A Conversation with Scott Bagby and Carter Adamson of streaming music service Rdio, February 2012

The concept of paying month-by-month to stream music from your computer and smartphone remains a relatively new idea in Australia. In the last year or two, a number of contenders have emerged. Nokia has had their ‘Comes With Music’ service for a while now. Sony launched their ‘Music Unlimited’ product in February 2011. Hulking, canary-yellow retailer JB Hi-Fi launched their own streaming platform in December 2011, dubbed ‘NOW’. BlackBerry, Samsung and Microsoft all have proprietary systems operating in some capacity. Rumours abound of Spotify’s Australian launch. A site named Guvera offers a slight twist on the idea: ‘guilt-free’ mp3 downloads. None of these services have yet gained any real traction in the Australian market.

Clearly, it’s becoming an increasingly crowded marketplace, as app developers and record companies alike cosy up to the assumption that most people don’t give a fuck about music ownership anymore. That whatever CDs, vinyl and cassettes they own gather dust on a shelf somewhere, immobile and largely useless in the era of interconnectivity. These companies believe that most music fans – ‘consumers’ – simply want the ability to take all the world’s music with them, wherever they go. For a monthly fee, of course.

The newest contender on the Australian market is named Rdio [pictured above]. It’s web-based and also has apps for the main phone platforms (iOS, Android, BlackBerry… Windows Phone?). It was founded by a couple of the guys behind Skype, it’s been public in the States since August 2010, and it’s pronounced exactly like it’s written (‘radio’ minus the ‘a’). For AUD$13.90 per month, you get access to unlimited PC and mobile streaming of their library, which apparently consists of over 14 million songs. Ahead of a launch party at Bondi’s Beach Road Hotel in early February 2012, a couple of the Rdio guys flew me to Sydney, bought me lunch, and answered my questions as best they could.

Andrew: How long has Rdio’s Australian launch been in the works?

Scott [Bagby, VP Strategic & International Partnerships; pictured left]: I first came down to Australia to start the discussions at Easter 2011. We were pretty much sewn up by the end of the year. So not quite a year.

There’s been a few streaming services available in Australia over the last few years, but none of them have had any real success in terms of market penetration. Is that fair to say?

Scott: Streaming services on the whole, globally, are quite nascent. I was just hanging out with a bunch of labels. I can’t verify these numbers, but this label guy told me that worldwide, there’s only about 7 million subscribers, to any streaming service. It is very much in the early days of all streaming services. But the potential is huge. They’re planning on massive growth in the area, especially this year. I think you’ll find that here in Australia, as well. There’s still an education that needs to happen for the user to understand streaming services. [They need to] just learn about ‘em, and use ‘em, and get what I refer to as the ‘a-ha’ moment, of why streaming services are so much better than buying individual tracks.

Carter [Adamson, co-founder; pictured right]: But seven million music subscribers in a world where everyone loves music? There’s a lot of room to grow. For ten years, we’ve had various fits and starts with digital music: DRM, tethered CDs, and that kind of stuff. We have services like Rhapsody in the US, who are stuck at around 600,000 subscribers. Now within the past year, you have more than a handful of services that have well over a million subscribers apiece. That only happened within the past year. You have markets like Australia, where 40% of all music revenue is digital music revenue. Korea’s over 50%. For the first time, digital music revenue globally is growing quicker [than physical sales]. I think we’re now at an inflection point with digital music subscription services.

Scott: The timing’s also great, because of the iPhone and other smartphones. People want to take their music with them. Back in the old days, when I was travelling around I used to have a CD case [for a discman], but that’s just too much of a hassle now. With this streaming service, we have 14 million songs at your disposal, no matter where you are in the world. You can download songs to your phone, switch ‘em out; every Tuesday, there’s new releases [on Rdio]. These sort of things – that’s the education that has to happen, and that’s the ‘a-ha’ moment when you get all of that going. The perfect alignment of the ubiquity of smartphones is what’s really helping it along.

Carter: Well, connected devices. Any single device that can talk to the internet is a playback device now. Whereas before you had one device; a record player, CD player, 8-track player. Now there’s a wide array of devices that are effectively playback devices, so it no longer makes sense to buy one song for each device. It no longer makes sense to port all the downloads that you bought a la carte via external hard drive to every single device that you have. The only thing that makes sense is for you to access it seamlessly wherever you are, using whatever platform or device you have.

Using the US service as an example, what percentage of users are using Rdio on their phones?

Carter: Over 85% of our subscribers are on the higher-priced tier. [Note: PC-only access to Rdio is AUD$8.90 per month – five bucks cheaper than the PC/phone combo.] And that makes sense, because the value proposition has always been seamless mobility. People always wanted to move their music around. No-one’s ever bought a song on iTunes to just play it on their computer. They’ve been waiting for 10 years for this whole seamless mobility thing to become a reality. Now it’s finally here.

Scott: I think that’s one of the reasons that the music industry faced such a piracy problem in the past, because they didn’t offer it in a format in which people wanted to consume music. Now that it’s coming into that format, you see a lot of people moving into services like ours. They wanted to listen in several places at once, but they couldn’t, so the only way they could do it is to steal it. It was still happening up until a month ago in Hong Kong. Everyone was saying, ‘I want to buy music, but there’s no iTunes, there’s no digital services here. I can’t buy what I want; you leave me no choice but to steal it’. These people were lawyers, bankers – people that had the means [to pay], they didn’t want to steal it, they just didn’t have it.

Carter: And also, the price has never been so low. We’re talking about 34 cents a day for access to the world’s music, across all your devices. That’s an insanely low price.

Tell me about that education process you mentioned earlier. How do you turn seven million streaming music subscribers into seven billion?

Scott: [laughs] Well, one of the benefits is to have your music everywhere and anywhere. Part of my job is to go around to all the different countries and get the rights sorted, so at least it’s available to everyone. Once it’s available, the education process is an ongoing one. And it’s one for the entire industry to be involved in. The best way to get there is to allow people to get that ‘a-ha’ moment. That moment comes at certain times, like when they’re at their friend’s place, they’re sitting around and they want to hear that song from their childhood that they’re all laughing about. Obviously no-one has it in their collection anymore, but then you – boom – you stream it down, you get a big laugh, and it kicks off. You can almost have Rdio and some beers, and you have a party.

I think a lot of people would be using YouTube for that purpose at the moment.

Scott: But YouTube, again, isn’t all that mobile. I mean, not as mobile as Rdio is.

Which labels do you have on board for the Australian launch?

Scott: We’ve got all the major labels, and we have some indies like Shock, MGM and Inertia. We won’t open up in any market, anywhere in the world, unless we have the domestic music, as well. At the end of the day, it’s about enjoying the content. That’s what makes a good service – the titles that you have. We have a whole team who just make sure that we have as much music as we can on the service. Funnily enough, I was just in Germany, doing a radio interview with a DJ. She is in love with Australian music, specifically Australian hip-hop. She used to fly out here, buy the CDs, then play it on her station. What she loves about this now is that she can now follow Australian influences [using the service], get the music that she wants, and find new music just through the service.

Will Rdio have an Australian office?

Scott: Yes.

In Sydney, I suppose?

Scott: We’re looking for some key players. Who’s the best person to hire? Once we find that person, they can determine where the office is going to be. Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth… they’re all options. It all depends on who the best person is to run [Rdio] Australia.

You talked about the ‘a-ha’ moment earlier. For me, when I was testing out the app, that moment was when I realised that Rdio had taken over the iPod player interface on the iPhone [ie the screen that appears when you’re playing music]. I thought that was pretty clever, how similar and familiar that screen was, even though I was using a web streaming service.

Carter: Two of the most common pieces of feedback we receive: “I just deleted my iTunes collection because I no longer need it,” and “I’ve discovered more music on Rdio in the past two days than in the past two decades”. We’ve obviated a lot of what you would’ve needed iTunes for, and we’ve made it even better with the whole discovery [aspect].

Scott: How we discovered music in our teenager years is we’d go to our mate’s house and you’d wait to hear their song. It wasn’t until you’d heard it a couple of times that you’d go out and buy it. It’s rare that you’d buy a song without hearing it first. That was one of the disadvantages that iTunes has; you couldn’t hear it without purchasing it.

Carter: Every Tuesday, new music comes out [on Rdio]. You don’t have to pay a dollar a song, or eighteen dollars an album: you can play literally everything that’s out on Tuesday. You can save it to your mobile device, you can un-save it and throw it back into the water if you don’t like it. People are consuming more music now. I’ve never seen higher retention or engagement metrics in the 17 years I’ve been doing consumer software, or consumer services. It’s insanely high. People get on it, they love it, they use the hell out of it.

The recommendation worked really well for me. It’s probably a simple thing, but it seemed to work better than most other services I’ve tried.

Carter: We wanted to be the most comprehensive service out there. Unlike the other services, we offer a little of everything. We not only have the social music discovery stuff, which is always front and centre, no matter where you dial up the service; we also have the algorithmic recommendations, which you were playing around with. They’re getting better and better every day as we see more data, and learn more about you. We also have the on-demand aspect; “I know exactly what I want to listen to,” whether it’s a song or a playlist. And we have the passive listening stuff; “I like an artist, but I don’t really know which song or album to play. Just play me some of this artist’s songs, and maybe mix in related artists.” Or you can play your ‘heavy rotation’ or your entire collection as a radio station. Or your network’s ‘heavy rotation’, or collection.

In the US… we haven’t carried it over anywhere else because no-one uses it, but we have built our own iTunes store. So you can buy [songs] a la carte in the US, but we found that no-one uses it, because once you’ve used the streaming service, there’s really no reason to buy stuff a la carte.

How does the Australian subscription price point compare to the American version?

Carter: Scott, I’ll let you take that one…

Scott: [laughs] Thanks. The price point is heavily influenced by the rights holders. Between different markets, we have similar… every market to us is the exact same. So the price point basically was just taking into [account] what we had to pay the artists, the labels and publishers. How does it compare? Unfortunately it’s more expensive than the US market. That was just due to market circumstances when we came here. But we personally didn’t treat Australia any different to the US.

How do you pitch the service to fence-sitters? Those people who say they love music, but rarely pay for it. They might go to a lot of shows, but most of the music they download is via torrents and other shady methods, not via iTunes or equivalent stores.

Scott: I think in general, most people want to do the right thing. Music lovers want the artist to get paid. I’ve never come across a music lover that says, “Screw the artist, I want to steal from them”. I think the key is making the service as easy and quick to use that it’s almost the default. So that you’re almost paying for the convenience. Instead of researching on BitTorrent, I have ‘social discovery’ [on Rdio]. I’ve built my playlists around my influencers. I like a particular DJ, and a good friend of mine knows a lot about music, so it just kinda bubbles up [in my playlist]. What used to take me a half hour of reading different music blogs and listening to their tunes, it just comes to me easily, now. As Carter says, discovering more music in two days than in two decades – that is what’s going to engage these music lovers, and make it worth them spending the money that they would otherwise gain through BitTorrent.

Can the service be used offline, or do you have to be connected to a 3G network or equivalent for it to work?

Carter: You can save as much music as you want to your device’s memory card. So if you have a 32gb iPhone, you can save that much. Again, for 34 cents a day – instead of spending $10,000 to fill up your iPhone or iPad…

The mp3s are saved onto the device’s hard drive?

Carter: They’re locally cached, yeah.

Has that been hacked yet?

Carter: Not yet. [laughs]

What are the most common comments you get when people are engaging with Rdio for the first time?

Scott: The people who’re born before 1980, their concern is: “why am I just renting my music? I want to own it; I want to have a collection.” I think that’s just a lack of understanding of the access model. It almost goes back to the heyday of having a massive CD collection, and looking at it, touching and feeling it. But more and more, as that moves on… there are a lot of 21 year-olds who’ve never owned a CD. So that question is more of a theoretical until they start using the service, and then they realise, “Hey, I can hear all my songs, and it’s actually better because I can hear my entire collection no matter where I am, not just in my house.”

Carter: I think there’s a general lack of knowledge. Most mainstream consumers don’t understand why they need a service like this, but strangely, they’re already doing it with other types of services, like movies, videos and books.  You have a digital book reader; you pull down your books electronically, you don’t have a physical copy. Same with video. They’re getting the fact that, “Oh yeah, this is what I do with other forms of content. Now I have this wide array of connected devices, I don’t need to buy one song for every device.” But I think there’s a general lack of education on why you need the service. I don’t think it’s a resistance, per se.

The desktop client – which is optional to download – has a matching feature, which looks at the music on your iTunes or your computer, and if we have the rights to stream it, it automatically moves it to your Rdio collection. It’s kind of like a locker service, for those people who’ve paid a ton of money – or any money at all – buying digital downloads a la carte. We do that as well. We make it an easier transition.

Going back to what you were just saying about existing libraries; part of my job is being a record critic. It shits me to tears when labels still insist on sending me a CD – which I’ll rip to mp3 immediately anyway – rather than supplying the mp3s so that I can hear the music instantly.

Scott: The industry itself is still in a physical mode. It’s turning around. I get CDs all the time, but I don’t have a CD player. My laptop doesn’t have a CD drive. I can’t rip the CDs. I say “thank you very much” and I usually hand ‘em over to the maid at the hotel. [laughs] It’s a transition period.

Carter: In general, we’re leaving a hit-driven business when you move to services like this. It’s a more personalised view on music. You follow specific people because you like their taste in music. You don’t go to Rdio and look at a ‘top 50’. You go there and you look at what’s relevant, what your friends are listening to. That is a fundamental shift in the industry – along with the mobility [the app allows].

I want to touch on what artists are being paid through Rdio. As I’m sure you’re aware, Spotify had some bad press about how little artists were being paid per-stream. What’s your model like compared to Spotify’s?

Scott: The model’s similar, because the tariff is going to be similar.  There’s a couple ways to approach this question. First and foremost, we don’t know about the labels’ relationships with their artists. Those are confidential. I have no idea how the labels are paying the artists. I know the majority of our revenue goes to the rights holders. How that’s being distributed afterwards is a black hole as far as I’m concerned. Having said that, there’s other ways to look at this. Net present value of money and all that other stuff aside, if you buy a [music] download, you only get paid once. That person can listen to that song thousands and thousands of times and you don’t get paid for that. On Rdio, you get paid every single time that song gets played. If it’s a good song, and it goes on for a long time [in terms of popularity], you’ll get paid a lot more than you’ll ever get paid than by a [single] download.

The second way of looking at things is, there’s been cases where artists or labels will pull their music off streaming services off Spotify. It was funny, because this label guy I was talking to – the one I mentioned earlier – was talking to a big artist of his. He turned around and said, “OK, you want me to pull it off streaming for these reasons? That sounds good. So you want me to close YouTube as well, and also the radio?” [The artist] was like, “No no no, keep those open…” The label guy was like, “Hang on a second. You make 200 times more on the streaming service than you do on YouTube, and 150 times more on the streaming service than you do on the radio. So… I don’t understand your reasoning.”

So I think there’s another education [required] on how these [services] can help and build the labels. The actual money pool for these artists, as of 2011 – two months ago? It probably was too nascent, too small to be anything significant to walk away from. However, the way that the ‘hockey stick’ [graph] of digital music and streaming services are going? I don’t think you’ll see those same stories this time next year, because the pie is getting bigger. That is one of the biggest complaints – that dollar-for-dollar, they’re not getting as much from our service as they are from iTunes. But the iTunes pie is a hell of a lot bigger than seven million people worldwide. I understand the gripe now – again, I don’t know what [the artists] are getting from their labels – but if they look at it in a promotional way and also that this is a nascent service and it will grow, you’ll see more and more people come online and stay online.

Carter: In a nutshell, we’re driving up music consumption. Once people are on this service, they’re listening to a lot more music. As Scott said, there’s been a model shift in terms of how they’re paid. So you’ll no longer get paid from only one transaction; you get paid each time you play a song. And we’re driving up consumption. So theoretically, that should even out very soon, as we get to scale. The other part of the equation is, we’re hitting segments of the music value chain that have never paid for music, or only pay $30 or $40 a year through iTunes gift cards. We’re reaching new segments. More people will be paying for music again, as we reach scale.

Scott: And not only that, but the smaller independent labels in each country – because we do worldwide deals – we’ve now given them reach, very quickly and with no cost to the label or artist. In America, in Brazil, in Germany. That exposure can translate into a great opportunity that they’ve never thought of before.

Carter: They can be big in Japan.

Scott: Yeah – it’s not just a t-shirt! [laughs] Going back to our Skype days; when we first launched Skype, we had no idea that Brazil was going to be as big as it was [in terms of users]. It was huge. I’m sure there’s some artists sitting here going, “I don’t know if we can do stuff in Brazil.” Now they’re getting feedback from streaming services and they’re like, “OK, everyone in Brazil is streaming our music, now it makes sense for us to tour there, rather than taking a blind punt.” Or maybe they wanted to go to Rio anyway, which is an understandable blind punt. But this sort of exposure is global, at very, very little cost.

Those are some well-rehearsed answers to a very hard question.

Scott: [laughs] Well, we think about it. It is a concern for us. Because if all of a sudden, the artists don’t want to be on streaming services, we’re in trouble. But we’ve thought about it. It’s an industry-wide discussion.

++

Andrew McMillen (@NiteShok) is a freelance journalist based in Brisbane, Australia.

For more on Rdio, visit their website.

Video: Interviewing The Dandy Warhols in Portland, Oregon

Last week, my girlfriend Rachael and I won a trip to the United States.

The competition asked, in 25 words or less, which Parklife 2010 headline act we’d would like to interview and why. We both chose The Dandy Warhols.

Why? Two reasons. We both dig their music… and the competition terms mentioned that the interview would take place in Portland, Oregon.

Pretty sure that The Dandy Warhols are the only Parklife act who live in Portland, Oregon…

We brainstormed for around 20 minutes. I entered: “The Dandy Warhols, because it’s been ten years since the release of their career-, genre-, and generation-defining album, Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia.”

Rachael went with an entry that name-checked a bunch of song and album titles: “I’ll step inside the monkey house of Portland’s true bohemians, The Dandy Warhols, for an illuminating interview that illustrates why everyday should be a holiday.”

Rachael won.

So a few days later, we flew Qantas to LAX for six nights.

Below is a short video montage of the day spent in Portland with The Dandy Warhols. We interviewed them for around an hour at their studio, The Odditorium, and watched them perform a rare acoustic set for local radio station OPB, wherein they covered songs by The Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and The Brian Jonestown Massacre.

It was badass.

Thanks to Fuzzy, Virgin Members Lounge, Pedestrian.TV,  The Dandy Warhols, and Pedestrian’s video producer, Matt Dempsey.

Click here for the full interview transcript.

Mess+Noise Mid-Year Report 2010: my top five

Mess+Noise asked their critics to pick their top five Australian releases so far this year. I chose these:

The Gin Club
Deathwish (LP, Plus One Records)
With nine songwriters in the mix across the genres of rock, folk and pop, The Gin Club’s fourth full-length could easily have fallen victim to too-many-cooks syndrome. It didn’t. Instead, it’s one of the best Australian albums of recent memory.
Read Andrew’s review here.

Halfway
An Outpost Of Promise (LP, Plus One Records)
This Brisbane alt-country act contain as many members as The Gin Club, but on this release, the songwriting of core duo John Busby and Chris Dale is informed by the direction of Go-Betweens co-founder (turned album producer) Robert Forster. The result is 10 finely-honed songs that bear a homely, barroom feel.
Read Andrew’s review here.

Nikko
The Warm Side (LP, Tenzenmen)
Another Brisbane band – swear I’m not biased. Post-rock with vocals done well.
Read Andrew’s review here.

Faux Pas
Noiseworks (LP, Sensory Projects/Heroics)
Outrageous, otherworldly electronic pop written in a Melbourne bedroom. An outstanding debut.

Parades
Foreign Tapes (LP, Dot Dash/Remote Control)
This one was overwhelmingly dense upon first listen, and took a few listens to reveal its genius. Unconventional pop songs dressed up in the always-awkward “art rock” tag. I’m glad I gave it time. You should too.

Visit Mess+Noise to see the rest of the critics’ picks.

What are your top five Australian releases of 2010 so far?

Reflections on UnConvention Brisbane 2010

UnConvention Brisbane 2010 happened 12-13 June at The Edge in South Bank. It was a grassroots music conference aimed at fostering a dialogue between like-minded members of Brisbane’s independent music scene. I co-organised the event alongside Dave Carter, Maggie Collins and Brett Wood. To read about how it all came together, read this blog post written a week beforehand.

I also moderated the music & media panel. You can view some highlights here, or embedded below:

From left to right (click their names for more info):

Myself, Michelle Brown (4ZzZ radio), Christopher Harms (Rave Magazine), Graham Ashton (Footstomp Music), Matt Rabbidge (LickIt Media), Steve Bell (Time Off), Crystle Fleper (FasterLouder QLD), Paul Curtis (Valve Records / Consume Management) and Matt Hickey (WhoTheHell.net / The Vine). Chris Johnson (AMRAP) and Sophie Benjamin (WhoTheHell.net) had to pull out at the last minute for personal reasons.

To listen to the full music & media panel conversation, click here to use the embedded audio player on the UnConvention Brisbane website.

In whole, UnConvention Brisbane 2010 was a winner. I’m thrilled that 120 (or so) members of the city’s independent music scene were willing to spend their weekend – or at least, part of it – listening to and engaging with fellow venue operators, band managers, musicians, business owners and label representatives. For mine, this was the highlight: bringing people together, and putting them in a low pressure social space where they felt comfortable interacting with one another.

While it wasn’t a perfect event – the free showcase attracted a smaller audience than the paid panel discussions, which was disappointing – I feel it was a great start to what we intend to shape into an annual event.

I’m told that the first year’s always the hardest; having never been involved with a project of this scale, I’ll have to take my friends’ word for it. Our ‘next year’ list of learnings and recommendations is huge, though, and we’re confident that UnConvention Brisbane 2011 will surpass what we achieved this time around.

Thanks to all involved – you know who you are. If you met me on the weekend and want to a continue a conversation, contact me via the link at the top of the page. If you want to be involved with next year’s UnConvention Brisbane in any capacity, please visit the website and click ‘contact us’. Any and all feedback and support is welcomed. Thank you for giving a shit about independent music, Brisbane.

There are plenty of video clips taken during the weekend at the UnConvention Brisbane website, which can be found here.

To conclude, I’ll leave the summarising to a bunch of bloggers who took the time to record their feelings on the event.

UnConvention Brisbane by the Bloggers

Here’s some of the cherry-picked highlights. If you’d like to add to the conversation jump on Facebook or Twitter and let us know your feedback – we’d love to hear it.

The Good

“I had suspicions at first that it would be simply a congratulatory circle jerk but I was wrong. Having a panel discussion allowed for an array of often divergent views to focus attention on what may be good and what may be not so good about the local music scenic. Furthermore, I also got to say ‘hey’ to some fellow bloggers, including Bianca from Music For the Laundromat and Jodi from Plus One. It’s always great to put faces to names. Congratulations to Andrew McMillen and Dave Carter for organising what was a great and badly needed conference that I hope returns next year” –  Darragh, Parallel Lines for a Slow Decline

“Unconvention was fantastic. I’ve been involved in several “creative” conventions, and find that they’re not usually worth the hundreds of dollars per ticket, so at $20 including a sausage sizzle, Unconvention was the best value convention I’ve ever encountered. It was filled with smart, creative, fun, talented people, who were all super approachable, and keen to share and network” – Jaymis, Oxygen Kiosk (and UnConvention Tech Nerd)

“The weekend was an invaluable experience for me. It was enlightening to hear people’s views on the ever changing music scene in Brisbane, and it certainly gave me a more positive perspective on it. If you didn’t get to make it this year, I would highly recommend it for next year” – Bianca, Music for the Laundromat

“Undesirable questions received a Capella singing in response. Fifteen or so minutes were dedicated to stories about hair and rock stars. Tom Hall advised aspiring promoters that you could get up ‘100 posters in an hour at a good run’. Everyone ranted about the state of music in Brisbane and nobody agreed. I don’t know what happened but hell, it was good fun.” – Jodi, plusonebrisbane describing the Music as Culture panel.

“I went and really enjoyed the whole thing. I learned a lot about how this music industry operates. … I can’t believe the whole thing cost $20. If they have one of these things in your local area you really should go.” – Brendan, Turn It Up to 10

“I have learnt a lot, but it has also affirmed my belief in punk rock, and its ability to work outside of any conventional music industry” – Matt, Papercuts Collective

“If their intention was to inspire, I would say, “mission accomplished.” It really was quite an experience to realise that these people who are ingrained in the industry, and who are doing great things for independent artists, had an idea and followed through with that idea, making mistakes, grasping opportunities and making contacts along the way” – Shayne, Cowbell Music (and UnConvention panelist)

The Not So Good

“I can’t speak for whether Unconvention was indeed unconventional in its otherwise pristine imitation of a Music Business Convention. Somehow I suspect not. But, um, good on them for bringing attendance prices down or something” – Everett True (UnConvention Panellist)

The Plain Weird

“Five weird things that happened to me on the weekend:

1. I went to the Down Under Bar. Worse still, I dimly remember being pretty excited about it.
2. Unconvention Brisbane took place for the first time. I chaired a panel on Music As Culture and during which Andrew Stafford, the author of Pig City: The Saints To Savage Garden, broke into song. Fellow panelist Everett True had decided that if we were asked a question we didn’t wish to answer, we had to sing. What did I ask Andrew? Oh just something light and breezy: ‘So what was the worst thing that happened to you because you wrote Pig City?’ (I made Everett sing as well).
3. I walked around Highgate Hill at 3am with a cocktail.
4. A taxi driver told me that we should just shoot people who wish to immigrate to our country. ‘Just shoot them, it doesn’t cost a lot to shoot people.’ And I tipped him. This morning I couldn’t remember why. Then I did. I tipped him because I was scared he was going to kill me and dump my severed body parts in the river.
5. Walking up Merthyr Road last night, not 15 minutes after Ted Bundy the taxi-driver, a car pulled up next to me as I walked along. The driver said ‘You want a lift.’ I told the driver I lived closeby so it was cool. I was eating a packet of crisps. Then the driver said ‘Do you want me to suck your cock?’ and I said ‘Nah man, I’m good’ and he drove off”

- Ian, Ambrose Chapel (and UnConvention ‘music as culture’ panel curator)

UnConvention Brisbane 2010, a grassroots music conference

Twelve months ago, my friend Dave Carter came to me with a concept called UnConvention, which originated in the UK a couple of years ago. He described it thus:

UnConvention celebrates music. It’s purpose is to provide a forum for those of us who work at the grassroots. For artists and musicians that want to understand how to get their music heard and how to practice their craft. For labels who want to champion this music and to spread the word. For people who want to work with music whether they be promoters, publicists or creatives.

UnConvention understands that the most interesting stuff happens on the margins. We don’t mind the mainstream. We just don’t find it relevant.

UnConvention is a forum for ideas, for creativity, for shared experiences and knowledge and for seeing and hearing great artists.

UnConvention doesn’t believe in ‘do it yourself’. We believe in ‘do it together’.

Dave is a lecturer at the Queensland Conservatorium in music technology, and an acclaimed researcher (check out his online marketing research paper here, which was presented at last year’s Big Sound music conference). So I said: sure, let’s make this happen here in Brisbane.

We asked Brett Wood – managing director of local indie label Starving Kids Records – if he wanted to get on board; he said the same thing. And as we set a date and found a venue and ironed out who we wanted to be involved, Maggie Collins – triple j radio presenter and manager of Brisbane bands DZ, The John Steel Singers, and Skinny Jean – approached us with enthusiasm. So we said: sure, you’re welcome to join us.

Next weekend, 12-13 June 2010, the first UnConvention Brisbane will take place at The Edge, the State Library of Queensland’s digital culture hub. As the venue is in the heart of the city’s arts precinct, it’s the perfect location. There’s a poster to the right which describes what will take place: click for a closer look. Some information from the event website is below.

UnConvention Brisbane is a grassroots-led music conference for independent promoters, labels, entrepreneurs, writers, technologists, innovators and artists. The goal of UnConvention Brisbane is to bring together like-minded individuals to discuss the future of independent music and how it will develop and flourish in the technological age. The weekend event will comprise panel discussions and networking events focussed around creating sustainable careers within the music industry.

Access to both days costs $20, and tickets are available via OzTix.

On the Sunday, I’m presenting the music & media panel discussion, which features the following lovely people.

Sunday June 13, 2010, 1pm – Music and Media

Music journalist and blogger Andrew McMillen will discuss the opportunities for mixing a passion for music with blogging, journalism, radio, marketing, publicity and other shady practices with:

• Paul Curtis (Founder, Valve Records / manager, Regurgitator, I Heart Hiroshima)
• Sophie Benjamin (Journalist and music blogger, whothehell.net)
• Crystle Fleper (Editor, FasterLouder QLD)
• Christopher Harms (Editor, Rave Magazine)
• Steve Bell (Editor, Time Off)
• Michelle Brown (Sponsorship & Promotions Manager, 4ZzZ community radio)
• Matt Rabbidge (Partner, Lick It Media)
• Graham Ashton (Executive Programmer of Big Sound and founder of Footstomp Music Services)
• Chris Johnson (Manager, Australian Music Radio Airplay Project [AMRAP])

Check out the full program details here.

We’re also proud to be presenting a free, all-ages showcase of some of Brisbane’s best independent acts on the Saturday night, which is sponsored by creative media educational institution, SAE.

The showcase will feature:

• Hip-hop/roots collective Laneous and the Family Yah
• Folk act Lion Island
• Indie rock band The Cairos
• Electronic pop trio Hunz

It’s a pleasure to be involved with an event that seeks to investigate how to sustain careers within Brisbane’s independent music industry. It’s important than ever to have these conversations. After spending a couple of years working in and around the local scene, I’m glad to be in a position to give something back.

Follow UnConvention Brisbane on Facebook or Twitter if you’re so inclined. The weekend Facebook event is here, and the free, all-ages showcase event is here; keep an eye on the website to see how it all unfolds.

A Conversation With Claes Loberg, CEO of Australian music service Guvera

An interview originally conducted for The Vine that I published in full at Waycooljnr, the Australian music and marketing blog which I recently began editing in place of founder Nick Crocker:

Q+A with Claes Loberg, CEO of Australian music service Guvera

Australia-based online service Guvera (http://guvera.com) has been making waves among the music industry recently. It offers free high quality (256kbps) downloads to consumers, which are paid for by advertisers who can match particular artists to their brand’s ‘personality’. As you can see by the image to the right, Guvera is not particularly subtle when it comes to marketing.

Waycooljnr editor Andrew McMillen spoke with Guvera CEO Claes Loberg a few days ahead of its worldwide public launch on March 30, 2010.

Andrew: Hey Claes. Can you summarise what Guvera’s all about?

Claes: Here’s the gist of it: advertisers paying for downloads. There’s nothing new about the idea of advertisers actually paying for content. That’s how we’ve been receiving TV for free for all these years. What’s wrong with television at the moment, is that advertising is actually starting to lose value year, on year. People have got the power to click past it, sort of get around the advertising. That’s a reflection of all advertising across the board.

Now that the people are in control, Guvera’s business model is a reversal of the advertising process. Instead of advertisers being the annoying thing they used to be years ago, now they can be a channel that people will want to go to, to get content. It’s trying to change the value proposition away from ads-as-disruptors. It actually pays the artists for the content it’s created, and the people still get it for free.

Full interview over at Waycooljnr.

Waycooljnr post: “Why Beggars Group Want You To Repost Free MP3s”

This is a guest post that appeared on Waycooljnr.com.au in November 2009.

Last month, Nick and I went to Perth for One Movement For Music; he as a panel moderator, and I as a reporter for the One Movement blog, which I’d edited since July.

Nick moderated a panel called “Busting Open Digital Myths“. My highlight of the panel was when Nick asked Simon Wheeler – Director of Digital at The Beggars Group, which consists of indie labels like 4AD, Matador Records and XL Recordings – about Beggars’ approach to online promotion, since they’re widely known and loved for allowing music blogs to repost free mp3s. Footage of Simon’s response is embedded below, as well as a transcription underneath.

Simon Wheeler:

“Everything we do is geared around a particular artist or release. One of the challenges we set ourselves – and it’s not a particularly scalable model – is that every campaign we put together around an artist or release is bespoke. It’s quite a labour-intensive way of working, but I think it’s very important that we try to do the record justice. When you’re working with very original artists making original pieces of work, I feel strongly that the marketing around that has got to be original as well.

There’s no standard practice to what we do. There’s a few common traits that we have. One that started in the US particularly is to make an mp3 available when we have an album coming out.

It’s kind of crazy how the music industry works; we shout and tell everyone about a new record. “It’s really exciting, it’s great, you can hear it on the radio.. oh, but actually, you can’t buy it for two or three months. Is that okay? Can you just not download it off of anywhere? Just wait two or three months, we’ll get it in the shops soon!”

So, going against that, we know that fans are passionate about an artist, and they’re very excited about a new album. So to be able to give them something to satiate that demand somewhat has been quite effective. There’s also the purpose of giving people a piece of music to ‘try before they buy’, if you like. We get a lot of love and a lot of coverage in the blog world, because I think our artists are very suited to that world.

We don’t give music blogs free reign, because you’d find that each blog would post a different track from the album, and so ten minutes after you’d publicised the album, people could just go and download the whole album (laughs).

So by making available one chosen, one focus track from a new album – much as you take a track to radio – there’s kind of an unwritten dialogue between us and the bloggers. We don’t tell them to post it, we don’t say they can’t post it; if people post the whole album, we’ll definitely say they can’t do that, and we’ll get it taken down. But they understand that if we post an mp3 to one of our label sites or blogs, then they won’t get any grief from us at all [if they repost it to their blog].

This really helps focus the campaign around a lead track, much as you do when taking a track to radio. There’s no new science here; this is just what the record industry has been doing for decades. We’re just applying that to the digital age.”

I knew that the Matador’s Matablog saw traffic and sales increase after adopting regular mp3 launches, but it was so refreshing to hear Simon’s response. He showed that Beggars Group understand the value in creating a dialogue with music bloggers, as well as giving fans a portable sample of a new album to take with them.

On a national level, contrast Beggars’ approach to what I see each week from major Australian labels, who release key tracks to radio using encrypted software, and who often disable the ability to save the audio file in a portable format.

The Beggars Group music blog strategy filters down to indie labels like Sydney’s Remote Control Records, whose blog regularly reposts promotional downloads from the likes of Matador, XL and 4AD. I interviewed their marketing director, Steve Cross, for Mess+Noise in October.

Simon’s outline above begs further research into how the group measures the return on the free mp3 promotional strategy. We’ll contact him for a guest post in the future, but I’m interested to know how Way Cool Jnr readers interact with label blogs.

Beyond Remote Control, EMI Music have maintained The In Sound From Way Out for over six months now. Though they’ve been shy about giving away too many mp3s just yet – check out the downloads page – their stream of the new Massive Attack EP ‘Splitting The Atom’ brought thousands of new visitors to the blog. (Disclosure: EMI is a Native Digital client)

Australian indie label Speak N Spell recently relaunched their site, which features a blog and free downloads. Sydney’s Difrnt Music are occasionally known to exchange songs for email subscriptions. And Melbourne-based boutique label Hobbledehoy took the unique approach of offering much of their catalogue for free download, in partnership with US provider Gimmesound.

Which other Australian labels see the value in using promotional mp3s to drive music sales and site traffic?

Big Sound 2009: Online Publishing Panel Notes

On September 9, 2009, I moderated a discussion panel at Big Sound called ‘Blogging, Twittering and Online Publishing: Tastemaking or Time-Wasting?‘. Here’s the precis, taken from the Big Sound site:

The whole world is online! Whether you’re typing essays for eager fans or 140 character pearls of wisdom, online publishing is quickly becoming the new bastion of communication and online journalism. What is Twitter and why would you use it? How do you start a blog and why would you? Is this online thing just a waste of time? Find out how those that do it well do it and find out why those that fail miss the point.

The panel featured the input of the following gentlemen [pictured left-right; photo by Justin Edwards just before the discussion began]:

• Everett True, British music writer and blogger [everetttrue.wordpress.com]
• Jakomi Mathews, founder and editor of the British music industry analysis blog The Music Void [themusicvoid.com]
• Jerry Soer, founder and editor of the Australian music blog Who The Bloody Hell Are They? [whothehell.net]
• Cameron Smith, founder and writer of the Brisbane music blog Before Hollywood [before-hollywood.blogspot.com]
• Elliot Aronow, creative director and vice president of A&R at the free-and-legal American music blog RCRDLBL [rcrdlbl.com]
• Andrew McMillen, freelance writer for Rolling Stone, jmag, The Music Network and Mess+Noise

These were the suggested points of discussion:

• How important is blogging and online publishing in communicating with music fans?
• Is Twitter everything it’s hyped up to be?
• How can you use social networking online to promote your band and how SHOULDN’T you?
• What’s the best way to start a music blog and what does the audience want?
• What does online publishing mean for music journalism?

A couple of days before the panel – notably, after I’d put it off for a fortnight – I sent the following email to the group.

Hi gents,

In addition the points of discussion that were provided, I’m going to touch upon on the following topics.

When I have you introduce yourselves, I’m going to ask each of you:

• When did you last buy music?, and
• How do you find new music?

Online engagement for bands: how much is too much?

Reading reference: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2009/08/14/more-imogen-heap/ and particularly this Imogen Heap quote: “About 5% of my time goes to actually making music sadly. The rest is promo, technical, planning, running around, schedules..blah”

• Artists have a range of tools and mediums with which to connect to fans; tools such as Twitter et al have lessened the gap between fan and artist. But at the same time, if their attention is focussed on the screen instead of their instruments, will their art suffer?
• Everett and Jakomi, I’ll use your experience of the pre-web era to draw comment on what it was like when you didn’t have the ability to know where your favourite bands were or what they were doing at that very instant.
• The ‘always on’ internet culture allows conversation to occur across the world instanteously. Has this removed some of the mystique that has historically attracted audiences to artists and performers? What are the implications?

Old vs new models of online promotion. Reference: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/03/the-live-music.html

• It’s a long article, so you’re forgiven for not reading the whole thing. But Godin’s point – here, and throughout his work – is that for musicians, it’s not a matter of shouting at everyone (the old model), but of whispering at your niche (the new model).
• So instead of signing to a label who can fund mass marketing campaigns (radio, print, TV), it’s smarter for bands to work their existing audience to build it organically, while coming up with creative/interesting/share-able web campaigns to capture wider interest (eg. OK Go’s treadmill video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI)
• Jerry and Cam, have you found this to be the case during your time as a manager and artist, respectively?

More Godin: as for messages to the fanbase from the artist, Godin suggests that these are to be ‘anticipated, personal and relevant’ in every instance. Fans should be thrilled to hear from their favourite bands, and disappointed when anticipated messages are delayed.

• This is a lovely, utopian vision, but in the real world, is it viable?
• Elliot, where do record labels sit within this vision? Is it just a matter of streamlining the process of delivering content from the band to the audience?

Beyond musicians, where do label A&R folk belong in this web discussion?
Reference: http://www.waycooljnr.com.au/2009/07/14/the-rise-of-blogranage-blog-patronage/

• Historically, A&Rs are the people who’re exposed to enormous amounts of music, and who often dictate which bands are exposed to wider audiences.
• Nick Crocker wrote: “I think A&R people at labels should start building their profiles online, developing a following and sharing their stories with fans. Inevitably, A&R people end up being hugely networked musically and build big, smart, connected networks of music lovers. They each have a market ready and waiting for their tales.”
• Everett, I know you’re comfortable with calling yourself a tastemaker. Do you agree with Nick’s idea, that A&R people should establish themselves as tastemakers? What potential benefits would music fans receive?
• Jerry, WhoTheHell.net has become a tastemaker after building an audience over several years. In your mind, what is the site’s role among music media? Would it be feasible to base a ‘new media’ music label on the WhoTheHell blog concept?

Music criticism on the web has given everyone the ability to give their opinion about what’s good and what’s shit. Reference: http://andrewmcmillen.com/2008/11/26/gareth-liddiard-on-music-writing/

• Gareth from The Drones wrote in a column for Ampersand Magazine: “Music criticism, to quote Chuck D: “You talk about it but you can’t do it.” But now that there is all this blogging shit going on critics have become like mild mannered primary school teachers trying to control their bitchy little charges. Which is funny cause nine out of ten critics are at uni. Blogging has cut the balls off music criticism. But even when critics are being cool it’s still weird. Rock’n’roll is pretty retarded and writing about it is really scraping the literary barrel. Why would you bother? Do something useful for fuck’s sake.”
• Reactions from the panel? Jakomi, what’s your take on this?
• Everett, what does this mean for established critics like yourself? I know it’s something you’ve been grappling with. (This’ll give you a chance to discuss your PhD and your findings thus far, perhaps?)

We’ve focussed heavily on discussing online publishing. But what about the role of print music journalism?

• Are print readers losing out due to the instantaneous commentary that occurs online, or does the latency/distance between the printed article allow a more measured, less hyperbolic approach?
• What about album reviews? What’s the point of the reviews we read in street press and music mags, since in many cases by the time they’re printed, the web has already aggregated, rated and reviewed these releases?
• Note that in July, Sydney street press The Brag opted to stop publishing album and live reviews due to budget quotes. (Source: http://www.messandnoise.com/discussions/1102027) In this instance, what’s the point of the mag, if they’re no longer willing to comment on the music itself?
• Cameron, which printed music publications do you read? What do you gain from them that you can’t find online?
• If print audiences are declining – and as a result, advertisers can’t justify their expenditure – where does this leave staffers of the printed article? As music fans, should we care? What do we stand to lose, other than these publications’ reputation and history?
• Everett, I’ll rely on you here, as you’ve got a history in both publishing and writing for the web.
• Jakomi, where do you see The Music Void sitting within this discussion? Why did you launch it as a website and not a magazine?
• What are the alternatives to printed music journalism? What will the music magazine of the future look like?

On the day, we discussed through most of the above, before 50-60 live human beings.

I’m told the panel was both entertaining and informative, though by session’s end I was severely doubting the latter, after spending around 90 minutes talking about blogging, which is second only to talking about tweeting in terms of tedium.

Ian Rogers of Brisbane bands No Anchor and AxxOnn [pictured right, playing live for the former] wrote this about the panel:

“I write about myself because no one else will. And I write about music because it’s what I like and because it’s more interesting to other people than writing about babies”. And so Everett True, former Golden God of the British Press and present Brisbane resident introduced himself to the afternoon’s delegates. The panel was about digital publishing and contained a puzzlingly configuration of quiet bloggers (“Uhm, I just like getting the free records”) and industry boffins – one preconscious, one loud and angry. And Everett. Mr True acquitted himself well post-introduction, happily making whatever comment occurred to him – more often than not correct as I read it – as the industry folks shifted around in their seats wondering, ‘Who the fuck is this weird old guy?’.

[I recommend you read Rogers' summary of Big Sound days one and two - he's fucking hilarious]

In all, it was an enjoyable experience that I’d happily relive. Thanks to Big Sound executive programmer Stephen Green for asking me to take part. I know the panel was filmed by the event organisers so I’ll post the transcript and/or recording when they’re available. My wider thoughts on the event are here.

Thoughts On Big Sound 2009

September 9-11, I attended Big Sound, my first music conference. I moderated a discussion panel called ‘Blogging, Twittering and Online Publishing: Tastemaking or Time-Wasting?‘, managed a showcase band, Hunz, and reported for The Music Network.

What did Big Sound 2009 mean to me?

It meant appearing in my first public speaking role since the occasional presentation throughout my tertiary education. On the day, it was my preparation and familiarity with the subject matter that saw 90 minutes of guided discussion pass without concern on my part. My notes from the panel are here.

It meant representing an artist whose music I love, and actively inviting others to experience his art and understand his vision. While I’m still coming to terms with the latter, but it was perpetually thrilling to see Hunz describe himself to the unfamiliar, both in meetings and on stage. Their showcase performance was strong, and well-received by the crowd present, based on the feedback we received afterwards. [Photo from the show below]

Throughout Big Sound, my personal goal was simply to introduce his music to new ears. That may be naive, but we agreed beforehand that there was little point in building up expectations. Whatever happens, happens, but there’s no doubt that their showcase was an overwhelmingly positive experience.

It also meant becoming more comfortable in crowded social situations. This was networking in the truest form I’ve witnessed since a digital industry event called Interactive Minds, late last year. It was very much a case of rapid-fire socialising, smiling, shaking hands, and exchanging details. Yeah, some of it was superficial. But while the personal connections I made mightn’t all yield results in the short term, in sum, the networking was the most enjoyable element of the event.

From my perspective, it was cool to have people introduce themselves to me after knowing who I am, which is the opposite to all of my music-related encounters in the past. The coolest example of this was Wally de Backer introducing himself the day after my panel. It took me like 5 seconds to realise that he was Gotye, and another 30 or so for Hans to make the connection to his identity – that is, a source of massive musical inspiration. But I wasn’t like ‘OMG WHAT TO DO?’, but more like ‘oh sweet, he’s keen for a chat’. Wally was there to showcase his other band, The Basics, who are self-managed.

One of the biggest shifts in my mindset of late is that I’m beginning to accept that ‘famous’ people are just people. It’s something inherently known, but it’s still difficult to accept. Everyone knows the feeling of seeing a public figure in the flesh and being too scared to approach; more and more, I’m abandoning that mindset, and just going after it. Cases in point: approaching both The Dead Sea (whose showcase was one of my highlights) and Yves Klein Blue‘s Michael Tomlinson (who I’d interviewed for jmag the week before) at the Sounds Like Brisbane launch.

In the Big Sound context, it’s more a case of recognising that these meeting opportunities are extremely limited, and discarding hesitation in the face of time constraints. Again, this is one of the aspects of the event I most enjoyed: the simple act of bringing together so many influential minds that have the ability to make shit happen is the main drawcard.

I mean, the conference is nothing without its delegates. No shit, right? I’d read this beforehand and understood it at a basic level, but it really didn’t click for me until I was there among the masses that I realised – hey, any industry is built on the people who work within it. An event like Big Sound simply enables connections between people to happen at a more rapid rate.

A few people I spoke to questioned why the openness and accessibility on display across the three days couldn’t exist for the other 362. As far as I can comprehend, it’s because shit wouldn’t get done if artists, labels, managers, and promoters kept the gates to their respective castles open at all times. Those few days of meeting and conversing are useful because of their scarcity. In an industry built upon the creation and commodification of a social object – music – it was enlightening and inspiring to meet so many dedicated to sharing with one another.

I’ll cite Big Sound as the event that affixed a silencer to my pistol of industry skepticism. In an interview with Warner Music CEO and ARIA chairman Ed St John a fortnight ago, I related to him that my increasingly frequent conversations with the people who work within the industry has shifted my view of large companies – like major record labels – from faceless organisations, to groups of decision-making individuals. [Sidenote: read that interview on One Movement Word here]

That might read like a basic statement to make, and a basic realisation to have. But after spending the best part of a decade – my formative adolescence – reading and participating in online forums where the loudest opinion is often taken as reality, I’m only just starting to unlearn. Nick and I call it ‘blogger’s mentality’, wherein an internal bias colours one’s worldview to the point where it interferes with learning and understanding.

I’m not suggesting that I’m attempting to remove subjectivity from my observations, because you know as well as I that it’s fucking impossible. Instead, what I’m trying to do is approach every situation, every interaction with an open mind, while placing little value on preconceptions. It’s less naivety, than measured optimism. Lately, I’m of the mind that people – individuals – are inherently good, so I’ll treat them with that respect until proven otherwise.

To return this realisation to the context of Big Sound, and the wider music industry: I have no time for stories of failed business deals and broken relationships. An individual’s history is less meaningful than how they present themselves in the moment.

What I’m now aiming to do is assess people on their merits when we meet, rather than relying on markers of their past to colour my perceptions. To me, where you’ve been is less important than where you’re going. In a songwriting context, to wit: you’re only as good as your last song.

[Thanks to Justin Edwards for the photographs]

“What Makes A Great Live Performance?” for Creative Deconstruction

[A guest post for Refe Tuma over at Creative Deconstruction. Original post here.]

This is a guest post by Andrew McMillen, a music writer based in Brisbane, Australia. Andrew is coordinating blog content for an Australian music event, One Movement For Music, which debuts in October 2009. The blog at OneMovementWord.com contains interviews with artists and speakers appearing at the event, Australian music news, as well as guest posts exchanged with the likes of Creative Deconstruction’s Refe Tuma.

For both music fan and critic, the most exciting live music experience is the great unknown. Bearing witness to an act you’d not previously heard, but becoming completely immersed in their art. Becoming an instant convert to their cause. Becoming willing to hit the merch desk immediately after they’re done playing in order to buy something – anything! – that the band have created; to have, to hold, and to listen. Those are the kinds of performances that music critics such as myself love to write about; they’re also the kinds of performances that A&R folk spend their careers trying to witness, in order to sign and release the act’s music on behalf of their label.

I’ve been a live music critic since June 2007. Two ‘great unknown’ performances stick in my mind. The first was in September 2008. I was reviewing an industry showcase event for the Brisbane-based Big Sound music conference. Four bands each had thirty minutes each to show their wares and attempt to build rapport with a crowd largely comprised of wary industry vets and conference delegates. Second on the bill were Melbourne band The Temper Trap [pictured right], of whom I had no concept. Their first couple of songs were enjoyable, if unremarkable. Then they played the track ‘Sweet Disposition’, which is embedded below.

The singer’s high vocal range elicited the kind of spinal shivers you can’t manufacture, and the beauty of the chorus hook brought tears to my eyes. Four minutes later, my accomplice and I traded incredulous, “what-the-fuck-just-happened?” looks. One of the most passionate, astonishing and affecting single performances we’d ever seen, is what. I wrote:

“Witnessing support bands unexpectedly and effortlessly capture the complete attention of an audience is always a joy to behold; the thirty-minute set that unfolds before me is a stellar example of this phenomenon. The Temper Trap’s brilliant pop contains all of the expected ingredients, but with the added spice of Dougy’s incredible voice. The performance of new single Sweet Disposition is one of the most moving, inspiring events I’ve witnessed this year. Outstanding.” – Andrew McMillen, Rave Magazine, September 2008

No surprises, then, that The Temper Trap used the resultant industry interest to sign a record deal, tour the world and release their debut album to wide acclaim. In a Japanese hostel in June 2009, I saw the video for their track ‘Science Of Fear‘ on MTV, and smiled at the progress the band had made in nine months. This is the kind of rare success story – predicated on pure passion and talent – that unites music fans, music critics and industry professionals.

My second example is less impressive in market reach, but closer to my heart. In November 2008, I accepted an assignment from my editor to review a couple of local bands on a rainy Thursday night. With a different friend in a tow, and little more than a hope that the bands would be entertaining enough to fulfil our craving for live music – and the necessity to describe the proceedings in 200 words – we were witness to a similarly inspirational performance.

The second band were an electronic pop trio called Hunz [pictured left], of whom I was vaguely aware, based on the animated YouTube short that a workmate had shown me months earlier. My friend and I stood close to stage, among a few dozen of the seemingly equally-ignorant. Before long, we were spellbound by their skilful contrast of dark electronic sounds against uplifting pop melodies. I was one of several to buy the band’s CD from the singer/keyboardist at set’s end, and thanked him for the performance. I wrote:

“Hunz augments electronic samples with his unique voice and live drum and bass to produce an enchanting sound. Why haven’t we heard him earlier? Blame ineffective promotion, blame infrequent performances; it doesn’t matter, as there’s several dozen new fans appreciating the trio’s thoughtful, restrained pieces. The frontman graciously accepts our hastily-spent cash in exchange for his remarkable debut, When Victims Fight.” – Andrew McMillen, Rave Magazine, November 2008

That particular musical discovery stuck with me for months. Hunz’s album was never far from my Winamp playlist or iPod scroll-wheel. I shared their music far and wide; months later, I met the man behind the band, singer/keyboardist Hans van Vliet (a.k.a. Hunz). Our mutual appreciation – from humble musician, to music critic and passionate fan – forged a friendship that soon led to an offer to become the band’s manager; a role I continue to inhabit and cherish. View an animated YouTube clip below to get an idea of the band’s sound; visit Hunz’s Bandcamp page to download some tracks for free.

These two examples are atypical of most live performances I see. While I can eke enjoyment out of the vast majority of shows I attend, my housemates could attest to the regularity with which I arrive home and state a show was merely “okay” or “good”. The reality, though, is that “good” isn’t good enough; “good” means I probably didn’t buy your CD after the show, and that your act probably won’t win their way into my playlist.

I often read about how there’s more music being played and listened to by more people than ever before, and how the live show is where artists traditionally earn the most coin. Since the role of the music critic – in my mind – is to sort the gold from the pyrite, it’s vital for touring artists to develop an engaging, memorable show that’ll convince guys like me to champion bands like yours. When I review live music, I want to rave about bands I love, instead of painstakingly pinpointing my disappointment. As both critic and fan, I want to be excited and inspired, not bored and unimpressed.

Written by Andrew McMillen for OneMovementWord.com.