Everyone likes Christmas music during the holidays, so here’s a link to my post from last year with some of the few original Christmas tunes I’ve done over the years:
Some Old Christmas Songs

The difference is, this year, as a Christmas gift, you can download & do whatever you like with them:
www.jarome.com/downloads/

For a limited time only!

We’ve had a lot of snow in Vancouver, and across Canada lately, I posted about ‘The sweet serenity of snow’ last year as well.

Every time I go to China, despite stereotypes, misconceptions and communism, I see great advantages to the culture there, especially in big cities like Shanghai and Beijing. But I didn’t realise how important the arts really were until reading this article form Asia Times:

www.atimes.com/atimes/China/JL02Ad01.html

Warning, if your american, this may likely offend you, because the truth hurts!

Key point mentioned is that “American musical education remains the best in the world, the legacy of the European refugees who staffed the great conservatories, and the best Asian musicians come to America to study. [However] According to the head of one conservatory, Americans simply don’t have the discipline to practice eight hours a day.”

I went to see the new James Bond movie Quantum Of Solace the other day with low expectations. I know the new movies are about Bond’s early days, but the modernized Bond has lost all the things that made Bond unique in the action adventure genre, and now it’s become just another Mission Impossible, Die Hard standard film. Don’t get me wrong, it was good, but it lacked the unique entertaining qualities Bond used to have, and without Q and his gadgets, it’s a tough sell really. (I really loved John Cleese as Q and miss him a lot)

What was really appalling though was the theme song for the intro credits that every Bond film has with the dancing silhouettes and Bond pointing his gun and all. This song, “Another Way To Die” performed by Jack White and Alicia Keys, was just atrocious and a terrible choice for a Bond film that in the past have had very strong themes to introduce the film, a trademark of the series. That a song this bad and poorly suited to the film could be placed in such a major release is a sure sign of the record industry’s demise (It was coordinated by Warner Bros). Just my opinion, but I thought it was a lame choice.

But for me this goes a lot further than opinion, and is really all about what makes a good song, something the record industry seems to have forgotten. Luckily, the Do It Yourself movement and the new music industry, which is putting music business back in the hands of artists, is going to be all about the quality of the song, and of music in general, something that has been a long time coming.

Call me old fashioned, but these are songs worthy of a Bond movie (ignore the retro visuals…):

Duran Duran: “View To A Kill”

Sheena Easton: “For Your Eyes Only”

I’m back from an amazing and productive trip to Beijing where I got to meet and work with some fantastic new artists as well as the immensely talented Elika Mahony. I blogged all about it on the new Pro Soul site, where I will be posting a lot of my music business entries from now on: www.prosoul.com

Yes, that’s right, Pro Soul Alliance, the new innovative 21st century record label is now live and ready to take on the artists of a new music industry! It’s a very exciting accomplishment, and we’ve put countless hours of research and effort into creating a truly ground breaking solution for artists everywhere.
We’ve assembled an amazing international team that is consistently expanding to provide an incredible range of services and research to assist artists of all genres from all over the world to connect with their audience and monetize their music in new ways that reflect the changes in the way people want to hear music.
There is really nothing like Pro Soul out there for artists and you will undoubtedly be hearing more about it in the near future! Would love to hear your comments and feedback.

It sure has been an exciting year, and things are just getting going! Hard to beleive it’s almost December.

For years now, I’ve been racking my brain as to why the media seems to have no interest in even attempting to explain what is really going on in the music industry rather than spread PR driven hype from major corporations…
This quote really says it all:

“That’s what’s wrong with newspapers.  Writing articles so neutral as to be uninformative.  What’s that cliche?  If tomorrow Dick Cheney said the earth was flat, even the “New York Times” would write: “Roundness of the Earth in question.”   – Bob Lefsetz

I have two essential things to say of my own regarding this problem in our society that you will ‘get’ in terms of their source depending on who you are: “independent investigation of truth”, and “Don’t believe the hype”

On September 23, 2008, songwriters, publishers, record labels and digital music services announced they had finally reached an agreement on mechanical royalties for songs played on online music services. It only took about 8 years for them to figure it out…

Called a “breakthrough that will facilitate new ways to offer music to consumers online,” the voluntary agreement crafted by the Digital Media Association (DiMA), the National Music Publishers’ Association (NMPA), the RIAA, the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) and the Songwriters Guild of America (SGA) ended the longstanding dispute about mechanical royalties for interactive streaming and limited downloads.

The agreement must be still be approved by the Copyright Royalty Board to take effect, and states that limited download and interactive streaming services will pay a mechanical royalty of 10.5 percent of revenue, less any amounts owed for performance royalties. In certain instances, royalty-free promotional streaming is allowed.
The agreement tries to solve the dispute about what invokes a mechanical royalty in the digital environment, and permits certain kinds of promotional streams without payment, and agrees that webcasters will not owe mechanical royalties for non-interactive, audio-only streams.

For some time now there has been a debate about how modern audio mastering techniques have created music that is louder than it usually would be at the expense of the normal dynamics of the music.
Andrew Dubber blogged about it here with a video that demonstrates the issue:

The process of making tracks louder than they usually would be without them distorting is called ‘Limiting‘.

This is something, as an audio engineer that also does mastering, that I have wrestled with for many years. I like music loud, and it bothers me when something sounds too quiet when listened to with other music. But as a producer and sound mixer, I also love dynamics in music. When others have mastered songs I’ve mixed using standard ompression, it has really ruined the song. But you don’t want the music to seem quiet compared to other music, and you want it to sound good on the lousy stereo systems most people listen to music on! Hence the Dilemma.

I think that in many ways, Dubbers argument may be pointless really. The majority of people in the world wouldn’t know good sound if their life depended on it! Even many of the talented artists I work with for whom music is their life struggle with this, and my production students certainly do as well.

I blogged more about this major issue of the poor quality audio so prevalent in the world here.

Alan Wilder of Recoil and formerly Depeche Mode wrote an excellent article about it and about other industry changes as well here

.

For some time now I, along with many others in the music industry, have been going on about free music not representing a lost sale, but a gained listener.

Frequently, many music industry professionals suggest that an increase in legitimate sales must necessarily coincide with a commensurate reduction in ‘piracy’, as if this were a fact, yet, the research company BigChampagne has made no such consistent observation in nearly a decade of analyzing online data about music. Rather, it finds that piracy rates follow awareness and interest… The biggest selling albums and songs are nearly always the most widely pirated, regardless of all the ‘anti-piracy’ tactics employed by music companies.

Wired magazine talked about the factual data supporting mega rock band Radiohead‘s decision to allow users to pay what they wanted for their latest album.
All of the torrenting/free downloading of Radiohead’s of In Rainbows album contributed to the album making such a big impression on a listening public that’s bombarded with an ever increasing amount of information. Without it having been so widely traded, BigChampage’s data report says that Radiohead’s album wouldn’t necessarily have shot to the top of the charts and their worldwide tour wouldn’t have been such a smashing success, and I have to agree.

Applying economic principles to digital music, BigChamagne found that “the challenge of achieving popularity (or attention) when the old rules of scarcity (of product) and excludability don’t apply (to information goods) the way they used to, changes the monetization game completely.”

BigChamagne came to the undeniable conclusion that the music industry needs to stop thinking of shared files as lost sales, and start treating them as an aspect of reality upon which they can build part of their businesses.

You can download a detailed paper on this topic here. I haven’t studied it in detail yet so I would love to hear your insights.

So I’m thoroughly embarrassed to admit it, especially publicly, but I like a few of the new Coldplay tracks on their new album. Their sound isn’t really my thing, but they have some more edgy, upbeat and interesting production on songs like Viva La Vida (my current fave song) and Violet Hill from the new album.

But when I went to their website, there was no music! Oh, except for a free song that was so poor, it was a slap in my face. NO MUSIC ON A BAND WEBSITE?? How does this kind of thing happen? Maybe it was there and I just didn’t see it? That is just as bad.

Note to major labels, if your going to jump on the ‘free song’ bandwagon, if you offer a lousy track, it is like the 30 second preview, it’s just a slap in the music fans face!

But eliminating the entire music section from an artist website? That is beyond belief.

You know the only place online you can hear more than one full length song from the new Coldplay album? ‘Illegal download’ torrent sites.

But since they offer non DRM tracks on iTunes, perhaps I will get a few songs from there… Maybe.

From Soundscan stats released at the yearly NARM conference:

– 80,000 Records were released in total in 2008
– 80 percent of them sold less than 100 copies each.
– Most sales were from only 1000 titles
– Only 10 percent of hit records represent actually purchased music

And regarding copyright according to Andrew Dubber:
“It’s estimated that less than 2% of all music that has ever been released in a commercial format is currently for sale in any way, shape or form. That 6-million tracks thing that iTunes goes on about is hardly even the tip of the iceberg.” (Because of corporate ‘copyright hording’, preventing creators from access to their own works)

There are many more, but I don’t want to overwhelm you…