You know there’s not room for all of you to have jobs in Silicon Valley…  Right?…

Besides why would any Silicon Valley company hire the cast off dregs of the record industry?  They have the brightest students from the best universities in the world clamoring to work for them…   Why would they hire someone who thinks that The New York Times of torrenting  (TorrentFreak) is an objective source on piracy?….  You guys really are as dumb as you look.  Hey wait,  aren’t you the guys who got us into this shit anyway? … No,.I don’t know if Deezer is hiring…Yes you probably have to speak french….

Oh sorry.  I didn’t know this thing was on.

If you don’t know by now  The Music Business Organization (Formerly NARM)  just sent it’s members a letter proclaiming that Google has finally begun to demote pirate sites–wait for it— citing a TorrentFreak article!!!!!!  Hahahahahaha!  BTW this “fact” is objectively and demonstrably false.   Next the Music Business Organizaton presented to it’s members some sort of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) scam-er uh “service” to members.   Is MBO run from some call center in the Philippines?  What’s next? Will they be calling telling me my auto repair warranty is almost up?

The Music Business Organization is a clown car.   There are no grownups.  The entire recorded music business is run by morons.

On the bright side none of them will have jobs in 2 years.

 

Dear Cathy TurrYou may have already read about the latest Google anti-piracy report and their commitment to modify the demotion signal to make it more effective. If not, we encourage you to do so that the link below:http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2014/10/continued-progress-on-fighting-piracy.html Preliminary results are in and it looks like the recent changes had a meaningful impact.  Many of the pirate sites that consistently appeared at the top of mp3 and download searches are no longer in the top results.  You can read more at http://torrentfreak.com/googles-new-downranking-hits-pirate-sites-hard-141023/ We are optimistic that Google’s changes in the demotion signal will cause persistent infringers to move down in search. However, this will only be meaningful if legitimate results are there to take their place. Now would be a great time to refocus your efforts on SEO so your licensed offerings appear ahead of new and smaller infringing sites who will be working hard to improve their own rankings. Tips for how your music site or service can do better in terms of Search Engine Optimization can be found in the following two infographics released by Music Biz: Search Engine Optimization for Music Websites SEO For Websites Part II If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to a Music Biz staff member. Thanks!

 

It looks a little better today. We are officially downgrading this from “Sexist Spectacle” to “Widespread Mansplaining.”
 

ItI

Does anyone else find this infuriating?

Three female artistes,  Adele, Beyonce and Taylor Swift have now withheld their music from Streaming services.  We have to assume that this was at least partially a business decision.  As should be all artists right, they have chosen to monetize their music without using the streaming services.

Objectively these three female artists are enormously successful and run profitable businesses.

Yet these money-losing streaming services and their (mostly male) journalist supporters seem to be telling these women they don’t understand business?

It would be funny if it was an Onion article.  It’s not.

 

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This is getting funny now.

Journalists are now reporting the “real reason” that Taylor Swift has opted to “window” her albums on Spotify.  That is, her public statements about “free” devaluing all music and hurting all artists are not good enough.  So the (mostly male) journalists have gone on quest for a male “self-interest” kind of truth.  Because after all Men are certainly making the real decisions here.

Business Insider (which is neither) seems to have first reported the “Real reason” that Ms. Swift chose not to put her albums on Spotify.  According to Business Insider it was Ms Swift’s record label “boss” who  pulled Ms Swift’s music from Spotify  (BTW a label she and her family own),  The article cited an unnamed  “industry source familiar with firsthand knowledge of why and how this happened, and who is most responsible.”   The article goes on to explain without attribution that the label “boss” is trying to sell the record label.  Increasing sales (a tacit admission that Spotify decreases sales) and hence the value of the label was cited as “his” motivation.  Business Insider did not explain why Big Machine’s other artists including megastars  Florida Georgia Line are still on Spotify.

You see it can’t possibly be

1) A female artist making  business decisions or….

2) Action altruistically  motivated by Ms. Swift’s previously stated feelings on the exploitative nature of free music.

Nope these dudes have to take the long way around the verifiable facts, and rest their entire story on anonymous sources and rumors.

Now virtually every major publication is repeating Business Insider’s anonymous unsourced claims.

“Real” indeed.

 

Music Streaming Math, Can It All Add Up?

Who will be the First Fired Label Execs over Spotify Fiasco & Cannibalization?

Streaming Is the Future, Spotify Is Not. Let’s talk Solutions.

Here’s Taylor Swift a few months back in the Wall Street Journal on music:

Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It’s my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album’s price point is. I hope they don’t underestimate themselves or undervalue their art.

Very eloquent.  Clearly she intended (as she has in the past) on “windowing” her album.  That is withholding her album from Spotify for a period of time.  Just like TV/Movie industry does with Netflix and Hulu.

So Spotify’s response is to treat her like a teenager and make her a mixtape playlist!!!???

Yikes. It is clearly “Bro-land” over at Spotify.

But that’s not the worst of it. Here are the mostly male music industry beat journalists responding to her decision to not release her new album on Spotify.  The very fact they say she “pulled” it from Spotify is in itself loaded.  It was never on Spotify. They don’t even get this basic fact right.

Look we get the jokes, but it’s doubtful that if a male artist had so clearly stated his feelings in regards to streaming and the value of music those comments would have been left out of the stories. Nor would he have been treated like a teenager.

And below is Joshua Brustein  “Mansplaining” that Taylor Swift is wrong when in fact her strategy makes perfect sense.
1) new album not on Spotify = 1.3 million sales.
2) New albums always generates interest in back catalogue.

Therefore also remove back catalogue album to generate additional sales.

Why isn’t bloomberg interviewing Swift for demonstrating such business savvy and showing the boys how to play the game?

On the other hand Brustein makes no sense whatsoever.

Hey Joshua you write for Bloomberg a money magazine.  This is about the money it’s not a “protest.”   Protest.. why the fuck would you assume she’s protesting?  Cause she’s a woman and emotional? Something like that?  Not thinking rationally? Is that what you are getting at?

And Gawker deserves special mention for being too stupid to notice that Spotify is owned by Billionaires. Oh but they are male!  That’s right men can be “rich as fuck” assholes like the SnapChat guy and that’s cool.  Darn I always forget how this works!

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“Streaming has won…”-Lefsetz commenting on Taylor Swift’s  1.3 million first week album sales, an album not released on Spotify or other streaming services. (Photo Christopher Harte CC)

This is just a quick note.  I try not give Bob Lefsetz any oxygen… but has anyone else noticed how much Lefsetz and the rest of the usual pro-streaming suspects have begun to resemble the former Iraqi Information Minister “Baghdad Bob?”   They can’t seem to face up to the obvious fact:

 Taylor Swift’s “windowing” of her album has increased sales and revenue!  First platinum record all year.

And should we be surprised? Windowing leads to increased revenue in the TV and Film business why wouldn’t it work for music?

This is actually a rather boring and mundane observation only made interesting by the current irrationality of the music business.  It’s only interesting because so many music business executives and journalists have completely drank the koolaid and refuse to believe that streaming cannibalizes sales. That streaming as it stands now (everything available for free) is really bad for the music revenue.   Reading the music business headlines in the wake of Swift’s feat is like watching some sort of religious cult have a mass nervous breakdown.

“Oh no  the spaceship did come! It whisked all the true believers away. It was right over there.  You just didn’t see it? That’s  because you didn’t believe!  Why am I still here? uh …”

Here’s Lefsetz in the face of Taylor Swift’s 1.3 million first weeks sales,  a feat not accomplished since Napster was around:

 Selling a million copies a week in a country of 300 million people is a blip on the radar screen, but owning the news cycle, even trumping the World Series, is priceless.

As for Spotify…

Acts come and go, institutions remain.

Hilarious stuff if you consider that Lefsetz declared her career pretty much over with during a well publicized spat he had with her in 2010.   Payback’s a bitch isn’t it Bob?

 

Music Streaming Math, Can It All Add Up?

Who will be the First Fired Label Execs over Spotify Fiasco & Cannibalization?

Streaming Is the Future, Spotify Is Not. Let’s talk Solutions.

 

If streaming is so good for artists  why is it that artists that control their own recordings opt to “opt out” of streaming services?

Black Keys

Thom Yorke

David Byrne

Now Taylor Swift.  This story is blowing up big time.   Expect the streaming services and their record company allies to “activate” their shills against Taylor Swift in the next couple of days. This is what they do every time a prominent artist speaks out.

Watch this space here cause as that happens, this time we are gonna call them out.

The only reason that the major record labels and big indies supported streaming is because THEY ALL GOT EQUITY IN SPOTIFY.   Did other public advocates of streaming also accept monetary compensation?  As noted in previous articles on the Trichordist it is becoming apparent that there are a lot of folks posing as “disinterested” parties that had a financial interest in the success of Spotify.  That is why we can’t wait for the Spotify IPO.  It will reveal who got paid off.   Though it’s doubtful that commercial bribery statutes will apply in most cases, expect some artist lawsuits against their labels. The labels after all took something of monetary value (equity) against artists albums without counting these revenue produced by these albums.

On the bright side.  Maybe the idiots who couldn’t do simple math and got us into this mess will finally lose their jobs.  See article below

Why is $5 a month streaming good for artists?  Because 1/2 the record executives will lose their jobs! Yeah!

 

RELATED:

Music Streaming Math, Can It All Add Up?

Who will be the First Fired Label Execs over Spotify Fiasco & Cannibalization?

Streaming Is the Future, Spotify Is Not. Let’s talk Solutions.

 

 

 

 

Label executives and many distributors including most indies have been out there trying to sell artists and small labels on $5 a month streaming!  Because at $5 a month many more people will subscribe to these streaming services!

1) No they won’t.  Why would they pay for what they already get for free?  It’s totally irrational you morons.

But Let’s ignore several hundred years of economic theory and proceed to #2.

2)Let’s say streaming gets as many subscribers as cable. Even round it up a bit to 100 million subscribers. Let’s do the math.  Everyone get out your calculators and follow along. YOU WILL BE TESTED!

$5 x 12 months is $60 x 100 million subscribers.  Spotify keeps 30%.  that’s a $4.2 billion dollar music industry.  About half what the industry is now.   And it’s highly doubtful they will reach 100 million subscribers. What does Netflix have now? 40 million? and Netflix isn’t stupid enough to compete with itself with an identical free version of it’s service. 

Either way at least half the money.  And with half the money you can only employee half as many executives.

Let’s hope that the first batch out on the street are the ones that sold everyone on these deals. If it were up to me I’d start with the head of digital and anyone who has ever uttered the phrase “data is the future.”

You DO know there’s not room for all of you executives to work at YouTube and Spotify right?

And here’s some career advice for all you future former record executives: sell t-shrits.

 

 

Do you trust your label to properly apply recoupable expenses against your SoundExchange royalties? Even at the best labels mistakes are consistently made.

Currently all SoundExchange royalties are spit between the performer and the labels regardless of whether the performer is “recouped” with his record label.  These royalties go DIRECTLY to the performer. The record label can not touch these royalties.   This is one of the reasons that these SoundExchage royalties are so important to Performers.  Performers do not have to rely upon the sometimes “creative” accounting practiced by their record labels.

The thing about the MERLIN PANDOLA deal is this gives Pandora and the Labels a “back door” to cutting the artists out of the equation.   That’s the point of direct deals.  Pandora and the labels can bypass SoundExchange.   Pandora’s ultimate goal is to weaken their opponent in the SoundExchange.  Right? By passing SoundExchange this weakens their finances and hence our collective bargaining positions.

Although SoundExchange so far has been able to continue paying the artist share of royalties on a nonrecoupment basis like a statutory license,  There’s nothing stopping Pandora from changing their minds and fighting SoundExchange later.  They can just start paying labels directly and their is really nothing that SoundExchange can do.  Look what Pandora did with Pre-1972 recordings?

We know that many labels are struggling with the bad deals they cut with Spotify would love to get their hands on the artists share of digital broadcast royalties.  The MERLIN deal gives them the perfect excuse.

Not only is MERLIN’s PANDOLA deal possibly illegal Payola, the decision to do a direct deal with Pandora was incredibly shortsighted. It will ultimately hurt indie labels by weakening their only ally in the government rate setting proceedings.  It potentially weakens SoundExchange by depriving them of revenue.    Thanks Merlin!  Thanks Caldas!