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.

The Obama historical event is nice and all, but if you want to see something REALLY cool, check this out:

60 Minutes – Brain Power

Love the part where they jack in the Matrix like plug into the womans head…
Science fiction is reality in the new world era!

Congratulations Obama, and America, for voting for someone not only with integrity, eloquence and intelligence, but who appears humble, and is driven to improve things! I hoped he would succeed, but I really didn’t know if it would happen given the bizarre nature of American politics… It really seemed like enough people loved him enough to make it happen, when I was in California last week, I only saw Obama signs on peoples lawns…

The problem is one man may not be enough to really change things in a totally corrupt system. The current political system is not only corrupt through it’s individuals, but in the whole system itself.
After studying the Baha’i administrative order, I decided that any political system that puts one man as the head to make major decisions is fatally flawed. Nine people is a good start. Each must be voted into their position purely on their merits and ability to serve, rather than campaign strategies, funding, and even desire to hold a position of such power. Then, each administrative member must hold no power outside the body of nine, there should only be power as a group. That is a pure, progressive system! And it works internationally in over 220 countries of the world in the Baha’i administration. But a system like that will never see the light of day in the political world unless a complete collapse occurs, in my limited opinion.

If anyone can make a change and impact the system, and improve the lives of Americans, I think Obama can. But he has a lot of mess to clean up, and a terrible system to try and work within. I hope for the best and wait with anticipation to see how things go over the next few years.

A DVD production I’ve been working on for some time has just been completed for a company Teaching For Thinking, that provides multimedia resources primarily for high school instructors, .

It’s called ‘Medieval Times In China and Beyond’ and is part of a 2 DVD series about Medieval History. Here’s a trailer:

Medieval Times In China and Beyond on Vimeo.

We found some fantastic resources for this video online in the way of images and video. I included some of my own photos from travel to India!

I appreciated how instructors now wanted content that represented not only North American and European History, but from around the world, particularly in China who was creating many inventions the world heavily uses and relies on while Europe was engaged in progress stifling religious conflict…

I am very selective about doing charitable work because of the amount of free time I have, but I have done my share philanthropy through various productions for organizations helping those in need primarily through education, more recently for a CD in Mandarin to help children of all backgrounds throughout Asia learn spiritual attributes and virtues.

My latest such production is with talented musician and writer, Alicia Cundall who wrote a theme song for the charity organization Red House called ‘One Story’ Which I did backing tracks for, recorded, produced and mixed.

RED House is a non-profit, non-governmental organization in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania that provides educational programs for disadvantaged and orphan children, ages 3 to 18.
Here is a video to give you a more of a sense of Red House:

Here is the website for Red House with the full length song:

http://redhousetanzania.org

It was great to help such a worthy cause that is helping youth through education. If your in Washington DC, attend the fundraiser and you can see Alicia peform this song along with a number of other talented performers.

I’ve been hinting at a big venture I’ve been involved in and working hard on with my partner Roshena Huang for some time now, even though haven’t said much lately, but i’m ready to start talking more about it. It’s the relaunch of my record label, Pro Soul as a totally reinvented company… more on that later. First though, why exactly did we have to reinvent the company? Because the music industry is drastically changing as is more than evident these days.

So where is it going? Well, no one can really predict the future, so we can really only guess. As Andrew Dubber has said, Anyone who says that they know where the music industry is going is either a liar or a fool. Either way, ignore them.

We DO know what the future of the music industry WON’T be. The future will not be the past.

That means if you’re doing what you were doing ten or even five years ago, you are simply not relevant in the music business! If you are not undergoing an aggressive period of radical change, completely redesigning your business from scratch in this industry right now considering where things are going, then your in trouble, just like the big guys.

So that is what were doing with Pro Soul Alliance – aggressive, radical change and complete redesign. And it’s a lot of work, but it’s also very exciting and different, stay tuned!

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.