For those of you that are unaware, I thought i’d share some information in this blog about Creative Commons. Lawrence Lessig has been a driving force in creating a non-profit organisation with new, groundbreaking copyright rules, that aim to guide forward-thinking musicians and artists through a new digital age of arts.

Building upon existing laws, Creative Commons licenses adapts them to allow remixing, mashing, evolving and combining of existing works, which makes for a creative freedom that will surely help inspire many new artists; influence is a powerful motivator, and something that creative people love to share. The original artists are able to choose which rights they want to maintain, and which they can offer to allow experimentation and sharing for future works, the idea often being that no work is ‘finished’, and that by sharing and giving in this 2.0 world, exposure, discovery and accreditation are more important than direct revenue from one set product.

Lessig is not aiming for an out-of-control, misdirected world where no-one has any rights to any of their work, hence the Creative Commons tagline adapting ‘All rights reserved’ to ‘Some rights reserved’. His intention is to avoid the problems and boundaries created by current copyright laws, not to send the arts world into anarchy by declaring ‘No rights reserved’ on all works, something that major corporations and governing bodies are failing to understand, especially within the music industry.

There are four main parts of Creative Commons licenses, all available for free, can be combined together, and the Wikipedia page offers a good explanation;

* Attribution (by) requires users to attribute a work’s original author. All Creative Commons licenses contain this option, but some now-deprecated licenses did not contain this component.
* Authors can either not restrict modification, or use Share-alike (sa), which is a copyleft (a play on the word copyright and describes the practice of using copyright law to remove restrictions on distributing copies and modified versions of a work for others and requiring that the same freedoms be preserved in modified versions) requirement – it requires that any derived works be licensed under the same license, or No derivatives (nd), which requires that the work not be modified..
* Non-commercial (nc) requires that the work not be used for commercial purposes.

As an example, Chicago-based record label Rock Proper have just released a new album under a Creative Commons BY-NC license, “making the experimental rock songs therein freely sharable/remixable as long as [the artist] is properly attributed and reuses are noncommercial in intent”.

I feel that this is important to share in this blog, and strongly suggest a bit of further reading from my links, as I believe that independent musicians can use the licenses to their advantage, and, through a good promotional idea and strategy, help raise awareness of the original, and ultimately the artist (/brand) behind that work. Putting creative freedom above trying to directly sell a product opens up other income streams such as touring, merchandise and more, and with the right online presence, you can really make this boost your music career.

Lee Jarvis.

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I’ve covered a bit recently on AC/DC dropping iTunes because of Apple’s requirement to sell album tracks individually and the band’s belief that this is wrong. Well, assuming that you aren’t a rock supergroup that can strike up a great physical distribution deal, iTunes could be on your list of download sites, and using it to sell your records, possibly through a digital distributor, could be a great way to boost your digital sales. A site that has sold over 5 billion songs cannot be ignored.

For a start, no-one makes as much noise in the technology scene as Apple. Their keynotes and conferences attract huge interest and will be live-blogged a hundred times over. Even when they announce some relatively small changes to the iPods and iTunes, people are engrossed. A large number of people WORSHIP iTunes, and the brand is recognisable to millions of computer users worldwide. Additional plus sides of this instant recognition, are ease of use and trust. Unless you make it as easy as possible for people to download your music within seconds, their attention wavers, it’s the way of the Digi-world. An online store that I’ve not heard of, where I have to set up a new account, find a confirmation email and add payment details is going to be a drag to some people, whilst asking me to purchase a track from Bob-a-Job’s download store makes me think twice about my credit details being safe. It may not be the right way to think, but we are talking about the masses here.

Marketing your sounds alongside similar sounds will help to increase sales from browsing music buyers. For instance, if you make smooth, soulful grooves, then a page on your website listing your favourite artists such as D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, Maxwell and Raphael Saadiq will help fans of those stumble across your sounds. Applying this theory to iTunes, the new Genius Sidebar will list you alongside similar artists. If you are considered by to be of the same ilk when users submit their library and playlist information, then it will suggest your music to fans of these artists. It (mostly) works too. This can be a great promotion tool, and potentially reaches a huge number of fans of your style.

Where AC/DC differed, is that they have a hardcore fan base that they’ve established over 30 years of world tours. They are ‘old-school’ in that sense, so an old school physical deal and mass advertising worked for them. Most artists will not be able to follow the AC/DC route, and it would not be in your wisest interests to. To re-emphasise the point of my last post, the important thing is to be aware of these strategies and why they work. The iTunes path may or may not be the best one for your style / core group of fans / marketing abilities, again, I’m just throwing it out there for you to chew over. Selling your own CDs is another route that i will cover very soon. Being aware that all different ideas could succeed, means that you will recognise a good opportunity when you work your way into it.

Lee Jarvis

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The Big Royalties Debate

Congratulations! You have recorded a kick-ass song and a major label wants to sign it and distribute it to a worldwide audience. The trouble is, just how much will you be rewarded for your years of hard work?

The fact is that people don’t buy singles on CD or Vinyl for £3.99 anymore – they pay £0.99 (if you are lucky) for a download, so the record companies have a lot less coming to them (read: a lot less to share with you). Sales have gone crazy with the advent of the digital revolution, but that is just the tip of the iceberg; there has been no set royalty rate agreed with music publishers and the RIAA. No wonder everything is such a mess!

Just a few weeks ago, all the major groups representing record companies, songwriters and digital music websites agreed a new deal for so-called “mechanical royalties” for interactive streaming music and limited music downloads. (The LA times gives a very good glossary of these terms and further details on the agreement.) The RIAA chief executive stated that “This agreement provides a flexible structure to support innovative business models in the digital music marketplace that will benefit music fans, creators and online services”.

It’s a step forward, but there are still some other issues to be resolved, and some rather large ones at that. The biggest grey area at the moment is Internet radio and the royalties that would be accrued from that. I’m sure we’ve all heard various stories about sites such as Pandora and the constraints placed upon them.

Streaming and internet radio is big business, and if you can find a (legitimate) way to make money in this markets then you can justify earning just a few pence per unit sold, or even giving your music away for free, as did Nine Inch Nails recently. Some big bands such as Guns’n’Roses can even swallow a major album leak, use the publicity to their advantage and turn it into promotion of the full album release. The market for online promotion of merchandise and live gigs is just as vast, and enough for a future blog post

The dwindling pot of money further declines because, as the big boys keep moaning left, right and centre, pirates are stealing billions of pounds of music every year. Yes PIRATES! Swashbuckling, downloading, free riding college kids are able to find, copy, distribute and burn illegal copies of your music for free in their sleep. The industry believes that the ratio of unlicensed tracks downloaded to legal tracks sold is about 20 to 1, which is a staggering figure. While the recent agreement is a step in the right direction, we’ve still a long way to go.

The short answer is that you will not earn very much directly from sales of one successful song. The days of retiring from one lucky “ooh ahh just a little bit” are long gone. But the thought of earning a new community fan base of affluent, stylish, generation-Y internet users that share and participate in the online world… well, that’s worth its weight in gold.

Lee.

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All this new music at our fingertips and all these new ways of buying and selling it. Aren’t we all so lucky. I recently reported how Madonna’s album was available for mobile phone downloads prior to the physical CD release (We’ve also had Bryan Adams selling his album exclusively through Walmart and Sam’s Club stores in the US (not quite as Rock n Roll, but you gotta take what you’re offered, right Bry?)).

Yet, amongst the digital revolution and traditional record shop mass-exodus, us dance music fans still like to buy physical products. It sure is hard for the retailers to keep on making money, times have changed, and a few vinyl junkies aren’t enough to keep a business afloat, but it was a very pleasant surprise to read about the recent RISE in sales of vinyl (RIAA 2007 Year-End Shipment Statistics – PDF). I’m not saying it’s saved, or making a comeback (especially after one year’s rise compared to nine years decline), but i realised that my own buying habits have changed over the years. I still go hunting for the odd 2nd hand bargain, or an old release with a killer B-side that everyone looked over at the time. But, i’m afraid i feel it hard to pay more than 8 quid for a piece of wax. Unless…. it’s an LP.

After a saturation of big brand mixed compitlations and a handful of rather weak superstar DJ full-length ego-massaging CDs, exciting dance music producers are making a bit of a comeback with artist albums. Canada’s Deadmau5 is planning an album release around Halloween, supported with a Puma/Beatport sponsored 50-date tour. The UK’s Mike Monday has his ready to go with US dance giant OM Records, complete with music videos!

There’s something about albums that give you a warm fuzzy feeling (not just the value for money). Maybe the artwork, or the expectation of the full spectrum of music that will (hopefully) be on there, with all the thank you’s and shout outs written inside the cover. Maybe there’s free stickers! Everybody loves free stickers!

If either of the above mentioned will be made available on vinyl, i think they will be sure purchases for myself, and even if not, I hope i’ll be able to continue hunting out some great vinyl LPs for years to come… whilst downloading the odd promo single

Lee.

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If you’ve not left your TV, radio and internet-less cocoon for the last four weeks, then you wouldn’t have realized that Madonna has just released her 11^th studio album, Hard Candy. With all-due respect to the comeback(?) queen of pop (I guess she’s never really been away long enough for a comeback), what really caught my attention was the promotion of the album.

Madonna has always re-invented herself to the new emerging markets, physically and musically. This album is no different, and working with the biggest producers of recent years, Timbaland and The Neptunes, as well as performing alongside Justin Timberlake on the launch single, ‘4 minutes’, ensures that sales are already through the roof thanks to a fresh generation of music buyers and millions of long-term fans.

But the way that this album was also marketed to the new generation of music buyers really struck me. With the release date being 28^th April (in the UK), Warner Bros decided to market the album by releasing seven songs on the seven days prior to this, available to download via mobile phone. Myself growing up with CDs, I quite like the artwork of and album, and I like to read all the inlay notes while I listen to it for the first time (GEEK ALERT!). I’m sure people love vinyl LPs partly for the same reason. However you can’t ignore the streams of ‘yoofs’ around the shopping malls, all playing the latest pop tracks on their mobile phones – the market here is huge! Gone are the days of monotone rings, these are full mp3s, and all the major mobile companies offer various packages and download sites through which they aim to claim back some of the download music monopoly that Apple hold.

I look forward to hearing more about how the move was received by her worldwide audience, and I’m sure I’ll be bringing you more news on this very soon. I think that as much as recent years have been a rocky ride for the digital music industry, the years ahead will be filled with innovative ways to feed the revolution.

Lee.

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Well, here we go with the launch of the UK Music Jobs blogs! We hope to make your visit to the Music Jobs website a bit more informative and enjoyable, with news, reviews, advice and gossip from around the world.

My ’specialist subject’ is Dance music, although I aim to cover as much of the music world as possible. I love going to live gigs, so you’ll hear my rants on Jazz or Rock, and I’ll also bring you news from major labels and their latest troubles. I hope to cover these as completely as I can, and I expect a flurry of adulation / abuse as I attempt to do so. You guys may know more or feel different about what I write, so tell me so!  I want the emotional replies – blogs are supposed to be interactive, so please comment on anything you feel strongly about. I need to know what amuses and disgusts you so that I can delve deeper into the subjects that you all want to hear about.

The Music Industry is a big ol’ world, and I only have two hands and one groggy brain to try and get it all across to you…. but bear with me, it’ll be a fun journey.

Lee Jarvis.

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