How To Fix The Music Business

My guest today is Benji Rogers, the Founder of Pledgemusic and Co-Founder of the Dot Blockchain Music Project. Digital music is a mutation. Like a virus, it adapts, looking for new ways to be consumed, defying efforts to be fixed in some predictable context. Zeros and ones phantasmagorically appear and recede across networks, bought, sold, streamed and shared. Artists have little control over where their creations travel, how they’re used, how they are mutated by others. Rights, ownership information, sales data and payment are managed by multiple entities in the music business who often have competing agendas. Releasing music into the digital world can be a bit like putting a message in a bottle and throwing it into a vast, wild sea. So how can this all be made more transparent? How can permanance and mutability co-exist? Enter the Blockchain. The .BC Music Project is the first attempt to use Blockchain technology to create a global, decentralized database of music rights wherein a song cannot be separated from its usage rights and still be played. There’s the transparency and permanence. If you haven’t heard of Blockchain, it is basically a distributed database that maintains a continuously growing list of ordered records called blocks. So you write a song, and create a block with data about the authors, who played on it, who the publisher and record company is. Once data is entered, it cannot be altered retroactively - BUT as rights or usage rules evolve over time, the information can appended, and there’s a record of who changed it, and a validation process to make sure the changes are true. So along with permanence and truth, you get mutability. There is huge enthusiasm around .BC Music, and the project recently announced partnerships with its first industry partners: Canadian Music Rights organization SOCAN, CD Baby, MediaNet, Songtrust, and FUGA. But Benji and his partners at the Dot BC Music project are not the first people to try to fix the morass of problems in digital music. There have been many other industry initiatives going back nearly 20 years that have tried and failed to solve these issues - so in our chat, I pressed Rogers to outline exactly why Blockchain technology and his initiative are different and why they might finally be the beginning of a very bright future indeed for the music business. Benji and I sat down at Ludlow House on the Lower East Side for this chat. So pull up a chair with us and listen! Dot Blockchain Music: http://dotblockchainmusic.com PledgeMusic: http://www.pledgemusic.com Open Music Initiative: http://open-music.org Imogen Heap Mycelia: http://myceliaformusic.org The Failure Of The GRD (Global Rights DataBase): http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2015/08/the-failure-of-the-global-repertoire-database-effort-draft.html The Secure Digital Music Initiative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secure_Digital_Music_Initiative Benji Rogers on Twitter: @BenjiKRogers  

Vinyl junkies - I’m one of them. Possessing an opiate-like addiction for our preferred musical format, we tolerate, no we embrace it's inherent limitations and inconveniences. Pulling a treasure from our Ikea Expedit shelves (actually Kallax is the new thing), we cross apartment room floors that sag from the weight of our collections to put a record on the turntable. But first comes the romance of arcane cleaning and calibration rituals, the Holy Trinity of tracking weight, azimuth, and overhang, and then the battle with the Four Horsemen of the vinyl apocalypse: surface noise, orange peel, non-fill, and off center pressings. After 20, 22 minutes maximum of blissful immersion, the stylus bumps against the end groove, vup, vup, vup, and its time to get out of the chair, somnambulant, and flip over the record. Straight people observe this behavior and say, “umm, wouldn’t it be easier to just listen to this stuff for free on your phone?” So what does an archaic physical format and the weirdos who are obsessed with it have to do with fixing the music business? We’ve been told again and again that music has little or no value as a product, that access to it is easy and free, that the days of record stores and physical collections are a quaint notion of the past. And yet, at the most unlikely of times for a rebirth, these old things, these pieces of art, have stirred passion and a connectivity to music and the artists across age brackets. Why? Is it a hipster trend? Foolish nostalgia? Or does listening to vinyl awaken a musical mindfulness that downloads and streaming don’t deliver? My guest on the show today is Billy Fields of WEA Distribution - that’s Warner, Electra Atlantic in case you didn’t know. Billy is the “vinyl guy” at WEA and certainly qualifies as a record junkie. When I walked into his office at 50th and Broadway in NYC, he was spinning a Siouxsie & The Banshees record, and it was loud. And when his boss came in for a minute to chat, he didn’t turn it down, not even a little. Billy shares his thoughts on the business realities of vinyl, how labels choose what to release, the challenges facing record stores, and the tangible passions that music on wax inspires. So, welcome Billy Fields! Links for this episode: Billy Fields on Twitter: http://twitter.com/billysezvinyl Darkside Records: http://www.darksiderecordsandgallery.com/ Fantastic Negrito: http://www.fantasticnegrito.com/heritage/ The Revenge Of Analog: https://www.amazon.com/Revenge-Analog-Real-Things-Matter/dp/1610395719 Benjamin Clementine: http://benjaminclementine.com/ Jim Campilongo: http://jimcampilongo.com/ Ellen's Stardust Diner: http://www.ellensstardustdiner.com/    

My guest on the show this episode is Justin Barker, Founder/Director of Slice Music, a UK based streaming and content consultancy. He is also the Director of Streaming Strategy, Global Artist & Label Services for PIAS, and previously held curational and operation digital roles at Universal Music Group dating back to 2006. Justin has been riding the edge of the streaming music wave for a decade, and has a unique perspective on the history and evolution of the streaming music space. After more than 15 years of destruction and decline in the music business, there is a glimmer of hope again. Even as physical product and digital download sales continue to whither, the explosive popularity of streaming music services like Spotify and Apple Music have brought growth back to an industry that’s been shrinking for so long, it almost forgot the meaning of the word. On-demand Subscription streaming music services have been around for a long time. Rhapsody launched way back in 2002, and the current King of the Mountain, Spotify, launched in 2008. It’s really hard to survive as a standalone music service, and many players have either shut down or been acquired and absorbed into other entities. Spotify has over 40 million paying subscribers, but lost 200 million dollars on revenues of 2 billion in 2015. Despite the challenges, new services are being introduced by Amazon and iHeartRadio, and Pandora is offering an expanded pay service. Each of these services must find a way to differentiate themselves from the other players in the space; to win the favor of potential subscribers. But they’re not just competing with each other, they’re competing with YouTube, which is arguably the world’s biggest streaming music service - and YouTube is free. How content is promoted and consumed on Spotify is evolving at a lightning pace. Adapting to these ongoing changes has proven challenging for many labels and artists. Justin’s here to kick around some history with us and shine a light into the playlist mists. Slice on Twitter: https://twitter.com/slice_musicuk PIAS: http://www.pias.com Nicolas Jaar: http://nicolasjaar.net Jim's Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/user/trickness/playlist/18NgBUrRgZnEAPBk8zsu4J  

My guest on the show today is one of the original gangstas of the digital music business: Larry Miller. Half a decade before Apple launched iTunes, Larry was carving a path. In 1998, he co-founded a2b music, one of the first digital music distribution companies. He went on to become President of Reciprocal Music, another groundbreaking digitial distribution & technology company, and later co-founded the Or Music label, which won a Grammy with their artist Los Lonely Boys. These days, Larry is the Director of the NYU Steinhardt Music Business Program, where he’s shaping the intellect of young people who will write the next chapter in the history of the music business. There’s a very wise saying: History is written by the victors. Here’s the accepted history of the digital music business: The major labels were clueless about the internet and were doing nothing until Napster appeared and killed the music business. Luckily, Steve Jobs and Apple saved the day by inventing digital downloads and selling them in iTunes. True veterans of the early digital music business know that things were a bit more complex than that. It was an exciting time and things evolved very quickly, too fast to keep up with. The truth is that starting in the mid-90’s, many technology pioneers were working closely with the major labels to shape the digital future of the music business. It was an incredible time of experimentation and learning. Of course the ideas weren’t all viable, so the labels cautiously dabbled, thinking they’d control the timetable of how these new technologies would roll out. After all, that’s how it always worked whenever a new format came along. Of course this time they were wrong. Napster came along and burned all the cautious optimism to the ground. Steve Jobs had great timing, arriving when the majors were fatigued from fighting and desperate for an easy fix to complex problems. So a new history was written, and the story of what came before was brushed away like ashes. We did this podcast over an early breakfast at the Mansion Diner at 86th & York Avenue, hitting record and chatting amongst the sounds of New Yorkers waking up to a gorgeous Fall morning. Larry Miller on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_S._Miller NYU Steinhardt: http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/music/business Musonomics Podcast: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/musonomics/id985799104?mt=2 The Mansion Restaurant: http://www.mansionrestaurantnewyork.com Shawn Colvin & Steve Earle: http://www.rollingstone.com/country/features/steve-earle-and-shawn-colvin-talk-new-album-rehab-and-trump-w431117  

My guest on the show today is Sheryl Crow's Music Director & guitarist Peter Stroud. Peter Stroud gets around. It’s funny how often I am flipping around the channels late at night and see Peter on stage somewhere. He’s played with Pete Droge, Sarah McLachlan and Don Henley, recorded on albums with Stevie Nicks, The Dixie Chicks, Shawn Mullins and Michelle Malone. As a guitarist and Musical Director of Sheryl Crow’s band, Peter has been a recurring player in her creative legacy going all the way back to her smash album The Globe Sessions. Alongside Sheryl, he has shared the stage with Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Prince, Chrissie Hynde and countless other musical legends. That’s a full plate by anyone’s measure, but like I said, Peter gets around. He co-founded a hugely successful guitar amplifier company, 65 Amps, and is a partner in the recently launched the Emerging Artist Network, a company that connects developing artists with brand patronage. Peter also is part of a band called Big Hat with guitarist Audley Freed and a band of killer musicians. In 2012, Big Hat self released their debut EP, with no record company involvement, so all the promotion and marketing was up to the band. The track “Feather In The Breeze” was added by fans to a couple of popular playlists on Spotify and over time, got over a MILLION plays. Because there was no record company involved, the money went straight to the band. There’s a lot of debate and mystery about where the money goes in streaming, so when I invited Peter on the show, I asked him if he could share the real numbers of what the band got paid...he gracefully agreed. I think you’ll all find this very interesting, I know I did - its not often that artists share this kind of information. Of course we riff about a ton of other stuff too - this is a good one! Stuff we talk about on this podcast: Peter Stroud on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/loudstroud Peter Stroud on Twittter: https://twitter.com/PeterStroud Big Hat: http://www.bighatband.com/about-us Sheryl Crow: http://www.sherylcrow.com/ 65 Amps: http://www.65amps.com/ Emerging Artist Network: https://emergingartistnetwork.com/ Chris Shiflett's Walking The Floor Podcast: http://walkingthefloor.com/ Jason Isbell: http://www.jasonisbell.com/ Pete Droge: http://www.puzzletreemusic.com/ Yacht Rock Review: http://www.pleaserock.com/tributes/yacht-rock-revue Peter's Music Recommendations: Sturgill Simpson: http://www.sturgillsimpson.com/ The Shelters: http://www.thesheltersmusic.com/            

These days, success in the music business is about survival. Major labels can lose millions and still stand because they’re owned by giant corporations. A couple of consecutive bad years for a major and there’s usually a purge, new management brought in, the roster overhauled, maybe they’re merged with another label. And a dreadful side effect of risk aversity that follows these changes is that the music that gets signed and released becomes progressively “safer”. It’s different for independent labels. Successful independents constantly reinvent themselves, and rarely play it safe with the artists they sign and music they release. The best indies are on point, way out in front of the majors, showing us where music is going. It’s inherently risky, especially when you’re paying the bills yourself. Which is why the accomplishents of Beggars Group are all the more stunning. Founded by Martin Mills as the Beggars Banquet label in 1977 during the height of punk rock, Beggars Group has deftly navigated 40 years of changes in musical tastes and technology. They haven’t just survived, they’ve thrived. Evolving into a label owner and distributor, Beggars Group handles Matador Records, XL Recordings, Rough Trade Records, Young Turks and 4AD. A cursory glance at the roster of acts they distribute is staggering. Jack White. Alabama Shakes. FKA Twigs. Radiohead. Warpaint. Grimes. The National. Adele. And over the past 40 years, they’ve been instrumental in bringing some of the most important alternative music ever created into the world by artists like Gary Numan, The Pixies, The Prodigy, Dead Can Dance, and Cocteau Twins. At the helm of Beggar’s digital business is our guest on the show for this episode, Simon Wheeler. As the largest independent music group of labels in Europe, Beggars Group can change the landscape of digital music with their strategic decisions; and Simon has helped crafted and execute these strategies at Beggars since 1997. He’s been inside the guts of every significant digital music opportunity the industry has faced since the beginning. And in this episode, we get deep inside the streaming music landscape, what it means for independent labels, and where Simon feels we’re heading after 20 years in digital music. Beggars Group: http://www.beggars.com/ Simon Wheeler on Twitter: https://twitter.com/afc99 Music we talk about in this episode: The Lemon Twigs: https://www.facebook.com/TheLemonTwigs/ The National: http://americanmary.com/ Jim's A2iM Keynote Address: http://www.trickness.com/blog/the-digital-music-business-and-the-rashomon-effect            

They say you can’t sell music as a product anymore. Nobody wants CDs. Download sales are tanking as streaming grows in popularity. People don’t have the attention span to listen to a whole album, we’re in singles world now. Cherry pick my favorites, put them in a playlist, hits of the 90’s, workout jams, I don’t need artwork, I don’t want to know who played on the record, or who wrote the songs. Shuffle it up and fire it into my head like musical Pez, one sweet little brick at a time. Zero footprint. That’s what they say. But what about the resurgence of vinyl? Our guest on the show today is Cameron Schaefer from Vinyl Me Please, a record club that is all about bringing vinyl to their members that will transport them into the present moment and delight them. Cameron is a partner and Head Of Label Relations at Vinyl Me Please and yes, he does have one of the best jobs in the world. We’re going to talk about what vinyl means to the future of the music industry, and yeah we geek out a bit. Vinyl Me, Please http://vinylmeplease.com/ Cameron's music recommendations: Colin Blunstone: http://www.colinblunstone.co.uk/ The California Playboys: https://www.omnianmusicgroup.com/products/trying-to-become-a-millionaire Angel Olsen: http://angelolsen.com/#/my-woman Devendra Banhart: http://www.devendrabanhart.com Preoccupations: http://preoccupationsband.com      

It’s a well worn music industry cliche - a kid sees The Beatles' debut American performance on the Ed Sullivan show on February 9th, 1964 and right then and there, they decide that rock and roll is what they want to do with their life. People from all corners of the music business were influenced by Beatlemania, and it shaped the future of the industry. But one 5 year old boy heard the music of The Beatles and grew up to become a masterful vagabond of the guitar, playing on many hit records and thousand of gigs, until 40 years later, incredibly, he found himself standing beside Paul McCartney - as a bandmate. Our special guest for this episode is that kid, all grown up - Rusty Anderson, lead guitarist for Paul McCartney. He’s got a brilliant new album out with his band Rusty Anderson Afternoon called "RAA" and we chat about how the record came together. He talks about making and marketing his own records, working with the legendary McCartney, his experiences playing in the band Ednaswap and on hit records by a long list of major artists. But Rusty also shares his thoughts on the state of the music industry. We hear a lot from record labels and technology companies about how things should work, about what is and isn’t fair about the music business. But we don’t hear often enough from the actual creators who give life to music, and how the changes are impacting them. We’re going to try to get more artists into the mix on these issues on the podcast. We’re honored to have Rusty Anderson as our first guest artist on "How To Fix The Music Business”. Rusty Anderson Official: http://www.rustyanderson.com/ Paul McCartney Official: http://www.paulmccartney.com DOJ Consent Decree info: http://futureofmusic.org/article/fact-sheet/ascap-bmi-consent-decrees Music we talk about on the show: Tomita "Snowflakes Are Dancing" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowflakes_Are_Dancing Rusty's podcast episode with Jeremy Dylan about Frank Zappa's Hot Rats: http://mrjeremydylan.com/post/147079759375/my-favorite-album-147-rusty-anderson-on-frank Band Of Horses: http://www.bandofhorses.com/whyareyouok/          

In this episode, we talk with Hayley Rosenblum, Music Campaign Stategist for Kickstarter, the global crowdfunding community platform. She shares advice about how to create experiences that will engage fans and win their support, lessons she learned in her years working with DIY pioneer Amanda Palmer, and how the post-Napster generation values music differently, but just as importantly as every generation that came before. The concept of recorded music as a commercial product is just a tiny blip in the history of music. For centuries, musicians have relied on the patronage of Kings, Popes, and wealthy benefactors to sustain them while they dedicated their lives to their art. But patronage declined in the mid-19th century. Public support of the arts and the rise of capitalism enabled artists to earn money for the performance and sales of their works. The recorded music industry invested in artists and created a commercial marketplace that more or less worked for artists for decades. Until it didn’t. The internet has democratized distribution. Putting your music online costs almost nothing, really. But it costs real money to create. It is expensive to conceptualize, to write, rehearse, record, release, tour and promote music. Artists have long relied on record labels to fund these endeavors, and accepted inequitable terms as the cost of getting the money. But labels are far more cautious these days about who they sign, what they release and how long they work a record. And the deal terms can be far more obtrusive, where labels want a piece of everything artists earn, not just monies from recorded works. If artists want to create without limits in today’s marketplace, if they want to survive and succeed, they need a more holisitic form of financial support. So patronage is back. But this time, it isn’t Popes and Kings supporting the artists, it’s fans like you and me. Artists we discuss in this podcast: Julien Baker on Bandcamp: https://julienbaker.bandcamp.com/album/sprained-ankle-3 Dredg: http://www.dredg.com/ Hayley's photo work links: https://www.instagram.com/hayleyfiasco/ http://hayleyfiasco.tumblr.com/tagged/fiasco-photos  

Spotify rules the streaming music world, although not everyone agrees that's a good thing. Has Spotify made it impossible for artists to make a living, or is the best thing to ever happen to them? In the episode, we talk with Sandy Smallens, who for the past 4 1/2 years was the Head of Artist Marketing and Original Content at Spotify. As the former bassist for 90's indie rock darlings Too Much Joy AND one of the first guys to run a new media department at a major label, Sandy has a rare ability to look at the digital music business from a multitude of perspectives. We dive deep into how Spotify has changed the landscape for artists and labels, and the controversy around artist compensation in streaming services. We chat about how artist development worked in the old days versus now. We lament the passing of the great NYC indie record store, Other Music, AND we play a round of the game "Marry, F**k, Kill" with YouTube, Freemium and Downloads as the contestants. AND Sandy tells us about his rad new podcast storytelling company, Audiation. This episode KILLS! Bands we mention in this podcast: G.L.O.S.S. (Sandy is very happy their music is BACK on Spotify) https://girlslivingoutsidesocietysshit.bandcamp.com WUSSY is from Cincinnati, NOT CLEVELAND. http://wussy.ella.net PUFF PIECES: https://puffpieces.bandcamp.com/releases SKEPTA: https://www.helloskepta.com  

Tim Bierman has worked with Pearl Jam for nearly 20 years, managing their highly successful direct-to-fan platform Ten Club. Years before the music business realized how important direct-to-fan was, Pearl Jam was cultivating a unique relationship with their fans and with their label, Epic Records. Tim and I chat about the band's unique live gigs & the community and creativity that have made them a modern day Grateful Dead. We talk about the band first steps into the digital world around their 2000 album "Binaural", building an affinity team internally vs. outsourcing, Periscope and fans live streaming gigs. Tim also shares his advice to artists on what they should prioritize, and we geek out on Repo Man and World Party, Alabama Shakes and Blake Mills.  Links to stuff we chat about:  Nugs.Net: http://nugs.net Repo Man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repo_Man_(film) World Party: http://www.worldparty.net/ Gypsum "Follow Me" https://soundcloud.com/gypsum-band/follow-me

This is a show trailer for the How To Fix The Music Business podcast, hosted by Jim McDermott.