All posts tagged digital distribution

  • The Music Network story: ‘For The Record: An Album Retrospective Part 5’, August 2009

    In the final piece of a five-part puzzle, Andrew McMillen examines the digitally-inspired shift in consumer habits away from the long-established album format. After speaking to passionate Australian artists like Hungry Kids Of Hungary, Urthboy and Eleventh He Reaches London last week, Andrew verbally prods two innovative Brisbane-based acts who have turned the album-release expectation on its head.

    Were this album-centric article series an actual album, we’d have since bypassed the hit singles, the forgettable middle filler, and the surprising experimental freak-outs. This’d be track twelve; the last gasp that’s strategically-placed to reward the attentive hard-core of fans. Luckily, reader, track twelve is this metaphorical album’s hidden gem: it describes two Queensland acts who’re subverting the traditional cycle in favour of a flexibility that benefits both artist and fan. Press play and get comfortable, won’t you?

    Drawn From Bees: animal loversBrisbane natives Drawn From Bees [pictured right] are riding a healthy buzz following their recent national tour and more than a few nods of approval from Triple J. The art-rock four-piece have self-imposed an interesting alternative release strategy: a new record every six months. Explains bassist Stew Riddle: “Over a few drinks after our first rehearsal last year, we decided to use the fact that we’re a band of four songwriters to our advantage, and aim for a prolific introduction to the band. We felt that it would be interesting to break from the new-band cycle of ‘release an EP, tour for 6-12 months, release another EP’, and instead try to put something out every six months.” But the Bees are in a unique situation that encourages frequent releases; Riddle admits: “Dan, our singer, is also a producer, so we can afford to record very cheaply. If we had to hire studio and producer time, it might be a very different story.”

    Two EPs into their two-year experiment, Riddle contemplates the band’s feeling toward the album format: “I tend not to think about what we’re doing in terms of working towards an album, as to me, the length is largely irrelevant. I feel that each record needs to make a statement, and to be a snapshot of where the band is at that particular time. Our third release is looking to be an 8 or 9 track record that has a more melancholy flavour. Is it an album or an EP? We don’t know, so we’ll just call it a record and let other people decide!”

    When asked where he thinks the album format belongs in the future of music, Riddle is sceptical. “It’s a hard one to judge. It seems that while the physical single is dead, the digital single is now king. No one buys albums anymore, but if you look on my friends’ mp3 player, they tend to collect not just full records, but full catalogues of acts that they love. I think that the album will live on. Certainly, at least in the sense of releasing bodies of music that make various statements at different points in an act’s career. Does it mean that the length of an album will remain between 30 and 70 minutes? Maybe not. Musicians aren’t constrained by the format anymore; vinyl and plastic don’t dictate the length.” With a fourth release due around Christmas to bring the four-EP commitment to a close, what’s next for Drawn From Bees? “We’ll probably do an album. Or a greatest hits box collection, who knows?” laughs Riddle.

    From a regular-release ideal to a staggered album: meet Brisbane indie rock band 26 [pictured below left], who’re midway through an ambitious project to release a twelve-track album in three-song installments every three months. After releasing two albums in the standard manner since their 2005 debut The King Must Die, singer/guitarist Nick O’Donnell explains the genesis of the concept dubbed 26×365: “We don’t sell all that many hard copies anymore, so we decided to release the next album in small portions. We were finding that people were buying singular songs rather than the whole albums off of iTunes.”

    Each of the four parts to 26×365 is priced at $3.39. O’Donnell continues: “We thought maybe we could package a couple of songs together at a lower price point and you could get people buying them because they think they’re getting a bargain, as they’re getting three songs for the price of two. By April next year we’ll have the twelve songs that you can buy as a whole product, but our true fans can get the songs every three months. This allows us to introduce the songs gradually into our live set; in terms of the record, it’s like our fans are coming along for the ride.”

    26: averse to smiling

    With the new release, the band are aiming to reduce the comparative tedium that they’ve experienced with past releases. “It’s not like the situation where the band records the whole album and they’re already already kind of over the songs; you know, you’ve already been playing the songs for a year or so. As an artist, you get to the end of the album process and the songs aren’t fresh for you, but they are for the public. So you’re pretending that they’re new to you, but they’re not.”

    The band’s website further addresses the reasoning behind the project. Perhaps unwittingly, 26 have put their heads together and specified a bold manifesto for independent artists the world over. 26 state:

    Unless you’re Coldplay, Metallica or Andre Rieu, the one thing a band must do is maintain momentum. Peoples’ attention span is becoming shorter and shorter, so we want to be attracting CONSISTENT attention.

    The 26×365 release process will allow:

    1. New material to the audience, but not so quickly that it will lose its impact.
    2. Offer a time-based point of interest for the band
    3. Allow the audience to see how we are progressing as a band
    4. New content for an entire year, including pictures, videos, blogs, and give aways
    5. New gig material for an entire year and having it ready for consumption on iTunes. No waiting for the whole album to be released.

    The purpose of this article series is not to eulogise the demise of the album, or to bemoan the recording industry’s omissions. Instead, it’s to highlight that right now is a better time than ever to consider the ideal manner in which to distribute music to an artist’s fanbase. For independent artists, a direct artist-fan (one-to-one) connection may be the most appropriate business avenue. For bigger artists – the aforementioned Coldplays and Andre Rieus – a one-to-many, traditional distribution method may still be the ideal outcome. The keyword in this discussion is choice. Not only do customers now have the ability to choose how they consume music with more freedom than ever before; now, artists are privy to a wealth of release strategies, business models, digital distributors, while still retaining the option to engage in traditional physical product manufacturing and distribution.

    “A lot of purists tend to complain now that an album’s artwork is gone. I think it’s really great, because what has gone is all the shit surrounding the music. You can still get the music itself, so you’re getting the purest version of the art, because it’s just the music. It’s nothing else.” – Nick O’Donnell, 26.

    Brisbane-based Andrew McMillen writes for several Australian music publications. He can be found on Twitter (@NiteShok) and online at http://andrewmcmillen.com/

    (Note: This is part five of an article series that first appeared in weekly Australian music industry magazine The Music Network issue #748, July 27th 2009. Read the rest of the series: part one, part two, part three, and part four)

  • The Music Network story: “For The Record: An Album Retrospective Part 4”, August 2009

    In the fourth piece of a five-part puzzle, Andrew McMillen examines the digitally-inspired shift in consumer habits away from the long-established album format. This week, Andrew quits hypothesising, and instead speaks to those responsible for history’s loved and loathed albums: musicians!

    In the last three weeks, we’ve indulged in much reminiscing and theorising on the value of the album format in an era of unparalleled consumer choice. “The track has been disengaged from the album!” “Artists shouldn’t automatically sprint toward the album endpoint as a result of historical programming!” “It’s easier to choose to part with around a dollar for a song you’ll love, rather than $15-20 for an unfamiliar collection!” You’re familiar with these arguments, professed from this writer’s listener/critic position. But, er – what about the artists themselves? The ones who make music? Where do they think the album belongs in 2009?

    Hungry Kids Of Hungary: Bigger fish to fryBrisbane’s Hungry Kids Of Hungary [pictured right] write hook-heavy songs that’re informed by a studious observation of the pop legends of generations past. Their two EPs have attracted radio attention, festival slots and, most recently, a Q Song award nomination. Are they treading down the pop-proven album release path? “We sure are!” replies singer/keyboardist Kane Mazlin. “We’re currently demoing and writing songs for a debut album. Like most independent bands, it’s a matter of balancing time and finance as to when we will record and release, but we’re certainly hoping to be in a studio within three months. I think it’s just a natural progression for us to put our ideas down on a long player. It will give us more scope to present ourselves more accurately, which is something we’ve only been able to touch on when creating EPs.”

    No surprise, then, that the Hungry Kids are album purists. Drummer Ryan Strathie explains: “Artists put a lot into creating an album as an entire piece – a single song is only one part of the album puzzle. I think it’s crucial for an album to be experienced in full, artwork and all. For me, its just not the same without the whole package.” Strathie cautions, however: “Artists – big or small – need to take responsibility for the quality they put out. If you can’t put out 10 great songs, then don’t do an album! It’s obvious that people will still buy a record if it’s any good; too many artists maximise on a single song or a hit and put out an entire album, even if it’s not good enough.” He concludes: “People aren’t stupid, they have been burnt!”

    From young upcomers to an established act: Perth’s Eleventh He Reaches London [pictured below left] have forged a respectable name for themselves at the intersection of the nation’s hard-rock, metal and hardcore communities. Their 2005 debut album The Good Fight For Harmony preceded 2009’s Hollow Be My Name, for which the five-piece received a $13,000 recording grant from the Western Australian Department Of Culture And Arts. Drummer Mark Donaldson rationalises the decision to release music in this manner: “We never really gave any thought to releasing an EP or singles, because we believe that you can get more enjoyment out of our band across an album. We wanted to release something that was quite cohesive, and had some continuity, with a good hour-long running time.”

    Eleventh He Reaches London: simply red“I’m still a huge fan of putting on an album and listening to it all the way through. It’s very rare to experience an album that you can listen to from start to finish, and not get bored. It’s very rare to experience that, and it’s one of the things you look forward to in life, as a music fan – that next band that you’ll become completely obsessed with.” When questioned about the free MP3 downloads offered on the band’s Last.FM profile, Donaldson continues: “It’s still good for people to be able to download a song in reasonable quality, just in case they are thinking about downloading the full album. Because we’ve basically arrived at the situation where you can download a song for free, get a feel for the quality of it, and then decide whether you want to waste your bandwidth on it!”

    We laugh at the madness of trying to explain the rationing of 60-100 megabytes to a music fan fifteen years ago. But how does he feel about fans of the band who purport to love their music, but who’ve never bought anything from the band? “There’s no ill feelings toward those who don’t pay. What I don’t like is when people download the album, love it, but then don’t attend a show when we’re near them. That really cheeses me off, because touring is such a massive effort. You look forward to sharing the music with the audience, and that’s what playing live is all about. Being able to share your love of your songs with others.”

    As co-founder of the Elefant Traks label and a renowned hip-hop artist in his own right, Sydney’s Urthboy [pictured below right] understands the record business better than most. Born Tim Levinson, his third album Spitshine is due in August 2009. He reasons: “I love the idea of the album because it allows an artist to make a little book, rather than a short chapter. I completely respect that people receive music in their preferred form, but as an artist I think the whole LP is worth holding onto. The album allows the artist to stretch out a bit, and from that perspective you’re able to tell a better story.”

    Urthboy: both dapper and chipperIt’s a valid comment, given that hip-hop song structures are perhaps more reliant on narrative than their rock counterparts. When asked about digital distribution’s effect on the album format, Levinson concedes: “It’s slowly changing people’s attitudes and expectations toward consumption of music. We’re in a transition period where albums retain a huge significance – but some signs suggest it’s disappearing. Stranger things have happened and trends don’t always result in their predicted outcome, though.”

    Levinson’s position at the helm of Elefant Traks informs his optimistic wisdom. When asked whether Elefant Traks have adopted alternative release strategies to album delivery, he responds: “We’ve discussed it a lot; I want to keep open-minded about it. One of our key methods of promotion is bundling as many activities into the one ad spend. Usually this is simple: the album and the tour. We’re a record label, but we’re also a default management company – we spend money to invest in the artist who hopefully invests in themselves, and in turn helps us sell their records. Touring is not lucrative across the board – that’s an industry myth – but it forms part of the overall picture. The point I’m getting at, is that not every artist can simply put out a few songs regularly, sling ’em to radio, excite the public’s imagination and wait for the money to roll in. There are significant costs associated with any release, whether EP or album. The public may like the freedom of picking and choosing but I don’t believe they’ve fallen out of love with the album yet. Singles aren’t for everybody, but our music industry is; there’s no use writing eulogies at this point in time.”

    It’s worth reinforcing that the purpose of this column series is not to eulogise the album as a whole. Rather, it’s to highlight that digital distribution has allowed listeners to choose how they consume music, and musicians to choose how to deliver their creations to listeners. Next week, we’ll meet some artists who’re rejecting the album-release expectation in favour of innovation, and look to a bright future where musical expression isn’t necessarily confined to 10-12 tracks.

    Brisbane-based Andrew McMillen writes for several Australian music publications. He can be found on Twitter (@NiteShok) and online at http://andrewmcmillen.com/

    (Note: This is part four of an article series that first appeared in weekly Australian music industry magazine The Music Network issue #747, July 20th 2009. Read the rest of the series: part one, part two, part three, and part five)

  • The Music Network story: “For The Record: An Album Retrospective Part 3”, August 2009

    In the third piece of a five-part puzzle, Andrew McMillen examines the digitally-inspired shift in consumer habits away from the long-established album format. This week, Andrew ruminates on the death of a pop icon, worldwide grief counselling through iTunes’ figurative cash register, and recent digital sales trends.

    One of the joys of writing on a short schedule is the agility with which weekly publications such as The Music Network can relate to current occurrences. After tracing the history of recorded music in the last two weeks – from technological advances, to the reduced reliance on singular album entities in favour of a more liquid, portable state – a significant event in musical history occurred. Thursday, June 25 2009 found Michael Jackson dead, aged 50.

    The grieving process translated into an outpouring of public reminiscence, which resulted in astounding sales figures for Jackson’s back catalogue. According to Billboard.com, US sales figures put the singer’s album sales for the week ending June 28 at 422,000, of which 225,000 were digital sales. A staggering 2.3 million individual song downloads found Jackson far and away the first act to sell more than a million downloads in a week. Within Australian shores, the disparity between albums and singles was curiously less noticeable: Jackson’s album and single sales were placed at 62,015 and 107,821, respectively, according to Undercover.com.au, while in another strange, archaic turn, only one out of every five Michael Jackson albums sold in Australia last week were digitally downloaded.

    Goodnight, sweet princeRegardless, Jackson’s enormous sales in the US simply couldn’t have eventuated ten years ago. Record stores inventories would’ve been exhausted across the country, and compact disc factories would’ve rushed to press more discs to meet the demand. Both of these outcomes still eventuated, but instead of experiencing weeks-long delays, music consumers have the option of instant online gratification: his 2.3 million download count resulted in six Jackson tracks appearing in the Billboard top ten.

    The Jackson phenomenon highlights several points central to the discussion raised in this column series. First, consumer choices are trending away from the album as the favoured mechanism of music release. Choice is key here: it’s easier to choose to part with around a dollar for a song that you’ll love, rather than parting with $15-20 for an unfamiliar collection. If money is no object to the consumer, then time surely is: as industry analyst Bob Lefsetz phrased it in his July 5th, 2009 Lefsetz.com column, “Who’s got the time to listen to an hour of music that you’re not truly interested in when there are all these other diversions that fascinate you?”

    Second, the popularity of digital music sales continues to snowball the trend away from the album as the industry’s singular organising principle. The modern music consumer can now purchase music from her home, without being subject to an array external factors while travelling to the record store. This operates in a similar manner to the ease with which she can cherry-pick her favourite songs from an online store, and ignore the rest, A simple point to make, but it’s worth reinforcing that digital distribution is the spark that set alight the consumer’s reliance on the album.

    Finally, a startling counter to the arguments that copyright theft is the primary factor crippling record labels’ established business models. In the period between Jackson’s June 25 death and July 1, streaming media analysts at VisibleMeasures.com report that combined views of the “Thriller” music video totalled in excess of 28 million. Considering that his aggregate single-song sales during the same period were 2.3 million – and just 167,000 for that particular track – it’s somewhat surprising that less than 10% of his fans chose to buy his music, and instead opted to stream it for free. But to step back within the boundaries of this discussion, let’s discount Jackson’s untimely demise and instead examine recent digital sales trends.

    The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) – comprising 1400 record companies in around 70 countries – released their annual Digital Music Report in January 2009. This report quickly became infamous within the recording industry, as media hurled themselves upon the IFPI’s estimation that, after collating studies in 16 countries over a three-year period, over 40 billion music files were illegally file-shared in 2008, which resulted in copyright theft rate of around 95%.

    But to focus on the near-past so as to not bore you with figures, here’s five key points garnered from the IFPI’s report on the international digital music business in 2008:

    • The digital music industry saw a sixth year of expansion in 2008, growing by an estimated 25% to US$3.7 billion in trade value
    • Digital platforms now account for around 20% of recorded music sales, up from 15% in 2007
    • Single track downloads, up 24% in 2008 to 1.4 billion units globally, continue to drive the online market, while digital album sales grew 36%
    • Consumer demand for music is higher than ever – NPD research found that total music consumption in the US rose by one third between 2003 and 2007

    The typical music listener, as imagined by marketing execs everywhereAt a national level, ARIA’s 2008 figures revealed that:

    • Physical sales declined from 51,866,917 to 44,438,874 (down 14%)
    • Digital sales overall rose from 47,267,034 to 128,532,126 (up 171%)
    • Digital album sales rose from 788,316 to 2,853,040 (up 261%)
    • Digital track sales rose from 17,647,057 to 23,464,576 (up 32%)

    It’s important to distinguish the disparity between album and track sales. While digital album sales experienced growth in Australia, they were still outsold nearly ten-to-one by single digital tracks. Why? In an era of musical abundance and complete portability, the consumer is spoiled for choice. We live in an age where you can experience “Thriller” for around a dollar, with a minimum of fuss – or you can stream it from YouTube, if you’d prefer. Freed from the constraints of physical products, we’re able to sample sounds before purchasing so as to reduce the rampant buyer’s remorse that we both feel while casting our eyes across our music collections.

    The record industry marketplace has fundamentally changed for content creators and consumers. To pound a cliché into your head: the internet has theoretically afforded any artist the chance reach your iPod earbuds. The barriers to entering the recording industry have been lowered, and the costs of bedroom production and online distribution are trending toward zero. As a result, it’s unreasonable for artists and labels to continue propagating an album-release business model that’s so firmly rooted in the past.

    But what about the present? I’m glad you asked, as part four of this five-piece puzzle will find me removing my hats marked “boring history” and “boring sales figures”. In their place, I’ll hatlessly hammer the thoughts that current musicians feel toward my incessant prodding of the album; that alleged, proverbial dead horse. Expect well-articulated rock-posturing, before part five finds us exploding in an orgy of alternative release models, innovative case studies and an unerring optimism for a recording industry who’ll eventually realise that as music fans, all we really want is our favourite artists to release great music as often as possible.

    Brisbane-based Andrew McMillen writes for several Australian music publications. He can be found on Twitter (@NiteShok) and online at http://andrewmcmillen.com/

    (Note: This is part three of an article series that first appeared in weekly Australian music industry magazine The Music Network issue #746, July 13th 2009. Read the rest of the series: part onepart two, part four, and part five)

  • The Music Network story: ‘For The Record: An Album Retrospective Part 2’, July 2009

    In the second piece of a five-part puzzle, Andrew McMillen examines the digitally-inspired shift in consumer habits away from the long-established album format. This week, Andrew highlights portable playlist control as a key component in the reduced reliance placed upon the album by music consumers.

    In last week’s column, I discussed the history of the album format, from the revolutionary, 45 minute-long LP through to the rising costs of compact discs. Now, take your imagination on a mental walk to your music collection. Stand before the shelves and admire your beloved classics, your blinding debuts, your middling sophomores, your utter disappointments, and the hidden atrocities that you’re embarrassed to have purchased.

    There’s an enormous nostalgia value attached to your record collection, whether in actual LP format or CDs. Few cultural topics are as divisive and subjective as one’s music taste. I’m certainly not writing off the value of the album in its entirety; that’d be madness. But why is it that you fondly fondle some albums, and not others? To use a cricketing metaphor: why do some releases hit you for six, while others barely make the length of the pitch?

    So, what'll it be? Barenaked Ladies or Pink Floyd? (photo credit flickr user gsimmonsonca)To elaborate on the latter example: picture the average album you’d buy from a store – perhaps not in this era, since both CD shelf space and CD merchants continue to dwindle – but ten years ago. Hypothetically, the disc is likely to be front-loaded with some great songs. They’re the ones that you’re likely to have heard before you bought the album. These strategically-placed songs are the ones that either – or both – the band and record label wanted you to hear first and enjoy first.

    Then you’d get to the second half of the album and, more than likely, you’d find a dramatic reduction in the quality of songwriting. As with any conversation regarding music, this is an entirely subjective topic of discussion, but there’s not a music fan reading who hasn’t experienced the phenomenon of an album’s proverbial tail failing to wag.

    As I wrote last week, the recorded music industry has revolved around the album for decades. Record deals, release schedules, pricing structure, the touring cycle, the catchy lead single, album reviews; these choreographed industry institutions are all funneled toward the end goal of selling albums. Music consumers were tied to the album format as a force of habit, since it was by far the most convenient method to listen to music. In the LP era, it was easier to let an album play from beginning to end, rather than painstakingly searching for the groove that contained the beginning of your favourite tracks.

    But portability heralded a substantial change in listening habits; the now-ubiquitous MP3 audio compression algorithm was a mere twinkle in German audio scientists’ eyes when Sony released the Walkman to the public in 1979. The device used cassette tapes, which allowed listeners to use headphones to play audio recordings while on the move. This led to label-released albums and singles finding a wide audience, and the proliferation of home taping from sources such as the radio, television, and your existing record collection. The ‘mixtape’ was born!

    The Walkman’s successor, Sony’s Discman, was released in 1984. The CD-based player allowed a greater freedom from the comparably imprecise Walkman method of fast-forwarding and rewinding through a cassette to find your favourite tracks. But the device was still tied to the concept of the album: while songs could be played in a ‘random’ order – an important precursor to Apple’s iPod Shuffle – it could only handle a disc at a time.

    Forward-thinking, back-looking. (photo credit flickr user Neil101)That listening habit was exploded when CD burning technology allowed listeners to compile the circular equivalent of mixtapes, without the cassette-associated fuss. As the audio filetype known as MP3 became easier for the masses to acquire online, consumer attitudes to music further deviated from the past when the first digital audio players became available in the late 1990s.

    Commonly known as MP3 players, these devices allowed a user to transfer CDs encoded in the MP3 audio filetype onto a portable hard drive that could play the files. For the first time, a listener could store their favourite songs in a portable format that could be ordered on-the-fly, as desired. No rewinding or fast-forwarding, no moving parts; control had been placed into the fan’s hands.

    Several unremarkable forays into the digital audio player market from Rio and Compaq set the stage for Apple, whose first generation, exclusively Mac-compatible iPod debuted in October 2001. A Windows-friendly version of the device followed in 2002; frequently-released incremental iterations have boosted its worldwide sales in excess of 210 million, according to the Associated Press.

    Apple’s success in the digital audio player market can be attributed to their user-friendly design and savvy marketing. Their devices satisfied a demand for portable music that’d gathered momentum since the Walkman’s debut. The twin Apple successes of the iPod and the iTunes Music Store – which will be covered in greater depth next week – are evidence that listeners prize portable playlist control, after decades of passively absorbing albums from start to end.

    This newfound control is central to understanding the shift from albums as the key organising principle behind music dissemination. Industry analyst Bob Lefsetz wrote on his Lefsetz Letter website in August 2006: “The track has been disengaged from the album. The label wants an album budget, producers, a full-length that they can charge in the neighborhood of ten dollars wholesale for. No matter that no radio station goes deep and neither do the fans.”

    He’s hinting at the killer-versus-filler argument that’s as old as the industry itself. While there’ll always be pleasure gained by experiencing a classy, calculated collection of songs from beginning to end – see Perth post-hardcore act Eleventh He Reaches London‘s 2009 release, for example – writers like Lefsetz and myself argue that the record industry’s unending fascination with the album as the definitive musical product is misleading and erroneous.

    The record industry’s perceived market expectations are the driving force behind the unending push for more albums. This wouldn’t be problematic – for artists, labels, or listeners – if real supply met perceived demand. Instead, album sales have declined worldwide, while sales of individual songs – key singles often released to radio so as to promote an album – continue to climb.

    Oh god, get it off me! (photo credit flickr user pinkbelt)In 2009, artists shouldn’t automatically sprint toward the album endpoint as a result of historical programming. Their creative output shouldn’t be stretched to meet the 45 minute/12 track (whichever comes first) expectation, just so that the parties involved can proudly call it an album. In an era where more music is being written, recorded and performed each day than at any other point in history, an artist shouldn’t throw together words, chords and beats just to meet an expectation built upon a decades-old concept.

    The question that I put forth is simple: why continue to push acts toward the goal of the album release, instead of working with artists to determine the most appropriate method of releasing their recorded work? Next week, I’ll further investigate the divide between the recording industry’s historical expectations and current consumer habits.

    Brisbane-based Andrew McMillen writes for several Australian music publications. He can be found on Twitter (@NiteShok) and online at http://andrewmcmillen.com/

    (Note: This is part two of an article series that first appeared in weekly Australian music industry magazine The Music Network issue #745, July 6th 2009. Read the rest of the series: part onepart threepart four and part five)

  • The Music Network story: ‘For The Record: An Album Retrospective Part 1’, July 2009

    In a five-part series, Andrew McMillen will examine the digitally-inspired shift in consumer habits away from the long-established album format. He begins with the history surrounding the album, and the hints at the consumer unease that has led to its reduced importance within the remodeled recording industry.

    Cast your mind back 10 years.

    As a music fan in 1999, you’d read music magazines and listen to the radio to garner information regarding upcoming releases from your favourite artists. You’d talk about your expectations and predictions to your friends in person, and strangers online. You’d hear the lead single on the radio and see it on the television a couple of weeks before the album was due. You’d visit your favourite record store on launch day and pay $20-30 to own the compact disc containing an act’s latest music and artwork.

    Shawn Fanning on the cover of Time Magazine. Intimidating!Or if you were really cluey, you’d use an online software application called Napster to find a fan who’d encoded the CD into the MP3 format. You’d download the CD from them for $0.

    1999 was the year that the recording industry was irreversibly changed by Napster, which circumvented the needs of millions of music fans worldwide. No longer were we forced to travel to a record store during business hours in order to buy a CD. Instead, we could download the audio in passable quality from our homes, burn the data onto a blank CD, and freely distribute these recordings to our friends.

    The recording industry’s response to the Napster quandary is well-documented elsewhere, and it’s not the focus of this series of columns. Instead, we’re investigating the history of the album, which is commonly known as a recording of different musical pieces.

    But why the album? How come we’re so used to artists releasing a collection of ten to fifteen songs every couple of years, comprising between 30 and 80 minutes of music?

    It first appeared a hundred years ago. Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite was released by the German label Odeon in 1909. The first album in the history of the recording industry comprised four double-sided 78 RPM discs, and was sold in a collection that resembled a photo album.

    These recordings were a big deal at the time. You could use a record player to listen to music in your home, at your leisure! Crikey!

    Then came the 33 1/3 RPM vinyl discs known as LPs. Short for long-play, LPs were first mass produced by Columbia Records in 1948 and came in two diameters: 10- and 12-inch. The latter format was initially reserved for premium-priced Broadway theatre and classical recordings, while popular music appeared solely on 10-inch discs. This early discrepancy in the history was caused by record company executives, who misjudged the commercial appeal of non-Broadway and classical recordings. By the mid-1950s, the 10-inch LP was discontinued. It reappeared in the late 1970s as extended-play mini-albums, which are also known as EPs.

    Show me your vinyl and I'm show you mineUp until the release of the LP, musicians had accepted that – owing to the limitations of the 78 RPM format – they could only record songs that were shorter than four minutes in duration. Double-sided releases were common, which resulted in the distinction between the A-side – the featured song that was most desirable for radio play – and an additional song, known as the B-side.

    The LP format could contain up to 45 minutes of music, which was divided into two sides. Record labels and recording artists were faced with a new window of opportunity, wherein they were no longer confined to a series of four minute-long creations. Once the format gained market dominance, musicians and producers realised that they could use continuous playback to maintain elements of style and mood between songs, or to promote thematic continuity in the form of concept albums.

    As the record industry matured, LPs were no longer just a collection of singles released in a streamlined format in order to increase sales. Decades of ‘single’ releases led to ‘album-as-art’ aesthetics, wherein the industry’s stakeholders – musicians, listeners, and labels alike – came to rely on innovative, creative uses of the LP format.

    By the 1960s, record companies were employing artist and repertoire (A&R) representatives to approach emerging acts with recording contracts. These were commonly known as record deals, wherein an artist or band would agree to record an album – or series of albums – that the record label would subsequently sell and promote.

    And therein began the rot.

    As the record industry became comfortable with the album format, they sought out the acts most likely to help them sell their products. The compact disc (CD) format was ushered into the market in 1983; annual sales in the US rose from 800,000 in the first year of production to 288 million by 1990, and almost 1 billion per year by the turn of the century.

    But after being seduced by major labels’ reputable names and marketable reach, artists found themselves locked into increasingly-shortened ‘write, record, tour’ schedules. This was the dream of musicians the world over, sure. To make a living from writing, recording and touring their music. But few would have dreamed of comprising their artistic vision, or rushing to complete unfinished material in order to meet a label’s release schedule.

    This photo was allegedly taken while recording Passion Pit's album, but it really could be from any studio ever.As a musician ten years ago, commercial success was largely dependent on signing a huge chunk of your profit away to a corporate entity who had the cash with which to line the pockets of the corporations that controlled the interdependent businesses of radio, music television, touring and record stores.

    This was the era of the widely-quoted figure: for every successful album, a major label released nine failures. But these businesses could afford to buy musical talent en masse and sign these emerging songwriters and performers to an album-release contract, then drop them if their commercial appeal faltered.

    Rarely were artists afforded time to find their feet and cultivate their best material; not with the clock ticking, the recoupable expenses climbing, and the label’s stakeholders demanding quarterly growth figures. No way!

    Of course, I’m painting an exaggerated picture on a slightly-skewed canvas. There have been success stories on both major and independent record labels throughout the history of recorded music. But the latter were all but hidden from the view of the average music consumer, who only paid attention to the acts who were charting near the top on radio and television and playing arenas.

    For decades, the recorded music industry revolved around the album: the record deals, the release schedules, the pricing structure, the touring cycle, the album reviews, the catchy lead single that’d inspire consumers to purchase the album. But ten years ago, Napster-induced cracks began to appear in the established business model.

    From the Walkman to its brother, the Discman, and from the burning of CDs to the rise of Apple’s iPod, the digital generation ushered in a massive shift in music consumer demand. Next week, I’ll highlight portable playlist control as a key component in the reduced reliance placed upon the album by music consumers.

    Brisbane-based Andrew McMillen writes for several Australian music publications. He can be found on Twitter (@NiteShok) and online at http://andrewmcmillen.com/

    (Note: This is part one of an article series that first appeared in weekly Australian music industry magazine The Music Network issue #744, June 29th 2009. Read the rest of the series: part twopart threepart four and part five)

  • A Conversation With Stu Watters, Australian Independent Record Labels Association General Manager

    Stu Watters - in the fleshThis is my first interview on behalf of One Movement Word, which is the official blog of the One Movement For Music  (OMFM) Perth festival and conference. In the lead-up to the October 2009 event, I’ll be speaking with a range of OMFM artists, speakers and music industry figures, and publishing the full transcripts on here.

    Stu Watters is General Manager of the Australian Independent Record Labels Association (AIR). After representing AIR for five years, he recently announced his depature from the organisation. I caught up with Stu before he heads to Brisbane to launch a new video production and licensing venture in July 2009. I came across former FasterLouder editor Cec Busby’s 2007 interview while researching, and used one of Stu’s responses during that conversation for my first question.

    Music fan to music fan: how have your listening habits changed since you first saw Dire Straits as a young tacker?

    It’d have been hard for me to avoid Dire Straits at that age, given that there were only a few outlets and media opportunities available to artists. And those guys just had access to all of it, and there was no escaping it.

    These days, it’s a very different ballgame: obviously at that age, I was very open to listening, and becoming a fan of whatever was put in front of me, whereas these days I’ve certainly developed a different palate. But I also explore and discover music in all the ways that are available to me. I have to say that there’s a lot of music that I fall in and out of love with very quickly, because something else comes along, which didn’t happen as much when I was younger.

    I would say that it’s harder to hold on to some of the music in the same way that I’d used to, in that I’d just flog stuff to death. My wife would argue that I still do, but I don’t reckon I do it anywhere near the same extent that I used to, because I’ve just got so many options that I’m exposed to on a regular basis. (The Twitter tool) Blip.FM has ruined my life this week, because all of a sudden I’ve got a whole bunch of new music that I have to listen to!

    It’s so much easier these days to get exposed to a lot more music. It’s very important to define filters that you can trust – people who you can look to, and like what they’re listening to – and that’s why I like software that can ‘plug and stream’. It’s a shame that (online radio streaming app) Pandora isn’t accessible here (in Australia) any more, because that was a really fantastic service. I could punch in something that I really liked, and it would give me stuff that I’d never heard of, but I knew that I’d like it.

    You know better than anyone in the industry that acts can come and go. I find that due to the sheer volume of music available online, it’s difficult for artists to get noticed – to be heard above the crowd, so to speak. If you were starting a band today, how would you go about getting heard?

    Eddy Current Suppression Ring. Dude in the back with the beer is loving it.As a band who wants to get exposure, you’re going to have to focus on the core outlets, which I think are still very much around community and commercial radio. I don’t think that that’s going to change for a long time. There’s certainly a greater opportunity for artists to create videos without focusing on the goal of television exposure, although that may happen naturally. Having a strategy built around covering online bases such as MySpace and YouTube is important, but I think it’s still absolutely critical that you have a very, very strong live performance that creates an amazing audience.

    Bands like Eddy Current Suppression Ring are testament to that idea: it’s a show that you go to, and you take it away with you when you leave. They sell phenomenal amounts of records (at each show), and they’ve done fuck-all in terms of production. I was lucky enough to go to the Melbourne Zoo show that they did recently, where 3,500 people turned up, purely because they wanted to see this band put on a great live show. And I still think that’s absolutely critical, irrespective of any of the changes that’ve occurred to the environment in which we distribute music.

    That live experience, that tangible, tactile thing, is still critical to the whole experience.

    AIR works with a variety of digital music services and distributors. There’s quite a few on the market – iTunes, Tunecore, and CDBaby, for example. Which of these offer among the best return on investment?

    You’ve got to identify what each one is trying to achieve. iTunes and Bigpond are retailers: Tunecore, IODA, The Orchard and so forth are all aggregators and distributors, and then you’ve got the relationship directly with the physical distributors. I think the dynamics have changed dramatically, and it would certainly appear that for a number of services – digital aggregator models which have been running off of percentages – the dynamic has changed in a huge way, in that they played a ‘gatekeeper’ role for a number of years, and I think that’s been broken down a lot.

    The Tunecore model, where they’re working off of the upfront, ‘flat fee’, is changing the dynamic considerably. And when you’ve got owners of content in the market who’ve licensed the content through a third party to a licensee, they’ve gone into those agreements at a time when there wasn’t a solution. It’s now very simple for the owners of the content – the licensors – to go directly to the licensees and offer the product. In the past, a digital delivery platform didn’t exist to enable that relationship; now, it’s very easy.

    In terms of value for money, there’s been a number of middle-men that’ve been cut out of the picture. At the bigger end of town – and by that, I mean even the big indie labels who’re still small players on a larger scale – they’re now able to be in a position where they can supply the content to the consumer directly.

    I don’t believe there’s a particular service that’s the ‘best’ value for money; the best value is the direct relationship between those two business entities. In terms of small, independent artists, services like Tunecore which offer ‘flat fee’-based pricing are probably turning out to be a better deal for a lot of companies that don’t have the leverage that others do.

    You mentioned that middle-men have been cut out of the industry. Do you think that’s for the better?

    Certainly. If you’re an artist and you’re dealing with a record label, there’s a percentage of your overall revenue that you’re losing there. If that record label is dealing with a distributor, then there’s another percentage. If that distributor doesn’t have a relationship with an online retailer, such as iTunes, Bigpond or Amazon MP3, they’ll have to use an aggregator, so there’s another percentage that the artist isn’t seeing. It’s just like continually slicing an ever-diminishing pie. The less steps there are in that equation to reach the consumer, the better off the artist will be financially. The end goal of most artists is to reach as many people as you can with your music; it’s not necessarily about making money, but reaching an audience has always been important.

    The Middle East's debut EP

    Do you believe radio airplay is still important for emerging acts in Australia?

    Absolutely. Let me give you an example – The Middle East. A colleague of mine heard them on Triple R, a community radio station, before they were played anywhere else.

    Through that, we found the band, and Triple J discovered them soon after. Their music’s awesome, and the radio airplay has created a following for them.

    I’m a massive supporter of community radio in this country, and it’s not until you visit other countries that you realise that they don’t have public radio in the same way that we have with Triple J – although, the UK has six BBC stations. We have a really strong radio culture in Australia, and I think it plays an extremely important role. And you can’t deny the impact that commercial radio airplay has on breaking artists. I don’t think it’s the ‘be all and end all’, but certainly, if an artist gets to the level where they can create enough momentum on commercial radio, there are usually excellent dividends to be paid as a result.

    It’s interesting that you mentioned The Middle East, because their release (‘The Recordings Of The Middle East’ EP) is my favourite of 2009. It’s amazing.

    Yeah, it’s killing me. I have a lot of faith in their artistic ability, to become an international act. It’s one of those records that my wife has hidden from me. I’m not allowed to play it any more! That’s a classic example of listeners having the opportunity to discover a band from Townsville, because of the shortened distance between audiences. A band like that 20 years ago, out of Townsville; it’d have taken a hell of a long time before they got to that level of exposure.

    And there’s a danger in that, too: artists who are making really good music, but who are perhaps not quite ready for the impact of their work. And I know that those guys (The Middle East) are getting smashed on every front. Who’s managing them? Who’s doing all the booking? They released the EP through Spunk, but who knows what’ll happen next?

    They’re getting belted as an act, and you wonder whether they’re professionally equipped to deal with it. There’s a real upside to the diminishing barriers to access with this stuff, but there can also be an impact that’s not always positive. I don’t think it’ll be negative in this case, but it’s not always positive in terms of – is the band ready for that level of attention? And if they aren’t what are the consequences of them not capitalising?

    For bands looking for radio airplay, do you think it’s best to start at a community radio level and move up to Triple J, or just shoot for the top?

    94.5FM - srs bsnssIt depends on the content. There’s no ‘one shoe fits all’. Community radio is the most diverse, and offers the most opportunities in terms of exposure. Triple J is more responsive to community radio than ever before – and this is just my view, which Triple J might counter – but I think that the rise of FBI, and online blogging and podcasting communities, have really impacted on what Triple J discovers and starts playing. FBI has made a huge impact in Sydney, given that most of the Triple J team is based in the same city. I’ve seen more of the ‘better’ music generate a profile out of community radio before it’s generating a profile anywhere else.

    So I support the notion that you should service community radio at all costs, and that you should also service, where appropriate, the public radio stations as well, whether it’s Triple J, ABC National, ABC Regional or commercial stations. It just depends on the content, but I think that community radio has the broadest appeal for the majority of Australian content.

    I’ve spoken to artists who feel that being signed to a label is less necessary than ever before, as determined artists can handle their own management, promotion and distribution through the web. What are your thoughts on artists who don’t particularly want to sign to labels?

    That’s fine, if they’re prepared to do all of that. I think that there’s still a place for business relationships to occur between artists and other entities, whether they’re labels, or distributors, or publicists. There certainly needs to be a central point where the act’s affairs are managed, whether that’s done by a manager or in-house. It’s entirely possibly; it’s more possible than it has been before, but I don’t think that’s necessarily an argument for redundancy, to be honest. There are more options available, but there are cases where it just makes sense for people to enter into those relationships.

    I think if it’s all handled in-house, it’s a matter of balancing self-management and writing music. I mean, if The Middle East are getting tied up in all their own affairs and they’re not writing any new music, then it’s to the detriment to the quality of their act.

    Exactly. But having seen them just the other week, and after hearing a whole bunch of new material, it warmed my cockles to know that they were doing something other than just the five tracks on the EP.

    How does AIR help indie artists who aren’t signed to indie labels, and who don’t intend to?

    About 25-30% of our indies are unsigned artists. We have a whole range of opportunities for those guys, particularly if they want to remain unsigned artists. Through the D-Star MPE program, generally you can’t open an account with those guys unless you’re turning over [a significant] amount of money. So there’s opportunities for acts to deliver their product to a whole range of media, including commercial radio, blogs, public and community radio. We also help out by giving AIR members access to our professional network. They can call us up and ask questions directly. I’ve fielded three calls today from artists who have business questions that they need answered.

    We have a bunch of members-only stuff in the back end of the website, which is probably more relevant to self-releasing independent artists, or small-to-medium independent labels. It’s a very open environment in the independent sector, and for an independent artist to be able to get onto the phone to an owner of a record label and get advice from them, that’s certainly an open part of AIR’s network.

    A change of topic. This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot, as I’m in the middle of writing a series of columns for The Music Network on this topic. Why do you think that the industry continues to push artists toward releasing albums?

    Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent ReznorI’m not sure if it’s the industry that’s pushing artists to releasing albums, or whether it’s more the artists holding on to the idea. Certainly, if you take Radiohead as a case in point, the album was very much a part of their philosophy. The ‘In Rainbows‘ release had very little to do with the consumer. I don’t think it’s the labels continuing the album trend, per se; holistically, it’s the industry that’s focussed on albums, including the artists. They generally want to do a body of work. It’s kind of like a visual artist: they don’t just exhibit one piece at a time, they’ll showcase a collection of pieces that they’ve been working on over a period of time. The idea of the album appeals to the artist, and it appeals to the consumer.

    I think for our sector, at an industry level, there’s now very much a single-track culture. It’s been reinvigorated with digital distribution. I don’t necessarily buy the argument that it’s the labels who’re keeping the album alive, I’d say that the artists are equally, if not more, influential in the idea of the album. But I like the idea that artists like Nine Inch Nails [pictured right] and Iron & Wine are repositioning their thinking around their music releases. This idea of “release an album every three years” has largely gone, and I think that acts are paying more attention directly to their fanbase. There’s a real necessity these days to ‘plug in’ to your audience on a regular basis, to keep the fans happy. Offer them something free, and unique.

    I read about AIR’s partnership with JB Seed for the ‘Independent Times‘ panel discussion at the One Movement For Music conference. The plan to sponsor ten previous JB Seed management workshop attendees is interesting. How do you think the role of the artist manager has changed during your time in the industry?

    I think there’s a distinct lack of manager development in Australia. That requires addressing, and I think that The JB Seed program has gone a long way to doing so, particularly for self-managed artists, as John Butler was in the past. He managed himself for a number of years, and worked it out himself; he now has a management partner relationship with (Jarrah Records owner) Phil Stevens, who is his manager, for all intents and purposes. I think there’s now a much greater incidence of artists working with their managers, than artists being led by the managers. I think that’s an important distinction to make, and that’s changed relatively recently.

    Managers also need to be across a lot more aspects of the industry. There are many managers these days who’re also – by virtue of their role – required to manage the recording, and virtually embody the manager of the artists’ record label, in many ways.

    Australian Independent Record Label Association logo

    I just want to clarify that AIR’s partnership with One Movement and The JB Seed. We’re supporting what The JB Seed are doing, but they’re the guys who’re sponsoring those ten managers to come in for the discussion. AIR are actually developing the ‘Independent Times’ program, which is where the managers will plug into. I just wanted to be clear that One Movement and JB Seed are the entities who’re sponsoring that initiative, not AIR! We work very closely with The JB Seed. We’ve worked with every management workshop that they’ve done, in terms of content and delivery. AIR’s relationship with One Movement is purely with delivering the ‘Independent Times’ program for that conference.

    You’ve been involved with a lot of music conferences over your time, with both (Brisbane-based music industry development association) QMusic and AIR. How do you feel that One Movement is shaping up?

    It’s really interesting. They’ve stated a strong focus for the conference and festival; their approach is probably the only music industry conference in Australia that revolves around a festival, in that the One Movement Festival is a two-day event. And I think that carries with it an immense degree of weight, particularly when you look at the partners of (Sunset Events founder, David) Chitty and (concert promoter, Michael) Chugg. Their influence adds a whole different dimension to the conference dynamic. People like the idea of going to Perth for a big conference – because it’s a fucking long way to go, you better have a really good reason to go there!

    For sure. I’m excited about the conference, but I’m more excited about making One Movement Word into a damn good festival blog. Interviews like this will greatly assist toward that end. Thanks for your time, Stu!

    Stu Watters is leaving AIR in July 2009 to pursue a new video production and licensing venture in Brisbane called Morph TV Productions. Catch him on Twitter or via email.

  • A Conversation With Paul Hannigan, Moshcam.com Co-founder

    Paul Hannigan, Moshcam co-founder (yes, he chose this photo)Streaming concert video hub Moshcam is a super awesome resource for viewing professionally-recorded footage of bands that tour Sydney, Australia. They’ve been an intriguing player on the web music scene since 2007, yet I hadn’t seen their story told anywhere else. I was stoked when co-founder Paul Hannigan agreed to my snooping questions in early April 2009. Here ’tis: the most complete Moshcam interview, ever. Take that, internet!

    Hey Paul! I’ve researched you and your company as well as the internet allowed me. Can you describe how the idea behind Moshcam began, and how you decided to undertake the project with your two fellow founders?

    I’d returned from Los Angeles where I’d been working with a couple of successful start-ups (Citysearch, and GoTo.com, which subsequently became Overture/Yahoo Search Marketing) and had been helping manage and promote a few bands over there. Living back in Sydney at the time, around 2006, I wanted to do “something with music online”, which was about as specific as my thinking was at that point.

    As a fan, I found myself at shows at venues like The Metro and Enmore 3-4 times a week. As it happened, John Reddin, who was a friend and Head of Production at XYZ’s Lifestyle Channel, had worked on a number of television productions with Elia Eliades’ (the owner of Century Venues) production company. Elia had spoken to John about his desire to explore new territory with his venues online and John said “I know this fellow you should talk to”, and arranged an introduction. Through that meeting, the idea of Moshcam was born.

    Did you have any experience within the music industry, or were those connections gained through John and Elia?

    I’d been a drummer and a music journalist in Europe, and had some band management and production experience there and in the States. But I hadn’t been part of the industry itself in Australia, other than in a reporting capacity as Editor-in-Chief of what was initially Fairfax‘s Citysearch.

    Of course, as a tragic consumer, I’d just spent 3 months digitising some 6,000 albums in my collection, so if nothing else, it felt like I was propping up the industry! And suddenly, here was an opportunity to bring a love of music together with a background in content production and technology development?

    Moshcam doesn’t seem like the kind of business that’s built overnight. How long did it take to put concept into practice? I understand that you consulted with Melbourne web developers Hyro to build a custom CMS with sharing/playlist functionalities; had they undertaken any similar projects, or was this an all-new interface?

    moshcam_splash

    We spent 8 months developing a proprietary back-end solution for Moshcam. To a large extent, I knew what I wanted the site to be in terms of user experience and functionality, so interface design and architecture was relatively straightforward.

    The CMS was more of an iterative process in that we were really pushing into new territory around video serving and how to manage those assets.

    The Hyro project profile states that you required banner advertising intergration for revenue purposes, yet at the time of writing, I can’t see any ads on the site. When do you plan to include these, and is this the only revenue avenue down which Moshcam is treading?

    As a start-up that needed to build significant traffic from scratch, we always wanted to get the product right for music fans in terms of usability, first and foremost, before we thought about how to include things like sponsorship and advertising. Moshcam was always going to be a free offering, so naturally a free-to-air advertising model was going to be a part, but by no means all, of our model at some stage.

    However, I think it’s fair to say we are at an interesting juncture in the online world when it comes to music specifically, and there are a host of revenue models which may or may not play out in the months and years ahead.

    Moshcam’s stated aim is to make quality live recordings available to be streamed over the web for free. I can’t imagine that every artist you approach is accepting of this goal; what is Moshcam’s strike rate, and have you found that artists have become more welcoming of the idea since Moshcam started in 2007?

    Almost every artist we speak to directly loves the idea and only cares about getting their work out there.

    With record companies and managers, however, who are often the gatekeepers of approval for us, there’s still a great divide between those that embrace their artists’ music online and those who are more resistant.

    It’s easy to understand their concerns since they’ve seen revenues consistently eroded through free downloading but with something like Moshcam, increasingly they see it as a valuable showcase for the artist, both in terms of their existing and potential fanbase, as well as being able to show promoters who may not be familiar with their work just how well they can deliver live.

    Gary Numan hearts Moshcam. Maybe.If I had to give you a number, I’d say we’ve moved the strike rate from something like 10% to 40%, which given the number of bands that comes through Sydney is a significant figure. We just filmed our 500th show, which was Gary Numan at The Enmore Theatre.

    Moshcam is only licensed to broadcast each recording over the internet, so the shows currently aren’t available for download. In the coming years, do you think that labels will begin to request the ability to download recordings on behalf of the artists, perhaps at a per-song or per-show cost? This makes a lot of sense to me: stream the show for free, and include the option to buy a high-quality recording – via file download or on a physical DVD – for around the cost of an album.

    Absolutely. This is something we are working with the labels to put into effect. As record labels look for new revenue streams, this is one that previously did not exist. The revenue from a gig ends the minute the merch stand shuts up shop. What better way to extend the life cycle of that show than through making it available for fans to buy?

    As the aggregator of all this great footage, we are perfectly placed to offer just such a service. As you can imagine, there are a number of issues that need to be resolved in terms of licensing and technology, but we are very hopeful that this will be finalised soon.

    Do you present each artist with the same contract? Do some artists try to negotiate so that Moshcam’s recordings can be downloaded?

    We have a standard contract that varies only in the length of broadcast terms, from two years to ‘in perpetuity’.

    The download issue is not one that really comes up in the negotiations, other than the aforementioned assurances that we don’t offer it for free.

    Until we are able to put in place a site-wide download service, we link through to any band who makes their gig available for download or purchase elsewhere.. of which there are very few.

    Moshcam is now working in partnership with several Sydney venues. Are you planning to transfer the concept to other cities and venues across the country?

    The Gaelic Club. Colourful!We have built-in studios at The Metro and Annandale Hotel. We also have two mobile units and have filmed gigs at The Forum, The Gaelic Club, The Manning Bar, The Vanguard, The City Recital Hall, and the Hyde Park Barracks (for the Sydney Festival). As a result we have great relationships with those venues so whenever a band I’d like to see on Moshcam is in town, we can shoot at any venue with very smooth integration into their house operations.

    Other than being able to drill down to a very local level, there are no real economies of scale for us setting up in other Australian cities, since almost every band from another city we’d like to film tours and plays Sydney at some point.

    Internationally, I’d love to work with venues in Tokyo, London or Dublin, and New York or LA and cover the four corners of the rock and roll globe! Once we prove the model, I hope there will be opportunities to do just that.

    There was some controversy in Brisbane last year when Birds Of Tokyo‘s management kicked up a fuss over bootleg footage of new material that was recorded at The Zoo – coverage here and here. As a music fan, not a business owner, how do you feel about fans recording gig footage and uploading it to video streaming sites? I know that the quality can range from cameraphone-poor to semi-professional setups, yet I feel that there’s an inherent innocence in making an effort to record musicians’ work to share with other fans.

    It’s a dilemma isn’t it? As a music fan I want to see and hear anything and everything by the bands I love, but I respect the right of an artist to control their own output, particularly when it comes to quality – which, let’s face it, is the defining point of difference between Moshcam and 30 seconds of mobile phone footage on YouTube.

    Obviously the internet has moved the practice of taping shows into a whole new digital distribution environment. But personally, I can’t see how this does anything but increase artist exposure, and ultimately, sales. I do think there is often a lot of disingenuous talk about downloads not affecting sales, depending on who’s making what point, but when it comes to live fan recordings I really do think that is the case.

    How do you prefer to listen to music? How has this changed since you bought your first album?

    Shadow Paul jumps around to House Of PainI have a ridiculous amount of music stored digitally, both burned from my vinyl and CD collection and bought from iTunes.

    I was a bit of a vinyl junkie originally and took a while to make to change to CDs since it seemed a real degradation of the album for the sake of convenience. Tiny artwork, illegible lyrics, reduced dynamics, etc. I think that’s why I embraced the digital format so quickly, as I’d already done my grieving for the original artifact. Now, there’s just the music, and nothing else to get obsessive about.

    How do I listen to music differently now than back in the day? I’m a compulsive curator, so it’s almost always a playlist as opposed to an album.

    More people are listening to more music than ever before, yet the major labels are resistant to changes in consumer habits due to an effort to retain pre-internet revenue models. Agree or disagree?

    Well it’s a prima facie argument, isn’t it? There’s a lot of nonsense spoken on both sides about the effects of digital downloads on the industry. Most kids I know have never paid for music in their lives. That’s just the world they grew up in, it’s not a new digital frontier for them, nor is it a moral issue. They have larger music libraries at 16 than I had after years of buying music as a fan.

    But the point is, they would never have bought that music anyway. So it’s simplistic and misleading for the labels to say that this is somehow lost revenue.

    What’s more, these kids are incredibly indiscriminate about what they download, which exposes them to artists they would never have heard if they were buying one album a month with their pocket money. This gets them out to live shows; gets them buying merch, and gets them involved in online fan communities, often interacting with the artists themselves. All of which creates lifelong fans who will buy music in some form or other when a pricing model becomes both standardised and sensible.

    Likewise, a lot of people who buy music continue to do so, while downloading a lot of free stuff they wouldn’t normally buy to check it out – again, no lost revenue and wider artist exposure boosting live music attendance. Can it really be coincidence that we’ve seen an explosion in live music attendance since since the advent of peer-to-peer download networks?

    And then there is the percentage of people who are downloading for free the music that they would have historically paid for. That’s something you can’t refute. Human nature being what it is, and music costing what it does, means that a lot of people are saving themselves money at the expense of the label and the artist. And that’s a problem, especially for the artist. If a musician can’t make a living from their output, how can they survive to make more music?

    Moshcam Logo. "The gig is up!"

    That’s why the tour has become an income staple. It’s like a return to the strolling minstrel – bands as bards, singing for their supper!

    Let’s hope we see some innovation from the labels around pricing to get fans paying for music at a price that’s realistic, in the new digital economy. Whether that’s a tiered licensing model – which would save fans like me who still buy their music a small fortune – remains to be seen, but if you look at media sectors where this has been operational, such as subscription TV, you can see how it could be work for the online music industry.

    None of this is being held back by mechanics or technology. It’s all about pricing. However, I think there will always be a demand for a fan to buy an album or a song directly to own it, either as a digital file, or as something you can hold and look at.

    What excites you about the music and web industries?

    The immediacy. It’s like the fourth wall has been demolished. Although with that comes a loss of some of the mystique for fans and means there will probably never be any more rock gods, I think it’s really healthy.

    The internet is basically punk technology for music distribution. Now not only can anyone pick up a guitar, form a band and record some songs, they can get it out there on a scale that has never been possible before.

    And in the area of live music, I’m obviously thrilled that we can now capture a gig and share it with fans without having to get into the business of DVD production and distribution. As a fan, this is all part of what I love about being able to experience music outside of the established release schedule of a band’s label.

    Before the web, all you heard from a band was what the label released. Perhaps an album every couple of years; maybe a live album or a DVD. Now there are all these great auxiliary moments where you get to see and hear an artist outside the studio, being captured and shared in all sorts of environments.

    Moshcam was nominated for a Webby Award last month in the ‘Best Music Site’ category, although you were beaten in the end by NPR. Congrats! Was this a goal of yours, or a total surprise? 

    The Webby that Moshcam didn't win. No crying over spilt springs!Thanks! It was great to be acknowledged by our peers as doing something worthwhile.

    To be honest it was a total surprise. Obviously, we’d entered but we haven’t been doing this for too long and we figured we were probably still off the radar of the Stateside luminaries who decide these things.

    What are your plans to navigate the ‘interesting juncture’ in online advertising models, and what can we expect from Moshcam throughout 2009?

    One thing to understand is that we didn’t start this as a marketing model upon which to hang a product. It was a genuine project by three fans to build something compelling for other fans. That said, it’s far from inexpensive to maintain and obviously we have to find a way to pay for it.

    How will we do that? Well, one thing Moshcam enjoys is a startling level of engagement with it’s users. Fans are watching for an average of 31 minutes per show, which is almost 10 times the average for a website visit. And when you realise that video advertising is the fastest growing sector, it’s not hard to see a model there that could work well for us as the market matures.

    As discussed, we’re also very keen to work with bands and labels to facilitate a download service, should they wish to sell their shows. We’re also working on some neat licensing and distribution partnerships, and we have a 13-part TV show featuring signed and unsigned Australian bands running on cable at the moment called “Moshcam: Live and Kicking”. We’re not in the business of re-inventing the internet’s business models; we just want to be in a position to offer a valuable service to bands, valuable content to fans and be able to work with whichever models shake out as viable for us.

    As for the rest of 2009, you can expect hundreds more great gigs filmed, as well as a lot of new types of content, from backstage interviews to artist-curated playlists. You’ll also see Moshcam on the road around Australia capturing the best local bands in each capital city, and a couple of other cool initiatives we’re developing that will focus on getting some unsigned bands we love much wider exposure!

    As you can see, Moshcam is kind of a big deal. Unless I’m mistaken, their streaming concert concept is sailing uncharted waters on the national level, so to speak, and they’re probably a trend-setter on the international front, too. Remember, you read it here first! All 2,900 words! Congrats. To reward yourself, head to Moshcam and watch a show. They’ve got over 500 available, so if you can’t find one that you like, you’re not a music fan. Get the hell off my blog!

    Thanks Paul! He can be contacted via email.

  • A Conversation With Hunz, Brisbane Electronic Artist

    hunz_02Hunz is a Brisbane-based indie artist who intersects innocent pop melodies with dark electronica. He’s Johannes van Vliet when recording, but his killer sound is augmented by a bassist and drummer on stage. I first saw Hunz perform in support of Yeo & The Freshgoods at Brisbane’s Press Club in November 2008; his music is brilliant, which is why I bought his debut album, When Victims Fight, immediately afterwards.

    Hi Hunz! It’s 2009. There’s ten trillion bands on the internets who want our attention. Why should you have ours?

    My music is a throw back to my teens, when video games were my escape to the problems that surrounded me.

    I use glitches, beeps, pops and the original programs that were popular for writing music back then. I try to cram the songs full of my heart so that when I sing, it all comes out connected and very personal.

    I have visions as I write this music, and it is my hope that soon people will see what I see as I embark on animating my music as well.

    Your debut – 2008’s When Victims Fight – was marvelous, but I understand you’ve since written a new album.

    My new album is called Thoughts That Move, and it was inspired by the RPM Challenge. My wife read about RPM on a website and said, “You should do this”. The concept behind the site is to record an album – ten tracks, or 35 minutes – in a month.

    As I logged onto the website I started having doubts. It looked a bit dodgy – I should say I’m a graphics snob, and I feel I have the right to comment on web design and layout; I don’t – but as I looked around, it was evident that my initial doubts were wrong.

    The RPM competition is about community and creating an outline that will help people – from bedroom guitarists to performing musicians – record an album within a month, albeit within February, the shortest month! In a matter of moments, I ran out into the lounge room and announced that I would accept this challenge.

    A summary of what followed in the month of February was as follows:

    • “Optimistic” Hunz would wake me up.
    • “Creative Ideas” Hunz would hug me during my day-job and whisper sweet nothings in my ear
    • “Realistic” Hunz would put me to sleep (well, keep me awake).

    Halfway through the month, “Realistic” Hunz would wake me up. “Creative Ideas” Hunz had stomach cramps and had to go bye-bye, and “Optimistic” Hunz was being bashed.

    In the last week, I just let everything go, and it all fell into place. Out popped this album Thoughts That Move, and wow, RPM was done for this year. There’s a more detailed account of the challenge at hunz.com.au.

    As an electronic artist, the ability to quickly tweak and modify your songs lends itself to this sort of time-constrained project. How much live instrumentation did you use?

    For this album, I asked a friend of mine in Nashville, Jesse Palmer (from a band called Skate Party, who did some tunes for HomeStarRunner) to work on a guitar part for You Said Hello. That was it. Everything else is mostly hand-drawn, which involves drawing in your waveform; another name for this is an oscillator. I would then do some basic ADSR (Attack – Delay – Sustain – Release) on it and use multiple channels to do the Add, Subtract, Multiply setups. It’s like creating your own SoftSynth VSTI plugin, but doing it right in the program instead.

    I used the Renoise audio composition software for this project. The other instrumentation was from a lot of old, old loops I have found over time. I love flavour in drums, so I love to cut up live loops and shove them into new beats. I love it when hi-hats ring into snares or kick drums. It adds imperfections, and electronic music needs this to make sure it isn’t so rigid. I used string and Rhodes samples for a few tracks too.

    I will eventually merge the live aspect of the music into the recordings, which will be heard on the next album. The guys in my band are amazing, and I would be silly to not have them influence the outcome of my tracks. There are parts they have both come up with that I miss dearly when I listen to When Victims Fight, and I’m not going to let that happen again. The only track on When Victims Fight that mixes electronic elements and the live band was Who Knows, and I feel like it’s a good start.

    hunz_03When do you expect the RPM album to be in stores?

    This album will be free.

    We are currently working out how to present this though, as people have requested physical copies and others are interested in paying something. We are also looking at ways of getting it into some digital distribution outlets so that people get it how they want.

    I’m also releasing the original song files in a tracker format for Renoise (.xrns), which means they are 100% destructible, a bit like a GarageBand session.

    I really want to pay my respects to the scene that inspired most of how I write music today. Back in the early days when I wrote music, it just got shared around the internet for everyone to pull apart. I guess with this album, I’m going back to that mentality a bit.

    So the free album release is more a recognition of your past musical experience than a comment on the nature of musical distribution in 2009?

    For me it was just how I used to release music in the past. You just released it online and hope for the best.

    I was so excited when I saw that Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead successfully released music this way, for free. It is a step in a different direction that feels like it might just work.

    ‘Free’ for bands like NIN means that they can live off their live shows.

    ‘Free’ for bands like me may mean that more people will be attracted to the idea of my music, and then fall in love with it, which will thus provide more demand for me to tour around a bit.

    It certainly is a game of “wait and see”, because I have no idea. But it just feels right, and ultimately, I won’t be disappointed. I’m doing music because I love it, and my close friends asked me to release it.

    Kickass mindset, man. You’ve already won. I love that you’re already planning the next album. Have any themes solidified yet, or are you still mulling it over? Is it going to be another free digital release? Or more importantly – do you see any alternative to releasing music for free or near-free? I have this notion that music in 2009 primarily exists as a vehicle to get bodies to shows, which you seem to believe as well.

    The next disc is going to be more like what our live show sounds like. I’ll create the initial song ideas, work with the guys in creating fresh bass/drum ideas, then take that all into the studio and record. Then I’ll take that home and manipulate it and then go back for mix-down later on.

    The theme for the next album is  introvert versus extrovert relationships, and I’m nearly done with the creation of the first phase.

    I haven’t yet decided how I’ll approach the release of the next album, but I love the idea of free music. I agree that music might move into a promotional realm for the artist, instead of being a source of major income.

    It’s hard for me, because the city in which I work is small. If I play every other week in Brisbane and have people come along, they’ll burn out quickly and will only come to shows every 3-4 months. So my crowds thin out until I have a major release; then it packs up again.

    If you’re a touring band around the globe, I could see this working a treat; or at least, somewhere where the population can support it.

    Maybe having options for the user would be a treat. Or you sell your album with a ticket to come to any show. So people can just buy the album and support, or people can get the album for free with their ticket purchase. And that ticket works anywhere you play. Maybe it’s universal. Haha, still thinking about that one…hunz_01

    I’m guessing you’ve got a pretty sweet home recording set up.

    I have:

    I then use Buzz, Renoise and Cubase to create everything from there. I stay away from VSTIs (virtual studio technology) and instead draw the wave forms – which can represent percussion or synth sounds – into Renoise.

    I also never got into the gear race, which makes me kinda feel like I missed out on something. But it’s been only over the last few years that I’ve played my music live, so I know my future will be more gear-centric.

    I imagine that you have some mundane day-job, and that your music is your creative outlet. Am I on target? Hunz – accountant by day, musician by night?

    Haha, that’s so great. No, I’m a Creative Director for a production company running the motion design team. Motion design is best generalised as “very pretty movie titles”, but like music, it has very, very deep paths that push to the other side of the spectrum.

    I’ve just embarked on setting up my own motion design company called iv motion [eye-vee mo-shun]. It’s a partnership with the company where I work now. It has been a big dream of mine to see music and animation together, all made by the same creative agency, so this is a step in that direction.

    In the past, I tried to do all the music and animation on my own, but I couldn’t. I need help. I need crews, and I need to pay them for their work. I am hoping this year brings about some completeness in Hunz, where people will see the two together and understand the music more. My graphics team used to be a part of a production house, but by breaking off on our own, iv motion can work with many production houses to get a broader range of work.

    Okay, so I was (thankfully!) way off on my accountant-by-day assumption. Creative Director – that’s awesome. This certainly explains the kick-ass artwork and animation that accompanies your music. I friggin’ love the promo vid that you did for When Victims Fight [below].

    You mentioned that you’d like to try and integrate visuals into your live show – what do you have in mind?

    Thanks for the love on the promo vid! I stumbled on that idea during another job and saved off my work knowing no client would want zombie-like people walking across the screen! It often happens as you work: something will glitch out, but it looks so freek’n cool that you have to show it somehow down the line, and Hunz works out perfectly for that.

    The live video aspect of Hunz will happen over a long period of time. It’s more a money/time thing, and then wanting to do it right. I have invested time into researching some fresh ideas, and with technology, the proper implementation wins over simply being the first one to use it.

    I am aiming for interaction of the artist with the video to enhance the mood of the songs. The way that NIN just did their last tour was exactly along the lines of where my head space is at. I haven’t seen it, and I don’t think I am going to watch DVDs of the tour. I’ll try and remain fresh and not taint my creative ideas just yet. I heard Reznor would push on these LED displays and the video on them would move around him to make it look like he was pushing through it. Just so good to see this happening.

    Your well of creativity seemingly runneth over. Music is your passion, that much is obvious. Do you have those moments where you wake up in the middle of the night and have to record something, or do you stew on ideas before working on a track?

    Melodies greet me often. I’ll be walking along, looking around at life and then the shapes and colours start singing in my head. So I have a phone that records these moments as I hum in the melodies. Most of the time I sit down on the computer and start messing with sounds. Usually it starts talking to me, a flood gate opens up, and then the song is complete.

    I feel like I watch the music being made for me and then I pass it on to everyone else. I had this one song that didn’t make sense to a few years back and I thought “Man, How neat is that? I can sit there and create and not know at the same time”.

    The influences of artists like Boards of Canada, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails are identifiable in your sound, but your MySpace mentions that you’re interested in “anyone who complements music with computers”. Can you elaborate on this statement, and describe how your music taste began to lean toward electronica?

    That “anyone who complements music with computers” is a way to say ‘hey’ to all the demo sceners of the day, and also to give people an idea that they don’t always have to use guitars for accompaniment. It also is a subtle request for people who use computers to send me their music. I’ve come from the demo scene, and we all used computers to help bring our ideas out into the open, and this helped introduce me to electronica. I’ve always had a soft spot for hand-drawn sinewaves and sawtooths.

    The lyrical content on When Victims Fight seems intensely personal; is this a trend you plan to continue?

    When Victims Fight was a complex one. It was about all those arguments you have in your head as you’re thinking. I do write about myself, but very exaggerated versions of it. Enough to protect the source but to still be honest and feel it. It will continue out like this; it’s just how I work.

    I have a few songs that didn’t make that album because the lyrics were so argumentative. One line is “you should do this”; the next is “well, I’m not sure if that’s where I need to go” .. and it flips around like this with no resolve.

    I’m not really into much resolve either, I’m really into the reality of the journey. It’s beautiful to watch the process of people.

    You currently handle most aspects of the Hunz project – production, visual, booking, promotion – yourself. Have you accepted this as par for the course due to the part-time nature of your musical career, or do you envisage enlisting external assistance?

    I’m really fortunate to have a helpful band. Both guys in the band are helping me out in any way they can, but that is dependent on how much I can “let go”. Which I am learning to do. I have very high standards; some would say too high. So I’m learning that it’s okay to accept what is “second best” in my eyes, because that is still higher than what most people might expect.

    I don’t know if the truth of that statement is in my heart yet, but I think it will get there.

    My wife also helps out as well and has challenged me – as only someone who knows you can – to do things differently, which has been awesome.

    Apart from that, I do need help. I’m creative, and although I’m learning that business is very creative too, it still isn’t my strong point. I do know what I want to achieve, and where the music is heading; I’ll just start constructing that now, and hope that I meet the right people to make it happen.

    hunz_04Finally – as a musician in 2009, what’s the biggest barrier to getting your music heard? How do you overcome that barrier?

    As I’ve developed as a musician, there are a few ways I’ve noted that you can explore as a band to get heard. I think for Hunz it’s all about people discovering the music kind of on their own. Because these themes are in the music, to do it any other way would be a lie.

    I don’t want to push Hunz. I want to let it sit and take on its own life. It’s been wonderful to watch, because often when someone connects with Hunz, they become a fan and want to help me out, which just overwhelms me in the best way. Because of that approach, things take a longer amount of time, so it’s finding the balance between that and connecting with the right people who can help build a platform for you.

    I will continue to perfect my art, video art and music over the years to come, and I hope you all decide to watch this process as it unfolds!

    Watch the process unfold in real time by following Hunz on MySpace, Twitter and his website. You can stream his newest creation, Thoughts That Move, through the RPM Challenge site.