy Says: Eddy’s top tips

Eddy Says

It seems Eddy eventually managed to relax into his holiday, and so hasn’t written an original ‘Eddy Says’ for this week. Which is good, because that was how things were supposed to be. He’ll be back and fully refreshed again next week. But for now, let’s have a second look at his top tips for submitting demos to DJs, solid gold advice whatever the year.

1. Don’t inundate
I know you’ve spent your entire life getting your first album together and you want it to be heard by the world, starting with me and a bunch of people like me who can help spread the word… But please, just put your best song, or pair of songs, or at most three on that CD. If I want more, I’ll ask for more. It’s just simple mathematics. If everybody sends me an hour of music, that’s about 100 hours of music per week I’d have to listen to and there aren’t enough free hours in the week to do that. Huge bodies of songs tend to get skimmed through, not doing them justice. If you choose two or three songs, make sure they show your depth. It’s simple. A fast one and a slow one, a catchy single and an interesting album track, basically a balance, because one may be great for me but the other perfect for, say, Rob Da Bank.

2. Biogs
Again brevity is the key to a good one, certainly don’t write more than a page. Preferably it will be a paragraph and a pic. Try to make yours stand out from the crowd by avoiding the phrases everybody uses: eagerly anticipated/world domination etc. Try to be original. My favourite blurb sheet of recent times was for ‘Sponsored By Destiny’ by the marvellous Slagsmalsklubben. None of the bog standard DJ and journo quotes, they simply used a quote “from a random member of the audience at their first London gig”. It said something like “my girlfriend dragged me here tonight so I had no idea who was playing. I’ve just had the best night I’ve ever had in my life in a club. Fuck. I think I broke my leg but I don’t give a shit. I’m going back in now…” I laughed and really wanted to check them out, and the rest is history.

3. DJ Mix Demos
When I started DJing, mixes were done and recorded live, and were a real test of how a DJ sounded and mixed tunes. Those days are largely over now. Fact: because of technology, a well trained chimpanzee could mix together sixteen records perfectly on Ableton. ALL mixes sound faultless now, so it’s the tracklist that’s key, and that’s what you should be sending out (if you’re sending a CD, make sure the tracklist is on it).

I can look at a list of tunes and imagine the set, I already know it’ll sound good and, again, few of us have the time to go through and listen to all the DJ mixes we’re sent. Just consider the mathematics again, even a modest ten mixes in a week adds up to ten hours or more. Where am I going to find another ten hours?!

Best thing is to accompany your tracklist with a track you’ve made, or a remix, or a mash-up, or battle-weapon. These reveal much more. Sure, send a full mix CD or a link to a mix with the tracklist if you insist, but it’s that list that’ll tell me, at least, what kind of ‘selector’ you are and what vibe you’re going for. And that will tell me whether I should be investigating your stuff any more.

4. Packaging demos
I touched on this in my ‘Top 20 Pet Hates’ earlier in the year. When you send a demo to someone who gets two heaving santa-sacks of blisterpacks each week, resist the temptation to wrap miles of parcel tape (or sometimes even Gaffa tape – for fuck’s sake! GAFFA TAPE?!) around them. It takes about four hours just to open the normal envelopes, before I’ve started listening, so a mummified envelope isn’t going to make me want to play you, it’s going to make me want to KILL you.

5. Check
It’s such a no brainer this, but I have to bring it up because EVERY week, without fail, I’ll get at least two or three CDs that are either unburned, unverified or just a period of recorded silence. CHECK your CDs before they go out.

6. Labelling Stuff
Of course, more and more bands and DJs are choosing the internet as a way of distributing music to radio DJs and the like, and that’s fine. The equivalent of the mummified envelope in this scenario is the poorly labelled MP3. When I have a download spurt, picture this: I’ve got ten downloads happening simultaneously. Each one eventually pops up as an icon on my desktop. If that icon says, simply, ’01.Master’ then how the fuck am I supposed to know who it’s by and what it is?

Even the track name is barely enough – ie put your name and the track name in the file name, make sure you include as much meta-data as you can when you create the MP3, and, if it’s on CD, make sure you put a copy in iTunes and enter all the artist and track info, that way it might reach my iTunes via the wonder of the net.

If you don’t? Well, OK, I can weed through everything in my inbox again, and track down the info you put in the body of the email, if I have TIME. But when do I have time? I remember once getting a file called ’03SexBomb’. I liked it. But I didn’t play it because I hadn’t a clue who it was by. I found out, weeks or months after the fact, that it was my pal Adam Freeland who had sent it, and it was his mix of Spinerette. It happens to the best of us. But don’t let it happen to your demo track!

7. Listen link
We’re getting so many downloads now and the law of averages ensure that most of them are unsupported and a waste of hard-disc space. It is SO USEFUL having the ability to LISTEN rather than DOWNLOAD a tune first. FatDrop and Share are great services for that, if you’re a label. Soundcloud if you’re on more of a budget.

8. And finally
Don’t worry too much about the packaging, the pic, the bio, that really expensive CD housing and colour co-ordinated press release: in my experience they are the sign of desperation. 99 times out of 100 the really well packaged demo CDs I get are from well meaning managers or, more usually, nice people in country cottages masquerading as band management and wanting to break into the industry as much as the band. Cream does rise to the top and the bottle it comes in is no reflection of it’s quality.

Dan Le Sac gave me a CD-R and handwritten letter, on literally, a dog eared scrap of notepad. So did Hadouken. I loved and played them both at the time. Kasabian’s now legendary demo came as a blank CD-R with one word – Kasabian – handwritten on the top, in between two square pieces of white card, held together by an elastic band. One song. One fucking brilliant song, as it happened. Scissor Sisters: Handwritten CD-R, three tracks, all really different. None of the above had PR blurb, bios, pics, nothing. If it’s that good, it doesn’t need ANYTHING (except the tracklists and artist names, remember!). It is what it is. A brilliant demo CD. That’s the starting point, and the finish line.

In an industry full of snakes, sharks, users and fiends, there are big hearted people like Marsha, easily contactable, easily approachable, to help with feedback, pointers and constructive criticism. Just please consider the above and be considerate. Good luck and I sincerely hope that somebody reading this will send me an easily openable, shit-looking CD, with a nice little human note and it turns out to be the work of a (YET ANOTHER) band that go on to headline festivals. Over to you…

eddy X

Eddy Says from this edition of the CMU Remix Update.

More MIDEM than you can probably digest in one sitting: The all-you-can-eat debate

Business News Digital Education & Events Labels & Publishers Top Stories

Say what you like about MIDEM, but when it comes to product launches, press statements and quotable quotes, it could pretty much fill a few editions of the CMU Daily all on its own. Expect plenty of industry and digital news for the next two days.

Digital first, of course, because the digitally-focused MidemNet always begins proceedings, even though the whole conference is dominated by digital these days. The great and the good of the internet-based music industry were out in force in Cannes this weekend, and among the digital debates to be had was the viability of the all-you-can-eat unlimited MP3 service. This has joined the list of serious digital propositions since the last edition of MIDEM, of course, as a result of Virgin Media announcing their intent to launch such a service – with Universal Music on board as a partner – last June.

As previously reported, Virgin’s original plans for an Autumn 2009 launch fell through as it became clear EMI, Sony and Warner, and even some key indie players, did not share Virgin or Universal’s enthusiasm for this proposition. More recent talk has been of a “limited unlimited” service, where the ‘unlimited’ MP3 downloads would actually come with a cap. All this has frustrated more than just Virgin Media and their partners at Universal. There is some support for the all-you-can-eat idea across the wider music industry, and some reckon the UK government should be making record labels commit to sign up to such services in return for any new anti-piracy measures, such as the three-strike system currently being considered by parliament.

But it seems unlikely the big content owners are going to budge on this any time soon, if the all-you-can-eat session at MIDEM this weekend is anything to go by. Reps from both Sony and Warner argued that consumers at large aren’t actually all that interested in the all-you-can-eat proposition, and that there was a real risk it would only be taken up by big-spending music fans who currently generate sizable monthly revenues for the record industry, considerably more than the fifteen pounds a month the Virgin service would bring in.

Even Simon Wheeler of the Beggars Group – who does think that some sort of unlimited download offering will launch eventually – said he had “a huge amount of concerns around getting to an unlimited model”. He supported the capped ‘unlimited’ service, if only to give record labels some real consumer insights into the all-you-can-eat domain.

CMU says: Industry right to be cautious of all-you-can-eat

Business News Digital Labels & Publishers

For what its worth, I think the bigger record companies are right to be cautious about all-you-can-eat. As Sony and Warner’s men at MIDEM rightly pointed out, it is actually a minority interest product, possibly of interest to two groups of music fans – ironically the record industry’s favourite group – the aforementioned big-spend music fan – and their least favourite – more prolific file-sharers.

It’s the latter group the service has really been designed to appeal to – it being a proposed solution to that question that always crops up at music business conventions these days: “how do we compete with free?” But it ignores the fact that, despite IFPI’s scary stats on this subject, the prolific file-sharing community is still relatively small compared to the wider music market. It is also arguably a little naïve in its assumption that if you offer every song ever made as MP3 for fifteen quid a month then suddenly every file-sharer everywhere will go legit.

Some use file-sharing networks because large parts of the record industry’s collected catalogue still isn’t available via legit digital music platforms, certainly in higher quality formats. All-you-can-eat in itself doesn’t address this issue.

Some use file-sharing networks because when they first hit the net two to ten years ago, looking for music, there were simply no decent legit services on there. Certainly none that weren’t hindered by digital rights management or artificial blocks to on-demand play. Such services are now available, certainly in the UK, but given file-sharing had a ten year head start, more needs to be done to promote them. Such promotion doesn’t necessitate adding all-you-can-eat to the legit menu.

Some file-sharers are teenagers and students whose predecessors in the 1980s and 1990s would have shared music with their school and college mates by distributing illegally-made home-taped copies. Many such teens of the 80s and 90s grew into fully-fledged paying customers of the record industry once they reached their mid-twenties, and there’s every chance the Napster generation will follow suit – even without all-you-can-eat being an option.

It is also worth noting, some file-sharers are just selfish, and would rather artists, songwriters, producers and label people slog their guts out for free in order to provide them with some light entertainment at no cost. Fifteen pounds a month will still be off putting for these people.

And finally, some file-sharers wrongly believe their file-sharing kicks it to the man. Given it’s the man providing all-you-can-eat, they’re unlikely to sign up.

Of course, some file-sharers might be attracted to all-you-can-eat – especially if three-strikes becomes a reality and actually works (though that’s a sizable ‘if’) – but it’s wrong to assume such a proposition would be a panacea.

The record industry should, of course, consider a multitude of different digital music business models because it is unlikely any one will be enough to keep the business afloat. But it seems to me all-you-can-eat is more risky than most, with the potential to jeopardise the other models being developed.

Out of ten years of panic, false starts and bad strategy, a working digital music market is slowly starting to emerge, albeit in the main pioneered by venture-capital-backed net-pioneers rather than the major music companies (or the ISPs, who most actively support all-you-can-eat). This emerging marekt has three strands.

First, the ad-funded on-demand streaming services. So, Spotify, We7, MySpace Music, MUZU, Vevo. For some consumers this is the be-all-and-end-all service, but for many it provides the suck-it-and-see component that many say is the role P2P file-sharing often plays.

Second, the subscription services. So, Spotify Premium, Sky Songs, Napster. Ad-free streaming, and possibly a set number of MP3s bundled in each month for keeps. A more full-on service for more full-on music fans, and a business model with endless potential for niche-genre reinvention.

And third, the now old fashioned a-la-carte download store. iTunes, Amazon MP3, 7Digital. Generally for more causal music buyers (ie the majority), and probably used by many in unison with the ad-funded streaming services.

This is a nice set up that might just work in the long term. And I worry that throwing all-you-can-eat into the mix will seriously destabilise it all. Which seems like quite a risk just to satisfy a small group of music fans, some of whom will become legit customers over time anyway, and some of whom will never spend money with the record industry, even if you start putting them and their families in prison.

For my mind, the record industry would be better off working out a licensing model that makes the three above mentioned strands of the emerging digital music market work and prosper long term (because I think we all know the licensing deals currently offered to Spotify et al by the record companies and collecting societies are ultimately unviable).

And then the wider music industry needs to work out whether the combined sound recording and music publishing sectors – based on this three-strand digital market – will be profitable enough to continue to saddle the majority of the cash investment that needs to be made into new musical talent. If not, we need to jump start one variation or another of the 360 degree model – probably by having all interested parties in any one artist (so label, publisher, promoter, merchandiser, sponsors) putting money into a central business venture which then controls an artist’s brand, marketing and fan engagement, while dishing out rights, products, performances and partnership opportunities that can be monetised by said enterprise’s various business partners.

And here ends my MIDEM-inspired polemic for 2010. Though there’s much from Cannes to come below.

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