Erykah Badu and Paul McCartney: First Twitter Sample Clearance?

We recently looked at an example of Twitter collaboration in the music world, but this may be the first case wherein the micro-blogging network was used for mainstream sample clearance.

Pitchfork reports on an exchange initiated by Erykah Badu on Twitter, seeking last-minute clearance for a sample from the Wings song “Arrow Through Me.” Looking to connect with Paul McCartney, she appealed to anyone who might help connect her to him or a closer contact in the chain.

Following the stream of tweets, it looks like Badu got a hookup to Lenny Kravitz, who knows McCartney’s daughter Stella, who then connected her to Paul. He approved the sample clearance and she thanked her “Twitter fam” for making the clearance come together.

As Tears for Fears’ Curt Smith talked about in our recent interview, usually this process involves lots of lawyers and in-betweens and can often be drawn out for weeks if not months of back and forth. In another excellent example of how social media can be used to disintermediate the music industry status quo, Twitter made sample clearance a collaborative and rapid process by putting two artists into direct contact.

Do you know of any other interesting examples of social media making things easier for artists?

Tags: clearance, erykah badu, licensing, music, music industry, paul mccartney, samples, social media, twitter, wings

Tags: twitter

Tears for Fears’ Curt Smith Talks Twitter and Solo Career [INTERVIEW]

Musician Curt Smith, otherwise known as half of the international hit group Tears for Fears (along with Roland Orzabal), took a unique approach to finding a collaborator for a recent solo project: he used Twitter. Still touring with Tears after an early ’90s breakup and early 2000s reunion, Smith somehow also finds time to raise a family and pursue a solo career as an independent artist.

We had a chance to sit down with him recently and find out more about his collaboration with avant-garde cellist Zoe Keating made possible by Twitter, why Creative Commons licensing is a no-brainer for artists, and how the Internet is forever changing the mechanics of the music business.

Can you tell us a little bit about how Twitter became an integral part of the “All Is Love” single? (Stream the track at the song link.): It’s sort of interesting, the people you find. What happens with writing a song and demoing it, for me the demo always becomes the master. I never really demo anything, I just get a rough idea and then continue. And I got to the point where I really knew that I wanted cellos. It was kind of the mood of it and the verses really scream out for that. And in the best case scenario, you always want to use real cellos, because they sound so much better. But then it’s a question of finding a great cello player.

So I went home that night and started looking — actually initially on YouTube. I had read something about Zoe before, because she has so many Twitter followers, now up to 1.4 million. So I’d heard about her and went to YouTube to actually see her, and then I just sent her a message and said, “It’s me, do you fancy playing on this track if I send you a copy of it?”

Was it a public message or a DM?: It was a public message initially and then she followed me and we got to direct messaging. So I sent her the track, just e-mailed it to her, and she liked it a lot and started working on it. She finished it and she handed it to me when she came to see a Tears for Fears gig. So that was the first time we met and she’d already finished it, the 80-odd tracks she did. So we take it back and pare it down to what we need.

Was that 18 different interpretations of the song or takes or…: Eighty! 80 different parts — that’s how she works. She wants to give you as much as possible to work from and see what you want to use. And a lot of the times it’s cellos just doing the same thing, but it’s just a much thicker sound. Sometimes I don’t want that, I just want a single cello — so she’s given me both options basically.

But she was great. I loved what she did, so we’ve sort of become friends since then. That’s the way social media can work, which is great. Before, we’d have to find someone who represented musicians: their agents, someone who specifically dealt with session musicians, sort of going round and round and this was a very direct way of just asking someone to play on my stuff, which was great. And what she did was fantastic and perfect for the song.

So you were pretty happy with how the results turned out. Do you think it was significantly different from other collaborations where you’re actually with musicians in the studio collaboration in real time or comparable?: It was very different. I’ve gotta say when it works it’s much easier. You haven’t got to sit there and do anything; the track just turns up and it’s good. I kinda like it. Also I think it allows them to interpret it the way they would interpret it, which I think is a good thing.

I think the idea of working with somebody of Zoe’s quality — it’s different if it’s just a session player that might not be as creative as Zoe is, because she’s actually a writer and incredibly creative. I think it might be different and they might need more direction. Because she is so creative she doesn’t really need much direction and the reason we’re using her is because she’s her. I’ve heard what she’s done and I love what she does — so it was sort of “can you do some of that on this song?”

Do you think this kind of asynchronous collaboration is one model of how music might evolve or how people might be able to be creative independent of geography?: Yeah, I don’t see any reason why not. What made it simple for me was the direct contact we had. So many times in the past, no matter who it is, normally you would have to go through a manager and then get a record company’s permission for them to appear on your record and obviously none of those things existed with Zoe. And for a lot of artists they don’t — if someone wanted to work with me, there’s no one you have to go through, you know where to find me. And if I listen to something and like it, there’s no one else you need to talk to. I don’t have a record company, I look after myself — obviously Arlene (manager) helps me. But certainly with musicians I find that they communicate a lot more than they used to.

I’ve heard of people doing asynchronous collaborations before, but this was the first time I’d heard of social media actually being involved in matching up people who hadn’t necessarily collaborated before.:
I think it’s just getting over that stigma of approaching someone directly — certainly it was for me. I thought, ‘Do I dare really just say “would you play on this song?”‘ And yeah, what are they going to say, ‘Yes or no.’ Zoe was thrilled because it turns out she’s a fan. So in that sense I find it much easier.

I think people will do it more and more. It is so easy now with, ‘Here’s the track, I’ll just send it to you,’ and you just send us whatever you have back, and make it Pro Tools-friendly or whatever system you happen to be working on, and it’s not that difficult to do anymore.

How do you approach your own use of Twitter as a solo artist. Do you do a lot of interaction with your fans?: Yeah, there’s a lot of interaction. A lot of politics go down and the odd argument now and again. It’s multi-layered and I think that’s the joy. There are things that I might talk about — the other night I posted a picture outside of the Justin Bieber sold-out gig and said, ‘This is what I get to do on Valentine’s Day,’ which made my kids very thrilled, and me not as thrilled.

While I was on tour I do the same: photos from the road, what I’m getting up to, where I am each day. Zoe, asking her to work with me. We get into politics — I make my political views openly known on Twitter, which some people take an issue with, but I think that’s okay.

It’s multifaceted and I think people that follow you become very appreciative of you sort of making them a part of your life. I think it tears down a lot of barriers. When we were younger and we did have those screaming fans and that kind of stuff, I never really understood it. And the reason I never understood it was I’d be thinking: ‘But you don’t even know me, how could you possibly be that enamored of me? I might be a complete asshole.’ That personality is still here, and people can actually get to know me now. It normalizes you. You don’t become an icon anymore, you just become this guy, which I think is a good thing and healthy.

How would you break down the value of Twitter for an artist? I’m sure it’s different for individual acts, but I see opportunities to expand the existing fanbase versus keeping an existing fanbase more engaged. Do you have any sense of how that utility plays out for you in particular?: I think it’s certainly expanded it, because there are people that, say, may be fans of Zoe but wouldn’t necessarily think of following me that would now be following me. Certain people who agree with my politics that wouldn’t necessarily follow me for music but are interested in the politics. So yeah, I think it expands it — I don’t know what the retention is as far as keeping fans you already have. I think if you already have them, I’m not particularly likely to lose them at this stage of my life.

I think what’s interesting also on Twitter is the age range. The age range is incredibly broad, which is not the same with Facebook or MySpace or anything else. They definitely have demographics, Facebook and MySpace, which I don’t find as much with Twitter.

Do you have a presence on Facebook and MySpace also?: Yeah, and the Twitter feed goes to both. I go on there at times and post stuff but nowhere near as much as Twitter because I have my phone with me all the time. It’s more readily available. It’s 140 characters.

When I was on the road I would blog, it would be longer, not limited to 140 characters. But when I’m on the road I have the time. I don’t have kids with me and I’m traveling and so… I’m bored. There are other things that occupy me when I’m at home. I find that once I get home I don’t really have the incentive to write a large blog post about something, whereas an idea that comes to mind I can quickly Twitter. Or if I see something I want to post a picture of, whatever it may be, it’s just fast and simpler and I’m more likely to do it.

Do you think any particular platform is more valuable for artists in general? MySpace is trying to transition itself to MTV 2.0.: MySpace is just spam central. I mean, every day I just get mail inviting me to gigs that are nowhere near Los Angeles! No, I’m not coming to Florida tomorrow. There’s not really much of substance on there — that’s my personal experience. I find there’s a bit more substance, at least person-to-person contact, on Facebook. I rarely get mail or comments on MySpace other than the mail inviting me to some gig. Maybe one every few days that’s a fan actually writing to ask me something. A lot of the comments I just delete. ‘Thanks for following me’ — I wasn’t aware I did follow you. ‘Buy my new CD’ — I don’t even know your new CD or who you are, so I’m hardly going to recommend it to everyone. So it’s primarily that stuff, which gets a bit tedious.

We keep each one updated but as far as stuff coming back to me, that’s my experience with MySpace.

But there are some people who do, and they tend to be younger, use Myspace and don’t go on Facebook, so you’re wise to keep all of them updated. I find Myspace is younger, Facebook is older and Twitter goes from whatever to whatever. My youngest Twitter fan is 15, and the oldest one is… me, maybe!

You’re going to do a live performance here in L.A. with Zoe, March 23)? What material are you going to do?: We’re going to do a few tracks together, yeah. We’re going to do ‘All Is Love’ because she already knows it. She’s doing an arrangement for ‘Mad World’ right now because it’s one of her favorite songs. So I’m going to attempt to do that one, and we’ll see what it’s like with just me and Zoe. We’ll find out when she comes down to L.A. Right now those two we definitely want to do, and we’ll see when we sit down together if we’ve got time to try more.

So the single for “All Is Love” did very well, can you talk a bit about the success of the track and how it was distributed and promoted?: Initially we gave it away for free, through Amazon. It became their free download initially of the day and it did very well so they continued it. And I think it’s more about building up and widening a fanbase, so giving it away seemed like a good idea.

A lot of it doing well was down to it being retweetable. Twitter played a bit part in it. Obviously MP3 Amazon have their own Twitter feed, so they sent it out to everyone who follows them. Zoe sent it out to 1.4 million people, and I sent it to my fans, and the reaction we got from people who listened to it loved it.

So I think a lot of it was to do with how much people enjoyed the track. I think if it was a piece of crap then probably people wouldn’t be tweeting about it, so I like to think that some of it is down to it being a good song and recorded well.

Do you think that people were excited about the nature of how the track was produced, too?:
I think so. I think all that fascinates the online world, the social media world. The fact that social media was directly involved in this track being put together definitely added an extra interest for a lot of people.

Arlene [Curt's manager]: One of the first comments on Amazon was from a fan of Zoe’s, who basically said, ‘I’m a fan of Zoe’s and I hadn’t really listened to Curt’s stuff before, but now that I heard this I’m going to go check out his other stuff.’ That’s exactly the kind of feedback we love to get.

You also have a unique plan for releasing some of the upcoming solo work that you’re doing, track by track as opposed to, ‘Here I’ve worked for two years and here’s an album at the end of that time.’ Does that have to do with changes in the music industry — are singles becoming more important? Is the album format becoming more disintermediated?: I think the album format is definitely sort of on the wane as far as the general public goes. I’m sort of of a different age group than the demographic that probably is likely to buy my records — they would still probably buy albums, I’m thinking. My kids don’t really buy albums. They buy singles. But I think it’s more that you want to find new ways of doing things. I didn’t really want to sit in the studio for a year and wait and then release it at all at the end of it. I think it’s more now sort of immediate gratification — that’s what I want. I want to get this track, let’s finish it, let’s do that one, it’s over, goodbye.

Normally doing an album you go from track to track and go, ‘Let’s not work on this one today, let’s go work on the other one,’ and I think you tend to get more self-indulgent that way. I was interested in doing it where a track is written, we record it, put it out there. I think it’s an experiment that I’m going to find interesting as well, to see if there’s any thread at the end of it. See if there’s any reason to release what I would consider an album at the end of releasing every single track.

What happens also when you do an album is you can go from track to track and you find a new way of doing something, whether that be a guitar sound you use or whatever it may be, and then you go, ‘Oh my God, we’ve got to put that on the other track.’ So it ends up with everything having a sort of uniformity because you go from track to track and you’re updating them all the time. This way I’ll be interested to see if it has a uniformity or if it progresses, with the last track sounding nothing like the first track. So it’ll be fascinating — maybe we’re working with Zoe now to working with Metallica at the end. Probably not, but…

That would be kind of awesome, actually. It’s interesting, too, in this sort of episodic content model, too, which matches more of what’s going on on the web now. It reminds me of how blogging works.: Yeah, it is the same, it’s really sort of updating people each time as opposed to, ‘I can’t tell you what I’m doing, you have to wait until I’m finished.’ As soon as I’m done this one, I’ll give it to you. So it is very much updating people as you go along. For me it’s going to be an interesting experiment.

Arlene: We got started on that when a couple of years ago he started doing a free holiday song. He and Charlton (producer) would go into the studio and record — I think the first one was ‘Silent Night’ — and we just gave it away for free on the website. And last year he did another holiday song and gave it away for free on the website. And we realized, if we keep doing this there’s going to be a holiday album there at the end of it — who knew? It wasn’t really the thought going into it.

CS: Yeah, in ten years we’ll have a Christmas record. Just in time for my retirement!

You’ve been working in the music industry for a long time now. What other changes have you seen happening over the years?: To be honest the most interesting have been in the last few years. That’s by far when the biggest changes have occurred. The final demise of record labels — they’re not dead quite yet but they’re on their last legs. They will be soon. All that’s a good thing. What’s fascinating to me is now the power is back in the artists’ hands, which I think is a great thing.

We’re going to have control not only of what we do and when we do it, but more importantly ownership. Because the initial thing a record company will always do is take the ownership away from you, for putting money into you making a record, which you have to pay back to them anyway. The Internet came along and changed everything.

It’s not really worked out yet, I don’t think we have all the answers yet of how it’s going to work — we have to find new models of how an artist monetizes what they do. Who knows what’s that going to be?

You’re releasing a lot of your solo material independently on your own label, but you’re already an established artist.: Exactly — it’s easier for me.

Do you think that new artists just starting out who want to remain independent — do you think that’s a viable solution for them yet or something that’s coming soon? Do they still need label support?: I think there’s still something that’s coming soon, but I don’t think they necessarily need label support particularly. Look at it this way: The record companies never discovered them anyway. A bunch of kids went to see the band and liked them, then a bunch more kids went to see the band, then a bunch more, then the record company heard about it. If you took the record company out of the equation, a bunch more kids would still go see them and then a bunch more… and it’s then a question of how you manage it.

It’s very tempting — and we were tempted and went for it as well — when a record company comes along and says, ‘We’ll give you lots of money. And we’ll put you together with a producer and all the rest.’ Could we have done that on our own if we’d have kept going? Probably. What would we have lived on while we were doing it? That’s the difficult bit. I think that now it’s going to be, if you’re a live band, you’re going to live off your live income while you’re doing it. If you’re a DJ, it’s going to be to keep as many downloads coming as possible and sell them yourself, so that you can make that record — whether you’re going to make an album or make singles. But yeah I think it’s possible to self-finance it, if you’re good enough. Before we had a record deal, we did make enough money to live off. We didn’t have jobs, we did it as a living.

From gigging mostly?: Yeah, from gigging. Because we couldn’t go and do demos and have jobs at the same time. We were in two vans touring Germany — we did all those things. It’s not going to be easy — it’s not the same as when record companies just come along and throw money at you. And the fact is, you might as well do it yourself because record companies right now are not going to come along and throw money at you. They’re going to do it as cheaply as they can but take the ownership. Because they don’t have the money to throw at you either. All that’s gone. Making a record is nowhere near as expensive, so you don’t need them for that. You can do that at home. You used to have to go to a studio for that. Making a video — you can do that yourself too.

You can even do it on an iPhone these days.: Yeah, exactly. You don’t need any of those things you needed from a record company. Like I say, the new model has not really worked itself out yet, but I think these things happen organically, and something will happen that will make it all make sense. In the interim period, artists should just embrace the fact that they have more control and don’t need record companies. And actually get to keep everything they do.

Do you have any other specific advice to those artists just starting out? Should they be diving into these social tools, are there any tools for bands that are out there now — things like Topspin, Reverbnation, they should check out?: There are. A lot of it nowadays is always going to be word of mouth, and people commenting on how good they think you are. You have to keep it organic. The problem with MySpace is that it was gamed ridiculously and I think people are hip to that and you can’t game people anywhere near as easily as you initially could when it first started.

They’re going to have to do what you do every day and make music. They’re going to have to have their finger on every pulse and keep involved in everything. A lot of it, especially when you’re talking about music genres, make sure you’re involved with that genre on social media. Even down to the people you follow on Twitter: Find people in your genre. Social media is a great tool, and the more creative you are the better it’s going to be. If you do go out and make a cool video for next to nothing and it becomes a viral video — you’ve got to use every tool at your disposal. It’s not just going to be, ‘Make a record and hopefully someone listens to it and likes it.’ Be visually creative, too, and all the other things that would actually bring people in.

What do you think about some of the more creative business model ideas coming out from artists like Josh Freese, who would give away a signed CD and a lunch date for $250 or Kristin Hersh whose Strange Angels club members get free concert tickets in exchange for financial support?: We’ve talked about doing all of the above. For me it’s a question of where I draw the line. I can’t say I’m a fan of the sort of Gene Simmons, ‘Buy my axe for $20,000′ thing — that’s taking it to the nth degree and sort of ripping people off blindly. My natural reaction would be negative, but it’s a different day and age now. And if you are up front and honest about, ‘This is how I’m going to finance my next record: You’re going to finance it.’ And this is what I give back in return for financing it.

The fact is, I can’t give everything away for free, because I wouldn’t be able to continue to make music if I gave everything away. It’s got to be self-financing. I could make everything for free, but I’d run out of money at some point. So it’s got to be self-financing, anything we do if we don’t have a record company, however you make that happen. I think a lot of those things you mention, like being a member is not a bad one. There are other things like, ‘Come and sing backing vocals’ because now anyone can sing backing vocals, we just Auto-Tune them so it’s fine. So you can be creative and fun with it. And the people could actually get something out of it as opposed to feeling like, ‘I just spent that for this?’ We are discussing it and we’re trying to work out which ones to embrace.

I think the fronting money for recording is a good one — artists like Jill Sobule had a lot of success with that. And I think fans really feel like…: That’s their record.

Yeah! They participated in that.: And we’ll list everyone and send it out with a big sheet of everyone’s names who were part of the album. Or if you get to a higher level of donation you come and do the backing vocals. There are ways to be creative with it which I think fans embrace.

It brings into contrast, too, exactly where the music industry is really getting it wrong: It’s not that fans don’t want to support the artists. It’s more that the nature of ‘product’ has changed and they’re not being given a sort of way to participate.: They now have a choice of just buying what a lot of the time is the cookie cutter stuff the record companies deal with and is imaged and get no real direct contact with the artist — to being involved in something, a project by an artist, band, singer, whatever it may be. They’ll be more inclined to be involved in the thing that involves them back. The fact that they’re getting direct responses from me makes them feel more involved. Even concert promoters on Twitter say, ‘We’d love for you to come play in Malaysia,’ and I’m actually the one to say, ‘Contact CAA in England,’ or whichever agent is that area, and it’s just direct contact.

We have fans that come to shows — we had a whole bunch of them came last year to the Tears show in Vegas. They flew in from all over America and all met, because they knew each other from social media. They all planned it and decided where to go and they met up in Vegas. So after the show we did a private meet and greet and met them all and signed all their stuff. Without social media that wouldn’t have happened. And they felt more involved, and that kind of thing will get bigger.

I know you’re a big proponent of Creative Commons. Could you talk a bit about why you think this is something important that artists should know more about?: The only way I can ever explain it is that it’s a no-brainer. It’s so simple and easy and protects you in the ways you want to be protected — or not if you don’t care. Most of the time you would have to spend a lot in legal fees if you just have stuff copyrighted, and you have the job of chasing after people who may be misusing that copyright. I’ve had so many occasions when schools have e-mailed management who’ve e-mailed me because they want to use something in a school play but because it’s copyrighted they can’t. And I can’t get an answer from Universal and I have to say well, ‘I can’t give you permission because you’ve got to go to Universal and then you’ve got to talk to so-and-so else.’ And this is stuff that’s owned by me. This is a simple way of up front telling people how it’s OK to use this.

And in my case it’s you can use it in any way shape or form, as long as I’m credited and you’re not making money off of it. You have to ask my permission if you’re going to make money and we have to agree on that. But if you just want to use it to show someone or use it in a school play or amateur film or whatever it may be, then knock yourself out. It’s more exposure for me. Just credit me for it so people know who it is. It’s just a way of doing all that at pretty much no cost, whereas before a solo artist would need a lawyer to follow up on all of it. Creative Commons is saving artists a ton of legal fees by making it simple, and I’ve always wanted contracts to be more simple. My bugbear with lawyers has always been, they’ve invented their own language so we have to employ them. It really doesn’t have to be that way; I feel simple English works.

I think there’s a bit of perception that Creative Commons is really only relevant or useful to independent artists. Do you think mainstream artists should pay more attention, or do you know of any mainstream artists that are embracing it?: I don’t know of any major label acts, but surely that would have to also be the label that embraces it. Therein lies the problem — you don’t own the copyright, the label owns the copyright. So it would have to be the labels that would embrace it, and seeing that labels are run primarily by ex-lawyers, it’s not gonna happen. What do you mean do things in a simple fashion? And put all my friends out of work? Not gonna happen.

We talked a little bit before about how major labels are missing the point regarding the human behavior surrounding music which is sharing. Do you know of any tools or can you think of any new music sites that you mentioned being excited about in the past few years that are embracing more of that model? I’m thinking of Spotify or things like blip.fm.: I do blip.fm. But there’s so many around, it usually ends up being word of mouth for me. My days are usually spent writing and trying to keep up with all that is tough. But blip.fm I find easy to use and great. But there’s not one in particular that’s come up. I think you kind of spend a bit of time on each and seeing how much you learn from it. But my primary source of finding new things is people telling me or seeing it mentioned by people I actually follow or know. That’s normally when I’ll go check it out.

Do you have any other advice, if you could be the angel — or maybe the devil — on the shoulder of the music industry about how they can salvage their image?: I don’t think they ever will, to be honest. I don’t think that’s going to happen. Not the music industry as we know it, anyway. I presume when we say ‘music industry’ we’re talking about record companies — they’re just going to become bricks and mortar. It’s going to be catalog and film placement and things like that. I don’t see them as a creative force anymore. And the sad thing about that is that you do meet some creative people at record companies that do get it, especially in new media. Yet, are they ever allowed to run with it? No. Never. They don’t get to do what it is they really want to do, because the people at the top have no creativity whatsoever.

So they don’t get it. ‘We’re not giving away shit for free, that’s wrong! What do you mean someone’s playing that video we spent $100,000 doing, for nothing? No! Tell them to take it down, cease and desist, now!’ So they don’t get it. They don’t get that that video being shared that day by god knows how many kids sending it to each other is going to lead to X thousand downloads of the song. It’s beyond me.

To be honest, what’s happening because of social media and because of the Internet is that we’re becoming more creative. We’re all becoming more creative because it’s easier to create. It’s easier to create movies and almost everything. Record companies? They haven’t changed since I was 18. They’ve never been creative. They weren’t creative then, they aren’t creative now. They’re not a creative force, they’re just a force that just buys and sells. I think music as an art form is a far more creative force now, and can be self-sufficient, whereas back then I don’t think it could. Because of the Internet it can be. Because everything is doable now. For me to make a record back then, I couldn’t. Couldn’t have made a video either. You can do all that now. I don’t really hold out hope for record companies. They will morph into something else, and artists will use them less and less. As long as they keep sending me checks I’m OK.

It used to be you had to have a label and a lawyer and so on, and now there are tools on the Internet to do pretty much everything. You can actually do things yourself. All these tools enable us to be far more self-sufficient.

[img credits: Justine Ungaro]

- Follow Curt on Twitter
- Official website
- Stream and download the “All is Love” single
- Curt and Zoe’s gig will be at the Largo in Los Angeles on March 23 at 8 p.m.

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Reviews: Auto-Tune, Blip.fm, Facebook, MySpace, Spotify, Twitter, YouTube

Tags: blip.fm, Curt Smith, facebook, interview, music, music industry, myspace, ReverbNation, spotify, Tears for Fears, Topspin, twitter, Zoe Keating

Tags: twitter

Music Industry Piracy Fears: A Historical Perspective

There is nothing about this old Dead Kennedys cassette single I don't love. [SB1 via HypeMachine]

Bono, You Got It All Wrong

Bonooooooorrrrlllllllll! I know you are a rock star and a defender of the planet and I really like Joshua Tree and Rattle & Hum and even Zooropa, but come on, "reverse Robin Hood"? So wrong. And it gets worse:

"But we know from America's noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China's ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it's perfectly possible to track content."

Amazing. Is he putting the fight to protect children from sexual depredators at the same level of pirates copying music? Or does he wish that we all had an Internet control system comparable to communist China? And this guy fights for human rights and freedom?

At the end, Bono, this is not about reverse Robin Hooding. This is not about the providers stealing from you. This is about two groups of fat cats fighting for money. First, you're rich and your pals at the music industry are rich. Second, those are rich service providers. In the middle, getting sandwiched between your throbbing shameless practices and thick hypocrisy, is the people. I can't speak for the rest of us, but I'm sick of you both.

And while we are talking about Robin Hood, and giving gold schillings from the rich to the poor, let's talk about your tax evasion practices to avoid redistributing your wealth in Ireland. [BBC]

My $62.47 Royalty Statement: How Major Labels Cook the Books with Digital Downloads

Tim Quirk was the singer of punk-pop outfit Too Much Joy, signed by Warner Bros. in 1990. Now he's an executive at an online music service, giving him insight on digital sales data and just how labels fudge their numbers.

I got something in the mail last week I'd been wanting for years: a Too Much Joy royalty statement from Warner Brothers that finally included our digital earnings. Though our catalog has been out of print physically since the late-1990s, the three albums we released on Giant/WB have been available digitally for about five years. Yet the royalty statements I received every six months kept insisting we had zero income, and our unrecouped balance ($395,277.18!)* stubbornly remained the same.

Now, I don't ever expect that unrecouped balance to turn into a positive number, but since the band had been seeing thousands of dollars in digital royalties each year from IODA for the four indie albums we control ourselves, I figured five years' worth of digital income from our far more popular major label albums would at least make a small dent in the figure. Our IODA royalties during that time had totaled about $12,000 – not a princely sum, but enough to suggest that the total haul over the same period from our major label material should be at least that much, if not two to five times more. Even with the band receiving only a percentage of the major label take, getting our unrecouped balance below $375,000 seemed reasonable, and knocking it closer to -$350,000 wasn't out of the question.

So I was naively excited when I opened the envelope. And my answer was right there on the first page. In five years, our three albums earned us a grand total of… $62.47.

What the fuck?

I mean, we all know that major labels are supposed to be venal masters of hiding money from artists, but they're also supposed to be good at it, right? This figure wasn't insulting because it was so small, it was insulting because it was so stupid.

Why It Was So Stupid

Here's the thing: I work at Rhapsody. I know what we pay Warner Bros. for every stream and download, and I can look up exactly how many plays and downloads we've paid them for each TMJ tune that Warner controls. Moreover, Warner Bros. knows this, as my gig at Rhapsody is the only reason I was able to get them to add my digital royalties to my statement in the first place. For years I'd been pestering the label, but I hadn't gotten anywhere till I was on a panel with a reasonably big wig in Warner Music Group's business affairs team about a year ago

The panel took place at a legal conference, and focused on digital music and the crisis facing the record industry**. As you do at these things, the other panelists and I gathered for breakfast a couple hours before our session began, to discuss what topics we should address. Peter Jenner, who manages Billy Bragg and has been a needed gadfly for many years at events like these, wanted to discuss the little-understood fact that digital music services frequently pay labels advances in the tens of millions of dollars for access to their catalogs, and it's unclear how (or if) that money is ever shared with artists.

I agreed that was a big issue, but said I had more immediate and mundane concerns, such as the fact that Warner wouldn't even report my band's iTunes sales to me.

The business affairs guy (who I am calling "the business affairs guy" rather than naming because he did me a favor by finally getting the digital royalties added to my statement, and I am grateful for that and don't want this to sound like I'm attacking him personally, even though it's about to seem like I am) said that it was complicated connecting Warner's digital royalty payments to their existing accounting mechanisms, and that since my band was unrecouped they had "to take care of R.E.M. and the Red Hot Chili Peppers first."

That kind of pissed me off. On the one hand, yeah, my band's unrecouped and is unlikely ever to reach the point where Warner actually has to cut us a royalty check. On the other hand, though, they are contractually obligated to report what revenue they receive in our name, and, having helped build a database that tracks how much Rhapsody owes whom for what music gets played, I'm well aware of what is and isn't complicated about doing so. It's not something you have to build over and over again for each artist. It's something you build once. It takes a while, and it can be expensive, and sometimes you make honest mistakes, but it's not rocket science. Hell, it's not even algebra! It's just simple math.

I knew that each online service was reporting every download, and every play, for every track, to thousands of labels (more labels, I'm guessing, than Warner has artists to report to). And I also knew that IODA was able to tell me exactly how much money my band earned the previous month from Amazon ($11.05), Verizon (74 cents), Nokia (11 cents), MySpace (4 sad cents) and many more. I didn't understand why Warner wasn't reporting similar information back to my band – and if they weren't doing it for Too Much Joy, I assumed they weren't doing it for other artists.

To his credit, the business affairs guy told me he understood my point, and promised he'd pursue the matter internally on my behalf – which he did. It just took 13 months to get the results, which were (predictably, perhaps) ridiculous.

The sad thing is I don't even think Warner is deliberately trying to screw TMJ and the hundreds of other also-rans and almost-weres they've signed over the years. The reality is more boring, but also more depressing. Like I said, they don't actually owe us any money. But that's what's so weird about this, to me: they have the ability to tell the truth, and doing so won't cost them anything.

They just can't be bothered. They don't care, because they don't have to.

"$10,000 Is Nothing"

An interlude, here. Back in 1992, when TMJ was still a going concern and even the label thought maybe we'd join the hallowed company of recouped bands one day, Warner made a $10,000 accounting error on our statement (in their favor, naturally). When I caught this mistake, and brought it to the attention of someone with the power to correct it, he wasn't just befuddled by my anger – he laughed at it. "$10,000 is nothing!" he chuckled.

If you're like most people – especially people in unrecouped bands – "nothing" is not a word you ever use in conjunction with a figure like "$10,000," but he seemed oblivious to that. "It's a rounding error. It happens all the time. Why are you so worked up?"

These days I work for a reasonably large corporation myself, and, sadly, I understand exactly what the guy meant. When your revenues (and your expenses) are in the hundreds of millions of dollars, $10,000 mistakes are common, if undesirable.

I still think he was a jackass, though, and that sentence continues to haunt me. Because $10,000 might have been nothing to him, but it was clearly something to me. And his inability to take it seriously – to put himself in my place, just for the length of our phone call – suggested that people who care about $10,000 mistakes, and the principles of things, like, say, honoring contracts even when you don't have to, are the real idiots.

As you may have divined by this point, I am conflicted about whether I am actually being a petty jerk by pursuing this, or whether labels just thrive on making fools like me feel like petty jerks. People in the record industry are very good at making bands believe they deserve the hundreds of thousands (or sometimes millions) of dollars labels advance the musicians when they're first signed, and even better at convincing those same musicians it's the bands' fault when those advances aren't recouped (the last thing $10,000-Is-Nothing-Man yelled at me before he hung up was, "Too Much Joy never earned us shit!"*** as though that fact somehow negated their obligation to account honestly).

I don't want to live in $10,000-Is-Nothing-Man's world. But I do. We all do. We have no choice.

The Boring Reality

Back to my ridiculous Warner Bros. statement. As I flipped through its ten pages (seriously, it took ten pages to detail the $62.47 of income), I realized that Warner wasn't being evil, just careless and unconcerned – an impression I confirmed a few days later when I spoke to a guy in their Royalties and Licensing department I am going to call Danny.****

I asked Danny why there were no royalties at all listed from iTunes, and he said, "Huh. There are no domestic downloads on here at all. Only streams. And it has international downloads, but no international streams. I have no idea why." I asked Danny why the statement only seemed to list tracks from two of the three albums Warner had released – an entire album was missing. He said they could only report back what the digital services had provided to them, and the services must not have reported any activity for those other songs. When I suggested that seemed unlikely – that having every track from two albums listed by over a dozen different services, but zero tracks from a third album listed by any seemed more like an error on Warner's side, he said he'd look into it. As I asked more questions (Why do we get paid 50% of the income from all the tracks on one album, but only 35.7143% of the income from all the tracks on another? Why did 29 plays of a track on the late, lamented MusicMatch earn a total of 63 cents when 1,016 plays of the exact same track on MySpace earned only 23 cents?) he eventually got to the heart of the matter: "We don't normally do this for unrecouped bands," he said. "But, I was told you'd asked."

It's possible I'm projecting my own insecurities onto calm, patient Danny, but I'm pretty sure the subtext of that comment was the same thing I'd heard from $10,000-Is-Nothing-Man: all these figures were pointless, and I was kind of being a jerk by wasting their time asking about them. After all, they have the Red Hot Chili Peppers to deal with, and the label actually owes those guys money.

Danny may even be right. But there's another possibility – one I don't necessarily subscribe to, but one that could be avoided entirely by humoring pests like me. There's a theory that labels and publishers deliberately avoid creating the transparent accounting systems today's technology enables. Because accurately accounting to my silly little band would mean accurately accounting to the less silly bands that are recouped, and paying them more money as a result.

If that's true (and I emphasize the if, because it's equally possible that people everywhere, including major label accounting departments, are just dumb and lazy)*****, then there's more than my pride and principles on the line when I ask Danny in Royalties and Licensing to answer my many questions. I don't feel a burning need to make the Red Hot Chili Peppers any more money, but I wouldn't mind doing my small part to get us all out of the sad world $10,000-Is-Nothing-Man inhabits.

So I will keep asking, even though I sometimes feel like a petty jerk for doing so.

---

* A word here about that unrecouped balance, for those uninitiated in the complex mechanics of major label accounting. While our royalty statement shows Too Much Joy in the red with Warner Bros. (now by only $395,214.71 after that $62.47 digital windfall), this doesn't mean Warner "lost" nearly $400,000 on the band. That's how much they spent on us, and we don't see any royalty checks until it's paid back, but it doesn't get paid back out of the full price of every album sold. It gets paid back out of the band's share of every album sold, which is roughly 10% of the retail price. So, using round numbers to make the math as easy as possible to understand, let's say Warner Bros. spent something like $450,000 total on TMJ. If Warner sold 15,000 copies of each of the three TMJ records they released at a wholesale price of $10 each, they would have earned back the $450,000. But if those records were retailing for $15, TMJ would have only paid back $67,500, and our statement would show an unrecouped balance of $382,500.

I do not share this information out of a Steve Albini-esque desire to rail against the major label system (he already wrote the definitive rant, which you can find here if you want even more figures, and enjoy having those figures bracketed with cursing and insults). I'm simply explaining why I'm not embarrassed that I "owe" Warner Bros. almost $400,000. They didn't make a lot of money off of Too Much Joy. But they didn't lose any, either. So whenever you hear some label flak claiming 98% of the bands they sign lose money for the company, substitute the phrase "just don't earn enough" for the word "lose."

** The whole conference took place at a semi-swank hotel on the island of St. Thomas, which is a funny place to gather to talk about how to save the music business, but that would be a whole different diatribe.

*** This same dynamic works in reverse – I interviewed the Butthole Surfers for Raygun magazine back in the 1990s, and Gibby Haynes described the odd feeling of visiting Capitol records' offices and hearing, "a bunch of people go, ‘Hey, man, be cool to these guys, they're a recouped band.' I heard that a bunch of times."

**** Again, I am avoiding using his real name because he returned my call promptly, and patiently answered my many questions, which is behavior I want to encourage, so I have no desire to lambaste him publicly.

***** Of course, these two possibilities are not mutually exclusive – it is also possible that labels are evil and avaricious AND dumb and lazy, at the same time.

Reprinted with permission from Too Much Joy.

It’s Still True: Music Pirates Buy More Music

We've been here before, so no long post necessary, but it's worth mentioning, again, that illegal downloaders, the alleged scourge of the music industry, are really the ones who buy the most music.

So says a new survey out of the U.K., anyway. [The Independent via Boing Boing]

Music Industry Wants Royalties From iTunes 30 Second Samples

Dear music industry: go fuck yourself.

Music royalty groups ASCAP and BMI are harassing online music stores such as iTunes to pay performance fees not only for the songs that they sell, but for the short clips that they use as previews. You know, the things that entice people to pay for music. They want to be paid for advertisements for their product.

Just how backwards is this industry? How many years can they continue to just not get it in such an extreme way? You would have thought that maybe it would have taken a few years for them to figure out the internet, but we're way beyond that. This entire industry seems to be run by people who don't just not understand the internet, but are aggressive about not understanding the internet. They have their old way of doing business and the old way the world works, and they'll be damned if any new fangled thing like a complete upheaval in the way people acquire and listen to music is going to change that.

It'd almost be funny if the people who were really being harmed by these jackasses weren't the artists. Bands aren't the ones pushing for something that will only end with their best form of advertising being pulled from the iTunes Music Store (because make no mistake, that's what will happen before Apple pays for fucking song clips). It's these royalties idiots, the same people who almost killed off Pandora.

So here's the bottom line, guys: you're doing it wrong. And you've been doing it wrong for a while. You need to figure out a new way of doing business, and that doesn't mean just shifting fees around and charging where you clearly shouldn't be charging. Earn your paychecks, because unlike the bands you purport to be representing, you're still getting them. [CNET via Electronista]