Lucifer Takes Over Twitter

Yesterday morning, fans of The WB's show, "Supernatural," took over Twitter's trending topics with the hash tag #LuciferisComing. It referred to the season premiere of the show that was to air that night where Lucifer would break free from his cage and the apocalypse would start on earth. All pretty innocent fun and easy to figure out if you only click on the trending topic.

Yet somehow Puff Daddy/P Diddy/Sean Combs (@iamdiddy) mistook the trending topic as Satanists converging on the growing social network and roused his nearly two million followers to respond with the message: "I'm calling GODS ARMY TO ATTENTION!! #GODISHERE #GODISHERE #GODISHERE let the devil know the fight he's in for! Retweet all day! Make GOD #1."

It didn't quite work. It never surpassed any of the Supernatural-related trending topics yesterday and fell off the list right around the time Twitter removed #LuciferisComing from the trending topics due to complaints. Apparently fandom doesn't have a right to fanatical free speech if it could be mistaken for satanic sentiment.

Now Supernatural fans are working to get the hash tag #Godhasleftthebuilding on the trending list, in reference to a comment the angel Zachariah made in the season 4 finale. If it makes it to the trending topics, I wonder how that will make "God's army" feel.

Best Buy Bringing Indie Artists to the Masses

I love independent record stores. Waterloo Records is one of my favorite places to spend a free hour in Austin. Though I do buy indie records at Waterloo, I can't always afford buying all the discs I want at the higher indie prices. That's why I'm also a regular visitor of my local Best Buy, where I can satisfy my new music addiction for, often times, the low, low price of $7.99 (or $9.99 if it's a larger "known" artist).

Many people don't even have an independent record store in their vicinity, so anything not sold in a big box retailer is unavailable to them unless they actively search for a particular artist online. That's why I really like the idea of Best Buy starting up a program to sell independent artists in their stores, working directly with the artist through Best Buys own personal distribution company.

How it works: Artists will submit their material to J Distribution, founded by a former Best Buy retail buyer, where it goes through a screening process. After a week in which the screening panel takes into account publicity, relative popularity and sales potential, artists will be accepted to the program. Much like CDBaby, a one time set-up fee is charged and, voila, the band's cd is put in regional (and outside areas where the band is popular) Best Buys to best cater their home-base fans.

The best part is when cds are sold, artists get paid directly from Best Buy/J Distribution. The quoted price sent to the band is $5.15 for each full-length disc sold and $3.65 for EPs, much better than the royalties paid per disc via a label.

Another example of how the industry is changing to allow artists to fend more for themselves without the backing of corporate entertainment conglomerations behind them.

Ticketmaster Pushed Out of the Nest

Last summer I ranted about Ticketmaster in a post at a currently on-hiatus blog. After working for 72 hours to get tickets to a John Mayer show that had supposedly "sold out", I pulled up a decent seat only to find out once I was there that pit tickets had been released right before the show. This sales plan didn't make any sense to me. It still doesn't.

Perhaps now it's not making much sense to Ticketmaster either.

IAC/InterActiveCorp is pushing Ticketmaster into a independent existence with an automatic $750 million in debt used to pay a dividend to its former parent company, mostly due to the lack of profitability to the larger company. Where will the $20 service charges per ticket go towards now? I recognize that implementing and updating a ticketing system isn't the cheapest line of business, but if they were setting an average of $15 per ticket for a show that they sell 8,000 tickets, that's $120,000 just for one show.* In service charges. Multiply that by an average of 20 shows a tour, by the number of venues or artists they sell tickets for and... it's a lot of money. That sort of debt will be easy to write off.

It's not like they man their voice-response phone system with actual people except on Saturday mornings when a lot of shows go on sale, and my previously mentioned John Mayer experience proved that these service people are stuck using the exact same web portal that us mere mortals use.

Yet somehow, Ticketmaster is claiming that the debt will be the equivalent of about "two times its annual profit before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization." At the same time they've announced that this new-found independence will allow them to expand and renovate their business model to allow them to better compete with sites such as StubHub.com, yet another bane of the concert-goers existence. So now, not only is Ticketmaster going to charge insane service charges, they're going to let scalpers come back to the site and sell the same tickets for three, four, five times the price?

Something tells me that won't help with the falling consumer confidence.

On the same day IAC announced the abandonment of Ticketmaster, a federal court ruled that the makers of the software that allows evil ticket brokers faster access than normal people had to pay up $18.2 million to Ticketmaster. Though it's highly doubtful that Ticketmaster will ever see that sort of money rolling through its front door. And if they do, IAC will probably take it. Though the saddest thing about this ruling is that, despite the fine, it won't stop ticket brokers from using this or some other company's software to prevent people actually wanting to go to a show to buy tickets at face value (plus a $20 service charge).

And with Ticketmaster looking to compete with them, something tells me it might become less of an issue.



* Numbers are a low-ball count of what a Woodlands Pavilion in Houston, TX concert would bring in. The Woodlands holds nearly 17,000 people for a standard concert with lawn seats, so I'm really rounding down on this one.

Image from limowreck666's Flickr account, found through Creative Commons web search.

New Meaning to Commercial Music

Now that physical copies of music are no longer making money for artists or the companies that help pay for the creation of albums, everyone is searching for a new way to make a buck. Or even an old way that hasn't been fully exploited. The easiest of these "new" financial endeavors is endorsements. Athletes have been making millions of dollars from endorsements for ages, but musicians - at least so-called "authentic" or "real" musicians - saw using their name and image as a way to sell a non-music-related product as selling out, a phrase that doesn't have a consolidated definition that everyone agrees on.

Now things have changed. Endorsements are not just for Tiger Woods and whichever football player is hot right now. Madonna is endorsing shampoo. U2, among many others, endorsed iPods (at least music-related). The most interesting thing about musical endorsements is how they're now being used, not by artists with name recognition, but to create artists from scratch.

Last summer, "Umbrella" by Rihanna seemed to be everywhere because it was everywhere. It was on the radios, but even more so, it was on television in multiple advertisements. Rihanna showed up in print advertising for actual umbrellas and lip gloss. She became a household name because of the song, but partially became a recognizable face because of the companies that took a chance on a fairly unknown artist with a handful of well-known people behind her.

What I find most disturbing in this trend of endorsements - other than the new "celebrity scent" coming out every other week or Kevin Federline peddling insurance - is best demonstrated by Tag Records. You probably haven't heard of Tag Records, mostly because they just formed this past April, but you probably have heard of Tag body spray.

One would hope the only connection between the two was the common name, but alas, it's not. Jermaine Dupri, a well-respected and talented music producer, has created a label that is directly connected to... men's deodorant. Dupri says the idea makes sense because it will give the label access to a marketing budget far surpassing that of what they'd otherwise have. But doesn't that make his label pretty much a advertising company that specializes in music? I mean, the label's Myspace page only advertises the release of the labels... first advertisement, coming in July.

Somewhere in my head, there is an invisible line separating harmless endorsements that produce an additional revenue stream for budding or established artists, and creating an entire record company based on a symbiotic relationship with a company with no musical resources at all. I wouldn't call it "selling out," just a line that, once crossed, turns the final musical product into something interchangeable with a pair of sneakers or, in Mr. Dupri's label's case, a product that rids one of body odor. Not exactly something I want to think of when I'm listening to a new artist...

Platinum In the First Week Not Impossible Yet

I'm vaguely out of touch with the current state of popular music, mostly because I don't listen to the radio. Ever. Because of this, I was shocked to find out that Lil' Wayne's most recent album, The Carter III, went platinum in its first week of release. According to Billboard magazine, the last person who did that was 50 Cent in 2005.

I'll state up front that I've never been a big fan of rap music, so I was caught off guard by this sudden seemingly impossible event when I came across it. Though with a bit more research, I also learned that Lil Wayne had seven songs on the Hot 100 chart at the same time, which is amazing for someone who hasn't been on American Idol.

After the previous week's top album not even topping 300,000 in the first week, this is HUGE! Yet somehow, overall sells are still 3% lower than this time last year. Tepid news for a seemingly stale industry.

But Universal obviously did something right. Inadvertently they proved that people are still buying hard copy albums, and enough people are willing to buy an album to make it reach levels common for boybands and other teen idols a decade ago. What did they do? Is Lil Wayne somehow filling a void in the musical stratosphere that people were craving? Was there a hype machine behind his album that has been lacking every where else?

What about this album made over a million people rush out to buy it in the first week of release? And can it possibly be altered in a way to help create interest for other artists? This is something that should be explored by people with far more access to information than I have because something happened. Though it will never be common for first week numbers to hit over a million, it's now been proven to not be impossible. All the pieces fell into place for Universal and Lil Wayne. Now it's time for them to analyze what those pieces were and take them apart to see if they can molded into something else to spark the public's interest for other artists.

Sinking Ship Ahoy!

I've never been a big fan of large corporations. That doesn't mean I don't see explosion-filled summer blockbusters (because, really, who didn't see Iron Man?) or eat at chain restaurants. It just means I don't necessarily like how large corporations operate from what I know, being an avid reader of the New York Times, and would prefer never to have to work for one. The mid-size company I work for now, with its crossed lines of communication and cubicles as far as the eye can see, is about as big as I go willingly. And that's just because I love the people here.

In the six months since I graduated from college, I've spoken with a number of people involved with the local music industry. A common theme of all these discussions has been "The days of large multi-national corporations running the music business is fast on the decline. Stay away!"

After reading this article in the New York Times yesterday, I whole-hearted agree. When the European private equity firm Terra Firma bought out EMI last year, I wasn't paying as much attention as I would have had it not occurred during my last hellish semester of school. Though I was aware of the dealings after yet another failed merger attempt with Warner Music, I did not realize what Terra Firma is.

Terra Firma's speciality is buying up failing businesses and turning them into profitable endeavors. Sounds just like what EMI needs. Too bad the company's - and Guy Hands', now the CEO of EMI - business dealings consist of buying service stations along the Autobahn to renovate, running betting shops and owning a company that leases jet airplanes. Guy Hands, the founder of Terra Firma and now the CEO of EMI, has outside experience in running "country house-style hotels" with his wife and made his fortune at Goldman Sachs.

Obviously Mr. Hands is very good at his job as he was able to buy EMI for $6.4 billion dollars. This doesn't change the fact that he has no experience in managing a company dealing in creative products or working with artistic people.

Since taking over, Mr. Hands' has lost some of EMI's most promising artists. Joss Stone is seeking a buyout to her contract, Coldplay doesn't trust the record company to promote their recently released album, and Radiohead ran out to infamously release their most recent album online.

Yes, EMI is hemorrhaging money, leading to the layoffs of 1,500 to 2,000 of its 5,000 employees. So are all the other labels. Welcome to the music industry! We bleed money!

Records labels are a business. They have to make money or they go under. This doesn't mean they should be run just like every other business. Music is a creative pursuit. The back end office workers should be equally creative in producing, marketing and selling music as the artists are in making it. Reducing the release of a new album to being the same as releasing a new brand of detergent sucks out all the mystique and excitement that should be infused in all aspects of the production of music.

Mr. Hands rightfully admits he isn't a "music person," which could be a very astute observation if he attempted to become a music person. Instead he turns down invitations to watch recording sessions, more or less declaring to his employees that he'd rather stay ignorant to the process of music creation. Preventing employees from attending industry events will equally paralyze the company, outcasting it to not just the lowest of the "big four," but also forcing it into a position of exclusivity. We do not play well with others. Go away.

“Getting rid of management teams and starting afresh is something we’ve always done,” the NY Times article quotes Hands as saying. He's bringing in former executives from Google and Second Life to work on digital services. While the music industry definitely needs innovative minds working to help discover new forms of profitability, it's worrisome that he might be replacing the former management team with a cadre of people who are equally ignorant of the industry just because that's what "we've always done."

It's a little ironic that I stumbled upon this post in a featured blog yesterday, by a guy named Cory, who was recently named SVP of Digital Strategy at... EMI. Once again, a bit disconcerting that he's only bought five albums in the last eight years (though his complaints are well justified), but at least he can remember the musical catalog that's soundtracked important moments of his life, which is promising. He also expresses a willing desire to learn about the music business. Perhaps if the old management is replaced by more people with the enthusiasm and outlook of Cory, then they could make up for the lack of enthusiasm and total no-nonsense strict financial business sense that appears to ooze out of the new guy in charge to change EMI for the better.

Good luck to Cory and everyone else that's jumping into what looks like a sinking ship. I hope you're able to turn it around and perhaps even polish the dust from the legendary EMI reputation. Until then I'm going to grumble about corporate interests taking over the world, sucking out its creativity.

And so it goes...

My boyfriend recently told me that I'm probably "the only person who gets paid pretty much every moment you're conscious." He said it like it was a positive thing, an amusing thing. I took it as a pathetic thing, a sign of my OCD-must-know-everything personality taken two steps too far.

I didn't get upset at the comment. The observation is probably 75% percent true. I do spend a large portion of my waking hours either working or at least in a location that pays me to sit in front of a computer on standby until something needs to be seen to. Every morning I leave at 7:15am and two or three nights a week, I return home at 7:15pm or later. I work on Saturdays, Sundays and when I can't sleep. When I'm not working, I know there's work I should be doing and it gnaws at the back of my mind - phone calls to make, emails to send, websites to update!

I'm still not certain how I found myself in this position, working for three different bosses in three different locations. I recall answering Help Wanted ads forwarded to me through a music public relations professor and a organization of which I was apart. I remembering meeting with two very talented women who wanted me to help them out, saying that, for financial reasons, my hours would be limited. It would work out fine. Having recently graduated, the only thing taking up my time was a part-time job where I didn't do much of anything.

Then somehow that part-time job because full time right as I started working freelance with a lovely little record label one or two afternoons a week and started maintaining websites and seeking press opportunities for a musician from the comfort of my newly moved-into apartment. Health insurance! Paid vacation! Things my professors said I would never get after completing my pursuit of a journalism degree (because journalists do not get sick and do not need vacations). Then the musician reunited with her former band and the workload increased from around 10 hours a week to any free moment I could spare.

Now I'm to the point where I work about 60-65 hours a week. Whenever someone asks me why, I come up with reasons - one job pays the bills, the other two will hopefully lead me down a road that will eventually end with a job I care about and enjoy doing. My friends look at me with understanding. My coworkers, family and people who don't know me that well look at me like I'm nuts.

They may have a point.

This is my story of how I'm navigating a life with three jobs and a cloudy future in an industry with an uncertain future of its own, and yet still manage to stay up-to-date on random pop culture minutiae and bake fresh bread every other weekend.