Label:Life

Various internet and television news sources report that Maverick Records has filed a suit against its long time partner, Warner Music to end their 12 year relationship.

Maverick Records is lead by Madonna and run by young, successful executives like Guy Oseary who have been able to beat recent industry negative sales trends by signing highly successful acts like Alanis Morissette, Prodigy, Deftones and others in the 1990s.

Warner Music Group was recently purchased by an investment team lead by Edgar Bronfman Jr. and losing Madonna and her team would certainly be a blow to the major label. Warner spokespeople were quoted saying the suit was “without merit”. [more @ www.audiorevolution.com]

Casting themselves as a collective David to an American Goliath, British and other European independent record producers threatened on Wednesday to boycott MTV channels to protest a 55 percent cut in royalties paid for music videos.

In response, MTV said it would reopen negotiations to look for a way to defuse a problem that erupted this month after it said it would stop broadcasting videos from companies that refused to accept the reduced royalty payments.

Unlike in the United States, where MTV does not pay for video clips from independent producers, European independents, who account for about 21 percent of the Continent’s $12 billion music industry, regard royalties for video clips as a significant source of money to promote often innovative music and little-known musicians. [more @ www.nytimes.com]

Prince’s love-hate relationship with the mainstream music industry takes another turn today as he opens his online Musicology Download Store www.npgmusicclub.com, turning his back on download services like Napster, Rhapsody and Apple’s iTunes.

The move comes a week after Prince appeared to be cottoning to an industry he once compared to a form of slavery, announcing that he would team with Sony Music Entertainment’s Columbia Records to release his new album, “Musicology.”

Prince’s lawyer and business partner, L. Londell McMillan, said the store was intended to increase membership in Prince’s NPG Music Club. Ideally, customers “come there, buy songs, see the experience and go, ‘Wow, I want to stay.’ ” [more @ www.nytimes.com]

AIM is organising a distribution trade fair on 7th April, to facilitate business between distributors and independent record labels.

A total of 13 companies are participating including:

Distributors –
Pinnacle Entertainment, Absolute Marketing and Distribution, Shellshock, Cadiz and Plastichead

Digital distributors and service providers –
Napster, Yahoo¹s LAUNCH Europe, Wippit, Recordstore.co.uk, State 51, Consolidated Independent, DJ in the Mix and The Music Engine.

The distributors will be holding 30 minute 1-2-1 meetings with AIM members throughout the day, and there will also be a series of concurrent presentations from the digital service providers, covering subjects such as repertoire digitisation and direct sale to fans. Confirmed to give presentations so far are Yahoo, The Music Engine and DJ in The Mix, others tbc.

The event, a mini trade fair, will be take place at The University of London Union, Malet Street in London, 10 -5pm on Wednesday 7th April, and will kick off with a briifing on the digital and physical distribution markets by AIM Chairman and Chief Executive Alison Wenham.

The fair will make it easy for distribution companies and independent labels to meet each other and will also serve to bring labels up to speed with the latest, most cost effective and convenient ways ways to deliver their music to fans.

Interested labels should contact Remi Harris to participate (open to AIM members only) [www.musicindie.org]

The Sex Pistols are today rated as the band that most changed the world.

The group – whose line-up included Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock – beat The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who and a rash of other world-famous bands to take the top spot in the list, published by Q magazine.

The Pistols led the punk revolution in the Seventies with their antiestablishment views and riotous behaviour. Despite a mottled history, they changed the face of music with their seminal album Never Mind The B***ocks: Here’s The Sex Pistols, and hits Pretty Vacant, Anarchy In The UK and God Save The Queen. According to Q: “They really shook the world”. [more @ www.thisislondon.co.uk]

As the music industry continues efforts to integrate the growing popularity of digital music downloading with traditional retail distribution, 2003 witnessed a veritable explosion of fee-based digital music service introductions and a nearly three-fold increase in paid downloading due to experimentation among American downloaders, according to global market research organization Ipsos-Insight.

New findings from TEMPO, Ipsos-Insight’s quarterly tracker of American digital music behaviors, reveal that in December 2003 as many as 22% of American downloaders aged 12 and older had paid a fee to download digital music off of the Internet. This translates into an estimated 10 million experienced fee-based downloaders within the current U.S. population (according to 2000 U.S. Census figures).

Further, this number represents a nearly three-fold increase in fee-based digital music experimentation within the past year. In winter 2002, less than one out of 10 (8%) U.S. downloaders had paid a fee for digital music. U.S. Downloaders Experiment with Fee-based Digital Music in Growing Numbers. [more @ www.mi2n.com]

This week’s Pick Of The Week is the album ‘Sputnik: Travelling Companion’ by Gravity and Henry, released this month on Mechanism Records.

This is a great, varied rock album, judging by the sampler medely that i’ve heard. They cite their influences as Jeff Buckley, The Police and Oingo Boingo, though I’m not sure that does them justice.

If deep,melodic, guitar driven rock with a great sounding vocalist (who sounds not unlike yer man from Soundgarden) is your bag, then you’ll love this.

Check it out HERE. Should you get a ‘not authorised’ message, hit ‘go’ next to the address bar, and you’ll get the track (if using Explorer). Otherwise, go to www.mechanismrecords.com and click on Gravity and Henry “Sputnik:Travelling Companion” free mp3 sampler. Go on, It’s dead good.

Much of this week’s issue has been given over to articles covering the debate now raging over file sharing. With the new wave of imminent litigation, now expected in the UK as well as the US, coupled with the new report refuting the claims of the RIAA and BPI, there is no hotter topic in the industry right now.

With the latest report published showing that the effect of file sharing on record sales is minimal, even beneficial in certain sectors, surely litigation against consumers is a waste of time, money and energy that would be better spent in speeding up the process of legitimising file sharing and downloading and developing new artists whose music people will want to buy?

More and more the indication is that there are many other factors involved in the decline of record sales, such as the bland, homogenised ‘play-list’ culture which the public has simply had enough of, overpricing and competition from other forms of entertainment.

To many independent labels, file sharing is a great ‘playing field – leveller’, giving them access to a distribution and marketing network other than the usual channels sewn up by the major media corporations. To criminalise file sharing, as they are attempting to do in the US, is to put a stranglehold on this burgeoning new distribution system, controlled by the major trade bodies..

This brings freedom of information into question. Lumping file sharing in with terrorism, child pornography and crime is a way of making it easier for politicians to pass laws against products that are popular with their constituents and unpopular with the corporations that finance their political campaigns.

This is perhaps an issue too deep to fully explore here but one that we all need to be aware of. Label:Life believes that there are agendas being played out here other than preventing the loss of record sales.

Whilst Label:Life is absolutely in agreeance with the RIAA and BPI’s claims that rights holders should be fairly compensated for their works, suing a small portion of potential customers is simply not the way forward. There is a whole generation of kids who simply do not go to record shops as they are used to getting music for free on the internet. Perhaps it would be better to educate them rather than litigate against them. If there was an affordable way for them to legitimately buy music over the net, they would.

Let’s not forget, many people are simply not satisfied with a mis-labelled, poor quality album download, or a copied cd with felt tip on. People still want a product, something they can hold. Label:Life doesn’t believe that ‘physical’ product is dead, just too expensive and often mediocre. However, digital product is here to stay, so the sooner cross-border licensing issues are resolved and legitimate file sharing models such as Weedshare are embraced, the better and we can all get on with the business of making, selling and enjoying music. -ED

Gilles Peterson has joined the bill of an incredibly interesting event – Deaf Jam – which takes place at Plastic People on 14 Apr. This is an event designed specifically for deaf people – the point being for regular clubbers to share the physical experience of loud music and sub bass with members of the deaf community – a group rarely involved in the clubbing world.

The intention is for the DJ’s to play tunes with monstrous basslines and heavy rhythmic tracks utilising Plastic People’s renowned hi fidelity sound system. Joining Peterson on the bill will be Patrick Forge (De Lata, Kiss FM), Phil Asher (Restless Soul, Inspiration Information), Abdul Forsyth
(Balance) Simone Serritella (Big Bang, Cuica) James Carver (MentalGroove,
Arision) and Disco Dick (Dirty House, Deep Cheese). Tickets for a mere £5 can be ordered at www.plasticpeople.co.uk- all profits to charity. Press info from jonas@electronicpm.co.uk.
[www.unlimitedmedia.co.uk]

Austin, Texas—Some independent music stores are thriving despite the competition from illegal downloads on the Internet.

The stores are finding that file sharing can help create a buzz online that can lead to more sales, according to a panel of independent music store owners who spoke at the South by Southwest Music Conference & Festival here Friday.

Take Hoodlums Music, located on the Arizona State University campus, which opened during the heyday of Napster. One might think Net-savvy students would ignore the shop in favor of free downloads.

“It’s a myth,” said Steve Wiley, co-owner of the store. “We see them wanting to buy music.”

High prices, rather than file sharing, are what usually stop a kid from buying a CD, Wiley said.

Typically, the music industry wants stores to sell CDs for $18 when they should be going for $15, he said. That $3 can make the difference in terms of whether or not a CD is going to sell.

“The file sharing, the Internet—just makes them music junkies,” Wiley said.
[more @ www.www.wired.com]