Viagogo head behind the Toblerone Curtain

Viagogo, the closest you can get to touting without being a tout company, have fled the UK to set up shop in the more relaxed legal atmosphere of Switzerland. Music Week discovered this:

Speaking to Music Week, a Viagogo representative said that although the firm was now not bound by British law, it would stick to its customer guarantee which "goes far beyond any UK trading regulations".

According to filings with Companies House, Viagogo UK changed its name to Consolidated Information Services Ltd. last month, before liquidating its assets.

Meanwhile, it set up a new company in mainland Europe - Viagogo AG, based in Switzerland.

The company would now appear to be bound by Swiss law and EU law, but not regulations in the UK.

But, hey, if Viagogo say you don't need to worry about any silly laws guaranteeing your rights, why would you worry, eh? It's not like they're the sort of company that would suddenly vanish from the UK and turn up wearing lederhosen claiming there's always been a cuckoo clock element to their business, is it?

Music Week suggests the move might be more about swerving the ban on selling Olympic tickets at a massive mark-up; personally, I'd avoid them unless you're after tickets for something in Lucerne.

[Thanks to @pedrodee]

Viagogo explain why their tout-alike business isn't actually touting

This week's Music Week catches up with Ed Parkinson. Ed is UK director of Viagogo, who last week Channel 4 made one of the focuses of their Dispatches investigation into the secondary ticket market.

Ed is keen to reassure the world that everything is fine and above board.

But what of that massive pile of credit cards sitting about in your offices, Ed, asks Music Week. He can explain that:

"That practice was really misrepresented by the programme," he said. "We have historically purchased a number of tickets [this way].

"Predominantly, we offer customers a guarantee that if a seller [fails to] get them a ticket, we'll give them their money back or provide a replacement.

"Having a small number of tickets in stock helps us fulfil that guarantee. If they're not used they do get sold on - sometimes at a profit, sometimes at a discount."

Is that clear, then?

It's not that ViaGoGo pretends to be individual buyers in order to purchase tickets which they can then sell on at a hefty mark-up.

It's simply that ViaGoGo pretend to be individual buyers in order to purchase tickets which they will then seel on at a hefty mark-up if nobody else provides them with tickets to sell on at a hefty mark-up.

And how can that be in any way questionable, because the company have done this "historically". And, besides, they have a "guarantee" which they have to fulfil. Which makes it okay, yeah?

[Cheers to @Pedro_Dee for the tip]

HMV tries to claim less space for CDs means it's committed to music

HMV is spending six million pounds it doesn't have refitting stores to make room for ranges it can't sell, reports Music Week:

Chief executive Simon Fox revealed today that the group would refit 150 stores by the end of September, increasing the selling space for tech products such as MP3 players from 8% to 25%.

This has led some commentators to suggest that HMV is moving away from CD and DVD. But Fox said this is emphatically not the case. “It is not about cutting back on range but about cutting back on space,” he told Music Week.

Righto. How will that work, exactly?

In order to do this, however, HMV will need to change how it sells music and DVD. This will mean titles appearing in one space, rather than in several different locations, such as the chart wall and the gondolas.

“It is largely around changes to uniting and merchandising without compromising on range,” Fox explained. “We are very, very concerned to make sure that we get our stores as active as possible for music.”

Yes, nothing says "active for music" like cramming all the CDs in to a corner. Actually, nothing says "active for music" because it's a meaningless phrase.

Music Week doesn't really ask Fox if there's something ridiculous in expanding the store's electronics range at a time when companies which are more obvious go-to places for things like mp3 players are struggling and one - Best Buy - seems to have frozen expansion plans in the face of consumers' indifference.

Seriously, Mr Fox? As phones get smarter and smarter, and the cloud-as-music-player becomes a reality, you're ripping the heart out of your shops (again) to make more room to sell mp3 players as they slide towards obsolescence?

Music Week brings news from Canada and Denmark

Music Week reports on a couple of surveys about unlicensed music:

The debate around P2P and its impact on music sales is never short of controversy and now two new studies have been published which reveal the extreme ends of thinking.

Eamonn Forde's piece doesn't quite live up to this eyecatching opening. Not much is "revealed" at all - indeed, one of the surveys is little more than a crunching of other survey findings.

This is done by the Canadian copyright farming industry, which looks at other surveys from between 2005 and 2008, and concludes that people who use peer to peer networks would spend an extra £110 a year on music if p2p didn't exist.

As Forde points out, looking at a survey about the internet in 2008 to draw conclusions about 2011 is flawed from the very start, and even if you can get round that problem, and except their rather elaborate extrapolation, you're still left with the basic problem that this is all "so what?"

If there weren't p2p networks, people would spend £110 more on music. Maybe. If there were no proper shoes, I would wear flipflops. If there wasn't rain, people would spend less on umbrellas. Perhaps the Canadian Intellectual Property Council might like to conduct a survey into what would happen if there were really unicorns?

The second survey is also a bit "so what":

Meanwhile, TorrentFreak is running details of a study into P2P user behaviour and ethical stances by the Rockwool Foundation Research Unit in Denmark. It found that 70% of those polled said that it was “acceptable” to source music illicitly from the web. Three-quarters, however, said they had moral objections to anyone then selling that illegally acquired music for profit.

People who use peer to peer networks don't have a problem using things like peer to peer networks to obtain music without proper licences. Excuse me while I frantically recolour my worldview.

[via @buzzsonic]

Music Week hopes to take the long view

There's some changes in both staff and direction at Music Week, as Roy Greenslade reports:

The previous editor, Paul Williams, has become "head of business analysis", and Michael Gubbins has been brought in above him as "director of content."

Of much more significance is the development of an editorial strategy that recognises the changes in both the music industry and the media industry

This seems quite wise, but feels a little late - accepting that the web breaks news faster and that when people sit down with a publication, they're looking for something worth sitting down with.

The risk for Music Week is the outcome of taking a long, hard look at the music business is going to result in uncomfortable reading for the music business. And they're the key audience both for sales and advertising. It's going to be a tricky job to pull off, taking people's money while telling them they're going wrong.

But at least Music Week understands their pain:

[Gubbins] cannot be other than aware of its problematic print sales. In the years 1997/8 its ABC sale was 12,503. In 2009/10, that was down to 5,218, and is thought to have slipped further in recent months.

It can't help that the number of people working in the traditional industry has been tanking, can it?

Pay to listen

It is, of course, a wry stunt rather than a new business model: The Reclusive Barclay Brothers are offering 'incentives' to people who listen to their music, reports Music Week:

The video asked viewers to visit the aptly named site www.newlowformusic.com to submit their e-mail address and over the subsequent 30 days, the band will randomly pick 100 people to receive their £27 share of the cash.

The band claims that paying people to listen to music is the only logical conclusion to the current trend of giving music away for free.

It might just be a smart use of £2,700 worth of promotional budget - cash that might otherwise have gone on small adverts or flyposting. Can't help wondering if they might have been better off having one huge prize though. If you're going to turn fans into a lottery, make it a big lottery.

There is no sum of money large enough to compensate for listening to Olly Murs.

[Thanks to Peter D for the link]

Music Week reflects readership's misunderstanding of online pricing

Music Week has launched an iPhone app, inviting you to tap into its music industry reporting wherever you happen to be. And how much does it want for this?

£9.99.

Well, that's a little heavy - a tenner for a single newspaper app, but it is working in a specialist sector, and times are hard, and I guess ten pounds is just about fair... what? What's that you're saying, Gordon Macmillan?

The £9.99 price gives readers access to the music trade title's content for 30 days. Then it is time to renew.

One hundred and twenty pounds a year?

Sure, they're writing for people working in an industry which is desperate to believe that the price of what they sell online should go up, rather than down, but even hardened music executives might spot that this is chronically overpriced.

The Spectator is pushing it, but at least they only try to shake you down for £2.39. Maybe - in the same way record companies have forgotten they don't need to charge for pressing, distribution and warehousing with online deals - Music Week has forgotten to pass the savings in newsprint and ink and vans and retail mark-up onto the consumer.

[via @simonth]

UK Music: "We don't want to get our hands dirty"

Music Week's coverage of Mandelson's yacht rules includes an unnamed UK Music spokesperson. In the middle of the clapping and giggling, there's this:

More than that, [the] trigger mechanisms [that had originally been proposed by Digital Britian] would have required our members to take legal action against individuals – a move the UK music industry has consistently resisted.

Yes, consistently resisted the idea that, erm, the copyright industry should pay to police its own copyright. Given that these businesses mainly exist to exploit intellectual property, isn't refusing to pay the cost of protecting the property a bit like a builder wanting somebody else to pay for his hod and cement mixer?

[Thanks to Peter D for the link]

Lesley Douglas: Life after Brand

Lesley Douglas has given her first post Radio 2 interview to Music Week. But, naturally, being the voice of the UK music industry MW decides to waste this valuable scoop by putting it behind a paywall, so instead we're relying on the MediaGuardian report:

"The music industry were so supportive, but it is very strange to read about yourself because I don't like courting press and singularly failed in that in the last few weeks. But the support I got from the music industry was amazing," added Douglas.

"It's hard for me to talk about the past, which is why I'd rather talk about the future. It's been a horrible four weeks in many ways but, as I say, the support I got personally was amazing."

Aha. So, instead of anything that might be interesting, we get a lot of stuff about her new job at the lucrative-but-dull Universal TV division. The BBC will be as delighted as the Mail annoyed that she has chosen to keep quiet about the Ross-Brand business that cost her job; it might not be too cynical to believe that she is clearly keeping one eye on a return to the BBC at some point and is keen to help the scars heal more quickly.

Tubular sells: Mail defends giveaway

Mike Oldfield's continuing complaints that EMI allowed the Mail On Sunday to give away the whole of Tubular Bells for free have brought about a wounded response from the paper. They've taken a two page ad in Music Week to defend their actions, even claiming that giving away the album boosted sales:

In response, the MoS has this week taken out a double-page advert in Music Week defending the move, arguing that covermounting helps promote music and claiming that sales of Tubular Bells rose by 30 per cent following the giveaway.

MoS managing director Stephen Miron said: “The whole argument is that we are devaluing music, but we are creating a stimulus.”

Miron confirmed that the MoS was keen to continue covermounting entire albums, where possible. “I don’t think we are the enemy in this,” he said.

“I think people would like us to be the enemy. The issues that come about are from retailers putting pressure on the record companies not to do these things. In reality, the music companies would – given a free way – do much more of this.”

Lots for EMI to use to defend itself there, then - although, of course, it might choose not to. Because if it agrees that giving away an entire album for free boosts sales of that very album, never mind other works by the artist, then it can hardly continue to deny that filesharing can stimulate legitimate sales, can it?

And if the Mail On Sunday is telling the truth when it suggests that record companies would continue covermounts if allowed, why is this form of giving music away not educating people to get used to not paying for music, a common complaint about filesharing and online services raised by the labels?

What the pop papers say: Brody distilled edition

So, while we reel from the news that John Lydon is calling in the lawyers to stop a punk compilation using the phrase 'Do you ever get the feeling you've been cheated' for it album - based, of course, on the preposterous belief that he, and his chardonnay swilling LA lifestyle doesn't neagte his role as arbiter of punk - we turn to the Guardian Weekend and Zoe William's echoing of the phrase: how did the whole Blair Britain cease to be cool? This, of course, requires you to believe that the we all voted Blair in back in '97 because of his credentials and fell for his spiel about being in a young country and a Vanity Fair cover story; that when we saw Noel enjoying a joke with the Prime Minister that we thought "hey - there's a couple of cool guys" rather than "hmm... which is the bigger of those two cocks, then?"

"What would have become of River Phoenix?" - had he not died - worries the Friday review, to mark the tenth anniversary of his doing his last speedball. Everyone seems to think that he would have gone on to become one of the Hollywood greats. Yeah? We suspect had he not died from a speedball in the Viper Lounge that night, then... he'd have died a couple of nights later. Or a year later. Failing that, his drug use would have seen make worse and worse films, to the extent that if the drugs hadn't killed him, he'd probably about now be being Buena Vista to fund The Santa Clause III.

Elsewhere, Alexis Petredis counts down the top 40 American artists right now. He strikes some bum notes - Fannypack (40), for example, who must be brilliant if you never heard the Yeastie Girls, but are still running on a tank roughly the size of that of the Fast Food Rockers; Madonna at 15 - the list making equivalent of the fuck for old time's sake - but generally, it's a pretty sound list, acknowledging Bright Eyes(28), Calexico (25), Pink (18) and crowning the Flaming Lips as the Best Current American Band, which seems about right to us. But Christina instead of Britney?

The Sunday Times Style section knows better, sending the godlike Jane Bussman to meet Britney. She kicks down some rumours - she's not getting email from William "but would love to" (oh, yeah? ask Paul Burrell) and calculates how lucky she was to get away with sharing a stage with a tiger (in this post-Roy mauling age, 'never work with animals' is less a showbiz dictum, more an insurance stipulation.) Of course, Britney is (whisper it) a little bit thick, but she doesn't pretend to be anything else. She chats about her sex life, but doesn't treat it as an extension of her day job. There's no attmept to claim that her 'oops, I'm naked' photoshoots are any attempt to carry forward the flame of Sylvia Pankhurst.

In Music Week, Andy Peters - the man who is making Top of the Pops into The All-New Top of the Pops - claims that nobody under 24 remembers TOTP being on any day other than Friday. Oh, yeah? Obviously, I'm too old to hold this up to any sort of proof, but on a similar basis, I shouldn't be able to recall when Emmerdale Farm was on during the day, or when ITN's main lunchtime bulletin was presented by Leonard Parkin, or Peble Mill At One at all.

The NME has got Brody Dalle on the cover - we're not entirely sure about her yet, you know: she has a hanging air of a second crack at making a Kelly Osbourne. She's even got the same hair and stands in the same way. Hmm. The big news picture is , oddly enough, Kelly and Ozzy, who are for some reason sat in the White Lodge from Twin Peaks - maybe as an explanation for why Kelly sings like that dream sequence dwarf. Elliott Smith gets a coverline, which again goes to prove that for artists not on the purple list, there's only one way to get am mention in the paper these days. In the report, they manage to get quotes from Moby and E and, of course, usher in the Buckley/Drake comparisons.

Other news: Cooper Temple Clause going down well in New York (which, by the standards of most British acts in America probably means they didn't get turned around at immigration.)

The NME seems to have been cooling on the Darkness - after weeks of trying to get back in their good books, they seem to have to decided to cut straight to the backlash, giving platform to the (actually quite understandable) pissed-off Liverpool fans who spent an hour waiting after the support bands only for the band not to show up; and the less understandable Londoners who seem to be bearing a grudge that they're not AC/DC.

The Electric Soft Parade do the pretend CD - Edan, Actress Hands and The Customers.

Peter Robinson takes on Josh Homme - he asks him what he makes of American Idol; he replies "A bunch of people judging music. That sounds like The Press." Yeah, except the press are a bit more amusing than Simon Cowell.

Matt Davies from Funeral For A Friend loves Million Dead - "they're really, really good live" - and the radar band is Eastern Lane, from Berwick, a place where public urination makes the local papers.

The clearly made-up 'nme brain' letter this week is "I've heard of a music movement called C86. What is it, and what's it got to do with NME?" Meanwhile, the open letter from Tim Jonze to the Strokes ticks them off for not saying anything of any interest in their interviews. You might be better off, Mr. Jonze, sending a memo to your editor suggesting that the next time The Strokes don't have much to say, it might be better off not spreading the interview over two issues.

So, Brody Dalle, then. It's clear The Distillers is little more than the cart that she's riding (in the full page photo, she's in colour, the lumpen backing band are in black and white; Andy describes their role as "hired extras"); she has - oh, pass the smelling salts - a Fuck Off tattoo. But what really makes us wonder is the sense that Brody seems to be desperate to try and give a sense that she's somehow kicking against something - the tour is called The Most Hated Woman on Earth; she insists that "boys don't like it when you play with their toys, especially when you do it better"; Andy claims that everyone sees her as some sort of novelty - but it's just not true. Nobody is treating Brody as an oddity breaking out her gender; nobody is putting obstacles in the band's way; everyone is opening doors and writing enthusiastically. The lack of struggle matched with Brody's desperate desire to be treated like she's an outsider forcing her way in is hilarious - it recalls the Not The Nine O'Clock News Sketch where Mary and Joseph turn up in Bethlehem, fixated on giving birth in a stable, only for the innkeeper to offer them their choice of rooms, with the hot and cold and the full ensuite.

Dashboard Confessional get really snippy when itsd suggested there's something teenage relatinships breaking up about their music. "The median age at our gigs is around 24, 25... first year of college age" snaps Chris. Thus his weak spot is revealed - something to file away and use later.

There's an article on Friendster. How very now. Next week it'll probably be Ebay or something.

Why? Why? Kiss; Tom Baker; Jamie Reid; Bowie; Bruce Lee; Bobby Moore & Pele and Marc Bolan posters this week - it's the 70's, see. But they seem to have paniced that their readers might not know who these people are, so unlike last week, you get a little bit of text explaining them. Apparently Pele isn't just the guy who knows what he'd do in the event of erectile dysfunction - turns out he's a footballer.

reviews
live
the warlocks - king tuts (the third week running the first review has been from King Tuts) - "aloof to the point of boredom", 7
red hot chilli peppers, LA - "enough tunes to soak up the screams", 6
super furry animals, newport - "they do give a fuck", 8

albums
coldplay - live 2003 - "he dances like a loon", 9
ryan adams - rock n roll - "one brilliant desperate failure", 7
bmx bandits - down at the hop - "as wet as a September shower", 6
liz phair - liz phair - "hot white wank", 3

singles
sotw - desert sessions - crawl home - "dripping with sweat and psychodrama"
the hiss - back on the radio - "roll with it"

Stuart Braithwaite loves My Bloody Valentine - their records are "the dirtiest I own because all the songs are about shagging." Not totally true, that: quite a few were about death.

[UPDATE: Headings and tags added 20-09-08]

We really must thank them

Due to an idiotic internal postal service, we've only just got hold of last week's Music Week with the year end charts in it. Thanks, guys.

What's obvious about the state of music from looking at them is just how quickly singles acts burn out now - of the Top 50 selling singles acts this year, only nine were on the list for 2001; and only three of the top twenty were in the top 20 last year (Atomic Kitten, Blue and Westlife, since you ask.) The biggest selling seven inch was The Jam's anniversary repress of In The City, which still only managed 5,555 copies despite a pocket-pleasing 75pence price tag. But more seven inch singles were sold than any year since 1998, and although the format now accounts for only 0.6% of the singles market, that's double its 2001 share.

There's some oddities in the singles chart - topped by Will Young's Evergreen, a stain of shame that the year shall have to wear for all eternity. Addicted to Bass by Puretone is up at 37; surprisingly Tainted Love by Marilyn Manson made the 100; Sophie Ellis Bextor's Murder on the dancefloor was higher placed (87) than Get Over You (89), despite having been split its sales across the Christmas and New Year 2001-2 break.
Albums sales saw Frank Sinatra doing well for a dead bloke, moving up from 33rd to 30th biggest album act, and there was a plummeting in popularity for the Stereophonics which gives us hope for the future. But best selling album was Robbie Williams' escapology, edging the much better Pink from the top of the chart.

Now 53, 51 and 52 dominated the compilation chart; just ahead of Pop idol's Big Band Album.

The airplay charts are interesting - if you like this sort of thing. Overall, Kylie's love at first sight was the most played track on UK radio. Surprisingly, Shy FX Shake UR Body topped Radio 1's list (569 plays over the year); Travis' Flowers in The Window shuddered Radio 2 to a halt 199 times. The commercial network pressed the button to make Liberty X's Just a Little take us up to the news one million, one hundred and forty four thousand, six hundred and twenty two times - a cummulative audience of just over forty five million. And as if the fear of poison in the underground and the congestion charge wasn't bad enough, people in London had to endure 1,352 plays of How You Remind Me by Nickelback on Capital Radio.

On telly, MTV filled the few gaps where it wasn't going "We have the Osbournes - aren't we wonderful" by sticking Shakira's Whenever, Wherever on 750 times; it was also the most requested on The Box, getting 973 plays.