The kings of video streaming

For the last couple of weeks, I've been pointing out that comparing radio royalty rates with online video rates - as the PRS tries to do - is wrong-headed and confused. Here, in my inbox appears a document with an expert who seems to back me up:

‘Lots more performances of music are needed online to generate meaningful royalties since each download or stream is individual in comparison to the wider audience numbers achieved by broadcasts on traditional media channels such as radio or TV.'

Exactly. Why can't the PRS see that, eh? Maybe we should try and see if this chap could try to point out to the royalty body that you're only going to get infinitesimal rates per play of a video... let's see, who was this wise man?

Andrew Shaw, Managing Director of Broadcast and Online at PRS for Music

Yes, having spent three weeks bleating that YouTube offer a tiny, tiny amount for each time a video gets played online, and suggesting this makes Google evil, the PRS now issue a press release reminding everyone that, erm, you can only expect a tiny, tiny amount for each time a video gets played online. I'm not sure if that makes the PRS part of the evil Google conspiracy, or simply suggests that - as with most of the RIAA affiliated groups and companies - at least some people understand digital music and its implications.

This is all part of the PRS press release celebrating the most popular online music of 2008. Yes, it really has taken them three months to work this out. Here's the chart:

1. NOW YOU'RE GONE - BASSHUNTER
2. ROCK STAR - HANNAH MONTANA
3. MERCY - DUFFY
4. DON'T STOP THE MUSIC - RIHANNA
5. 4 MINUTES – MADONNA, JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE, TIMBALAND
6. APOLOGIZE - TIMBALAND
7. BLACK AND GOLD - SAM SPARRO
8. AMERICAN BOY - ESTELLE AND KANYE WEST
9. I KISSED A GIRL - KATY PERRY
10. SOMETHING GOOD - UTAH SAINTS
11. WHATS IT GONNA BE - H two O, PLATINUM
12. CHASING PAVEMENTS - ADELE
13. SO WHAT - PINK
14. SEX ON FIRE - KINGS OF LEON
15. PIECE OF ME - BRITNEY SPEARS
16. DANCE WIV ME - DIZZEE RASCAL
17. VALERIE - AMY WINEHOUSE, MARK RONSON
18. THE PROMISE - GIRLS ALOUD
19. ELVIS AINT DEAD - SCOUTING FOR GIRLS
20. HOT N COLD - KATY PERRY

What is the reaction of the PRS to this discovery?

Some of the entries in 2008 exemplify that digital is truly an audio-visual environment where video can drastically boost a track’s popularity.

Eh? While the list might not exactly match the ILR playlists for the 2008, it's hardly as if there's any gems in the list that you might have missed had you relied on radio rather than going on the internet during the year.

There's something else I don't quite understand. The release says this:

PRS for Music analysed 74 million downloads and streams of music on licensed websites and services such as YouTube, iTunes, Last.fm, Spotify and Bebo, in order to pay royalties accurately to its 60,000 members.

Which is fair enough. But the notes for editors says this:

A typical radio station plays 12,000 pieces of music in a three month period. During the same timeframe, on services like YouTube, PRS for Music will analyse some two billion performances of 14m different videos.

So in 2008, PRS analysed 74 million downloads and streams. But in three months, PRS analyses two billion performances of videos alone - implying eight billion streaming videos in a year. So is it 74 million or eight billion? Shouldn't an agency set up to look after other people's money be better with the numbers?

Music is better than sex

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Now make your phoney one-on-one connection with your fans even phonier

Thanks to Hypebot for bringing ArtistData to our attention. This is a service which allows bands - by which, of course, we mean whatever intern the label has charged with going online pretending to be the band - to automate their social networking posts.

Yes, yes, I can see the appeal - why go and change tour dates in ten different places when you can get a machine to do it for you? - but the side-effect is to remove the 'social' from the 'networking'. Surely what made MySpace a big attraction for music fans in the first place was the chance that you could go on line and write 'OMG I LURRRVE YOU LIL KELLY!!!1!!!!' and know there was a chance that Lil'Kelly (or at least one of his proxies) might see the post.

It's slightly less thrilling when you know that the closest anyone associated with artist ever gets to their MySpace is giving its password to a robot, isn't it?

So, then, the internet has come along and, for the first time since recorded music started, it's possible for the artist and audience to be intimate, regular contact, and ArtistData have come along to try and save the artist from this nasty threat.

And is the outsourcing of contact such a sweet deal for the artist anyway? The company promises 'Post once, publish everywhere' but offers neither Bebo nor Facebook as part of the 2.0 realm in which it operates. So you'll still need your interns, cutting and pasting, cutting and pasting.

What's most fascinating is the last line of ArtistData's pitch:

With all the time you saved go do something more useful and move your career forward.

Because, of course, there's no way interacting with the people who buy your records and come to your gigs could possibly be considered career development, could it?

NME breaking news: Michael Jackson album "to be marketed"

Unless I'm missing something, NME.com seems to have devoted a page to a breathless report about how they intend to market the latest Michael Jackson best of.

The headline, admittedly, did catch my attention:

Michael Jackson starts battle between Facebook, MySpace, Bebo users

Images were conjured up of some sort of final conflict to decide who controls web 2.0, but instead it turns out the headline should have read "amongst" rather than "between", as its about a widget you can use on those web 2.0 sites to have a competition at 'who is the best at dancing like Michael Jackson in some way'.

Even the PR team who have succeeded in getting this story on the NME site are going to be less than delighted, though, as it turns out the bloody thing isn't even available yet:

The Michael Jackson applications will be available from August 22, and will allow users from the rival networks to compete against each other.

Who actually sends out messages about their hoped-for viral campaigns which haven't even started yet? It's like running a story "Man shoots material for YouTube video; edit planned for sometime after the Olympics". Apart from anything, having shared the idea, it's likely there's going to be sixteen thousand knock-off Dance Like Jacko apps launched before the official one gets distributed.

Universal attempt product placement

More signs of big labels trying to seem hip but missing: Universal are playing host to a drama being shot for Bebo, The Secret World of Sam King. The London offices of the label and some of its artists will be used to add veracity to the tale, featuring a bloke running a secret record label from within his day job with a 'proper' record label.

How does Universal think this is going to reflect well on them? Either King is going to be a success, a genius whose skills are being overlooked - which means Universal haven't got a clue what they're doing - or else he doesn't know what he's doing, which means Universal is employee bunglers. Did they think this one through, either?

Bragg wants Bebo cut

From a delightful "Dorset, England" byline, Billy Bragg delivers a piece for the New York Times taking a surprisingly Capitalist view of the AOL takeover - namely "lets have a bit of that stock action":

Michael Birch realized the value of his membership. I’m sure he’ll be rewarding those technicians and accountants who helped him achieve this success. Perhaps he should also consider the contribution of his artists.

The musicians who posted their work on Bebo.com are no different from investors in a start-up enterprise. Their investment is the content provided for free while the site has no liquid assets. Now that the business has reaped huge benefits, surely they deserve a dividend.

What’s at stake here is more than just the morality of the market. The huge social networking sites that seek to use music as free content are as much to blame for the malaise currently affecting the industry as the music lover who downloads songs for free. Both the corporations and the kids, it seems, want the use of our music without having to pay for it.

We can see where Bragg is coming from - if music helped fuel Bebo's growth, then shouldn't the makers of that music be rewarded? But how would you even attempt to apportion any cash on that basis?

To say nothing of Bragg missing the point by a country mile: what is being sold when Bebo is flogged to AOL is not the music embedded in the site, but the people who are Beboids or Beboites or whatever they'd be called. The value in a social network lies not in the stuff people do on the network, but in the people who are attached to the network. If anyone should be getting a slice of the AOL gold, it's the members, not musicians, surely?

Gordon in the morning: While others deal with Amy...

Oddly, the Prime Minister of Showbiz doesn't deal with Amy's crack; that's left to other people to handle. Instead, Smart is left writing about the Spice Girls again. He's worried about Mel B's language:

Because she’s become so much like her foul-mouthed Bo’ Selecta! character, I can no longer tell them apart.

Really? Has she got a large rubbery face and glasses, Gordon? Because that might be the easiest way of telling them, one from the other.

SCARY SPICE has always had the mouth of a drunken trucker, and I’ve applauded her straight-talking in the past.

Really?

But there's a time for straight talking to stop, it turns out:

Furious parents have had to cover their kids’ ears to protect them from Mel’s stream of smut during the Spices’ run at London’s O2 arena.

Good lord, are they still playing there? Really?

The gigs include a bit where the girls discuss what they have had “too much of” before they launch into their hit Too Much. Clever, eh?

Yes, that's Gordon Smart snickering at someone making a lame pun based on a song title. The man who wrote "I bet Macca was looking back at Kylie and thinking: “No More Lonely Nights.”" Clever, eh?

Anyway, Gordon churns on about what Mel B said, discovering a parent who was "outraged" that her child should hear such things. Despite taking her kid to a gig where she knew there was going to be a song with the repeated refrain "wanna make love to you, baby".

Gordon, it seems, is himself quivering with outrage:

Who needs sex education? A couple of minutes with Auntie Mel at her O2 School of Skank and your kids will have enough filthy words to turn the playground blue for months.

So, not quite so in thrall to the Spices any more, Gordon?

Girl Power? Filth power, more like.

No, he really says that.

Of course, this would appear to be the same Gordon Smart who burbled delightedly when the Spice Girls made jokes about his cock onstage.

So, in search of the real Gordon Smart we turn to his Bebo page, an insight into Gordon's real world.

The most fascinating aspect of the page - besides the testicle-in-an-egg-cup where you'd expect to see a picture of Gordon - is this revelation, from the day before he appeared in the Sun, in that awkward picture where he looks for all the world like a man trying to hide a wedding ring at a speed dating event:

Well there's no turning back now...

Get The Sun tomorrow for a laugh at my gay outfit. I'd be thrown out The Muirs for it - no question.

Let me know what you think...

If I get a doing on the train tomorrow, it was nice knowing you.

Let's leave aside the tricky question of the appropriateness of using 'gay' as a term of abuse - for now, anyway - and just look, wonderingly, at a man happily describing the outfit he wears for his byline photo, every day, in such terms. Something to think about every time you see Gordon peeking out from the Bizarre masthead, isn't it?

It also makes you wonder what the people who provided the "gay suit" would feel - it's a bit different from how he described the clothes in the paper on that bright, first morning:

And cheers to ALL SAINTS, RICHARD JAMES, PAUL SMITH, BELSTAFF and JOHN VARVATOS for the clobber.

[Thanks to Barry]

Days like these

KateModern, Bebo's interactive drama (don't you love the way that soap opera on the net is still spoken of as if it's a new idea, about a decade after The Spot?) has done a deal which will see Atlantic Records' second division hoofers The Days pop up in the story:

"Traditional means such as gigging and press interviews work alongside truly groundbreaking, inventive ideas such as this one." Joanna Shields, president, international, at Bebo, says the characters in the drama had already met actor Jamie Bell and "now, for the first time, they have befriended a real band - blurring fiction and reality in an interesting and interactive experience".

It's not actually blurring fiction and reality any more than those bits of The Archers where they drop in a rapidly-recorded scene featuring whichever actors were available discussing the latest agricultural disaster from the headlines does. Much as we love those moments - like the bit where Lilian Bellamy had to pretend to be interested in some cow-threatening plague because, presumably, they couldn't find an actor who played an actual farmer to get to the studios at short notice - they don't actual make us think "it's so realistic", but, because you start to ruminate on the process which made a bit on bluetongue or hoof-and-mouth appear at such short notice, they underline the unreality.

Now, if The Days didn't know they were appearing as a paid-for advertisement in a made-up story... now, that might blur the boundaries a bit.