Re: BitTorrent activity on Paul McCartney’s "Kisses on the Bottom," the album is being traded at a fraction of comparable titles. Van Halen’s "A Different Kind Of Truth," also released yesterday, is being traded at about 4X the volume of "Kisses," and Leonard Cohen’s "Old Ideas" is seeing more than double the audience of McCartney’s album. Interestingly (and perhaps to the credit of the file sharing community), Amnesty International’s various artist release, "Chimes of Freedom: The Songs of Bob Dylan," proceeds from which benefit the organization’s support of human rights causes, is being swapped in surprisingly small numbers — less than half of the volume of the "Kisses."

Incidentally, Diana Krall appears on the Amnesty album as well, performing "Simple Twist of Fate." She wins!

John Robinson
BigChampagne

Macca piracy is not "nothing," but I take your point. Been looking at it. Fair bit of curiosity about the new standards record, esp in EU, on the one-click sites and torrents. But the feedback is pretty overwhelmingly negative: a combination of "I got what I paid for this," "this is not rock, it’s easy listening," and "the quality of the recording is awful." IOW, what you’d expect from the torrent set.

Eric Garland
BigChampagne

Updated: Paul McCartney Is Now Pulling His Albums from ‘All Streaming Services…’

Nobody gives a shit about his standards album anyway.

Despite the reproduction of press releases in mainstream media, despite the reviews of said album in same, no one really cares. That’s the dirty little secret of being a classic rocker, you’re done, you’re toast, only people your age have any desire to hear your new music, and most of them don’t either.

Which is why you’ve got to make it easy.

Somehow, these acts still put money in front of exposure. When their problem is just the opposite. Believe me, McCartney’s grosses are not going to go down if his music is on Spotify, just the opposite. People know the legendary cuts and want to hear them live. But they don’t want to hear the new music. That’s time to pee, to get popcorn, an indulgence by the oldsters that they tolerate, just as long as it’s only a couple of songs. And how do you change this? By making good new music and making it available to people.

Hell, if I contacted BigChampagne I’d probably find out no one’s bothering to torrent the McCartney covers album, desire is just that low.

But some might give it a spin if it was easily available to stream on Spotify, which is not like forcing me to go to a site I’m unfamiliar with because you made an exclusive publicity deal with them to use an antique player to hear the songs. The advantage of Spotify is everything’s in one place. So people go there and take risks.

And what’s great about Spotify is it kills piracy. Isn’t that what got us into this mess? But by putting your stuff behind a pay wall, by making people buy it to hear it, you’re hanging on to an old model and encouraging those who care to steal. We don’t want to buy anything without checking it out first. Kind of like buying a car, would you do so without a test drive?

You’ve got to look to endgame. Not the tiny streaming payments of today. Not only is Spotify the first service to negatively impact piracy (it doesn’t pay to take the time to steal to check out new albums anymore), as we move to a mobile world more people will pay for the service, as it is, uptake has increased.

I give a shit about music. I think artists should be paid. I think that recording revenue is just part of the total pie. I think the more artists rail against Spotify the more they demonstrate their ignorance and greed. What, do they all use BlackBerrys and refuse to use iPads too?

The public embraces the new when you make it good and easy. Convenience is something people pay for each and every day. Hell, that’s what blew up MP3s to begin with! The ability to hear what you wanted whenever you wanted in your digital jukebox, ultimately in iTunes which synched with iPods. All those millions of iPods sold, if you think they were filled with paid tracks, you’re dreaming.

Can we all get our heads out of the sand and live in the present? Can we all agree that the only path to the future is to get ahead of the consumer and corral him? This is how the iPhone killed the BlackBerry. Four and a half years ago, only Apple zealots needed iPhones, now everybody needs an app phone.

Many customers don’t even know they need Spotify yet. The service is still growing. Isn’t that great! Because once everybody knows about something and no longer cares you’ve got Nokia, or Palm, and you’re toast. Spotify’s got room to grow. But if Luddites like Paul McCartney keep crippling the service they’ll make good and sure that music is free in the future.

P.S. For the umpteenth time, I’ve got no financial interest in Spotify, I own no shares in Apple, I’m just championing what I think is great, the same way you trumpet a band you love. And Apple’s sales have proven iPhones and iPads are not niche, and neither are streaming music services. We’ve all got to start somewhere, whether it be Google or Facebook. The way acts are going they’re gonna push back the future of digital music consumption for years, sheerly out of ignorance.

Spotify hits 3m subscribers to improve conversion rate

What if we don’t need radio. What if we don’t need television? What if we don’t need record companies and movie studios? What if we don’t need money?

Let’s say you had a thriving business. Wouldn’t you do your best to protect it? That’s what all of the foregoing entities possess, a beachhead, profits, and they don’t want to sacrifice at all. No one in America wants to go backwards, no one wants to lose, so those who are threatened spew ever more intense invective, accusing others of looting their businesses whilst convincing wannabes that they hold the keys to prosperity.

But this is not true.

I implore you to read this story:

Who Is RayWJ? YouTube’s Top Star: Earning an Estimated $1 Million a Year, a Foul-Mouthed Comic Shows the New Rules of New Media

In other words, you’re better off going on YouTube than "American Idol". But on YouTube creativity is king. To have big time success you must write your own material. Like on the rest of the Internet, brains triumph.

The nerds are inheriting the entertainment business. They’re stealing it from the guys who couldn’t get a date in high school who put on three piece suits and declared themselves important, but they’re not.

Any artist will tell you it’s all about freedom, the ability to do it your way. Suits have no idea what works, that’s why they’re suits!

Do you have the balls to do it your way? To stop looking for someone to rescue you, give you money to work on the plantation?

All we hear is the Internet ruined the entertainment business.

Hogwash.

The Internet is a washing machine that mixed up everything and we’ve yet to see exactly how it all dries out. But when we do, different people will be in power, the game won’t be the same.

If you’ve got talent, there’s never been a better time to create. Because the tools are cheap and you can go directly to your audience. Hell, you can even monetize on YouTube. Instead of complaining about Spotify payments, make a viral video. Yourself. Don’t sign with a major and put it on Vevo and get chintzed out of the revenue. This is your opportunity, this is your time.

Maybe RayWJ will go nuclear. But today, he’s unknown to most. That’s the new game, your niche is big enough, in this case, to make a million dollars a year. If you’re playing to everybody, you’re missing the point. Everybody doesn’t care. But many do. Play to them.

P.S. From the RayWJ YouTube page:

"MAKING YOUTUBE VIDEOS IS JUST A HOBBY OF MINE. PLEASE DON’T BOTHER CONTACTING ME WITH BUSINESS OFFERS. I’M SIMPLY NOT INTERESTED. THANK YOU."

The Ray William Johnson Playlist – YouTube

They were DANCING!

Last Thursday night I went to the Hotel Cafe to see Ed Sheeran. He was really quite special, he knew how to work the audience, he had them singing along, literally, helping him out with harmonies both on stage and off. Normally the acts there are nervous and unformed, beginning their careers. But the hundreds of gigs Ed’s played paid off. It was like seeing "Outliers" in action.

But the highlight of my day was hanging at Atlantic Studios.

Mike Caren is a white Jewish thirtysomething, but his forte his hip-hop. He had a studio in his home, but with people coming and going at all times of the day, even when he was out of town, Craig Kallman gave him permission to move his equipment to Paramount. Where success begat more success and they ended up moving the whole operation to a space on Cahuenga previously occupied by Babyface. There are four studios, three with a Mac Pro and Mackie monitors. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First we sat in Mike’s office, in the building, b.s.’ing. And that’s when he started complaining that the new stuff wasn’t on Spotify. Not the legitimate new stuff, but the mixtapes, that drove his business. I spoke of the illegality, and he coughed up the story of Don Henley, how he’s trying to eviscerate that "Hotel California" track from the Web.

Huh?

Turns out someone rapped over "Hotel California". Despite Don’s efforts, Mike had no problem pulling it up on YouTube. It’s the ENTIRE SONG! I was unimpressed, thinking it was just a cheap shot, but it turned out this guy had a whole catalog of tracks, some of which Mike admired, and Mike made the point that most of the audience had never heard "Hotel California".

Mike started going through the chart on YouTube, not the one with all the official Vevo hits, but the one peppered by the self-produced projects. He pulled up this good-looking guy from Tufts who drops tracks every week. He’s got a following. It was like going down a rabbit hole and finding a world that everyone knows about but you.

And then we toured the studios.

The deal is they’re free. To songwriters. There are two eight hour shifts. There’s soon to be a third. But the songs can’t leave the complex. To ensure that Atlantic gets first dibs. Atlantic acts can come in and work ad infinitum, they’ve just got to pay the engineer. It’s a veritable hothouse of creativity. The songs are put in Dropbox and Mike gives feedback and they tweak them to the point where…

Flo Rida cuts one.

Yup, three of the studios are simple.

But one still remains in its Babyface incarnation. At least on one side of the glass, the recording room has been carved up. And behind the door…

Was the party.

Now bankers have all the money. They say they can buy fun.

But they could never buy this.

The music is blasting out of the speakers, Flo Rida is sitting there composing lyrics and behind him are those tall skinny girls, with Gumby insides, grooving to the music. There were a few guys and some food and I didn’t want to leave. It felt like this was the epicenter, where everybody wanted to be. All those listeners out in radioland, if they could only get inside this studio.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t say Flo Rida had no idea who I was, but was still extremely friendly. And how he’d heard this track composed at the studio and had to record RIGHT NOW!

Now you might be saying this music, with its beats, isn’t gonna survive. But Mike made an interesting point… His two year old is iPad fluent. Not only navigates apps but burns out on them and demands more. What are the odds he’s gonna pick up a guitar and put in seven years of practice down the line? With this computer fluency, he’s going to make electronic music.

Fascinating point.

But the more fascinating one is that L.A.’s the place for songwriters. They can’t afford to live in New York, they’ve all come to L.A. And the best come in and work at Atlantic Studios. They just want to be part of the action, they want to participate, they want to create greatness.

And sure, they want to get paid.

But it was like the Brill Building. The hothouse atmosphere both inspired collaboration and a desire to top one’s competitors. It was creation in action, and very exciting.