Creative Caffeine: Nashville Recording Studio

It’s no secret that the music industry has not made an ideal transition into the digital era.

Album sales are falling, P2P file sharing is rife, and a plethora of new artists are using the Internet as a platform for gaining international exposure.

With the introduction of MySpace Music, three major record labels — Sony BMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group — are hoping to launch a counter-strike to the technological developments and online activities that have rocked their industry.

Full Article:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/09/25/music.debate/index.html?eref=rss_latest

Update: the bill has since been approved on a 14-4 vote.

The United States Congress returned to work this week, and senators appear to have copyright on the brain: A broad intellectual property enforcement bill introduced in July is slated for markup by the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday, and another aimed at cracking down on piracy overseas was introduced Wednesday.

Full Article:
Copyright bill blasted as “enormous gift” to Big Content

It’s been a depressing summer for the delusional record industry. We’re seeing a total disconnect between labels’ unrealistic, old-school revenue expectations and what the market can bear. On the streaming-music front, the sad reality is that advertising revenue may never fully support the music industry wishful-thinking profit margins.

Full Article:
How the Music Business Spent the Summer Killing Itself – Advertising Age – The Media Guy

 While the niche may still be small measured against overall sales of recorded music, the surge of interest in vinyl — and, particularly, its rising cachet among young listeners — is providing a rare glimmer of hope in a hemorrhaging industry.

“Even if the industry doesn’t do all that well going forward, we could really carve this out to be a nice profitable niche,” said Bill Gagnon, a senior vice president at EMI Catalog Marketing, who is in charge of vinyl releases. He said that people who buy vinyl nowadays are charmed by the format’s earthy authenticity.

Link to Article:

Digg – Another Spin for Vinyl Records

Online music sales continue to skyrocket at the expense of CDs. iTunes continues to be the leader of the pack, too, not only in online sales, but music sales overall. But a small rebellion is brewing against iTunes as artists become disgruntled with the hit they’re taking on overall album sales thanks to the now-wildly-popular method of cherry-picking favorite tracks for download.

Full Article:

Album-loving artists blame iTunes for changed music tastes

Fans at Bonnaroo yesterday (June 15) were so angry at Kanye West for his delayed performance that they scrawled their anger in spraypaint on the portaloos at the site, angrily chanted his name and pelted glowsticks at the stage during the two-hour delay.

West was due to perform at 2.45am yesterday morning but did not emerge on stage until 4.25am.

Messages on the screens told the crowd the show would be delayed until 3.15am and then delayed again until 3.30am, reports the Associated Press.

The crowd repeatedly chanted “Kanye sucks!” during the delay, and today a section of portaloos onsite were spraypainted with the words “Fuck Kanye”.

The delay was apparently due to issues setting up the rapper’s ‘glow in the dark’ stage set after a previous delay unloading Pearl Jam’s stage. The band had also run over their allocated time by an hour.

However, even with the stage set-up apparently completed at 3.30am, West did not appear for almost another hour.

According to reports, the original schedule had him in an 8.15pm slot but he requested a late-night set.

Original Article:
Bonnaroo fans anger as Kanye West is late | News | NME.COM

Pearl Jam, a band with a reputation for delivering great live performances, is offering to sell “bootleg” recordings of the group’s concert shows.

Fans can go to Pearljam.com and purchase streaming downloads or burn-to-order CDs of each of the band’s performances during its 2008 concert tour, which launched last week in Florida. Internap is overseeing the audio streaming.

Pearl Jam is taking liberties with the term bootleg. Typically bootlegs are pirated material that are given away or sold at bargain-basement prices.

That’s not the case here. Each concert performance will sell for $9.99 (MP3) and $14.99 (FLAC) and be made available two weeks after the performance. But fans may give Eddie Vedder and the group a pass on this one.

Why?

Because at least Pearl Jam is offering the music free of digital rights management. This means fans can burn the songs to disc or transfer them to their digital music players. Another reason is that Pearl Jam is a longtime advocate for fans.

Pearl Jam once canceled a concert tour to protest the high price of concert tickets. The group sued Ticketmaster and requested that the U.S. Department of Justice investigate the company. Nothing came of the lawsuit.

Full Article:
Pearl Jam offers streaming ‘bootlegs’ | Tech news blog – CNET News.com

The music industry is suffering, and it’s all because of those darn fans. Er, what? It turns out that KISS member Gene Simmons believes exactly that. He claims that piracy is to blame for the industry’s woes, and KISS is apparently taking its ball and going home until the situation gets under control.

“The record industry is dead. It’s six feet underground and unfortunately the fans have done this,” Simmons said, according to AOL News. “They’ve decided to download and file share. There is no record industry around so we’re going to wait until everybody settles down and becomes civilized. As soon as the record industry pops its head up we’ll record new material.”

It’s never a smart move to blame your loyal and devoted fans for the injustices of the world, but Simmons seems to think that his fans (unlike everyone else’s) would rather steal from the band than continue paying for music they enjoy. Simmons also thinks bands that encourage the public to download their music for free (such as Radiohead with its famed In Rainbows experiment) are only making the situation worse, despite the fact that Radiohead has made a nice chunk of change from the In Rainbows release so far.

Simmons’ latest comments come just over six months after his previous rant about the music industry, wherein he told Billboard, “Every little college kid, every freshly-scrubbed little kid’s face should have been sued off the face of the earth.” At that time, he blamed the record industry for letting foxes into the henhouse (presumably by allowing DRM-free music to be sold online, or perhaps any music at all to be sold online). “Doesn’t affect me. But imagine being a new band with dreams of getting on stage and putting out your own record. Forget it,” he said.

So, does this apparently rampant piracy problem affect Simmons or not? His comments between last November and now seem to contradict each other a bit, although they clearly share the same underlying sentiment: anger. Simmons might want to reconsider speaking for anyone but himself, though. Many young and independent bands are able to enjoy success on and off the stage, all while selling their music online. As part of an upcoming feature we’re doing on indie bands and online music, one band told us that its members believe that P2P is all part of the ecosystem, and that they even saw increased sales after their album showed up on Bit Torrent.

The sad part is that Simmons’ continued comments aren’t going to cause anyone (fans or not) to have an epiphany and quit their P2P-slingin’ ways. In fact, it may have the opposite effect—the clear disdain in his words may well drive some of KISS’ fans away. The only thing Simmons is doing by lashing out at fans is earning him a reputation as a curmudgeonly artist unwilling to adapt to a changing music landscape.

Original Article:
Gene Simmons blames fans, P2P for killing music industry

Bonnaroo, it was nice knowing you.

We’ll miss your gray market economy, with Frisbee-chucking weirdos selling burritos, beer and mystery balloons from the back of Econoline vans. We’ll miss the way you blended hippie jam bands like Rusted Root with indie rock bands like Death Cab for Cutie and the resultant nine-car social pile up that ensued. Hell, we’ll even miss the sunstroke and smell of the non-VIP camping area.

But it’s all over now. You could have had yourself a nice little time with David Cross in the comedy tent, dozens of stoners mesmerized by “The Big Lebowski” and maybe a nice Phil Lesh/Lupe Fiasco duet, but no. You got greedy. You wanted a big-time name near the top of the bill. You had to go cock things up and get Metallica.

Let there be no question: Metallica will kill Bonnaroo. When they’re done, Manchester, Tenn. will be a post-apocalyptic swath of scorched farmland, burned out VW Microbuses and tufts of shredded hair yanked from hipster beards. Why, you ask? Because this band is like Rogue from the X-Men, it kills everything it touches. Here are five solid examples to ponder before the special brownies kick in.

Full Article:
Five Reasons Why Metallica Will Doom Bonnaroo Forever – Esquire

By JOHN GEROME, AP Entertainment Writer Sat Mar 22, 6:53 PM ET

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – Dolly Parton knows a good investment when she sees one, and these days she sees one in the mirror.

Parton, whose business portfolio includes a theme park and an entertainment production company, says she’s spending a lot of her own money trying to get back on country radio with her new CD, “Backwoods Barbie.”

“I’m looking at it like an investment,” she told The Associated Press. “I thought, ‘I’ve made enough money. I can afford to invest a little in myself.’”

She has self-released the disc on her own label, Dolly Records, and hired a seven-member promotions team.

“I purposely tailor-made this to try to get some hits,” Parton explained.

The album reached No. 2 on Billboard in its second week, her best showing in 17 years.

The first single, “Better Get to Livin’,” a country-pop song she describes as sonically similar to Keith Urban, sputtered at No. 48. But the second single, “Jesus & Gravity,” is just now arriving at radio.

At age 62, Parton remains an icon and inspiration to younger singers.

“I don’t think there’s anything that woman can’t do,” said rising country star Kellie Pickler, who calls Parton her greatest influence. “She just walks into a room and lights it up. She’s got that ‘it’ factor that money can’t buy. She’s the whole package.”

Music Row began to lose interest in Parton in the ’90s as a new crop of country stars emerged. Her last Top 5 hit, “Rockin’ Years,” was in 1991, and she hasn’t had a major label record deal in 10 years.

“When it changed I was still as serious as ever and was thinking I’m still as good as ever, if I ever was any good,” Parton said.

She has watched with interest as new technology has created opportunities without the big labels.

“Now the majors are what they used to think I was: history,” she said.

“I thought this is a good time, but I need to make an all-out effort. … Whatever it takes, you fight for it. You do what you have to do to feed your habit, and I’m a music addict.”

link to original article:
Dolly Parton releases album on own label – Yahoo! News