@mcnallyconsults

This scene has been building since the middle of the decade and it’s a particularly ironic movement (not sure you can have an ironic movement but there you go) as it’s foundations are neeks (nerd meets geek = neek) rejecting technology ‘essentials’ such as PDA tools that are meant to help you manage your life better and replacing them with…pen and paper.

The idea that you need a movement for what is really a simple matter of how you prefer to take notes and keep contacts is rather daft – one post cheerfully discusses the issue of pen and paper not offering ‘cut and paste’ as an option – but it is is also a valid discussion and relates to a theme I have touched on before.

How much does technology and the opportunities that come from it actually add to our lives?

The question is just as relevant to an artist and how they develop their career as it is to the Hipster PDA guys. One lesson the Hipster PDA movement offers is an opportunity to do a reality check.

Is a ‘must have’ opportunity actually an opportunity? How does it really benefit you? Does it justify the effort and time when there are much more simple and just as effective alternatives?

The answer I imagine is not black & white. I like to sync my email, contacts and calender with my phone. I use Dropbox & X-Marks to sync files and bookmarks between computers but my ‘to do’ list is on cheap pads with rip off pages or Moleskines which can be carried around without getting banged up.

So a mix of technology works for me as it does for most of us. I guess the lesson continues to be that it’s a matter of balance, of what works for you and for remembering that one size does not fit all and never will.

For those of you who saw The Specials earlier this year. For those of us who are Two Tone fans. For those of us who were there first time around.

These limited edition Two Tone posters have now been re-released as a result of a colaboration between the artists responsible for the original Two Tone graphic design work – John ‘Teflon’ Sims and David Storey*. They are now making each of these influential artworks available again in a limited edition of 100 giclée prints. Printed on Fine Art paper (Baryte Museum 300gsm) using light-fast archival ink, each one is numbered and signed by the artists and includes a certificate of authenticity.

Available from David Storey at £88 each or £450 for all six.

Damn. I’m skint. Chops to Cool Hunting for the source post.

The cancellation of Popkomm throws up some interesting questions. Not least how relevant such a convention is these days. My experience of last years event in Berlin was not exactly overwhelming.

Somehow – in one of the most vibrant and creative cities in Europe, the organisers managed to offer one of the least vibrant and creative experiences one can imagine.

What are these conferences actually meant to offer? Well in all honest creativity was never at the top of the list. Basically it’s an opportunity for ‘music’ companies and individuals to network and do business.

Last year the rooms were full of companies who were really only selling to themselves. And a lot of them seemed to actually have forgotten that the phrase ‘music industry’ had the word ‘music in front  of  ‘industry’.

The majority of the stands were either national stands, solution providers or service providers. So far nothing new.

The providers were predominantly digital focused. They were also predominantly offering different ways to distribute, market, promote or screw up your digital music – and most were start-ups.

The majority were not the slightest bit interested in music per se. Talk to any of them about new music, great songs or new artists and if they couldn’t figure out a way it could be monetised then goodbye. They were interested in music as content  -  they really were looking at it as just a collection of digital files – and revenue streams.

Which is fine. I’m realistic about these things. Idealism and passion is not welcome at these events. I don’t expect everyone who works in the business of music to like it. I’ve worked for the NME for Gods sake.

The other side of these events – the bit that is meant to provide the thought provoking part of the three days are the panels. Most are a waste of time. Old school CEO’s, vested interests, snake oil salespeople and – every now and then – a speaker who introduced a new idea or trend bucking suggestion that was actually worth listening to. The latter though was rare.

And it’s not just Popkomm. This years MIDEM was pretty much the same.

(Except Cannes still seems to think that the recession doesn’t apply to the creative industries. Whoever persuaded the three largest creative  industries in the world that the ideal place to host their premier annual music, film & TV event was an overpriced seaside resort with even worse transport links than Albania was a genius).

The same types of companies, the same type of bullshit. There were more labels. And there was less music. Which is ironic.

Let us not forget though that the hottest tickets at MIDEM were for the promotional nights hosted by a digital company, Qtrax, that spent millions flying in James Blunt, Don Henley and LL Cool J to play for the delegates. Why? Because they were launching an ad supported P2P download site with all the majors participation. Except the majors weren’t participating after all despite what Qtrax seemed to think. Go to their website now and it’s shuttered.

Popkomm is not being held this year because of piracy. Seriously – that’s actually one of the excuses they are using. Popkomm is not being held this year because it is no longer relevent to the people who made it relevant in the past.

It’s also not being held this year because the organisers have found to their cost that digital start-ups tend to slow down very quickly in a recession.

Popkomm forgot it was meant to be about the music industry. Not the digital industry.

Virgin Media the UK cable operator, has teamed up with Universal Music to launch an “unlimited” music download subscription service in attempt to combat online piracy.

The “carrot and stick” service also requires Virgin Media to take the toughest stance of any broadband provider against illegal file sharing. It has promised to suspend internet access for persistent offenders.

June 15 2009 / ft.com

So we have Virgin Media & Universal revolutionising the industry. Again. Forgive me if I fail to get too excited. If this announcement was with all four majors and the indies taking part I might actually see it as the a ground breaking opportunity that the BPI, IFPI et al are hailing it as.

A few things puzzle me. Lets say it does launch with Universal. At a price (which is yet to be disclosed but sources quote £10 / £15 a month). Then what happens when the other labels come on board? Do you have a price increase for each label? Or has Universal agreed a rate which Virgin thinks will be a royalty across the industry? Am I missing something here? Please let me know if I am.

Also lets do some maths. Even at £10 a month the annual cost would be £120. Considering it is a widely used industry statistic that an average purchaser of music only buys the equivalent of five albums a year (and that’s from all possible permutations of labels) this seems a rather expensive option.

More caviar and stick than carrot.

Maybe they are working on the assumption that the whole family will buy in. However we are in a recession, with declining music sales signposting bigger issues than just price, and with a myriad number of competitively priced alternatives for one off purchases it’s a lot to budget for.

Great value for me. And great value for a lot of my muso mates – if, and it’s a big if, it includes the indie labels.

Bit bloody expensive for the average punter though. Still there is an upside for them I guess. Supposedly the music will be DRM free. So one household buys into a subscription deal and then shares it with friends and relatives? Right. I can see the majors loving that. Not hard to police at all.

Talking of Virgin agreeing to act as the the labels policeman as part of the deal – US industry bible Billboard reported:

This will involve implementing a range of different strategies to educate file sharers about online piracy and to raise awareness of legal alternatives. They include, as a last resort for persistent offenders, a temporary suspension of Internet access. No customers will be permanently disconnected and the process will not depend on network monitoring or interception of customer traffic by Virgin Media.

Eh? Suspension is surely a disconnection? No matter how long? And if there is no network monitoring then will Virgin be taking evidence supplied by labels as gospel? Very nasty waters to be getting into? Not so much a policeman more an enforcer.

Clever move by Universal though. The ISP become the bad cop and the label just sits back and watches it all unfold.

Still I’ll be surprised if it ever happens. Billboard also added a footnote to their article:

U.K. digital satellite broadcaster and broadband company Sky has also been developing an unlimited subscription service, although no further details have been confirmed since its partnership with Universal Music was announced in July 2008.

A couple of weeks ago we fought the credit crunch and took a holiday in England. In Appledore, near Bideford in North Devon. It’s a beautiful fishing village with a great chippy.

Best of all though the village is alive with music. At the weekend every pub either had a band playing or a session taking place. The quality of musicianship was great and the pubs were rammed.

One pub in particular stood out. The Beaver Inn. Great food, great location at the end of the quay and friendly staff. And once a month they host the North Devon Jazz Club. We happened to be there for the May night.

On the bill was John Law’s Art of Sound.

Law is an amazing piano player and composer. The rest of his trio are highly rated, consumate  musicians. They played for two hours. The pub was totally silent during the performance and at some point they passed a beer mug around for cash contributions for the band. Then they sold some albums.

They did very well. I contributed to the beer mug and despite being near death from a 28 mile bike ride that day stayed till the end. Amanda who is not a huge jazz fan bought two albums.

The band got £30 from us.

Why? Well because the live experience was brilliant. The band did volume discounts on purchases of more than one CD to encourage multi-buy and what else? They were fantastic musicians and I wanted to support that.

They didn’t collect emails. The website barely exists – though the myspace is good – and though they were polite they didn’t engage that well with their audience after the show. So  they failed to follow even the basics of fanbase development. Which is a pity because if ever a group deserved to build a bigger fanbase they are it.

But I would go and see them again at the drop of a hat. And I will find out where they are playing without being mailed.

I will buy the rest of the catalogue because on record they are splendid too. And I wasn’t that bothered about not chatting with them as I tend to get a bit self concious anyway.

And sometimes it’s so good that you forget the theory. You just sit back, drink great beer, watch the sun set on the sea and enjoy some of the best live jazz you have heard in years. It’s sometimes just that simple.

The manipulation of research figures or the omission of inconvenient facts has long been a gripe of mine when dealing with industry claims of piracy and it’s effects.

This is an excellent article by Ben Goldacre from The Guardian which picks apart yet another dodgy report. This time on the economic impact on the UK of illegal downloading.

‘… a unit at UCL called Ciber, the Centre for Information Behaviour and the Evaluation of Research (which “seeks to inform by countering idle speculation and uninformed opinion with the facts”). The report was commissioned by a government body called Sabip, the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property’.

Please read it in full. It is worth it. It ends with the line…

‘Like I said: as far as I’m concerned, everything from this industry is false, until proven otherwise’.

Charles Arthur also has a good article in todays Guardian on where the record sales and revenue may actually be going.

‘What other things might they spend it on? Here’s a thought: people who spend on recorded music (CDs, the occasional music DVD) are also very likely to spend on things such as games and DVD purchases or rentals. They are all discretionary purchases. So I dug up the figures from the UK music industry: the British record industry’s trade association (the BPI), and the UK games industry (via its trade body, Elspa) as well as the DVD industry (through the UK Film Council and the British Video Association). The results are over on the Guardian Data Store (http://bit.ly/data01), because they are the sort of numbers that should be available to everyone to chew over.

What did I find? Total spending has grown – but music spending is being squeezed. The games industry – hardware and software – has grown from £1.4bn in 1999 (the year Napster started, and the music business stood rabbit-transfixed) to £4.04bn in 2008. That’s 12% annual compound growth. You’d kill for an endowment like that. Even DVD sales and rental take a £2.5bn bite out of consumers’ available funds, double that of 1999′.

As if we ever doubted. Taken from todays Financial Times. Nice for you lot who made it to Un-Convention.

“Manchester’s got everything except a beach,” declared Ian Brown, the Stone Roses singer at the heart of the 1980s “Madchester” scene.

The more analytical Economist Intelligence Unit on Tuesday also gave it a vote of confidence, declaring the northern city to be a better place to live than London. Its annual survey put Manchester at 46, five places ahead of the capital.

Manchester was level with Seattle in the US and ahead of Milan, Rome and Dublin. It scored 90, to London’s 89.2. Higher crime and risk of terrorist attack weighed on the capital’s rating.

The survey assesses a city’s political and physical stability, healthcare, culture and environment, education and infrastructure.

For the past few years the music industry – especially the independent music industry – has been inundated with over-hyped, supposedly life changing technologies, start-ups and a myriad selection of ‘essential’ opportunities.

These ‘holy grails’ – digital marketing and promotion, digital distribution, mobile distribution, self financing, self monetizing, social networks and Web 2.0 plus – are meant to have revolutionized our industry. They are meant to have empowered the independent, given voice to those who could not be heard and freed the artist from the chains of mainstream media.

Despite this volume of so-called opportunity, for the majority of independent artists little has changed in real terms. They may be able to build fan-bases faster and wider – but are they real fans? They may have a voice – but can they be heard amongst the clutter and finally – they may now have the access and the opportunity to promote their music but is anyone actually listening to it – or buying it?

Technology and it’s many applications has diluted the focus from the fundamental and essential foundations of building a career and allowing an artist and label to develop.

By this I mean that while these tools may be useful – and some are essential – there is a temptation to use technology for its own sake rather than really evaluating whether it is in the best interest of the artist or the most practical use of a labels resource.

Many new technologies – whether applications or services – are potentially groundbreaking, exciting and have a practical use – however many are also completely irrelevant to most artists needs.

Some which have an obvious benefit – social network sites for example – are seen in overly optimistic terms. The continual growth in ‘friends’ across the many sites can serve a purpose but only if those fans are then motivated or properly communicated with. In addition clutter is the curse of these sites. In a very laudable way social networks have helped fulfil the ambitions and egos of many frustrated performers. They can, and do, act as a more democratic (and less humiliating) form of X-Factor for many. Everyone can have their 15 minutes of fame and, best of all, have their vanity indulged in real time.

However for an artist and label one key question exists – if you have 27,000 myspace friends but can’t sell even 270 tickets or albums to them what sort of fan base have you actually developed? I would suggest a predominantly fickle one – a fan base that is difficult to track, that in the main does not engage – or is engaged – and as such is still an exercise in vanity. For every one band who develops a relationship that is truly beneficial there are tens of thousands who mistake ‘friends’ for popularity and thus an unrealistic view of their potential.

This flawed view of technology – that just by using it an artist will benefit from it – permeates the web and the music industry. The simple fact is that – for example – the myths of bands breaking via myspace and other networks are just that – myths.

This is not to say that social networks cannot add value. In the same way that digital distribution can add potential value. Again though the same fundamentals apply – an artist can have the best distribution in the world but unless people want to buy their music it’s just another file made up of ones and zeros sitting on servers.

So what is the solution?

Simply it is going back to the core of our business and our craft. It is thinking globally but acting locally. About understanding how new opportunities can help you develop but also understanding that it is about getting out and playing live.

It is about building a fan base that you can look in the eye and see the sweat on their brow – knowing exactly which songs work for you because you can see people reacting. And as I mentioned in a previous post interacting with the fans.

It is looking back and re-learning the lessons of Punk, New Wave & Rave. It is about building real and not just digital, communities. It is about understanding a fanzine (or a blog) focussed on a core scene, movement or even a city is of greater value than a guy blogging halfway across the world telling a few hundred diverse people he likes your mp3.

It is about building partnerships and building collectives – about collaborating with other artists from other media. It’s not just about DIY anymore – it’s much more exciting:

It’s DIT – Doing It Together.

As artists and labels face the multiple threats of failing distribution, declining retail and unresponsive and unsupportive media they have to align their talents with likeminded people. The great music movements were all based on a collectivism – self serving or not – that the internet seemes to promise but in reality fails to deliver.

The future of the music business is not about technology, it’s not about methods of distribution nor is it about globalism – at least not for today’s developing artists.

The future of the music business is real artists learning their craft, developing partnerships, building fans at a local level – and then moving to the next level. I believe artists and labels have to pause and take stock of where they are and what they set out to achieve.

The future should be and needs to be about a focus on the fundamentals.

It’s time for a reality check.

Nothing sums up this post as well as The Smoking Gun does. Great site by the way. Hours of fun over the years have been spent there.

Actually I can’t resist saying something. Check out the Jay-Z dressing room furnishing demands. A love seat. I’m sorry? A love seat?

On this site you will find a set of free photo effect applications for iphone and – even though they were not designed for desktops – some superb photo editing software. Very similar to lomography style pictures (though not really a substitute) – and if you lack the skills or inclination to get to grips with Photoshop then this takes the pain and expense out of the process (no pun intended).

I’m using Tiltshift at the moment on both XP & Vista with great results.

The QuadCamera results looks fantastic too.

Ideal for adding some creative photos to websites, blogs, social networks etc.