Soulobit: Howard Tate

Howard Tate, who disproved the dictum about no second acts in American lives, has died.

Tate was a major soul star in the 60s - he toured with Aretha Franklin and scored hits on the R&B chart, most successfully with this:

But he felt he was being sold short by the record labels; in the early 1970s, he quit music altogether. He destroyed his own records, and joined the insurance industry, a place where he felt he would be able to keep better track of what was owed to him.

So complete was his divorce from music that many believed he was dead - that's showbusiness, where not being on TV is the same as being in your tomb.

But insurance wasn't any kinder to him. After his daughter died in a fire, Tate spent a decade in thrall to addiction.

End of Act One.

A chance meeting and the rise of the CD conspired to bring Tate back - he'd cleaned up his life and become a minister when he bumped into one of Howard Melvin's former Blue Notes in a shop just as the reissue market kicked off by the CD had rediscovered his 1960s albums. By 2003, Tate was back in the studio; even landing a Grammy.

It's not clear if the industry ever paid him the money he felt he'd earned earlier.

Howard Tate was 72; his death was described as being due to natural causes.

Bookmarks - Internet stuff: Black Swan

Nice, brief New York Times piece on the city's pioneering Black Swan records:

In early 1921, Pace struck out on his own, taking most of the office staff with him to found Pace Phonograph Company — its first office was in his home on West 138th Street — and starting Black Swan Records. It was aimed at recording black performers at a time when many big record companies would not. Pace’s goal was to challenge white stereotypes by recording not just comic and blues songs, but also sacred and operatic music and serious ballads. Du Bois was one of Black Swan’s directors.

Avril Lavigne's record company hates her record, too

Bless the poor souls at RCA who tried to suggest to Avril Lavigne that her new album might not be very good:

She told the News of the World: "It's hurtful actually. I put so much into this record, but the record company were kind of cold. But what it came down to was they really wanted me to go in a different direction and that was not OK with me.

"I've been doing this for ten years now and I write my own music. All of these new people were telling me what to do and I was like: 'NO, NO, NO!' This is my fourth record and I'm 26 so it's time for me to do something a little different. I love this record and I'm really proud of it."

Perhaps the people at RCA remembered that Avril tried "something a little different" the album didn't actually sell that well, and figured that given that her entire career is based around pretending to be a teenage girl, and more aimed at flogging those awful books and brackish perfume, "somthing different" might be a mis-step. Like Black Lace trying to write an opera.

Bono's friends: How to save the music industry

This should be interesting. Paul McGuinness, manager of Dutch-for-tax-purposes band U2, has decided to tell us, via the medium of GQ, how to save the music industry.

Let's not dismiss him out of hand, eh? Let's listen to what the man has to say.

How to save the Music Industry
By Paul McGuinness

Actually, you know what. Let's do a spot of dismissing out of hand. Because that heading is just packed-full of assumptions, isn't it? It assumes that there's a Music Industry which needs saving. That's worth saving. That what McGuinness thinks of as the Music Industry - which must include filing tax returns in a way that reduces your contribution to society to the minimum; filling trucks full of equipment and driving them to sports stadia; a record an album, tour an album structure - is desirable and sustainable and in some how "saveable".

Sorry. You were saying, Paul?

Even after three decades managing the world's biggest rock band...

Wow. I think I know a thing or two about music, and I had no idea that Paul McGuinness managed The Rolling Stones as well as U2.

Oh. Really? He meant... Oh.

I have a lifetime hero as far from the world of U2 as you could ever get.

Thinking, thinking. Someone humble and who didn't collapse into lucrative self-parody after the third album?

Or do you mean that person who had Bono's trousers? Presumably, after the court case and all, they're quite estranged.

He was a feisty 19th-century composer of light orchestral music. His name was Ernest Bourget.

Oh. Midmarket composer whose music mostly worked as background and who is remembered nowadays for kicking up a fuss about copyright. McGuinness fills in the tale:

It was Bourget who in 1847, while enjoying a meal in a Paris restaurant, suddenly heard the orchestra playing one of his own compositions. He was startled - of course he had not been paid or asked permission for this. So he resolved the problem himself: he walked out of the restaurant without paying his bill.

Aha. So doing a runner from a restaurant is a noble act - providing it's done in the name of copyright reform. Never mind that - in this story - Bourget hasn't actually ended up financially worse off, at worst losing potential earnings, but he has eaten real food, bought by the restaurant, cooked by people, served by people. All of those have made an actual loss.

Even when talking about 1847, the current music industry can't understand the vital difference between stealing a thing and an unlicensed performance.

Bourget was in the same financial position as when he went into the restaurant; the restaurant wasn't.

Paul McGuinness' big hero is a highly strung thief.

Bourget's action was a milestone in the history of copyright law. The legal wrangling that followed led to the establishment of the first revenue-collection system for composers and musicians. The modern music industry has a lot to thank him for.

While the rest of us might have a few issues.

Interestingly, you'll hear from the upper floors of record labels and collection agencies the claim that if there's no copyright law, there will be no music. And yet, as McGuinness has just demonstrated, there was music before there was copyright law, and some people were doing well enough to dine out on their earnings.

Assuming Bourget wasn't always going to do a runner. Maybe as he was flouncing out the door, he was thinking "that's a bit of luck, I was going to have to do the 'there's a pubic hair in my gravy' routine if they'd not played my song."

I was thinking of Ernest Bourget on a January day two years ago when, in front of some of the world's best-known music managers gathered in a conference hall in the seafront Palais de Festivals in Cannes, I plunged into the raging debate about internet piracy and the future of music.

An industry which has its gatherings in the South Of France while pleading impending poverty might be considered to be taking the piss a little.

I had been invited to speak by the organisers of the Midem Music Convention - the "Davos" of the music industry - where, along the corridors, in the cafes and under the palm trees, the music industry's great and good debated the Big Question that dominates our business today: how are we going to fund its future?

Here's a clue: don't waste your money sending executives on expensive beanos; try investing in bands instead.

Just as a sidebar, the only thing more sickening than someone using the phrase "the great and the good" is when that person is describing a group of which he is a member.

My message was quite simple - and remains so today.

Oh, good. I was afraid it might have been in Latin.

We are living in an era when "free" is decimating the music industry and is starting to do the same to film, TV and books.

Decimating, you say? Just removing one-tenth of the industry, then? That's pretty good news, as a lot of people were predicting it might do some major damage.

Unless you don't actually know what "decimate" means.

Yet for the world's internet service providers, bloated by years of broadband growth, "free music" has become a multi-billion dollar bonanza.

No it hasn't, as their business is hooking people up to the internet. Indeed, the more people download more 'free music' (or paid for, actually), the worse it is for them, as increased traffic costs them.

McGuinness could be suggesting that without the chance to get unlicensed music, nobody would have bothered to get an internet connection, and thus it's this bonanza which has created their customer base.

I'm sure he isn't just assuming this to be the case, and has weighed all the other possible drivers - the iPlayer, YouTube videos of how to cook cakes, the ability to surf while making a phone call, broadband allowing more than one person to check their email at once in a household, working from home, doing school projects, Skype and eBay and Amazon and iTunes and blogging and remotely watching Old Faithful blow - and decided that, nope, if there was no unlicensed music on the net, nobody would bother.

What has gone so wrong?

Well, firstly, Paul, you've made the classic mistake of assuming what matters to you is the vital part of the puzzle, then you've started to tell us your industry has been undermined while telling us about your expense-account jaunt to France... oh, you didn't mean that, did you?

And what can be done now to put it to right?

I'm sure in the original version, 'put it right' did appear correctly as 'cling to the status quo that a very few of us have been doing nicely out of'.

Paul tells us that he was "amazed" when the speech was picked up and bounced around the world. Why does he think that happened?

Well-known artists very seldom speak out on piracy. There are several reasons for this. It isn't seen as cool or attractive to their fans - Lars Ulrich from Metallica was savaged when he criticised Napster. Other famous artists sometimes understandably feel too rich and too successful to be able to speak out on the issue without being embarrassed.

Or perhaps they thought "well, it's been a nice run, but clearly it was never going to go on forever."

But McGuinness thinks there might be another problem: Badgers.

Oh, sorry, bloggers. Not badgers:

Then there is the backlash from the bloggers - those anonymous gremlins who wait to send off their next salvo of bilious four-letter abuse whenever a well-known artist sticks their head above the parapet. When Lily Allen recently posted some thoughtful comments about how illegal file-sharing is hurting new developing acts, she was ravaged by the online mob and withdrew from the debate.

Sure, there are some people online who behave like utter arses - although, here's a funny thing, Paul, most bloggers also suffer from the abuse brigands. Because what you've done there is lazily characterise everyone who writes and engages online as being boorish louts.

The thing that drove Lily Allen to withdraw was not mindless abuse, but the sudden swamping of her simplistic viewpoints by mostly well-reasoned argument.

Likewise, most of the reactions I saw to your simplistic bout of special pleading were measured and, while mocking, an attempt to engage and debate.

Jesus, it must have been a very, very long time since anyone ever told you they disagreed with you if your reaction is to just bellow 'look at these BLOGGERS with their TIRADES'.

Of course, then Bono stepped in:

he wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times in January and he pulled no punches. "A decade's worth of music file sharing and swiping has made clear the people it hurts are the creators... and the people this reverse Robin-Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business." Bono is a guy who, when he decides to support a cause, does so with enormous passion. But even he was amazed by the backlash when he was mauled by the online crowd.

Yes, there he was writing something that is controversial - he must have known that the 'look, we're getting nowhere chasing people who own computers, so let's harry the people who own the telegraph poles' line was controversial, right? - Bono's being controversial, and he's amazed that people responded?

Note, by the way, the characterisation of 'disagreement' as a 'backlash'. To be an actual backlash, you'd have had to have had a frontlash, and I don't recall anyone ever saying 'that Bono has the right idea about filesharing' in the front place.

The reaction might have been a lashing, but simply because people are telling you you're wrong doesn't make them wrong.

Something a lot of people are interested in generating a noisy debate online. And Bono and Paul are surprised.

These people really, really don't understand the internet at all, do they?

In fact, it's almost as if they're willfully reveling in their ignorance:

You have to ask how these inchoate, abusive voices are helping shape the debate about the future of music.

You might also ask how a bunch of out-of-touch, middle-aged (mainly) men swilling back cocktails on the shareholders' pound in the South Of France, dismissing any attempt at debate as "incohate" and "abusive" are doing that, too.

I rarely do news interviews but when I spoke to the influential technology news site CNET last autumn I was set on by a horde of bloggers.

You were not "set on", you silly boy. If you go on CNET, you will be responded to. The bloggers weren't setting themselves on you, they were trying to engage with you.

Except I think you mean commenters, rather than bloggers, but - hey - they're on the end of a computer, so they're all the same thing, right?

One of them was called "Anonymous Coward."

Um... Paul...

I'm not worried about criticism from Anonymous Coward.

Um... you do know that nobody is actually called Anonymous Coward, don't you? You're really not smirkingly pointing at Anonymous Coward and snickering that 'hey, even he himself admits what he is'?

Perhaps when McGuinness sees a letter in the paper from 'Name And Address Supplied' he really thinks there's a Mr. Supplied who has shared his views with the paper.

Still, you're not afraid of a placeholder name. So what's the problem?

But I am worried about how many politicians may be influenced by his rantings.

But you said they were incohate and abusive. What politician would be influenced by "rantings" that were obviously so? Unless, you know, they're not ranting at all, and were actually counter-arguments.

And there are a lot of them saying you're wrong, aren't there? It'd be terrible if politicians started to listen to the majority viewpoint rather than the rich one, wouldn't it. No wonder Mr. A. Coward worries you so.

The level of abuse and sheer nastiness of it was extraordinary. Without Anonymous Coward and his blogosphere friends, I think many artists and musicians would be more upfront about the industry's current predicament.

Really? You don't think that most artists - the vast majority - have been so screwed over by record labels nickel and dime-ing them through recoupment, getting them to sign rotten contracts that only a successful few can ever challenge, dumping them after one album, that perhaps they don't speak up because they'll shed no tears for the people who did them down?

Do you really think that artists are afraid of these incohate bloggers?

They might tell the world what they really feel about people who steal their music.

You're telling us - with a straight face - that musicians are worried sick that their livelihoods are going to disappear, but not saying anything in case someone posts a 'you greedy bastard' on their MySpace page?

You may or may not think everyone blogging is a petty bully, but you clearly think that everyone else is as stupid as a burlap sack shoved full of unsold Cactus World News CDs.

Quite a few musicians do make their views known; others make their opposing views known. Many - knowing that even if some cash is raked off the internet it'll go straight back to Warners head offices - probably don't care much either way.

Still, Paul has identified this cowering massive, and has decided to wade in on their behalf.

It is two years on from my Cannes speech. Some things are better in the music world, but unfortunately the main problem is still just as bad as it ever was. Artists cannot get record deals. Revenues are plummeting. Efforts to provide legal and viable ways of making money from music are being stymied by piracy. The latest figures from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) shown that 95 per cent of all music downloaded is illegally obtained and unpaid for.

Those two categories aren't the same thing, are they? It is possible to pay for something while still obtaining it without licence, and there are a gazillion ways for a legally-owned track to have become yours without changing hands.

You'll also note that McGuinness doesn't offer any further explanation about this eye-catching figure; probably because it's all guesswork. The actual figure of 95% is for "unauthorized" obtaining of music; the same report paints a balancing, sunny picture of increasing digital sales and a healthy $3.7billion digital market worldwide. Odd that McGuinness leaves that bit out.

Indigenous music industries from Spain to Brazil are collapsing.

Well, if by "indigenous music industries" you mean the bits owned by international conglomerates, the same companies which have buggered up their English-language businesses now getting it wrong in Spanish and Portuguese too. (Of course, the dumping of their English-language acts into foreign territories have also helped this struggle by "indigenous" industries.

An independent study endorsed by trade unions says Europe's creative industries could lose more than a million jobs in the next five years.

Interesting - by which I mean sloppy - that McGuinness didn't actually say what this survey was.

It was Building a Digital Economy: The Importance of Saving Jobs in the EU's Creative Industries and, far from being independent, was put together by a consultant group, Tera, for the International Chambers Of Commerce. The ICC are a self-appointed body who spend most of their time trying to shape legislation to favour their business members around the world. For such a group to publish a 'something must be done, probably with laws' report is about as independent as a news report on Myanmar Tonight.

Maybe the message is finally getting through that this isn't just about fewer limos for rich rock stars.

Yes. It's about multinational corporations. We've always understood that.

Of course this isn't crippling bands like U2 and it would be dishonest to claim it was. I've always believed artists and musicians need to take their business as seriously as their music. U2 understood this. They have carefully pursued careers as performers and songwriters, signed good deals and kept control over their life's work.

Also, U2 make a large chunk of their money from property development anyway. So they're good.

Today, control over their work is exactly what young and developing performers are losing. It is not their fault. It is because of piracy and the way the internet has totally devalued their work.

Funny thing is, there's a lot of artists who love the internet because it allows them to keep control over their work - they don't need to do massive deals with record labels; they're not being forced to sell a million copies and are happy being able to sell a few thousand, and organise gigs and sell their own merchandise which keeps them in funds. Rather than seeing the internet as 'devaluing' their work - how crap is an artist who can only find value when their work is in a pocketbook - it's giving them a chance to change their relationship with their audience.

They don't want saving, and they certainly don't want to be taken back into a time when four international businesses would hold sway over who would be heard, and who would be successful.

By now, McGuinness is only down to the end of page one. He decides it's now time for a bit of history. How did we get here?

It is facile to blame record companies.

Yes, can you think of anything more facile than blaming a business for its own failure?

Whoever those old Canutes were, the executives who wanted to defend an old business model rather than embrace a new one, they left the business long ago.

Really?

Let's take, at random, Universal.

Their CEO is Doug Morris, who has held the top spot since 1995. To be fair, Morris is stepping down next year; his replacement will be Lucian Grainge. He's been the CEO of Universal in the UK since 2001.

Over at Sony, Rolf Schmidt-Holtz has held senior positions in the company since the last decade of the old century.

It's funny, that with so many of the comfiest seats in the Music Industry being held by bottoms which sat in place during the Napster wars, that it turns out all the Canutes have "long since left the industry".

(By the way, Paul - Canute wasn't trying to turn the waves back, he was trying to show his acolytes that he couldn't. If the Canutes have left the music industry, it would be the ones who tried to tell their boards there was no way to stop the digital tide coming in, and failed.)

Last year, more than a quarter of all the music purchased globally was sold via the internet and mobile phones. The record companies know they have to monetise the internet or they will not survive.

Yes. I think we remember how excited all the labels were at the prospect of selling online.

Perhaps Paul doesn't realise that the internet has old articles on it? Maybe he thinks we can't check.

He then suggests "free" is the problem:

Today, "free" is still the creative industries' biggest problem.
In America there are no more Tower Records or Virgin records stores and many independent stores are just about hanging on. Consumers now buy CDs in a bookstore such as Barnes & Noble or Borders.

Eh? Surely the decline of the bricks and mortar stores isn't anything to do with free - or not so much - as the undercutting by businesses like Target and Tesco, and online stores like Amazon. Plus a couple of terrible business deals on location and financing of their businesses.

And did he just suggest that Barnes And Noble's lovingly presented racks of CD are a problem rather than an opportunity? "No wonder we're in trouble, people bought our product in a new location." What?

Things are changing, though, says Paul:

Today we take a far more sober view as we see what damage "free" has done to the creative industries, above all to music.

Yes, you won't get anyone like the music company Downtown launching a service like RCRDLBL which gives away free music from across the majors, what with free being so bad and all.

Oh.

Governments around the world today, led by Britain and France are now passing laws that, if effectively implemented, would dramatically limit the traffic of free music, films and TV programmes.

I think - though I'm guessing - that McGuinness is talking about various bits of three strikes legislation. I'm not sure his confidence that they'll be ever effectively used is any more misplaced than the belief that other governments are going to follow Britain and France. Given that many governments are quite happy to let their nationals issue homemade DVDs of shakily-filmed copies of Piranha 3D, I wouldn't be holding my breath.

Numerous commercial strategies have tried to deal with "free." Today, many believe music subscription is the Holy Grail that will bring money flowing back into the business. I agree with them. A per-household monthly payment to Spotify for all the music you want seems to me a great deal. I like the idea of the subscription packages from Sky Songs too. These surely point the way to the future where music is bundled or streamed and paid for by usage rather than by units sold. Why should the price paid not correspond to the number of times the music is "consumed"?

Well, here's an idea: because consumers like to buy things, not rent them. I have a mug on my desk with an amusing picture of a cow on it. Had I been expected to pay a royalty everytime I slurped out of it, it would have remained in the store. I've got a subscription to The Guardian, and would no more expect them to bill me if I read the Sports section one day than I would demand a refund if I didn't get round to the op-ed pages one day.

The greedy little glint in your eye at the thought of not allowing us to own our music, but have to pay a toll every time we want to hear a song marks out the difference between someone who cares about The Industry and someone who cares about music. Having got a copyright law which effectively means you get paid for your days' work over and over again, you're now trying to concoct a situation where your over-extended paydays multiply a thousand times over.

I know you don't like being abused, but I really can't think of a phrase more apt than "you really are a chiseling little yamstain, aren't you?". But that isn't incohate abused. That's abuse that has been thought through. It's raging abuse, but it isn't ranting.

Here's a surprise, though: McGuinness then turns his fire on Rupert Murdoch for being nowhere near gung-ho enough:

Newspapers and magazines are trying to reinvent their businesses to deal with "free." It started with a honeymoon while mainstream titles opened up websites and attracted vast numbers of online readers, dwarfing their physical subscriptions. But the honeymoon has come to a miserable end. Newspaper circulation and advertising revenues have fallen sharply. Rupert Murdoch has re-introduced the "paywall" for some of his flagship newspaper titles such as the Times and the Sunday Times. Murdoch has great influence - his empire straddles all the businesses with stakes in the debate -- from the social network MySpace to the Wall Street Journal to Fox Movie Studios and the broadcaster Sky. I'm disappointed that he didn't take a closer look at the music industry's experience and see the dark side of "free" earlier.

But Murdoch's free stuff was stuff he was happily giving away. And remind me, how much does MySpace charge for sign-ups right now? It's... oh... what's the word again? Oh, free, isn't it?

I love the idea that McGuinness thinks that somehow the music industry is leading Murdoch into a world of paywalls, too.

(Again, just a little fact-check, Paul: newspaper circulations have been falling for decades, and advertising revenues have been tanking because of the recession. You might have heard about that, it was in the papers. Both the free ones, and the paid-for ones.)

McGuinness then dismisses the idea of lawsuits - he never supported them, and they're terrible PR. But, hush, we're finally getting to the point:

So what's the answer to "free"? It starts by challenging a myth - the one that says free content is an inexorable fact of life brought on by the unstoppable advance of technology. It is not. It is in fact part of the commercial agenda of powerful technology and telecoms industries.

This is such a stupid claim that it's hard to believe anyone at GQ let it appear in the magazine.

He's effectively saying that AOL and BT willed Napster into existence.

Yes.

Go on, Paul. AOL - itself a content provider, and once part of a movies-to-TV organisation - and the other ISPs want consumers to steal things. Do explain:

Look at the figures as free music helped drive an explosion of broadband revenues in the past decade. Revenues from the "internet access" (fixed line and mobile) business quadrupled from 2004 to 2009 to $226bn. Passing them on the way down, music industry revenues fell in the same time period from $25bn to $16bn. Free content has helped fuel the vast profits of the technology and telecoms industries.

There's absolutely no way at all those are two totally unrelated facts. During the same period, McDonalds opened 1,000 restuarants, and that must have been fuelled by free music, too, right?

But you'll have some statistics as to actual usage which will prove this, right?

Do people want more bandwidth to speed up their e-mails or to download music and films as rapidly as possible?

Oh. You don't.

It's probably a bit of both, Paul. But watching Hollyoaks on 4OD isn't harming anyone's business. It is actually part of Channel 4's business.

I'm sure the people running ISPs are big music fans. But their free-music bonanza has got to stop. That will happen in two ways: by commercial partnership, with deals such as Sky Songs' unlimited-streaming subscription service; and by ISPs taking proportionate responsible steps to stop customers illegally file sharing on their networks.

Hang about, though: you've been smudging the idea of unlicensed and licensed free stuff - Murdoch had the right to give away the Sunday Times when he was doing so - and yet now, all of a sudden, the idea of record labels and artists sharing for free has vanished from your mix altogether. Where does that fit in? Or have you not thought that bit through yet?

What's that word for a not fully thought through argument? Inchoate, isn't it?

But, hey, Paul's been thinking:

I've done a lot of debating on this issue in the past two years. I have walked the corridors of Brussels, learned about the vast resources of the telecoms industry's lobbying machinery and encountered truly frightening naivety about the basics of copyright and intellectual property rights from politicians who should know better. More than once I have heard elected representatives describe paying for music as a "tax."

Well, if you have no choice but to pay it, then that would be near the right word, wouldn't it? You pay for a record; if you have to pay a portion of your broadband fee to the music industry, that'd be a tax. It could be a flat-rate licence if you'd rather it work that way. But, yes, that would be what it is.

I am convinced that ISPs are not going to help the music and film industry voluntarily.

Why exactly should they? They're also not doing anything to help the battle to save the high street bakers. Besides your unproven claim that people must be using their connections for evil, why would any company be obliged to help another? You're part of the capitalist society, Paul. That's what capitalism is.

Some things have got to come with the force of legislation. President Sarkozy understood that point when he became the first head of state to champion laws to require ISPs to reduce piracy in France. In Britain, the major political parties have understood it, too. Following the passing of new anti-piracy laws in April's Digital Economy Act, Britain and France now have some of the world's best legal environments for rebuilding our battered music business.

But it won't work, Paul. For a man trumpeting his head off about how he knew suing consumers would be a failure a few lines back, why have you suddenly become convinced that a piece of legislation - however appalling - that says 'it's still not on to take music without paying, like what that other law says' is going to make any difference? All it means is the ISPs will also be wasting their time and money in partnership with the record labels.

If your roof is leaking and getting your bed wet, putting another duvet on top of the wet one isn't fixing the roof.

At the heart of the approach France and Britain are taking is the so-called "Graduated Response" by which ISPs would be required to issue warnings to serious offenders to stop illegal file sharing. This is the most sensible legislation to emerge in the past decade to deal with "free." It is immeasurably better than the ugly alternative of suing hundreds of thousands of individuals.

Ah yes, how much less ugly to have the prospect of headlines like 'Unable to revise - because her brother downloaded a U2 song'; 'Grandmother thrown off internet after neighbour hijacked her wi-fi - "I can't talk to my grandkids in Australia" sobs 92 year-old' and all the rest.

At least suing has some sort of court overlooking what's going on.

McGuinness ends with a positive future - every song available all the time on any device, higher quality sound files ("MP3 files sound terrible" he reveals; they don't, of course, as most people are quite happy with them, and those who really care don't use them anyway) and a world where music companies are in the vanguard:

The mindset regarding free music is changing. Managers and artists I meet take the issue far more seriously than they did before. Newspaper editors no longer think the problems of music are from another world - they actually ask our advice on how to address them.

Seriously? Jesus, if you're asking EMI how to cope in the internet age you must be in the quicksands. It's like calling Alan Carr for beauty tips.

It may be that the crisis for music has now got so bad that the issue of "free" is really being properly understood for the first time.

Or rather, what you've done is a desperate bid to try and recast the argument in slightly different terms but still ignored the fundamental issue here.

You can't stop people passing tracks about. You can't stop people taping off the radio, or its 21st century equivalent. You can't do anything to alter the basic fact that the supply of a specific digital track is virtually unlimited, and that the logic of that is that the end user unit price is almost nothing.

And you can applaud Sarkozy until your hands bleed, and stalk the corridors of power forever; you can peer at AT&T's profits and mutter how it isn't fair. But it doesn't change the basic truth.

You're not selling individual packages of music to consumers any more. That business has gone, and every day you spend trying to bring it back is a day wasted, a day further away from the reinvention your business needs.

Embracing Spotify and the likes is good, and positive - you shouldn't try to pretend that it's a music business initiative, because liars aren't attractive, but it's great that you're finally not just hitting every new idea on its head.

But please: stop trying to talk up the idea that we can still be the 1960s; stop trying to create a Presbyterian-style campaign around the idea that most people will not pay for some of their music as being a moral ill. It just makes you sound ridiculous.

Oh, and by the way: while typing this, I've been listening to all the lovely free music on offer on Island Records' website. I think you might know a couple of people down there, Paul - do you want to go and give them your little lecture on how free music devalues everyone and how the music industry is so against it?

Goldsworthy chooses UK over DFA

Tim Goldsworthy has, more or less, severed his ties with DFA Records and returned to the UK.

Although this has prompted a rash of 'end of an era' pieces, Resident Advisor observes that it's just a geographical reflection of an extant existential distance:

[Goldsworthy] points out that he has done very little work with DFA in the past two years, though he would be willing to do more production or remix work for the label "if something good came along and I got offered it."

Apparently, Goldsworthy didn't bother to let DFA know he was off. Nobody wants to have a conversation in which they say "actually, I think Britain's a much better place to raise kids..."

Mail On Sunday launches a record label

Having long churned out covermount albums, and this year having tried giving away brand new albums, the Mail On Sunday has decided the logical next step is to launch its own record label:

Speaking to Music Week, The Mail on Sunday editor, Peter Wright, said: "With a newspaper we are used to making decisions very quickly and turning things around very quickly.

"There are some wonderfully talented people in the music industry, but I think they are a bit traditional in their thinking."

Well, that's undeniable, but I'm not convinced that 'making quick decisions' would be the key skill that you require when running a record label. Still, they're giving it a go.

They're releasing ACM Gospel Choir's Silent Night as a download this week - they really feel it's a contender for number one. A choir singing a carol in December, huh - wow, that's going to show traditionalists in the music industry a thing or two about new ideas.

The Mail will then wrap an AMC Gospel album up with the usual right-wing hate-whispering for a giveaway.

Record labels more obsolete than earlier today

One of the great things about record labels, though, is that they provide a vital physical infrastructure. Sure, anyone can publish online but getting a record into a shop? That's quite a big deal. There'll always be room for labels, as it's not like anyone is going to make releasing physical product as simple as putting stuff online, is it?

Oh. That's what Discmakers are claiming they're going to do:

Disc Makers has launched Elite Artist Services, a new imprint that will make it even easier for established artists to strike out on their own. Disc Makers, one of the industry's most popular CD and DVD manufacturers, has said that the Elite service will provide the infrastructure necessary for artists to manufacture, market and distribute their CDs and downloads without the help of major label. Elite will even offer graphic design, packaging, mastering, warehouse storage and merchandise for their clients. The service will also offer download sales through the artists' website, iTunes, Amazon and Rhapsody.

Doubtless the RIAA are desperately looking for some evidence of how this could be sued out of existence. Let's hope we get a similar service in the UK.

Labels must change

Peter Gabriel - wearing his We7 hat, of course - has called on record labels to reinvent themselves:

"There's still room for record companies but they should reinvent themselves as a service industry and not as owners.

"The structure of the old album and waiting for that to be finished still has some merit but you can do a lot of other things and I think it should be a lot looser and mixed up."

You have to wonder why Gabriel believes that there is a role for record companies, as if it's a given. There might be a way for those companies to continue to exist, certainly, but the radical reinvention they'll require means they won't be the companies they are now. In other words, in the long run, the record companies of today may only have their stock market initials in common with the beasts they are tomorrow.

It's surprising that Gabriel has assumed there must be a role - it's like telling coal delivery companies that they'll still have a role when the country goes all nuclear; it's simply a matter of giving their delivery team lead trousers.

Alan McGee doesn't love the companies

We're sure that Alan McGee's latest spot of record-company slapping is in no way motivated by the failure of Poptones, oh no:

"I'd recommend a band not to go to any record label, I think they're all fucking rubbish.

"You're better off doing it yourself. They're living in the past, it's like owning a tram company or something."

Like running a tram company? Like the one that runs the trams in Manchester, do you mean, or the one that runs the Croydon trams? You really think that owning a record company is akin to being in charge of a modern, rapid, urban transport network?

We suspect he probably meant something more like a steam railway, didn't he?

Only Guy Hands would invest so much in a dying business

The guy who tried to cash a $360 billion cheque claimed that his girlfriend's mother had given him the money to start a record label. Presumably she was only investing for ten per cent of the stock...

Blackie Lawless blames internet for all world's ills

Remembering when all this round here was fields, Blackie Lawless has been muttering about how everything's rubbish these days. The press doesn't come up to scratch:

"The press has turned so tabloid, so hopelessly obsessed with bullshit."

A man who makes his living singing Animal (Fuck Like A Beast) might, you could argue, find himself in some difficulty complaining that the newspaper industry has dumbed down in the last few years.

Lawless also complains about the internet:

"What people never seem to be able to realize is that there is one, and just one, reason why we'll never see more bands the size of AC/DC or PINK FLOYD. These were bands that were allowed to try and fail, allowed to grow, allowed to go on at their own pace, and evolve without record companies or other stress factors interfering. Do you think AC/DC would have been able to make an album like 'Highway To Hell' if they had not been allowed to do things at their own pace? I don't. Music needs support, bands need support, and stealing an artist's work will never ever be labeled 'support.' Illegal downloading does not support the artists; illegal downloading is one of the biggest reasons why popular music is past its peak. Most new bands are not able to play, they're not able to write decent songs, and will be forgotten before this interview's over; and the reason for this is exactly what I've told you now. They're not given the opportunity to try and fail, and take the time to learn their craft properly, and illegal downloading is a major factor in this."

The only trouble with this theory is that it's wrong. The 90s offered no acts the size of the big names of the 80s, like Madonna or U2. The 80s couldn't compete with the size of acts like the Floyd of the 70s. That deacade, in turn, never got out of the shadow of the Beatles. This isn't because music started to suffer from pre-emptive internet panic but more because more and more bands were able to play more and more outlets, and everything got shared out a little more. It's wrong to say that popular music is past its peak - Americans bought more music last year than they did the year before - it's just harder to command a massive portion of public attention in a very, very competitive market. The internet hasn't helped with that, but it's not because of illegal downloads - it's down to the ever-increasing number of platforms and outlets and places to hear bands.

Lawless has a point that bands aren't able to develop at their own pace any more - but that's got nothing to do with the internet, either, but is down to the record labels demanding success on the first album or dropping the bands on the spot. This tendency was well in place before the music industry started to grapple with online. But if Lawless is telling us that the WASPs of the future will fall to pieces before they get going... well, that doesn't sound so bad, does it?

Reverend and the music industry remakers

How huge would you say Reverend and The Makers are? Big enough for their poster to hover in the background of some scenes of Corrie; had the Melody Maker still been going, they'd have been in with a shout of a Christmas double issue cover shoot (some sort of pun on Reverend/Nativity, we'd guess). But they're hardly a global-straddling brand, like Prince or Radiohead. They're not even as big as Bush when Bush turned their back on traditional labels.

Which makes the band's decision to release an album for free, without bothering to get their label involved, or to charge for it, all the more interesting. Big labels are getting used to established acts telling them the balance of power has changed; now smaller labels are getting the same treatment from smaller bands. And, naturally, they're not happy.

Mark Jones, boss of R&TM's label, Wall Of Sound, is upset:

: “There’s a validity in that [releasing the songs acoustically, free, before doing a full album], but maybe he should have discussed it first, have a plan!

“I’ve come so far with this [working with McClure] that I feel like it’s been taken away from me. I’m passionate about his music.

“An artist like Jon McClure needs the right platform to deliver what he needs to do to the public and I think we ddi that really well. He’s got to be one of the most important artists in the country, but I feel hugely let down. I had no idea he wanted to do this.”

It's perhaps bad form on McClure's part to not have talked it through first, but it's probable that Jones is being overly pessimistic. As soon as McClure played those songs as works-in-progress live, they'd have been bootlegged and digitally packaged and passed amongst the interested in an instant - this is just a smarter way of making your fans feel valued (and, importantly, trusted) while keeping some degree of control. It's unlikely to have an impact on sales of the finished product, and certainly not a negative effect.

Still, there is much else for Jones to feel worried about. Clearly, the days of seven or eight album contracts are vanishing, and the terms of the deal between label and band are shifting: effectively, if a label believes that they're making an investment in a band's career rather than simply putting up the cash for an album, they're going to be in for a bit of a shock.

Interscope Records move Josh Homme away from Jimmy Iovine for the staff Christmas lunch

Josh Homme has a somewhat low opinion of his record label, it turns out:

"Fuck the labels, man, they suck. The last thing they're stripping down is their own expense accounts and shit. I mean, (President) Jimmy Iovine of Interscope Records takes a private jet or rides first class to tell a band they don't get tour support...I'm not gonna be quiet because the American label, not Canada, not Europe, but our American label's fucking us like crazy, so fuck them...I'm not even bitter, people say labels are evil, no. They're just lame."

"They can't do anything to me. That's the difference...they can't stop me from being me and from playing, but they can lose their jobs and have to fucking work at Shakey's pizza like they should've all along."

"I have a retarded record company. They're all locked in their hysteria of a business that they don't understand, you know. Playing it safe and being panicked have no business in music."

He also added that they've been skimping on office supplies, buying off-brand sticky notes that don't actually fucking stick to any fucking thing and cheap biros that burst in your fucking pockets.

Universal CEO: The new Shmoo

Rewriting history is usually a matter for the victors, so it's a little surprising to see Universal CEO Doug Morris being given a chance to try to address the perception that the record industry didn't see digital coming.

He tells Wired that the music industry knew what was about to happen, it just didn't know what to do:

Morris insists there wasn't a thing he or anyone else could have done differently. "There's no one in the record company that's a technologist," Morris explains. "That's a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn't. They just didn't know what to do. It's like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?"

Personally, I would hire a vet. But to Morris, even that wasn't an option. "We didn't know who to hire," he says, becoming more agitated. "I wouldn't be able to recognize a good technology person — anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me."

The mental image - of a bunch of guys in suits gathered round a boardroom, hearing the sound of the future but afraid to do anything about it because they didn't have anyone with the skills to help, and incapable of even developing a strategy which could find someone who had those skills.

Seriously, this man is meant to be in charge of a major international company, and he's asking for sympathy that he felt incapable of popping an advert in a newspaper to hire someone to look at their digital strategy? Are we to assume that the secretarial services at Universal are still provided using Remingtons, card files and carbon paper because - you know - those computer guys could be offering "a good bullshit story."

Morris is doing the rounds to try and promote Total Music - the desperate attempt to break iTunes' growing dominance in the US music retail scene by 'persuading' mp3 player and phone manufacturers to bundle a prepaid subscription with their product. Morris only wants to see the artists paid, you understand:

"Our strategy is to have the people who create great music be paid properly," he says. "We need to protect the music. I know that."

He doesn't actually mean artists, though. He means the men in the boardrooms.

Morris believes his industry has become something of a... well, a Shmoo:

"There was a cartoon character years ago called the Shmoo," he says in a raspy tenor. "It was in Li'l Abner. The Shmoo was a nice animal, a nice fella, but if you were hungry, you cut off a piece of him and put onions on it, and if you wanted to play football you just made him like a football. You could do anything to him. That's what was happening to the music business. Everyone was treating the music business like it was a Shmoo."

The music business is, indeed, like the Shmoo. The Shmoo last appeared in 1977 and has been a fading memory ever since.

But that's not what he means:

"It was only a couple of years ago that we said, What's going on here?' Really, an album that someone worked on for two years — is that worth only $9, $10, when people pay two bucks for coffee in Starbucks?"

Now, there's an interesting question - the answer, sadly for Morris, is 'probably, yes, even more so now'.

Coffee is a product which you can only sell once - you grow a bunch of beans, you grind them, you sell the coffee - having first shipped the beans halfway around the world. Starbucks also runs a huge chain of coffee shops, with all the costs that that implies, and with - pretty much - only the sales of coffee to make the cash back on.

When you make a record, you do the work once, and can sell the results over and over again. CDs are sold in stores where they're - most often - not the main product being sold and so don't have to bear the weight of the retail network.

Looking at it from the other side, there was some research a few years back which showed the average CD in the US got played less than once. Even if we assume that things have got better, and lets say each CD is played twice before being discarded, a large coffee from Starbucks will give probably about half an hour of enjoyment; a new CD possibly a couple of hours. That seems to suggest that coffee drinkers are paying $4 an hour for pleasure; CD purchasers $4.50-$5. Seems fair to us.

But Morris doesn't just deal in coffee metaphors - oh no:

All the sharing of the music, right? Is it correct that people share their music, fill up these devices with music they haven't paid for? If you had Coca-Cola coming through the faucet in your kitchen, how much would you be willing to pay for Coca-Cola? There you go," he says. "That's what happened to the record business."

A chilling image. The trouble is, of course, that people get water coming through their taps, and yet the bottled water industry is worth $5 billion in the US alone. A large chunk of it - funnily enough - sold by the Coca-Cola Company. You can sell a product that people have on stream, providing it's delivered in a form which offers convenience and a pleasant experience. Perhaps if Morris spent more time thinking about how the Coca-Cola company has built a sizeable business selling something that people can get for free from their taps, and learned the lessons, he wouldn't be watching his company go down the plughole.

[Thanks to Michael M for the link]

Allen plots boutique label

There's a nasty rumbling in the Daily Mirror that, having dumped her management to "go it alone", Lily Allen is plotting a record label of her own. Because artist-fronted labels have such a great track record, don't they?

3AM offers evidence of her plans that she's lined up two bands, block-booked a two-month bank of studio time and explored the terms and conditions for iTunes distribution. Sorry, that should read "their evidence is she's spoken to Kanye West and appeared as a judge on a TV talent show".

Ginuwine and the fake

Ginuwine has, according to a lawsuit he's filed, managed to get himself signed to a record label which doesn't exist:

Ginuwine claims that Bourne said he owned the label and the contract would offer a $500,000 advance and $1.75 million to record an album.

The singer has not recorded any material since the signing or received any money.

The suit also claims that there is no corporate record for King Music Group Inc. in New York, California, Florida or Tennessee. Ginuwine has been unable to sign to any other label because he is under contract to King and could get sued.

Ginuwine and his lawyer have been unable to contact Bourne and the supposed CEO’s Memphis number is unlisted. Ginuwine’s suit is seeking $4 million in damages.

Now, Ginuwine isn't some starry-eyed young thing just off the Greyhound bus - surely you'd do a bit of background work to find out about the label you're signing to before writing on the line? Especially if you're already in the business and putting your faith and career into the hands of a record label you've never heard of? Wouldn't you?

Now, if you'll excuse us, we're off to complete selling Ginuwine the Brooklyn Bridge...

Who knew we would all live this long?

Tonight, on University Challenge, one of the questions asked students to identify the Fierce Panda logo.

They failed.

Madonna screws the majors?

A fascinating snippet of gossip in today's Times suggests Madonna could be about to leave Warners, her label since back when she was good, to sign a deal with LiveNation.

Yes, as in the former promotional wing of Clear Channel.

The idea would be to wrap up her live music with recording rights; it's probably going to give the majors more to worry about than McCartney tying up with Starbucks because, while McCartney is mainly a back-catalogue type of guy, new Madonna records still sell really well.

The few major label managers who have a plan for their industry in the future beyond smashing all computers and trying to make Apple give them a dollar for every iPod sold have grasped that they need to reinvent what they do as more of an artist management business - it was that which inspired Universal to shell out the best part of fifty million quid buying Sanctuary.

Trouble for the labels is, with everyone agreeing that for top-drawer artists, the live part is now a more significant earner than their recorded work, the smart move seems to be to tie yourself to a copmpany whose expertise is in live promotion and can sub-contract the CD and digital releases, rather than tying yourself to a company which is struggling with digital releases and CD sales and doesn't have any in-house capacity to do the live promo work.

Impressobit: Tony Wilson

There will be, of course, much written about Tony Wilson elsewhere today, focusing - we guess - heavily on Factory, New Order and Joy Division, Granada Reports; perhaps In The City.

Here's some of them:
BBC News Online
Wired
Manchester Evening News
Associated Press
This Is Cheshire manages to get his name wrong. Three times. But they were working at 1.11am
The Independent
NME

Paul Morley writes in The Guardian:

We used to make fun of Wilson and the mantle of grandeur he often assumed, but we knew that in his idiosyncratic and subversive way he was a great and important figure. Good things happened because he was around. This flamboyant, infuriating, pushy hybrid of light entertainer and anarchic Situationist was so in love with life, with music, with ideas, that he infected you with his passion.

It's not often when we're writing one of these where we have much in the way of a personal angle to add, but we did - just the once - break bread with Tony Wilson. He sat himself down at a table where a few of us were fortifying ourselves before a day talking about the digital future of music, and it was immediately apparent how he was able to carry so many people with him on the most hare-brained of schemes. He didn't just sit down, he held court, making a (seemingly) convincing case that to stay in business, record companies would need to embrace the obsessive fan - he used an example of somebody who wanted to be sure the resins used on reproduction covers were the same as the ones used on the original. And then he was off again. Working the room. Running the show.

In a way, he was the Isambard Kingdom Brunel of the music industry, in that his spectacular victories were made possible by the same sense of experimentation that created terrible failures. And like Brunel, it was those flops which meant that he never got to enjoy the fruits of his successes.

So while the American press raises its toast to "the man they based 24 Hour Party People on", let's remember some of Wilson's other work:

Factory Too: 1994's attempt to revive Factory, using money from London Records. Curiously, it was London who almost saved Factory when it had gone into receivership with debts of two and a half million. That deal had foundered at the last minute when it discovered buying the label didn't bring rights to the New Order catalogue with it - although they would have got a lovely table.

Factory Once: The third coming of Factory, in a form dedicated to releasing material from the original Factory records.

F4: Never being afraid to tread over old ground, Wilson revived Factory again in 2005 - the main fruits of this short-lived effort being a Durutti Column album and some compliment slips.

Remote Control: Channel 4's reworking of MTV's game show. It does make you wonder what Wilson could have done with a more mainstream game show - it's surely not inconceivable the man who happily voicedover The Richard Hillman Story could have found a niche as a twenty-first century Countdown helmsman.

What Now?: We're not entirely sure this was called What Now, but it probably was. Back in the 1980s, when exam results were generally a private affair and not merely an excuse for the Telegraph to print pictures of blonde teenagers jumping in the air alongside thinkpieces decrying the slump in standards, Granada would contribute a daytime phone-in to the ITV network. The idea would be young people who had suddenly discovered their lives had collapsed could call-in, Swap Shop style, and discover there was still a chance they could go to Loughborough University or get a career in the twine-manufacturing industry. We imagine that Wilson's contract with Granada and his role presenting pop programmes put him in the frame for talking to Britain's youth, rather than an executive enjoying the irony of Tony giving careers advice.

Northside: But at least he stood by them.

And now, in Macrovision...

Also in this week's Music Week is an opinion piece by Brian McPhail, who comes from Macrovision. Not the company that made the poor-quality alternative to Atari, but the people who make copy protection technology. What does he have to say?

The problems with copy protection technology so far were not with our technologies, they were caused by implementation decisions

Now, I don't know which specific CDs were using Macrovision, so I'm going to assume that McPhail is talking for his industry as a whole, okay? And I'd say that CDs which lock up computers and won't allow the machine to reboot even to spit out the offending CD is a problem with the technology, not the implementation. And anyway, doesn't that sound a bit like a mines manufacturer trying to claim that its not their product that blows people up, but the way its used?

They came from the technology being young and the decision makers being early on their learning curves. Some were saying 'we don't care if its not playable in 10% of cases.' Our view is that, if you have more than 0.5% to 1% non-playability, it is not worth doing it.

This is incredible - first confirmation that the labels care so little, they don't mind if one in ten records are duds - imagine if a car company took that approach; you'd have Ford/Firestone all the time. Not that Macrovision are much better - "one percent non playability" is, remember, 6,000 copies of a platinum selling single that just don't work, which we still don't think even approaches being good enough.

The systems worked as the labels intended...

Up to one in ten sales being totally worthless? That was their plan?

... but the consumer thought 'this is preventing me from using my music in the ways that I have become accustomed to enjoying it'

No, Brian, consumers thought "I have just bought a CD that I'm not able to use" or, if they were lucky "I have bought a CD which has been designed to stop me from using it in ways that I'm supposed to be able to."

We discovered that bringing out a copy-protection solution that was playable was not enough. Since then, we have gone through a major shift in our thinking. We realised that for the music business, there needed to be an element of rights management technology to make it more convenient for consumers, and not just copy protection"

We think what he's trying to say - maybe its become gibberish because we're trying to quote from the article - is that they realised that having copy protection that stops people from using the music they've bought pisses people off.

We have developed a solution called SafeAuthenticate which allows labels to add additional music tracks which are pre-ripped and can be easily transferred to PCs. The next version will enable easy export onto portable devices and will support CD burning. Then the consumer will feel that if he buys a new Robbie Willaims album, he can play it on his PC and also make his own custom compilation and export it to his portable device. He can do more than he could do before.

Well, first of all, it doesn't take new technology to allow labels to put more tracks on CDs - there's load of space, the limit just comes from the chart rules. So singles will still only have three tracks on them, whatever.

Second: "he can do more than could do before." Play on PC, make compilations, export to portables? Isn't that "exactly what he could have done without copy protection" rather than "more than he could before"? Next you'll be trying to tell us that the sexy world of Digital Rights Management will allow us to hear different sounds through each speaker - creating a 3d effect - and will enable star djs to rework original tracks into new mixes. Macrovision is a Denver Boot on CDs, and adding so much technology that the CD might actually let you do what you're paying for except in 10,000 out of every million copies is not a great claim.