FISTFULAYEN

After hearing a promo for it on This American Life’s podcast, I started listening to Sound Opinions, a syndicated radio program and podcast from Chicago Public Radio, self-described as “the world’s only rock n roll radio talk show”, hosted by Chicago newspaper music critics Jim DeRogatis and Greg Kot. It’s awesome. They do a great job of mixing music news and pop music with in-depth interviews, live performances, and plain ol’ “good music”. If you love music, subscribe to this bad boy and enjoy.

Two of their recent shows struck a nerve: one featuring Saul Williams and another which re-ran an interview with Lawrence Lessig.

I’m a Saul Williams fan. Heather Morra first showed me the movie Slam (which Saul co-wrote and starred in) in the late 90s. Heavy shit:

Now that’s putting a masters degree in acting to good use.

So I wanted to like Amethyst Rock Star, but I just didn’t. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t get into it. Maybe I should go back and try again.

Then I saw Saul at SXSW three years ago supporting his self-titled EP. The show was incredible and the EP was even better. It was one of my favorite albums of the year and I reviewed it back then. I *still* think this is his best output to date, and Black Stacey is one of the best hip hop songs of all time, a heartfelt youthful confession that grows into a plea to modern rappers to tell the truth and speak from the heart. Seriously, this record RIPS. Don’t sleep. Get it, enjoy the depth of lyrics over Bad Brains samples. Incredible.

Play Saul Williams - Black Stacey
Buy MP3s on Amazon

So I was pretty stoked to hear he’d produced a new record with Trent Reznor and even tipped his hat to Bowie with the title: The Rise and Fall of Niggy Tardust. To be honest, speaking as a fan, the album was only ok. Definitely some stand-out cuts, but some of it just didn’t connect for me. Again, I need to spend some more time with it.

Regardless, I was glad to see all the hype around how he’d released it (I gave him $5 before even hearing it), Trent’s comments/measure of success juxtaposed against Saul’s, and even the Nike ad featuring a track from the self-titled record, “List of Demands” (which, according to Amazon, will be on the CD issue of the record, out soon). Fucking brilliant to see Saul finally getting traction.

Which finally brings me to the Sound Opinions interview with Saul, which was great (Saul in the Sound Opinions studio pictured above, click on the image for more from Sound Opinions’ Flickr stream). I got excited listening to it, thinking about the many ways Saul is the artist of the future. The interview is really a must-listen, you’ll hear how a yet-to-be-established, forward-thinking artist thinks about free music, music as income, and gathering fans in the future.

Play Saul Williams on Sound Opinions
Visit SoundOpinions.org

“Now we artists have found a way to make our work more accessible and people seem to be more inspired to pay in certain cases. In our case I’d say that’s been [true]. It doesn’t surprise me the amount of people that have downloaded it for free — it makes perfect sense to me. I imagine of those 265,000 people of them probably two of them have heard of me before. [laughter]” - Saul Williams, 2008

Then just this past week Sound Opinions re-broadcast an old interview with Professor Lawrence Lessig, lawyer and author of some of the greatest books on copyright, ever. It’s a great intro to Professor Lessig, if you think he’s the guy that likes P2P file-sharing please give a listen for an expanded view — he does a great job giving a primer on his views and how copyright law hasn’t kept up with the times.

I particularly like the way he points out that breaking down the barriers for the recording of cover songs created huge opportunity in the recorded music world, but the enforcement of barriers to sampling has seriously impaired creativity relative to what new technology allows, and there’s a strong argument the industry overall is paying for this in opportunity cost. What would the last sixty years of music-making have been like if you had to get *permission* to record a cover? What would the cost in opportunity have been? Unquestionably huge. I’d argue we did a similar disservice when we shut down the sampling world. We won’t get another Paul’s Boutique or AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted (production-wise) as a result. The Girl Talk record is technically illegal. Professor Lessig does a great job explaining why this need not be the case, and quotes Jeff Tweedy as to why it is. At the end of the show Sound Opinions take it one step further and add Eggman from Paul’s Boutique to their desert island list.

Later in the program Professor Lessig minces no words about how he feels about the concentration of power in the recording industry:

“It might be true [the recording industry are] threatened by these new technologies but it’s not clear that abolishing the recording industry, at least in the way that we think of it today, is terrible for the artists. The existing industry is extremely concentrated, it’s an extremely narrow range of artists who actually get to make it in the world or actually get to support themselves through the sale of recordings and a different industry might actually benefit a wider range of artists. And that would be a good thing in my view. If they can’t provide value to artists then they have no reason to be here in the business. The job of a recording industry is not to protect themselves, it should be to help prosper artists in this business.” - Professor Lawrence Lessig, 2006

Perhaps heavier handed than I would be, but I certainly agree that the coming industry will benefit a wider range of artists. That’s core to the Topspin vision.

Play Lawrence Lessig on Sound Opinions
Visit SoundOpinions.org

Thanks for reading/watching/listening. Let me know what you think of SoundOpinions.

Just to share, here’s my Podroll:

• Ken Radio - I listen to Ken and Andy every single day and have since 1998. They can make me crazy some days but they are the most consistent audio tech news source online. You can count on them to do annoying things like pat themselves on the back repeatedly but you can also count on Ken to be there reading you ten headlines a day, every day. KenRadio listening secret: fast forward to 10 minutes in, that’s where the news *actually* starts. Then you can get 20 minutes of headlines while you work out, bike to work, whatever.
• This American Life - The best program in the history of radio, period. I’ve been listening religiously for years and I can’t believe how consistently amazing this show is, just by letting American humans tell their unique stories. The latest season of the TV show on Showtime has been great, too, much better than the first season.
• Sound Opinions - See above.
• Ted Talks - I used to frown on the TED conference’s elitism. Then I listened to all these TED talks and realized elitism has its advantages. Welcome to Genius City. I’m slightly smarter just for listening.
• 60 Minutes - It’s, um, 60 minutes. Now I don’t have to listen on AM radio anymore. The best part of 60 Minutes these days is getting to watch (hear) Andy Rooney turn deeper into a caricature of himself week after week. Andy Rooney’s closing 60 Minutes bit has become an SNL or Onion skit making fun of Andy Rooney (”I don’t like the movies. Who eats this popcorn, anyway?!”). It’s not to be missed.
• Rhinocast - Not as frequent as it used to be but definitely some good stuff. I personally love hearing Lefsetz talk about the first time he heard Yes driving to Aspen with his dentist. I jest but listening to these did give me a new appreciation for Bob — his love for music is palpable.
• MacBreak Weekly - The TWiT guys are waaaaaay too long-winded. Maybe it would be tolerable if you were driving a semi-truck through Oklahoma and there was nothing else on the radio, but I don’t really have time in my life to listen to these dudes straight-up ramble for an hour straight. Still, I admit to checking in with MacBreak weekly every now and then, particularly around times like a couple weeks back when everyone was trying to predict what the iPhone announcement was going to be.
• Element Skateboards - There are actually a bunch of decent skate video podcasts. This is the one I’ve been watching the most recently.

What am I missing?

ian

When Billboard runs a cover like that, it’s hard to keep the company Trapped in the Closet like R. Kelly. The proper coming out blog post is located on Topspin’s new site. Order your own issue of Billboard here. A couple more pictures from the shoot here, and a couple snaps from the unused bowl photo shoot here.

I hope to see you all at our party in Venice, CA tonight. If you didn’t get an invite it’s not that I don’t like you, it’s that I’m busy and couldn’t think of everyone. Mail or text me and I’ll get you on the list.

Thanks for the interest and support. As Ozzy Osbourne says (repeatedly) in those awesome circa Randy Rhodes live videos, I love you all.

ian

I’ve gotten sappy about my daughter Zoe plenty of times on this blog. But not today. Today I’m just proud.

Zoe was homeschooled grades 5-7. In 8th grade she went back to public school and took home every award.

She chose Santa Monica High for high school (private school Marlboro was the other option). She took the hardest classes, taking BC Calculus in her junior year and assisting the class her senior year. She took 5 AP classes unnecessarily in her senior year, just because she didn’t want to be bored (I talked her out of a 6th, AP Spanish). She got an A in every class, every year, apart from a solitary B+ in her (no-credit) Academic Decathlon class (which I for sure would have failed). She aced her AP tests, scoring a 5 on not-only in Calculus but in English as well.

Zoe was accepted to her first choice of colleges, MIT, early admission in the fall. She accepted and starts in August.

And last night on the way to “Grad Night” she and her friend Laura were naming every sample on the new Girl Talk record. The image at the top of the page is the page I made and paid for placement in her senior yearbook. I think it was probably the only senior ad that contained a 90s hip hop reference. And Zoe was probably the only kid who got it.

That’s my girl. I’m so proud of you. You’re truly the best. Congrats. Enjoy it. It’s a real accomplishment.

xoxo,
papa

Just back from checking out Adam Yauch’s new movie, Gunnin’ For That #1 Spot, which follows eight high school basketball players into the “Elite 24″ all-star game in Harlem’s Rucker Park. Now anyone that knows me knows I’m not a fan of either movies or basketball, but I’m here to admit this is a damn fine movie and encourage you to see it next week when it opens up. These kids are amazing; it’s easy to get swept up in their story.

Not entirely coincidentally, four of the eight are going to be draft picks the day before the movie comes out.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

ian

Dave Allen, former member of Gang Of Four and current Director Insights and Digital Media at Nemo Design contributed a great stream of consciousness essay on social media, blogs, and advertising to Nemo’s corp blog, Social Cache. Its only crime is that it combines many ideas into one post. Namely:

1) Social networking is not about technology, it’s about people and their gravitational pull toward one another.

2) Transactional business of commodity goods driven by buckshot marketing is going to get hard and harder (due to attention scarcity) and building trust-based connections with your customers is going to become more and more important.

3) #2 is going to be easier for new companies than incumbents.

4) “Viral” != “Value”. I’d argue viral is a side-effect of “Quality” (or as Jonathan Strauss would say, “Tier 1 to me”.

5) Corporate blogs are tricky but important (ours launches on Friday, at long last).

Still, I find myself agreeing with the bulk of his observations.

ian

Hey all. I’m guest DJ’ing with Travis Keller (Buddyhead) on Thursday in Santa Monica at Bar Chloe, attached to Hotel Carmel, 2nd and Broadway, in Santa Monica. 8pm to midnight.

Be there. Bring your dance squad. Introduce yourself.

See you there.

ian

Julie, Lucinda (20 mos), and I headed over to Matt Kozlov’s place (the Kozpad) to see Chester French do an almost acoustic set on the roof. Lucinda hammed it up, including requesting a pound (fist-to-fist) from D.A. (lead vocals) during the last track. Classic.

Chester French’s new record comes out soon on Pharrell Williams‘ imprint. Sample on their MySpace page. I have to say, they sounded damn good on the roof today despite D.A. apologizing multiple times for blowing his voice out at The Viper Room on Thursday. He warmed it up during the first song and they were great. The stripped down setting showed that Max is a *really* great guitar player, the songs stand on their own, and D.A.’s voice is great.

Congrats to Matt on the new gig (I hope that’s public ). Matt’s leaving Yahoo! to take a big, important job at a major record label. I have no idea who introduced him to Rick Rubin. None at all. They need folks like you, man — incredibly smart, obsessive music fans with intuitive business acumen? Come on. Slam dunk. Glad it worked out.

Oh and Julie and I want to send this song out to you. We had the best time at your party. The wife and I, thank you very much.

ian

I admit, it’s a huge breath of fresh air to be free of the “I license catalogs of music” business. Look at the position Last.fm has found themselves in:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/06/the-warner-music-ends-at-lastfm/

I won’t say much on the topic but suffice it to say this is pretty much how I was expecting this to go and why I ultimately steered Yahoo! Music away from direct licensing of ad-supported streams and into the Rhapsody deal.

Last.fm used to have a nice, utilitarian, meta-business. Given my Nullsoft and Mediacode background, those are the kinds of businesses I liked; providing utility to people who love music, not needing a license from anyone to get it done. That’s why I wanted to buy FoxyTunes. Great user-focused utility, no nonsense.

While Topspin is different, it’s good to be back in the sweet spot, servicing the parts of the value chain that actually want to be serviced: the artists and the fans.

ian

Aloha, Mr. Hands,

We’ve never met, though we have friends in common. In addition to working with one of your artists off/on for the past 14 years I was GM of Yahoo! Music for a bit (I recently left to join a startup you’ll hear more about soon, Topspin). I commend you for having the guts to take on the EMI challenge. While I know everyone is beating up EMI for being at the bottom of the heap at the moment, EMI also has the least to lose and still a great shot at building a new industry on top of a valuable catalog. We are all watching with a great deal of interest to see if you can pull it off. I am sincere in wishing you the best and looking forward to meeting you in person.

I was having lunch (and an incredible Rosé) on the beach with some folks from your company at MIDEM this year and after everyone was slightly buzzed I earnestly threw out my vote for how to change EMI’s new music business. I was expecting someone to explain to me why my ideas were terrible or simply impractical, but instead they said, “I wish you’d tell that to Guy Hands.” I promised them I would. That was back in January but I haven’t entirely lost the thread. True to my word, I’m finally making the time to jot my thoughts down here. Sorry I haven’t written sooner, it’s been a busy year for me. I’m sure what I present is a strategy that has already been discussed at your company; I don’t claim to have discovered anything novel. But perhaps my vote for the approach below will count for something.

In a nutshell: With the disappearance of advantaged label competencies such as superior production, distribution, and marketing, reconfigure your labels to be based around affinities and focused narrowly enough to serve roughly the same audiences from release to release. The labels would be very small teams responsible for fan cultivation, focused and direct marketing, and A&R. They would rely on EMI for service, support, and tools (generic marketing would happen on the EMI mothership, for example).

Now in a bit more detail…

Labels used to bring a lot to the table:

• Capital (aka money, not to be confused with Capitol when discussing EMI). Making records was expensive. Up until ProTools arrived on the scene there were less than 500 “professional” studios in the US and only 2500 people that knew how to operate them. Making “professional” sounding (Supertramp, REO Speedwagon, Styx, you know) albums was expensive.
• Distribution. Vinyl records were heavy. Getting records to Musicland, Tempo, Peaches, Tower, and even Schoolkids took a fleet of trucks and people on the ground managing distribution. Al Teller once told me when he was running Columbia he used to take artists into the local record store to show them how well the Columbia product was stocked. That’s because distribution was HARD and it MATTERED. And big companies could do it much better than small companies could. But that’s gone. Distribution is trivial and none of the stores I mentioned even exist anymore (SCHOOLKIDS A^2 RIP, you gave me so much as a kid).
• Marketing. Lets face it, until recently music marketing meant radio and then MTV. Nothing else really moved the needle except maybe paying for placement at retail and in retail cooperative advertising (see “Distribution”, above, for why that is starting to lack, too). But now that your customers’ attention is going elsewhere (see my original Media 2.0 Physics presentation from 2+ years back for more on attention scarcity) your marketing is becoming less efficient just as it is becoming more important.

Without the advantages of access to capital and a distribution stranglehold, marketing (which will come to mean both acquiring new fans and managing your relationship with existing ones) is where the real battles of the new music industry will be fought. The question I would be asking is: What real, defensible advantages do we have in marketing?

Since marketing no longer means dealing with independent radio promoters, radio stations, and music video television stations for play and instead means building real, trust-based relationships with fans directly, there’s no efficiency in marketing Robbie Williams today and Iron Maiden tomorrow. You’re lacking the focus a Vagrant or Victory (or closer to my heart, Dischord or from the “wildly profitable” category, Jive in its late 90s heyday) who are more or less going back to the same group of fans with each release. Hell, Vagrant even spun off two new labels, one for kids and one for heavier music. They’re focusing on what they know and segmenting their marketing efforts by affinity group.

If I’m an artist, I’m probably better off having a small label start building my career than I am submitting to a major, going through the buckshot marketing machine and hoping against hope they’re going to break me at radio or MTV. If the small label has an existing relationship with a group of people already inclined to like my style, they have a better chance at building my career from the bottom-up than I have hitting it big in the channels of radio or MTV.

If, as this hypothetical artist on an indie label, I get traction, will I then move up into the major system? In the old days I *had* to if I wanted to reach a wider audience, but not anymore. If I’m the White Stripes of tomorrow do I do a 360 deal with the label or do one with myself? I can afford to record my own music, I can distribute in 100 different ways by myself (and keep more of the profits), so if I’m going to partner with you for my releases you’d better have better access to a larger audience than I could generate on my own. If my song fits in the limited (and shrinking) channels of radio and music television I might have a shot. But if not, what do you offer?

If you had a set of meaningful, affinity-based labels you would have the real asset of a trust-based relationship with a captive audience to offer. Every artist wants to be on the same label as their musical heroes. And consumers need filters.

Plus you would have a powerful asset smaller labels wouldn’t: You would still keep a “special forces” virtual label team working the acts that are ready to breakthrough to the mainstream. When an artist is ready to break out of the box the affinity label draws around them, you have the infrastructure, team and experience to take the act mass market, worldwide, QUICKLY. Small labels can’t offer that to an artist. Your labels would be very attractive to artists as you’d have built-in audiences to bootstrap them with, and also the rocket fuel should they stumble upon the next Funky Cold Medina or Bust A Move (sorry, Delicious Vinyl Mixtape in the car).

You have a couple such labels already. Blue Note is an obvious one, though it’s a long way from the golden days of Rudy Van Gelder. DFA is a more recent addition that fits the bill, I hope you can hang on to them. No offense meant to my snowboard friend Jason but what do Daft Punk, Meat Loaf, KoRn, and The Stooges have in common from an audience perspective? How is there any efficiency in the same marketing team working all of those records (and scads of others just as unaffiliated) in the past year? (Oh and btw, Syd, every link on HollywoodAndVine.com takes me to a 404…) I would break these old labels up into new labels which can concentrate on and build the trust of like-minded audiences, post-haste.

If you look at my aforementioned Media 2.0 Physics presentation from a couple years back you’ll see I’ve been saying something similar for a long time. I’ve spoken to a number of folks at the majors about this over the years and they all seem to get what I’m saying, but for one reason or another it just isn’t practical for them to focus like this. One friend at a major is consolidating all the “rock” acts under one heading but by his own admission it’s not as focused as I’m describing above. My guess is he’ll have some increased success with this increased focus but not as much as if he broke it down more narrowly by audience.

So what are you waiting for?

Best of luck, however you proceed from here. Hope to meet you soon,
ian

ps - What’s up with leaking the hire of Google’s CIO on April Fool’s day? No commentary meant on the hire but the timing was a bit inopportune, no?

Hey blog readers,

Thanks for reading. I’m curious to see a little discussion around this. I’m really not an expert in this arena, so I’m genuinely curious why my idea is a bad one and why no major is really pursuing this. I’m also curious to hear more examples of where this has/hasn’t worked. Personally I see focused labels succeeding with far more ease than non-focused ones. Dischord has made money in spite of themselves via focus, quality, and building trust with its fan-base. At the other end of the spectrum Jive focused on *just* pop music and ended up selling the company for $3B (the largest-ever acquisition of an indie label). There’s Epitaph (and Anti), Matador, Sub Pop, Merge, and then there’s TVT. A little label from Bloomington called Secretly Canadian can have an artist who wins The Mercury Prize. What’s to learn here? Very curious to get your thoughts. Please leave them below.

Thanks for dropping by,
ian

Just a quick post to wish Bruce a happy birthday (HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRUCE) and share a couple records I can’t get enough of…

In an email where he also admitted to liking the Santogold record, Mike D turned me on to this AMAZING Joe Higgs reissue on Pressure Sounds, Life of Contradiction. It’s a roots reggae masterpiece I’d never heard before and I’ve probably listened to it 50 times in the past week and a half.

And from the Roots, Rock, Reggae documentary:

Roots!

Also, I picked up the MP3 version of the Nigeria Special record I’ve heard so much about. Some serious gems on there. Highly recommended. Check out the track “I Want A Break Thru’”, below.

I bought CD versions of both of these for Bruce for his bday. Never been so sure about a gift in my life.

Oh and here’s my verdict on the Santogold record: I like the second half. I like the songs that sound like Siouxsie and M.I.A., and not the ones that sound like Gwen Stefani. Here are the tracks I dig:

I feel a little guilty using the Amazon widget instead of the Yahoo! Media Player one, but the fact of the matter is, time is precious and uploading MP3s, linking to them, making the Amazon affiliate links, and pasting in the cover art for both the in-page and in-player takes more time than I have and actually discourages me from blogging more. Testing to see if the Amazon MP3 widget makes this faster and more painless. So far so good. Trade-off for you dear reader is an entire album of 30-second samples instead of one full track. What do you think?

ian