What a clusterfuck THAT was.

The managers in the U.K. are pissed.  And they’re not going to take it anymore.  They’re rebelling against major label practices.  They want no packaging deduction on digital downloads, they want MORE of the digital pie, they want to be paid royalties on PHYSICAL product.

This has been the talk of In The City.  That the Music Managers Forum (MMF) were gonna hold a pow-wow.  And it was standing room only, but the lead-up was better than the execution.  Oh, the managers aired their grievances, most of them legit, but they just didn’t have a plan of attack, they seemed to be WHINING!  Oh, they plan to intervene in this copyright hearing, then again I heard from the BPI guy that it’s costing THEM over a million pounds for a brief, he wants to see the managers cough up that kind of dough for a barrister.  What I was told was this was about copyright royalties on digital downloads.  Presently it’s a bit over eight percent, the publishers want twelve.  Needless to say, the labels don’t want to pay.  They’ve been arguing for three years.  Ergo the hearing.  But other than that?  I couldn’t discern the plan.  God, couldn’t they at least come up with an artists’ bill of rights?  Or maybe they should just go on strike, that’s probably the only way any progress can be made.  But you know some manager would break rank.  And they don’t want to give up sucking at the tit for a minute.

But then there was Jeff Fenster, defending the major label position.  Hey JEFF!  You don’t OWN Jive!  Have some PERSPECTIVE!  That’s what always blows my mind about the label employees, they defend the heinous corporation like it’s family and don’t come to their senses until they get blown out.  Is that what’s wrong with corporations or people…  I’m thinking about that one.

Then again, if things are so bad, why don’t they just do it by themselves.  If, as Jazz Summers kept saying, it’s a new paradigm, why don’t they release the records THEMSELVES?

Actually, the manager of Radiohead was on the dais, he was part of the assembled multitude.  Supposedly they’re out of their deal, why don’t they put out their record on their own label?  God, I heard Simply Red did this just about a year ago and sold FOUR MILLION ALBUMS!!  Isn’t that like selling TWELVE TO SIXTEEN MILLION through the major label system?

God, it’s so different here.  The managers aren’t scruffy fighters you’d be afraid to come across in a dark alley.  They’re all well-meaning and articulate.  It’s like a completely different BUSINESS!

And speaking of completely different businesses, the panel before, actually a keynote address, by this guy Martin Higginson, was REVELATORY!

Martin runs this mobile content aggregator MOM.  I’ve heard too much mobile b.s. so I wasn’t eager to go, but since it was a KEYNOTE!  And Martin started off with all the usual statistics, about mobile penetration, but then he took a left turn.  First, he said the labels were delusional, pricing mobile downloads at three to four pounds, the price of a ringtone.  Ringtones were NOVELTIES!  That someone bought a limited quantity of, maybe three or four a year at most.  Music depended on VOLUME!  The tracks couldn’t be more than 50p (eighty cents, presently iTunes sells tracks in the U.K. for 79p), otherwise people would STEAL THEM!

And THAT’S where it got interesting.

What bugs the shit out of me is everybody in the U.S. saying we live in the greatest country in the world.  If the U.S. is so great why is it costing me more than thirty dollars a DAY to access the Net in the U.K.  Our fiscal policy SUCKS!  As does our cell phone network.

Here mobiles are a religion.  Turns out, you can sideload content onto your mobile and then BLUETOOTH it to everybody in the vicinity.  This guy Martin, he had it right.  The execs think people want to hang out in record stores.  Really, they want to hang out on the CORNER, showing each other their mobiles.  And, unless music was priced cheaply enough, the kids were just going to steal it.

Oh, he had this Sony Walkman phone.  Orange and white.  He says it holds hundreds of songs.  That the big retailer here says he’s going to sell more of these this Christmas than iPods.  Oh, you can download music on these phones, but you’ve got to pay for 3G access, which almost nobody has, they don’t want to pay for it.  So, you just plug in your USB cable, take what you want from your computer and give it to EVERYBODY YOU KNOW VIA BLUETOOTH!  This exists RIGHT NOW!

God, he played actual phone calls to retailers.  Asking about buying digital downloads on mobiles.  EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEM SAID TO JUST STEAL THE MUSIC ON YOUR COMPUTER AND SIDELOAD IT!  The execs think mobiles are their savior, but it’s a whole ‘nother quagmire.  Martin’s advocating cheap prices a la iTunes so people won’t trade illegally.  Yeah, right.  Like the labels can survive on iTunes revenue.

Oh, this guy in a suit went on about the dilemmas facing the labels.  How indies can get paid without them.  Maybe the managers should have listened to THIS guy!

And before that I went to the soundtrack panel.  Geoff Bywater had some interesting things to say.  Turns out Fox doesn’t even worry if no label wants to get involved, they just sell the tracks from their movies and TV shows direct on iTunes.  God, the labels are CLUELESS!  Trying to maximize revenue today, marginalizing themselves tomorrow.

Next is the indie label forum.  Alan McGee, Tony Wilson, Richard Russell and Chris Blackwell.

They don’t do this kind of shit in the U.S.