Pondering the music biz

June 26th, 2009

I have been writing a new post for a while now in ‘drips and drabs’ about music, and more specifically ‘the music biz’. I read it back yesterday and it was a big rambling mess of a rant so I decided to re-write it. Whilst distracting myself from the task in hand I stumbled upon a blog by unsigned songwriter Stuart Newman. As the band I am in (Left Hand Red) is currently going through the same process, this blog struck a chord (no pun intended!) and made a lot of sense.

To furnish you with some background information, Left Hand Red have been around for 4 or so years with the ultimate aim of getting signed to a record label, getting our music out to a wider audience, and hopefully being able to live off being a professional band.

After several years of sending out countless amounts of ‘press packs’ to record companies and not hearing a peep back, LHR front man and general organiser of the band, Dan Scully, decided enough was enough and with the way the music industry is currently evolving we should put all our energies into going it alone instead.

OK, so history lesson/shameless band promotion over and onto the main rant…

So, why have we heard nothing from any record company despite sending out CDs to 50+ companies? The answer is simple: haircuts and jeans. That’s right, haircuts and jeans. As a band, LHR don’t have one asymmetric fringe or pair of spandex-tight jeans between them. This means we are not currently in fashion and not what the record companies are spewing out to the lucrative young teen market. We don’t have what is needed right now to produce maximum profit, and squeezing every penny possible from their purchase is what record companies are about. Now don’t get me wrong, I know it’s a business and the point of that is to make money, but, there is so much variety in music from classical to techno and despite this all we hear is what the record companies see as the most profitable, tapping into a ‘lifestyle’ and exploiting it for all the money they can. And when the current fashion starts to become stale a new one will be pushed forth and you’ll never hear of the current crop of bands again. The record companies will cease to promote yesterdays bands, no longer throwing money into recordings, tours and merchandise, instead diverting all the attention to the new ‘toys’.

No passion for music, no loyalty to the bands.

The alternative to all this for emerging artists? Go it alone. The way music distribution and promotion is evolving it is becoming much easier for bands to look out for themselves. No longer do bands need big bucks to press a record or a team of promoters up and down the country to get themselves noticed. A few hundred quid for a professional recording session to get the ball rolling is all that’s needed, anyone can burn their own CDs, make their MP3s available for download, put together a website or MySpace page and get themselves seen and (more importantly) heard. When you can do all this yourself, what can a record company offer you? Sure, there’s the ‘up front’ money but with some luck and patients I don’t see why it isn’t possible to make your own – MP3 downloads, CD sales, gig fees etc. Sure, it won’t be as an attractive sum as a big label may offer if they want you enough but you get to keep what should be most important to a musician – control over what you are doing, write whatever you want, record whatever you feel like, whenever you feel like it, no pressured deadlines or record companies pushing you in a direction to make you more saleable. After all, if you’re making music, it should be because you have a passion for it and want to express yourself through it, have a good time making it and make it to please yourself, if other people like it too, that’s a bonus, but you need to be making what you want and have total belief in your work, doing it because you like it.

All of that said, I have to ask myself what would happen if a major label turned up at our next gig and offered us a deal? It’s impossible to say until that day happens but I would like to think we all love what we do enough to have a serious think about it and what it would mean for our music. If it meant 15 minutes of fame doing what we do, sure, what an experience that would be. If it meant being moulded by the company to fit with the current trend, then I’d like to think we would have the strength to keep the purity of our sound and carry on enjoying what we do over the lure of making fast money. Sitting here, typing this, I feel that I would rather continue with my current lifestyle and really enjoy making the music we do, carry on promoting ourselves, meeting new people and spending our wages on recordings because we believe in ourselves rather than ‘upgrade’ my lifestyle with money and have to make music I don’t enjoy playing or being associated with, but who knows what will happen if that day ever comes around…

LOCAL PAPER RIDICULOUS HEADLINES

March 2nd, 2009

There is quite literally nothing that can rival the joy I feel of having my day brightened up by another totally bemusing or poorly punctuated headline stood proudly outside the newsagents from The Argus.  I thought it may of  just been me that had a quiet chuckle to myself about this, but apparently not.  There is a dedicated Flickr pool for snaps of the headlines!  Here are a few samples, followed by a link to the pool…

All these, plus many more from here: http://www.flickr.com/groups/argusheadlines/pool

Spotify and the bizarre playlist

February 23rd, 2009

After receiving praise and an invite from my good friend over at EightyOne a week or so ago I downloaded and installed Spotify, a streaming music player.  Once you are signed up for the service you are required to download and install a small program, after that, funtime!  Spotify has an iTunes-esque look about it (both on PC and Mac) and is very simple to use with its few controls laid out well.
Radio mode allows you to listen to a random assortment of music, or, you can narrow the choice down by genre, decade or a combination of both.  Search allows you to, well, search for music and play something specific and you can even create playlists.  A neat touch I found is where I have Spotify installed on both my MacBook and Windows PC the playlists I create a automatically synched between the two.
The performance of Spotify is excellent, I have yet to experience a song stop randomly whilst I wait for it to buffer, songs also start playing very quickly and the search is equally responsive.
There are three subscription options to Spotify…

1) Completely free.  You pay diddly-squat for access to pretty much all the music there ever was, Spotify plays an advert every six or seven songs.  Far less annoying than commercial radio as the advert breaks are for a single ad.
2) 99p for 24 hours.  For a 99p fee you can have Spotify ad free for 24 hours.  I recently used this “day pass” at a party - read below for more on this!
3) £9.99 a month, which gets you ad-free playback plus “extra Spotify invites”.

In conclusion, Spotify = win.  If adverts really, really annoy you - subscribe, if not, stay free and pay 99p when you have friends over.

As I mentioned above, I recently used a 99p “day pass” to stream music at a house warming.  Two of my good friends arrived and pretty much instantly started putting a playlist together, sitting with the MacBook screen facing the wall and the pair of them giggling like mischievous children I knew some sort of bizarre and wonderful playlist was brewing.  Such was the awesomeness of the playlist I have decided to share it with you all…

bonkers Spotify playlist

bonkers Spotify playlist

I hope you are laughing as much as we were (after a few beers).  Also, should this be the best compilation of music you have ever seen, we are available to hire as DJs for functions and parties, leave your details in the comment section and we’ll get back to you!

Gamer grub

October 14th, 2008

No no, you heard me right the first time - gamer grub.  It’s the muscle speed boosting, reaction time reducing super-food.  It comes in an ergonomic tub to eliminate greasy fingers and crumby keyboards - just pick up the tub and pour in the tasty chunks of processed chemicals/animal bumholes.

Mmmmmmm, delicious.  Or not.

Satan’s very own guitar?

September 24th, 2008

Brighton guitar shop Badlands Guitars has what is possibly Satan’s very own guitar.

Ibanez copy, or...

Think it just looks like an Ibanez copy?  Well, to the untrained eye maybe, but if we take a closer look at the tremelo we can see that it is in fact…

…the OVERLORD OF MUSIC!!!!!!!  Satan’s own guitar or possibly even just posessed by the Devil, who knows for sure, either way this bad-boy is pure rockin’ evil      \m/ ^_^ \m/

Actual sunshine!

September 22nd, 2008

That’s right weather watchers, there was some actual sunshine this weekend, I hope you managed to get out and enjoy it. View below is from Hove beach (pic taken on iPhone).

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Foxes getting braver since hunt ban

August 15th, 2008

Ever since the banning of fox hunting in England the foxes have been getting braver. With a newly gained confidence due to their realisation that they can roam the countryside without fear of being chased down by the hunt the fox has even started mocking the upper classes.

Fox in top hat

As seen above, the fox has taken to dressing in traditional hunt wear and teasing the hutsmen. Shortly after this piture was taken another fox playing a bugle arrived followed by more foxes riding roe deer with a pack of voles.

*The above story may not be entirely true

Classy place of work…

July 30th, 2008

You heard it here first, the credit crunch is so bad people have been driven to stealing soap from their employers

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Dino-riders!

June 27th, 2008

Freaking Dino Riders! I completely forgot about this cartoon for some reason, who’d of thought you could forget about men riding dinosaurs with big laser guns strapped to them!



http://www.dinoriders.com/

Have eBay finally lost it completely?

June 11th, 2008

The behemoth online aution house, eBay, has been loosing fans for sometime now with crazy ideas such as sellers not being able to leave negative feedback (read about that on Times Online here) but is its latest move a step too far? eBay has decided to force PayPal (also owned by eBay) on sellers as a payment option. Many people do not want to offer PayPal as a payment option as it takes a percentage of your cash for itself and will not let you pass this charge on to the buyer so the seller looses profit on their sale. eBay is also forcing PayPal as the ONLY method of trading in some selling categories. This is all under the rather thin guise of helping reduce fraud and protecting its users. Having been a victim of a poor seller myself and having had first hand experience of eBays customer service and how it helps buyers/sellers with disputes I can tell you this is obviously some sort of joke, I would also expect you know someone that has had dealings with eBays particularly unhelpful help system too! The truth of the matter is this: more PayPal transaction = more money in eBay/Paypals pockets.

A quick scan of the Internet shows that when eBay put this ruling in place on their Australian site the antipidean users decided enough was enough and have been switching to alternative aution sites that are ruled less like a Victorian school.

So, what are our alternatives for buying and selling items here in the UK? There is the well established Amazon Marketplace (http://www.amazon.co.uk) and the alternative auction house eBid (http://uk.ebid.net), and with (currently) less users you may be more likely to pick up a bargain!