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Record labels still have plenty of options

Two weeks ago, Warner Music Group Corporation announced their fourth-quarter results and the numbers weren’t positive. According to Wall Street Journal, Warner reported a $18 million loss with the recorded-music business revenue dropping 9.4% and digital-recorded music revenue rising 9.5%.

In the article, Chief Financial Officer Steve Macri blames the transitioning in the music industry and the economy for the revenue slump and this decline is expected to continue into the new fiscal year. (Source)

It’s no surprise, really. As I said in my post on September 19th, the record industry should have seen this coming ten years ago when Shawn Fanning created Napster. Music corporations tried to fight the industry changes and now they’re feeling the heat. Allegedly WMG was “surprised” by the results, considering the success of comeback albums such as Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3.

CDs aren’t a dead format; last week Susan Boyle’s album “I Dreamed a Dream” debuted at #1 in CD sales (over 700,000 copies sold,) trumping Rihanna, Adam Lambert, Lady GaGa, Shakira, Tom Petty, and Tom Waits, all of whom had new-releases in the same week. “I Dreamed a Dream” also beat first week sales of Eminem’s “Relapse” and took the #1 spot from John Mayer’s “Battle Studies” which dropped to #13. (Source)

I get excited when I see news stories like this because it proves my point: if an artist with pure talent has a strong album release, it is going to fly from the shelves. Susan Boyle is a breath of fresh air. She doesn’t need audio sweeteners or auto-tune and people want to hear something new. That, along with thanks to Britain’s Got Talent and YouTube, is why the album is doing so well.

If record labels such as Warner Music Group were to focus on releasing albums with less filler and trendy production techniques, they’d have a better chance of selling albums. And if record labels came up with ways to reinvent the compact discs, those would sell better too. Back in 2005, the DualDisc was invented. It was a double sided CD with the traditional audio on one side and video on the other. The video side often included a making of featurette, the album in surround sound, links to exclusive web content, etc. If record labels were to continue finding ways to make CDs appeal to the audience, chances are the sales will increase.

Last month, Warner, Universal and Fox Studios were talking with Netflix about delaying new release movie rentals a month so DVD sales would pick up. (source). Imagine what could happen with CD sales if record labels made a similar agreement with businesses like iTunes and Amazon music. iTunes and Amazon cannot release music without the label’s consent, so as long as a deal that both parties benefit from is drawn up, the new policy could be easily adopted.

There are plenty of options record labels have to fix their situations, but they need to brainstorm quickly or Steve Macri of WMG will be right in saying their revenue will continue to drop.

A question of ethics in reporting

Okay, I admit it. Since last Friday I have made my share of Tiger Woods jokes. On Twitter I’ve written Tiger Woods’ golf clubs break records and car windows, Tiger Woods can drive a golf ball better than an Escalade, etc. But there’s a line and the media has been repeatedly crossing it.

Woods hasn’t confirmed the affair and Rachel Uchitel, the rumored mistress, has been strongly denying having relations with the golfer. Today on his website, Woods posted a statement about the weekend incident.

“I have let my family down and I regret those transgressions with all of my heart. I have not been true to my values and the behavior my family deserves. I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect. I am dealing with my behavior and personal failings behind closed doors with my family. Those feelings should be shared by us alone.

“Although I am a well-known person and have made my career as a professional athlete, I have been dismayed to realize the full extent of what tabloid scrutiny really means. For the last week, my family and I have been hounded to expose intimate details of our personal lives. The stories in particular that physical violence played any role in the car accident were utterly false and malicious. Elin has always done more to support our family and shown more grace than anyone could possibly expect.

“Whatever regrets I have about letting my family down have been shared with and felt by us alone. I have given this a lot of reflection and thought and I believe that there is a point at which I must stick to that principle even though it’s difficult.”

Ok, it’s not a statement that releases any details about Friday, but it states what it needs to clearly: he apologizes to his family and supporters for his actions and he requests his privacy.

But the media storm continues. Following the accident, Woods announced he was too banged up to play in the Chevron World Challenge. A blog I read yesterday accused Woods of hiding because in 2008, he played at least 10 months with a torn ligament in his left knee, and sustained a double stress fracture in his left tibia and he still won the US Open. Woods was in a car accident! He hit a fire hydrant, a tree, had cuts on his face, blood in his mouth, and was in and out of consciousness when the police arrived. Even if he didn’t have signs of head injuries, you don’t want to mess with that. Playing with a torn ligament and a double stress fracture in the shin for months isn’t a smart move, but sports people love that. Remember Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling in 2004?

Earlier today, TMZ released a voicemail Woods supposedly had left on Uchitel’s phone. Any regular US citizen would be horrified to find one of their phone calls or voicemails was leaked on the Internet, regardless if they had something to hide or not. Any regular US citizen would be upset to find personal information about themselves and their family shared on the World Wide Web. But since Tiger Woods is a public figure, it’s apparently okay.

I am not defending or condoning Woods’ behavior, but everyone messes up and he made the public statement that should have sufficed. The media needs to give the family space and focus on more important matters, such as the economy, social security, and Obama sending more troops to Afghanistan.

“Tiger’s my guy,” Shaquille O’Neal told Bleacher Report. “I’m not going to be like everybody else and say off-the-wall comments. I just hope he’s OK. The problem going on is when you have people disguising as media putting out reports, and then people believing what they read. We don’t know what’s fact, we don’t know what’s true. We just hope he’s OK.”

U2 at Gillette Stadium – Bono lets the music speak

On Sunday, I was able to go see U2 perform at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro (also called Foxborough), Massachusetts. Since Snow Patrol was opening and I’m a big fan of the band, I was very excited to see the show.

U2 has been known for continuously raising the bar for concerts and in a recent interview, The Edge, who plays lead guitar, said it was getting difficult coming up with innovative plans for this tour. So in the end, they redesigned the stage, turning it into what was nicknamed “The Claw.” Standing on four legs and looking like a spacecraft, The Claw stood 164 feet above the stage. Each leg had its own sound system and lighting and cost between €15-20 million each. The Claw emits smoke, flashes colored strobe effects, shoots beams of light into the sky, and contains a circular television screen that not only shows a 360 view of the stage, it stretches vertically for a greater video/lighting effect.

The main stage is circular with a large catwalk parallel to the stage. Connecting the stage to the catwalk are two bridges that arch so as they automatically slide along a track, they pass over the heads of the standing audience. Fans were able to stand between the stage and catwalk while others stood outside the ring or sat in the stadium seats.

My friend and I found a free parking lot a mile away from the stadium, so by the time we walked over, Snow Patrol had already started. They performed their best known songs for an hour and did very well, saving the lighting effects for their final song, “Chasing Cars.”

U2 came on an hour later, introduced with David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and smoke rising from the legs and roof of The Claw. The band then came on stage and started with “Breathe,” a track off of their new album, No Line On the Horizon.

The band was right on target when they performed songs people were familiar with. Four songs into the night, they played “Mysterious Ways,” which had the crowd on their feet, singing along. Some people were dancing in the isles while others waved their arms back and fourth. During other songs like “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” the band quieted down before the first chorus and we realized everyone in the stadium was singing in unison. Bono later segued the song into a short cover of “Stand By Me.”

Other times in the night, U2 tried to push songs from their new album and that’s when they started to lose their audience. Songs like “Unknown Caller” and their closer “Moment of Surrender” were weak and people were disengaged, particularly by the latter. But the band did well including songs from their album from 2000, All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and they even played “MLK” and “The Unforgettable Fire.”

The second to last song they played “With or Without You,” in which they filled the whole stadium with a disco ball effect. Bono’s microphone at that point looked like a floating Target logo, rotating freely and glowing red. Then people pulled out their cellphones and held them to the sky as Bono asked technicians to turn off the lightsand said “let’s turn this stadium into a galaxy.”

Bono still has a great vocal range and he has his energetic flair, but it’s evident that he’s getting older and mellowing. This is not the Rattle & Hum Bono who had the adolescent rage and would go deface a statue. Bono rarely spoke, except when asking the audience to pray for a person he knew and when he was thanking people. At one point of the night, he sang a section of “Amazing Grace.”

Overall, the show was amazing and I thought it had the most brilliant use of lights, sound, and creativity I have ever seen at a concert. I arrived at home in Connecticut that morning and I was exhausted while sitting in the classroom seven hours later, but I would definitely do it again.

Photograph taken by Evan Shaw-Mumford

The Music Industry…the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Anyone interested in the music industry has probably heard the accusations…the popular entertainment distributer iTunes isn’t giving the expected amount of profit back to the songwriters, music publishers and composers. CNET News posted an article about this on September 17th, 2009 in which Rick Carnes, the president of the Songwriter’s Guild of America was quoted saying, “We make 9.1 cents off of a song sale and that means a whole lot of pennies have to add up before it becomes a bunch of money. People think we’re making a fortune off the Web, but it’s a tiny amount. We need multiple revenue streams or this isn’t going to work.”

The problem really started back when the music file sharing program called Napster launched in 1999. Created by Shawn Fanning, an 18-year-old student at Boston’s Northeastern University, Napster revolutionized the way people got their music. Now if you go into a store like Walmart or Best Buy, you will see they are consolidating their music sections since digital music purchases are defeating CD sales. The question is almost a no brainer…why purchase an album for $15 when you can get the song you want for $1?

According to ifpi.org, music sales increased last year and the digital music business rose 25%, earning $3.7 billion. Single song downloads grew 24% while digital albums rose 37%.

Record labels are concerned that with the growing interest of listening to music online, the industry isn’t being properly compensated. In CNET News, Universal Music Publishing Group CEO David Renzer says, “you can stream radio, and you can preview (tracks), things that we should be getting paid performance income for.”

That’s where things get shaky. Earlier this year, iTunes allowed record labels to control the pricing of their songs, either $.69, $.99, or $1.29 per song. Many hit singles have been changed to $1.29 while the rest of the album tracks are listed at $.99 a song. The movement doesn’t stop there, several record labels are urging Congress to impose a Performance Tax on radio stations, an act that has stations concerned about their future. According to noperformancetax.com, radio stations compensate songwriters and composers approximately $500 million a year and the continued broadcast of new singles helps increase sales for the record companies. With a Performance Tax, many radio stations, especially the independently owned, are afraid they won’t be able to afford the costs and will have to either change to an all-talk format or shut down completely.

Talk show host and comedian Ellen DeGeneres is also a target of the record labels. On September 9th, several record labels accused DeGeneres of playing over a thousand songs during her dance segments without paying for the licenses and filed a lawsuit against the show.

Regardless if the record companies are justified with what they are doing or not, they need to take a step back. In these 30-60 second dance sets, DeGeneres is giving artists free publicity, similar to Oprah giving a new novel a head nod. Rather than sending a lawsuit over to a popular show host like DeGeneres, the record labels should work a deal out with a producer where they use this segment to push a new song.

It’s been over a decade since Napster was released and instead of embracing the new technologies that are available, major record labels insist on fighting the changes and continue to bite the hands that help them. Raising the fee of a song on iTunes isn’t great, but imposing a fee for playing a 30 second sample of a song is foolish. Urging Congress to push a tax on radio stations for playing their music is mind boggling. They are right to take action but these plans they are putting into place is going to hurt themselves and put many people out of work.

If these record companies were smart, they would:

1) Rather push artists to release an album, find the right producers and songwriters to create a long lasting album. I can leave U2′s “The Joshua Tree” album in the car stereo for days and not get bored of it. If an artist or band comes out with a great album, it will sell for decades. Record labels seem to have this idea that they need to follow current trends in order for songs to succeed. Auto-tune is a great example of this…if I were to tune into a Top 40 station right now, chances are I’ll hear a band with heavy production on the track.

Back in the day, if radio stations pushed a few singles, it would be easy for an album to go multi-platinum, so the rest of the record could be filler, and the industry would still make money off of those tracks. Now that consumers have other means to get their music, songwriters and artists have to work harder to get the whole album into their fan’s hands. (Or hard drive.)

2) Hire some young blood to help run their company. Shawn Fanning was 18 when he came up with Napster. Teenagers and young adults have a stronger advantage with digital technologies because they are not afraid of it. Now 28-years-old, Fanning is a successful businessman, creating the sites Rupture and Snocap, the latter being bought out last year by Electronic Arts for $15 million.

3) Realize the compact disc is becoming obselete. The first compact disc dates back to the late 70′s/early 80′s. Unless added perks are added to CDs, the medium is going to disappear. In 2005, record companies tried DualDiscs, a double sided CD with audio on one side, video on the other. That hasn’t seemed to go anywhere; labels maybe stopped creating them due to lack of interest or possibly because of the additional $1.50 to $2.50 cost to create these types of discs.

Either way, the music industry is changing very rapidly and record labels need to come up with a plan. And this plan needs to be done using methods that work with businesses who are helping them. As Mark Wright, Senior Vice President of MCA Records says, “if a song’s not on the radio, it’ll never sell.”

The year that didn’t have a summer song

This post was inspired by a friend who posted a tweet asking if there was “a true summer song this year? Nothing has really dominated the charts like in past summers.”

Looking back at the passing season, it is easy to recall many popular songs, singles like “Blame It,” “LoveGame,” “Waking Up in Vegas,” “Day ‘n’ Night,” “No Suprise,” “Obsessed,” “Knock You Down,” “I Don’t Hook Up,” “Not Meant to Be,” “You Belong With Me,” “Fire Burning,” “Please Don’t Leave Me,” “Face Drop,” “Run This Town,” and “Her Diamonds,” but none of these songs really stood out from the crowd. Particularly because (with an exception of a few,) these songs sound very similar with the saturation of auto-tune.

Black Eyed Peas did have the biggest songs on the summer…according to Billboard, BEP has been at the #1 spot of the Top 100 since May. “Boom Boom Pow” was the first single off of BEP’s album “The E.N.D.,” which debuted at #1 and then was dethroned by their second single, “I Gotta Feeling,” which has held the #1 spot since.

Based on that information, Black Eyed Peas are the hit-makers of the summer, but the number one spot was shared by two songs rather than one. If “Boom Boom Pow” hung onto the number one spot, it would have been a catchy song of the summer. “I Gotta Feeling” is just a weak song that has all the energy put within the production rather than the band performing. As Will.i.am said after performing “I Gotta Feeling” at this year’s Teen Choice Awards, “I want to thank auto-tune for making me sound good.”

If you look back at 2008, Kid Rock came out with his very successful single “All Summer Long.” A mashup of two classic songs with new lyrics written over the music, Kid Rock dominated the charts and CD sales. Mariah Carey and Madonna, who released their albums around the same time, found themselves spanked as Kid Rock’s “Rock and Roll Jesus” album sold more copies than Mimi and Madge did combined. Because Kid Rock’s music isn’t available on iTunes, people were willing to go to the store and buy a 12 track album for one song. Not too shabby for a man who picks fights at Waffle House.

There’s other songs that will remind us of previous summers. If someone started singing “Under my umbrella…ella ella ey,” chances are you’d remember the song and remember riding in the car singing to it. Next year when people hear “I Gotta Feeling…tonight’s gonna be a good night…tonight’s gonna be a good night…tonight’s gonna be a good night,” we’ll think back to the music of 2009 and wonder what happened.