CDs killed the record label.

Well, I partly agree with the idea put forth, but I think it glosses over a few things. Namely, the price scheme. I remember when CDs were first emerging and the line was touted that, as the prevelance of CDs grew and the medium got cheaper, albums would cost $10. They never did. You can find some new albums for $15, but most are $20 or more.

Anyways, the notion that cheap CDs and shoddy album compilations is what really caused such massive revenue loss for record companies is interesting.

Traditionally, the majors blame the internet for devaluing music, but the most forward-thinking in the business are starting to reverse this equation. “In a way, the CD is what destroyed the music business,” says Joe Mardin, a musician, producer, arranger, and engineer. Mardin grew up in the music business; his father was Ardiff Mardin, the legendary producer of Hall & Oats, Norah Jones, Aretha Franklin, and others. “People were buying millions of CDs to replace their catalog," says Mardin, explaining how industry greed ended up killing the Golden Goose. “There was this imperative that started to emerge: 'You must fill up a CD with as much music as possible,’” Mardin says. “The rest was filler. You ended up with albums that were one or two hits and a bunch of wanna-be hits.” The record industry itself killed the album, trying to maximize profits.

"The very concept of the album itself, a consecutive body of work designed by the artist to be experienced in its entirety, has been lost," explains Caraeff. And as a result, the traditional labels are contracting radically, morphing into a much humbler business. "The labels will survive," Mardin predicts, "but with much smaller margins and sales." And that might not be such a bad thing for music—or musicians.

After the current contraction, a few artists, like Lil' Wayne, will still be able to rake in large sums. But the top-heavy shape of the industry as a whole will change. There will never be another 100-million-selling album, there may not ever be another 20-million-selling album. “The profits were just gloriously obscene,” says Bob Sherwood, who was head of marketing for Columbia when Faith was released, and has had top positions at Mercury Records, CBS Records, and Sony. “You can’t do that today.”

Yet there will always be fans, always be musicians, and—of course—there will always be money. “If you find 100,000 fans who are willing to contribute $15 a year for your music, that’s one and a half million dollars," says Goldberg, doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation. "If you can find a way to get your music to them efficiently and for them to get that money to you efficiently, you can make a very nice living.” It's the internet, not the labels, that connects musicians to their audience. What's gone is the major-label hit-making machinery. “The top is going to come down," says Goldberg, "but the middle class is going to grow."
- Source

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Express your inner Neo-Nazi with iTunes.

You ever wanted to just rock out and scream "white is right!" along with your favorite tunes? Wish there was an easier way to get your racist-jam fix than having to drudge your way on out to your favorite, obscure supremacy music store? Well, worry no more. You can get all the white power you need right on iTunes.

You're unlikely to find CDs by groups like Skrewdriver and Brutal Attack sold alongside the latest hits from Rihanna and the Jonas Brothers at your local retailer.

But the white-power punk bands' ballads are just a click away online.

With song titles like "Skinhead Superstar" and "White Warriors," white-power bands and other hate-music recording artists have found a home in places like Apple's iTunes and Amazon.com.

And with nothing more than a credit card, users can purchase — among other offerings — CDs by the proudly racist country singer Johnny Rebel, with songs such as the catchy little ditty "Coon Town."

Critics of hate music are appalled to see lyrics such as Skrewdriver's:

Are we gonna sit and let them come?
Have they got the White man on the run?
Multi-racial society is a mess
We ain't gonna take much more of this
What do we need?

or Johnny Rebel's:

Roses are red and violets are blue,
And n——-s are black.
You know thats true.
But they dont mind, cause What the heck?!
You gotta be black to get a welfare check!

But there is a market for it — which leads to the question of whether online music retailers should screen what they sell, or if it should be up to the buyer to decide what's suitable.

"There's always somebody out there who thinks something is politically incorrect," said Jeff Schoep, head of the National Socialist Movement and its affiliated record label, NSM88 Records. "But this is America. We have freedom of speech and expression. If people want to express political messages in song, they should be able to do that."

Schoep, who said his label has seen a recent "uptick" in sales despite a worsening economy, said the songs distributed by his label are no different from those of more popular acts like Rage Against the Machine.

"If you're going to be able to carry that hard-core Marxist stuff, what is the problem with someone saying, 'White pride, worldwide?'" Schoep asked.

"You can't have a double standard. If pro-white voices can't be heard, what about rap artists who say it's time to kill cops and drag them through the streets?"

Patti Smyth, a spokeswoman for Amazon.com, said the offensive tracks were offered by unidentified third-party companies.

She declined to elaborate and did not return repeated requests for comment on any plans to limit sales of objectionable music.

Apple declined comment.

Nora Flanagan, a spokeswoman for the activist group Turn It Down, which lobbies against objectionable music, said the companies have every right — and a social obligation — to remove the songs from being sold on their sites.

Citing a "tag system" on the retail sites that links them to mainstream bands like U2 and Motorhead, she said the purveyors of hate music have benefitted greatly from their online exposure.

"The racist right is really taking advantage of the room Amazon is giving them," Flanagan said. "We're not talking about a First Amendment issue here. They're a business and they have a right not to sell whatever they want. It's a business decision they're making ...

"It's absolutely their right to sell it," she said, "but it could be their choice not to — if they wanted to take a stand on it."

Schoep, who claims pro-white music is "going more mainstream," said removing bands like Skrewdriver and Brutal Attack would be "un-American" and would amount to outright censorship.

"The minute they start censoring, then we're not living in America anymore," he told FOXNews.com. "If people don't like it, don't listen to it, or don't buy it. But some people out there want it."

Chris Kennedy, director of the Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice, said the term censorship is "thrown around" too loosely.

"Censorship should only be applied when the government tries to censor someone," he said. "Otherwise, we're just talking about the choices that entrepreneurs and businesses make in a free society. When [companies] decide they're not going to accept their product, that's not censorship — that's just choices that they make."
- Source

At first, I thought this hard to believe. So, I checked both the iTunes store and Amazon. Amazon's claim that they do not directly sell racist music, like Skrewdriver's, is complete bullshit. You can even get Amazon to gift wrap it for you. And it's there on Apple's iTunes store, too. Shit, you can even find Skrewdriver at Microsoft's Zune site. Nice to know that you no longer have to go to your out-of-the-way Neo-Nazi record store to get this shit, you can just download it from your favorite mainstream music provider.

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Sub Pop article on CNN Money? Yep. Sub Pop's still going strong.

I was pretty shocked to see an article about Sub Pop on CNN. Let alone a business article about the indie label. It is a pretty interesting read, especially where they talk about how Nirvana is what has essentially kept the label afloat, and not just because of sales from Bleach.

By any reasonable standard, Sub Pop should no longer be in business.

The iconic label, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2008, made its name nearly two decades ago with such classic albums as Nirvana's Bleach and Mudhoney's Superfuzz Bigmuff, but its brand of off-kilter, rib cagerattling independent rock eventually fell out of vogue.

Yet despite self-destructive impulses and changing trends in the music scene, Sub Pop survives. The company declines to disclose revenues but says 2008 was a good year, with a surge in digital sales (which now account for 37% of its business) and strong releases from both the Seattle band Fleet Foxes and the HBO-connected Flight of the Conchords.

In 1988, Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavitt quit their day jobs (Poneman at Kinko's, Pavitt at Muzak) and joined forces to parlay Pavitt's underground music compilations into a real record company. Thanks to local bands like Mudhoney and Nirvana, Sub Pop had an auspicious launch. Within two years, annual sales volume grew from a few hundred records to tens of thousands.

But as Megan Jasper, a Sub Pop receptionist at the time, recalls, "The problem was that you didn't have businesspeople working there. It was all music lovers. And people who love music aren't necessarily great at running a business."

Mudhoney singer Mark Arm adds, "We were all just making stuff up on the spot."

The label nearly tanked, but it survived with some unexpected help from Cobain and Co. When Nirvana left for big-league Geffen Records in 1991, Sub Pop was awarded points, or a percentage of sales, on the group's Geffen albums, resulting in millions of dollars in new revenue. Sales of Bleach, Nirvana's only Sub Pop album, skyrocketed; to date the company has moved 1.7 million CDs, a massive number for any indie release. In 1995, at the height of the grunge era, the Warner Music Group (WMG) paid $20 million for a 49% stake in Sub Pop.

Now playing in the big leagues, Poneman overspent on recording budgets and videos, squandering Sub Pop's good fortune. Early this decade, however, business began to improve. Sub Pop released buzz-worthy debut albums by The Shins and The Postal Service, while Poneman built a leaner, meaner organization.

"We try to make our money go as far as it possibly can," says Jasper, who returned to Sub Pop in 1998 and is now executive vice president. There are 27 employees, down from as many as 60 in past years, and the label makes a profit of about $5 a CD.

"It sounds obvious," Poneman reflects, "but it took some tricky navigation to get us back to our original mission: putting out great records by great artists. We felt like we'd become music impresarios, when in fact we were just dirtbags from Seattle."
- Source

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Everyone said he was drunk.

Lyle Lovett
Family Reserve

you will need Adobe Flash to listen to the audio stream



lyrics after the jump

Family Reserve

When I saw the ambulance
Screaming down Main Street
I didn't give it a thought
But it was my Uncle Eugene
He died on October the second 1981

And my Uncle Wilbert
They all called him Skinner
They said for his younger ways
He'd get drunk in the morning
And show me the rolls of fifties and hundreds
He kept in the glove box of his old gray Impala

And we're all gonna be here forever
So Mama don't you make such a stir
Now put down that camera
And come on and join up
The last of the family reserve

Now my second cousin
His name was Callaway
He died when he'd barely turned two
It was peanut butter and jelly that did it
The help she didn't know what to do
She just stood there and watched him turn blue

And we're all gonna be here forever
So Mama don't you make such a stir
Just put down that camera
And come on and join up
The last of the family reserve

And my friend Brian Temple
He thought he could make it
So from the third story he jumped
He missed the swimming pool
Only by inches
And everyone said he was drunk

Now there was great Uncle Julius
And Aunt Annie Mueller
And Mary and Granddaddy Paul
And there was Hanna and Ella
And Alvin and Alec
He owned his own funeral hall

And there are more I remember
And more I could mention
Than words I could write in a song
But I feel them watching
And I see them laughing
And I hear them singing along

We're all gonna be here forever
So Mama don't you make such a stir
Just put down that camera
And come on and join up
The last of the family reserve

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When games get meta. LotR Online jam session.

Some things manage to absolutely amaze me. Especially metagame. For example, Spore is entirely built around metagame. The entire Sims franchise, Sim City, Sim Ant, The Sims, etc. are all built around metagame. Metagaming has also gained a lot of popularity in MMOs, which only makes sense. No longer is the point to save Azeroth, but now it's to get rich through crafting, get fancy sets of armor, just to hang out and chat or try to add realism on roleplay servers. Guild Wars has titles as a form of metagame. You can just beat the campaign. But you can also instead strive for cartogropher titles by exploring all of the respected continent, collect minipets, etc.

What I stumbled upon for one of Lord of the Rings: Online's metagame content was pretty damn amazing. Playing instruments. Like lutes, flutes, and drums. You can battle the dastardly menaces of Middle Earth and then take a break and belt out a tune for some fellow players in a tavern. Who knows, maybe someone will join you?

nothing after the jump.

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Cheers! Slainte Mhor! Prost!

Today marks a delightful milestone for Americans. The first step of the repeal of prohibition, being able to drink a damn beer. On April 7th, 1933 prohibition was sort of ended. FDR raised the alcohol minimum from 0.5% to 3.2%. True repeal of prohibition wasn't until the following December 5th. With that, the bootleggers and mob connections that profiteered so much from illegal booze soon had to find their dirty money elsewhere. So, today, tonight, raise a mug high and toast what was the first step of regaining your freedom from nitpicking religious fanatics to relax and enjoy a drink.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt had been president barely a month, having been sworn in on March 4 after a landslide victory the previous November. Sweeping into power with him was an anti-Prohibition majority in Congress known as "the wets."

Together they fulfilled their first campaign promise with passage of the Cullen-Harrison Act, which increased the amount of alcohol allowed in beverages from 0.5 percent to a discernible 3.2 percent by weight.

When the act took effect at 12:01 a.m. ET April 7, trucks and carriages burst out of brewery gates bearing cases and barrels of beer for a parched republic -- at least for the District of Columbia and the 20 states whose laws permitted it. Several breweries dispatched cases directly to the White House and the Capitol.

According to the Brewers Association, more than 1.5 million barrels were snapped up in the first 24 hours.

"It's a big deal. ... The whole industry of beer has gotten together to say this date is definitely historic," said Julia Herz, spokeswoman for the Brewers Association, which represents smaller "craft" brewers.

In St. Louis, Missouri, megabrewer Anheuser-Busch is throwing a big bash, complete with historical exhibits and an appearance by the company's famous Clydesdale horses.

Indeed it is a big day. It marks a major milestone in progressive and secular thinking. To some it may be just a semblance to get drunk. For others, such as myself, it represents freedom from oppressive religious fanatics bent on forcing the world to their dogmatic interpretations. Some might see that as a far stretch, but consider much of the fanatic Muslim world where alcohol is prohibited due to religious interpretation. Much of what drove the prohibition movement was, in fact, religious wrangling.

Remnants of Prohibition survive today in the form of state-owned liquor stores and local laws that, for example, prevent sales of alcohol on Sundays or in grocery stores. Some counties remain entirely dry, banning alcohol sales altogether, and 3.2 beer is still sold in six states (Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma and Utah), according to Modern Brewery Age magazine.
- Source

Well, obviously not everyone is going to be celebrating. All of this does make me wonder, though... How much longer until we will be celebrating the same with cannabis? It only took a scant 13 years for people to realize that prohibition didn't work with alcohol. How much longer will it take, how many more people will have their lives ruined from incarceration because of cannabis and other soft drugs before the federal government realizes it's the exact same thing? We have the largest number of inmates imprisoned in the world, and estimates are that 15% to as much as 30% of those are non-violent drug offenders.

Anyways, enough of that.

Cheers! Prost! Slainte Mhor! And may we be here for another beer next year and many, many more.






The Pogues
Repeal of The Licensing Laws

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State Radio - Keepsake

State Radio - Keepsake
(via last.fm)

State Radio – Keepsake

lyrics after the jump

One gonna heal my body another gonna heal my pain
One gonna settle me down then bring me back up again

I’m gonna put my family back together again

One gonna hold my woman another gonna hold my job
One gonna help me get up, another gonna help me stop

One gonna help me talk right, one gonna lay me down to sleep

One gonna hold my thoughts and another gonna hold my bones
One gonna keep me warm and another gonna keep me cold

One gonna bring religon, right from a Coleman stove
One gonna help me keep em’ another gonna help me tame

One gonna run me down (Hell a bullets in my way)

You’re gonna keep my soul it was yours to have long ago

I’m gonna buckle my belt around the ceiling pipe
I’m gonna buckle my knees and I’m gonna lock em’ up tight

I’m gonna hold a pen while you drag my arm across the page

One gonna hold my memories another gonna close the door
One gonna leave me restless another wanting more

You’re gonna keep my soul it was yours to have long ago

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Tone Loc's a good guy.

Want Tone Loc to perform? Sure thing. $400. Another club wants him? No problem. $1,000. The only problem is, the guy that made these deals wasn't actually Tone Loc's manager.

After Tone Loc heard about these two small Detroit clubs being scammed, he decided to do something to help them out. He decided that he would actually perform at these clubs to help the owners recoup some of that swindled money.

A fraudster managed to get $400 from the Red Dog Saloon, and a further $1,000 from Bumpers after he posed as Loc’s manager, promising that the rapper would play shows at the bars last summer.

When he heard about the scam, Loc, whose real name is Anthony T. Smith, offered to play the shows at the bar to help them recoup their loss, says the Detroit Free Press.
- Source

That's some pretty stand-up shit right there. Loc isn't doing the concerts pro-bono, but he didn't have to do the shows. That's nice of him to want to help out those club owners that got scammed. The scam artist has not been caught.

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Am I Alive?

Hello, world.

The American Analog Set
She's Half





lyrics after the jump

She's half

And her mom's from Indiana and she
She married an Asian man and they
They brought her from Japan to be
Happily suburban and I
I met her one summer when I was
I was just visiting ten days
Her wrists were island thin but she
She smiled like her Indy kin
And she's half

She's into strictly rich and
Overworked businessmen
She don't remember when
She used to hold my hands
After the Rollerland
After she closed the stand
Now it's supply and demand
And it just comes down to the math
And she's half

And she's half

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