Widget

I like Rcrd Lbl. Ever since reading about Peter Rojas collab with Josh Deutsch of Downtown records, I liked their “ready-fire-aim” approach.

So, in the spirit of co-operation, I’ll be pinching some of their widgets and plopping them here - music that you may have missed. Kicking it all off we have Dublin’s Grand Pocket Orchestra, just because they’ve been on my mind lately and they rule and (they’ll be back in Belfast in Sept.)

On tour…

It’s been an interesting few weeks as I followed Escape Act & Tom McShane across the length and breadth of our fair isle, touring in support of their new 7″ release.

It was quite a journey - from rabid fans in Derry (”OMG, are you guys Escape Act?  I heard you on Colin Murray - He’s the new John Peel!), to aloof music-browsers in Tower Records, it was quite the spectrum.  All said, all of the dates were enormously positive, and unique in their own way…

Derry was a raucous environment, and the city has a frenetic energy at the best of times - then, in true summer-time fashion, 50 or so Italian students landed in off of a bus halfway thru Tom’s set and made quite the crowd

Tower Records in Dublin was a chance to see if either act could control it’s sound to play in such a small space - with a liberal use of “jazz hands”, both Tom & Escape act played mezmerizing sets to the ever-changing, vinyl browsing crowd.

The 3 hour, Friday rush-hour trek back from Dublin to Belfast that same day was a marathon for everyone, but it was worth it for the show at Lavery’s that awaited that night.  The crowd was expectant and warm for the show, with only one appearance by the cheap and sleazy Belfast punter (”Why would I pay to get in when I can watch the show from the door?” is an actual quote from one guy.)

Back in Dublin only 1 day later, upstairs at Whelan’s was a wonderful venue.  A sign above the bar reads “Dear Customers:  Whelan’s is a listening venue.  Please respect the artists and remain quiet during the performance”  It’s rare that venues understand simple principles such as this - between trying to make a buck from artists and draw a crowd, sometimes the music is simply lost in the shuffle.

Luckily, the music was at the fore that night - I have to admit to being a bit star struck by the opener, Mumblin’ Deaf Ro.  Ever since Neassa (from The Terribles) sent me his album last year I’ve been besotted by the Dublin song-smith’s lyrical story-telling and mesmerizing guitarwork - I’d highly recommend you check him out - http://www.myspace.com/mumblindeafro

A week later, Cork’s welcome was a warm one - plenty of radio play and press made for a good, if chatty, turnout.  The nattering masses made getting people’s attention quite difficult, but the lads were up to the challenge:  at one point Chris from Escape Act was rocking so hard he kicked over the half the drumkit.  The move certainly served it’s purpose and turned a few heads.  Jim @ Plugd records was enormously enthusiastic about the 7″ and the store is one of the best I’ve seen - check it out if you’re ever down there!

The swan-song, then, was in Limerick last night - the ever-fabulous Vertigo Smyth, as he had in Cork, played an amazing set augmented by some wonderful double-bass and ukelele work.  The after-party was supposed to be at a place in Limerick called Daphnes - word had it that the bar never closed but rumours abounded that local law-enforcement had started to crack down on the revelry.  So it was, that when we arrived at the venue at 3am there were various crowds of folks milling about hoping to get the signal to enter the aladdin’s cave of late night boozing.  The fact that there were crowds outside what was supposed to be a “secret” shebeen kind of negated any chance of getting in - Limerick’s worst kept secret indeed.  Good thing there was a house party to be had!

So here I am drinking a hair-of-the-dog in Limerick, and I’m still processing all of this - the good, the bad and the smelly.  Once my head is in a place where it’s fully functional, I’m sure I’ll have some insight.  Till then, I’m just gonna marinade in the whole, messy lot.  Yum.

Rough Trade, Sister Ray calling…

Just some pics today of my recent trip to chat to the nice folks at Rough Trade and Sister Ray about our current and upcoming releases.  The pictures tell the story of love, loss and alcohol better than I ever could -

Our gracious hosts…

Tom’s new fashion accessory - Green Vinyl

Conversation…

Would you like a drink? - No, thanks, I’m not thirsty. - wha??

7am.

Virginia Woolf’s Grandfather’s Graveyard

Parklife

Can’t work all the time…

I <3 Swingboats

and old tyme-y hockey games

Too big for this

I’m waving! See!

del.icio.us

Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been thinking quite a bit about social bookmarking site del.icio.us, and the various ways I use it to aggregate information for Penny Distribution.

•    Tagging interesting articles or some relevant new story, then providing my tags as an RSS feed/Email Subscription for folks who’re interested in music industry stuff and want to follow what I’m reading each day.
•    Tagging artist news, reviews and coverage with the artist’s name - then providing an RSS feed/Email Subscription for that artist so fans can be kept informed of news about their favorite artist.
•    Subscribing to my peer’s del.icio.us RSS feeds - basically having other folks researching on the internet for me

These functions have been incredibly useful in connecting Penny and our artists to fans and people interested in what we do.  I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that I’m not getting the most out of the service from label perspective.

If you’re a label, artist or manager, do you use del.icio.us to connect fans to your artists?  And if so, what approaches do you take?

My delicious RSS feed is here and you can subscribe to the Penny News service via email here.

If you liked this post and think someone else might find it interesting, please forward it along.  Thanks!

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Aloha, EMI & Guy Hands

Ian Rodgers (former head of Yahoo! Music) is one of the select few Music 2.0 commentators who consistently hit the nail on the head when talking about where we’re going (not just where we’ve been) in the music industry.  My (extremely short) list also includes Mark Gunheim,  Mike Masnick and Terry McBride

Ian’s open letter to Guy Hands (new owner of EMI) today is a great read for artists and new labels alike.  Standout passage (standout because this is exactly what Penny Distribution offers):

“If I’m an artist, I’m probably better off having a small label start building my career than I am submitting to a major, going through the buckshot marketing machine and hoping against hope they’re going to break me at radio or MTV. If the small label has an existing relationship with a group of people already inclined to like my style, they have a better chance at building my career from the bottom-up than I have hitting it big in the channels of radio or MTV.

If, as this hypothetical artist on an indie label, I get traction, will I then move up into the major system? In the old days I *had* to if I wanted to reach a wider audience, but not anymore. If I’m the White Stripes of tomorrow do I do a 360 deal with the label or do one with myself? I can afford to record my own music, I can distribute in 100 different ways by myself (and keep more of the profits), so if I’m going to partner with you for my releases you’d better have better access to a larger audience than I could generate on my own. If my song fits in the limited (and shrinking) channels of radio and music television I might have a shot. But if not, what do you offer?”

Read the whole article here

New Wax from Penny Distribution!

Image by Helico via Flickr

So, you all know I normally save this space for music industry discussion, so forgive this off-topic post. I’ve got 2 things I want to share:

1. We’re excited to announce the release of Tom McShane’s new single “Fighter” on split 7″ vinyl and download. You can preview the tracks over at Tom’s Myspace or his Penny Distribution page.

If you dig the music, go ahead and pre-order the vinyl at TomMcShane.co.uk - you’ll get immediate access to 4 bonus downloads as well as your shiny new record when they ship on June 23rd.

2. If you’re a fan of Penny Distribution’s music, you should subscribe to our dedicated Penny Artist News site. It’s basically a bulletin board for all of our artists and will keep you up to date on new releases, shows and signings. Coming up are some exclusive radio-session downloads from Tom McShane in the buildup to the release of the vinyl. Not to be missed.

{aside} For the picky among you (and you wouldn’t be reading this blog if you weren’t!), we’re also offering artist-only Email Updates & RSS feeds. Go check them out and stay on top of it

Thanks for your patience with this - we will now resume our regularly scheduled programming…

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Unclaimed Cash for Artists - Join “Project Unfound Artist”

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In this new music world of shattered revenue streams, it’s become all the more important for artists to be aware of where their money can come from. Licensing revenue and merchandising are two of the oft-quoted income streams that are now central to any artist’s attempt to sustain themselves.

But another important source of revenue is every artist’s right to be paid when their recordings are streamed on internet radio, satellite radio or cable or satellite television music services. The collection of these monies on artist’s behalf falls to an organization called SoundExchange in the U.S. (or it’s sister organization PPL when the performance occurs in the UK).

It’s safe to say, however, that many more people have signed up for iTunes than are aware of or registered with SoundExchange. According to this Wired article there are 7,700 artists who are due royalties but, as they’re unregistered with SoundExchange, they can’t be paid. If the money remains unclaimed after 3 years it go back into SoundExchange’s coffers. This may be a large part of the reason why there isn’t much of a push to find them in the first place.

To tackle the problem, entertaimnet lawyer Fred Willhelms and P2Pnet are moving to allow crowdsourcing to attempt to find the artists on the Unregistered Artist List

“Start tracking them down and letting them know they have money coming to them…

The next time you end up on hold, call up the list, Google a name, or search Facebook and MySpace.

“Send a note, or if you don’t feel like getting personally involved in the process, send the contact information to JSimson@soundexchange.com,” says Wilhelms.

“Get an artist paid.”

Of course, I’d advise that if you’re an artist, you make sure you’re registered with SoundExchange yourself first and foremost. Even if you’re not a US resident, you never know how your music is being used. And as services like YouTube become legit and start paying royalties, it’ll be SoundExchange who’ll make sure you’re compensated when someone uses your work.

It may not be a lot of money to start, but it’s a trickle that contributes to the stream.

Penny Distribution: The Hypebot Interview

Just a quickie to point you in the direction of an interview of Penny Distribution for Hypebot.com’s 4 Questions For… series.

Previous interviewees include Sonicbids, Imeem, Ning and Reverbnation, so what they wanted to talk to us about, we’ve no idea! ;-)  Have a peek at:

4 Questions for…Penny Distribution

ISP Tax Part 2, MySpace Music and The Bad Old Days

Image via Wikipedia

Bruce over at Hypebot today posted the full text of an email sent by digital distributor The Orchard to it’s label members regarding MySpace Music.

In it Greg Scholl, the head of The Orchard, sounds a warning note about proper compensation of indie artists who take part in the new Myspace service - a service who’s owners and equity holders currently comprise of 3 of the 4 majors and Rupert Murdoch’s Newscorp.

“…the apparent MySpace licensing approach is troubling. It hearkens back to a time none of us wants to revisit … Where independent artists and labels were third-class citizens in the global music economy, instead of the second-class citizenship (with a good chance for an upgrade to first) that we enjoy today”

This isn’t the first of these kinds of deals. My last post discussed the new approach taken by Warner in hiring Jim Griffin to help explore ways of creating an ISP surcharge, added to a customer’s bill, that would allow unlimited music downloading. Any such scheme would also be largely owned and influenced by the majors and could result in more marginalization of independent music business and artists.

Indeed, the MySpace deal could be even more unfair, as majors and MySpace leverage the huge amounts of aggregated traffic that indie/unsigned artists bring to the site into revenue that those same indie artists will see little, if any, income from  Wired’s Listening Post Blog sounded a similar warning last Thursday.

In response to these growing concerns, we’ve been discussing a collective of artists and businesses with a number of other like-minded businesses with the aim of gathering and using our collective strength (the essence of the long tail) to push for our proper place at the table.

The idea is in it’s nascent stage, but if you’re interested or concerned, please join us and join in the discussion:

http://indyartists.ning.com

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ISP Tax - So Crazy It Just Might Work

Source: WikipediaReaders of this blog shouldn’t have been surprised by yesterday’s announcement by Warner Music Group that vocal industry critic and “music-like-water” proponent Jim Griffin is to begin the implementation of a voluntary collective licensing scheme.

The rhetoric against the proposal from the blogosphere has been, as usual, brutal and swift. Techcrunch has called the plan both “extortion” and a “protection racket“. It’s unfortunate that a better job hasn’t been done in tackling the fears generated by such a scheme and it should be priority #1 for the newly founded entity headed by Mr. Griffin.

That said, I think overreaction in this case is unhelpful. I find it interesting that there would be support for this idea when it is purely theoretical, but when movements are made to make it a practical solution, the internet erupts in anger.

There are, of course, plenty of reasons why the idea won’t work, why it will be damaging to independent musicians, labels and long-tail artists.

But first and foremost, I know that the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s 2004 proposal of such a scheme is forming the blueprint for the new entity headed by Jim Griffin. And in my conversations with him in the past, he is well aware of the interests and concerns of small, independant artists and I firmly believe he has the interests of artists of all stripes at heart in this.

I don’t think abstention is an option here. If musicians and labels can’t work together to implement a voluntary licensing scheme in the vein of what Griffin & Co are offering, then government will impose such an agreement on artists and labels. We only need look at the mess the Copyright Royalty Board made of Internet Radio licensing rates to see the advantages of working out a business deal well before government gets involved.

This is where we need to act: The power of the long-tail is, of course, volume. It’s up to independent music businesses like the readers of this blog to take this matter into our own hands.

Please get in touch if you like the idea of forming a collective to ensure fair representation around the negotiating table of this scheme. Jim has ensured such a place exists for long-tail artists and labels, and Penny Distribution is working with a number of other indies to make sure our voice is heard.

After all, the internet provides a voice for us like never before, and our priority should be to ensure we have voice as strong as our collective market share.