There only are a limited number of ways you could make money. It's advertising, it's subscriptions, it's e-commerce and then its using the data for smart purposes [market research].

The interview is mainly about Last.fm verses Myspace, as the latter recently launched its new Myspace Music function.

One of the big stories with MySpace Music was whether streaming the music legally would be successful in driving song purchases via downloads. How's it fared for you?

When we launched free on-demand earlier on in this year in the States, the amount of e-commerce we were generating more then [sic] doubled. It definitely does work.

Legal, free streaming is a newer phenomenon on the Internet. What's the issue?

We always said to the labels, "You have to let us do this," because what's happening at the moment is people are getting the recommendations off of Last.fm and then they're just going to all the illegal peer-to-peer sites.

They're more than familiar with that problem. What's the state of the digital music business today?

I think what you've got with the Internet is the fact that the labels and the collective side have realized that they need to make sure there is proper sharing of all the revenues which are generated with all the content creators. And I think that's correct. I think the problem, though, is that there is a lot of posturing going on, on both sides, as to what the right model is to monetize that. The [potential] market is huge, but at the moment, it's all on the peer-to-peer networks.

The Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, D.C. is expected to rule Thursday on a request by the National Music Publishers' Association to increase royalty rates paid to its members on songs purchased from online music stores like iTunes. The publishers association wants rates raised from 9 cents to 15 cents a track - a 66% hike.

Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500) declined to discuss the board's pending decision. But it adamantly opposes the publishers' request. In a statement submitted to the board last year, iTunes vice president Eddy Cue said Apple might close its download store rather than raise its 99 cents a song price or absorb the higher royalty costs.

"If the [iTunes music store] was forced to absorb any increase in the ... royalty rate, the result would be to significantly increase the likelihood of the store operating at a financial loss - which is no alternative at all," Cue wrote. "Apple has repeatedly made it clear that it is in this business to make money, and most likely would not continue to operate [the iTunes music store] if it were no longer possible to do so profitably."

The Copyright Royalty Board is a three-judge panel that oversees statutory licenses granted under federal copyright law. That includes setting royalty rates for music sales. The current proceeding followed the expiration last year of a 1997 decision that had governed sales of so-called physical music products like CDs for a decade. The board's forthcoming decision, its first affecting digital sales, will set royalty rates for the next five years.

It's hard to believe that Apple will actually shut down iTunes if it doesn't get its way. Apple has shrewdly used the store to help sell iPods, its most popular product. Before the computer manufacturer opened the store in 2003, there was virtually no place for iPod owners to purchase digital music on the Internet. So iTunes helped grow the market for the device by appealing to people who didn't want to patronize illegal file-sharing services and risk a music industry lawsuit.

Publishers don't seem to be buying the bluff either.

They argue that the digital music market is growing and that they should get a higher rate because all parties in this squabble will ultimately prosper. "I think we established a case for an increase in the royalties," said David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers Association.

Israelite said he opposed any attempt by companies like Apple and its record label allies to do away with the fixed royalty rate. "Apple may want to sell songs cheaply to sell iPods," he said. "We don't make a penny on the sale of an iPod."

Via money.cnn.com

Best Buy will be the exclusive retailer for Guns N' Roses' decade-plus-in-the-making new album "Chinese Democracy" before year's end, sources close to the situation tell Billboard. Some details of the deal are still being worked out, including the release date.

The news brings a semblance of closure to the bizarre history of
"Democracy," which Guns N' Roses has been working on since the mid-1990s.

Since then, every original member of the once-mighty group has left besides vocalist Axl Rose, and millions of dollars have been spent working on the new material.

"Democracy" was most recently on the Interscope release schedule in March 2007. The endless delays encountered by the project reached comic levels this spring, when soft drink manufacturer Dr. Pepper offered to send a free can of the beverage to "everyone in America" (excluding ex-GNR members Slash and Buckethead) if "Chinese Democracy" were to arrive anytime during the calendar year 2008.

Via billboard.com

As readers undoubtedly remember, last week Stranger columnists Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart teamed up to write a dynamite open letter to John McCain, Cease and Desist, You Old Fart by Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart.

Well, this week, Snopes.com—the Library of Congress of urban legends—investigates the Wilson sisters' Stranger work.

Thanks for the attention, Snopes-ers, but you've got it wrong wrong wrong. As I type this, Stranger columnists Ann and Nancy Willson of Heart are seated to my left, busily working on their next column, Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is the Apotheosis of Modern Art by Ann and Nancy Wilson of Heart. (Actually, Ann's the one doing the work right now—Nancy's watching that hilarious Sarah Silverman video.) But thanks for playing!

MySpace Music Launches Without World’s Leading Independent Labels And Artists

Said Charles Caldas CEO Merlin, Global Rights Body For Independent Sector:
“It is incredibly disappointing that MySpace will launch their new service without having finalised a deal with the world’s most important independent labels and artists. It certainly makes Chris DeWolfe’s public statements, that the "indie bands are really the heart of MySpace", ring extremely hollow.
“What is absolutely clear, however, is that any independent deal struck without an equity component (as was done with the majors), will see independent labels face a situation whereby their major competitors will profit from the use of their repertoire without an appropriate upside opportunity being extended to them by MySpace Music and its Major Label equity partners.
“Whilst Merlin continues our negotiations, we remain extremely concerned that with MySpace Music the major record labels are acting not only as competitors, but through their equity stakes in the venture, as the clients/end user as well. Without an equitable participation by independents, that creates a situation that is both unhealthy and dangerous.
"Merlin, the global rights agency represents the largest basket of rights outside of the majors labels, with a US market share equivalent to that of the smallest majors”

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Make room, iTunes. MySpace is hoping to shake up the digital music scene.
In a bid to spruce up its popular online hangout, MySpace plans to flip the switch Thursday on a much-anticipated service that will give its roughly 120 million users free access to hundreds of thousands of songs from the world's largest recording labels.
The catch: the music can be played only on personal computers connected to the Internet and listeners have to tolerate advertising splashed across the screen. Anyone who wants to transfer a song to a portable device like Apple Inc.'s iPod will have to buy the music through Amazon.com Inc.'s year-old downloading service, which sells songs for as little as 79 cents apiece.
Unlike much of the material at Apple's iTunes store, the music sold through MySpace's new service won't contain the protections that limit how many times a track can be copied.
MySpace is hoping to set itself apart from iTunes even further by allowing its users to create an unlimited number of playlists containing up to 100 songs apiece — a sharing concept similar to music services already offered by Imeem and Last.fm.
If MySpace's plan pans out, people will regularly post different playlists on their profiles and expose their friends to new music.
The recording labels are betting these implicit recommendations will cultivate more interest in more songs and eventually generate revenue to help recoup some of the revenue that has evaporated as CD sales have plunged from $12 billion in 1999 to a projected $5 billion this year.

This sounds a day late and a dollar short to catch up to iTunes' dominance of the market.

Via The Associated Press

Hello friends,

Things are moving right along at the Crocodile, with all sorts of demolition taking place. It really is a bit of a mess right now, but I sure think you will be pleased with the results.

Before the rumor mill starts going bananas, I just want to give you all a heads up and let you know that Eli Anderson has been hired as the Talent Buyer for the club, and Roy Atizado has been hired as Director of Live Entertainment.

You might remember Eli from his days at Sonic Boom Records, where he not only helped folks pick and choose aural delights for four years, but also managed to snag the coveted title of “Seattle’s Sexiest Record Store Employee” in The Stranger’s annual poll. After a year in Boston, where he did not win any awards or titles, but managed to maintain his indie rock cred by working for Forced Exposure and at Great Scott, Eli returned to our fair city and was promptly hired to assist with booking and promotions at the Crocodile. Since the club’s closure last year, Eli has been working with Frank Nieto at 230 Publicity and doing part-time booking at Chop Suey.

Many of you know Roy from his long involvement in the music world. Dude has spent the last 20 years working in virtually every aspect of the business. He’s been a tour manager, an artist manager, and is very experienced on the production end of things. Roy has worked many a day and night on the behalf of artists — coordinating sales and marketing at the distribution level, and making sure all the T’s are crossed and I’s are dotted. Roy has spent the last three years at Chop Suey, where he has been General Manager for two years. He’ll also DJ for you, if you ask him nicely.

In addition to the fine local team of Eli and Roy, the Croc has also hooked up with the Doug Fir in Portland to help out with some of the booking. The Doug Fir will assist with national touring bands, and ensure that the Crocodile receives the same fine quality of booking that takes place in one of our all-time favorite Rose City rooms.

So, what does this mean? Will Eli be up and down I-5, more often than a serial killer? Will the Crocodile change its name to something more woodsy? Should bands send their press kits to the Doug Fir? In short: no, no, and no.

Bands should send their demos, press kits, and pretty pictures to the dynamic duo at 2nd & Blanchard. They’ll be working out of the office in October. Or, Rocktober if you prefer. The Crocodile will continue to be a room that is open to all — from baby bands playing their first shows, to major national artists. Eli and Roy look forward to working with the pool of talented booking agents and promoters in Seattle, and far beyond.

We’re still a long way off from opening the doors, but, if everything goes according to schedule, look for the grand opening to take place sometime in late January or early February, 2009. There are some good surprises in store, and I am confident that the room will sound great. I spent a good chunk of time talking with Jim Anderson this week, and he’s really giving it his all.

As always, I am here to answer any further questions you may have about the club, its staff, and how many mice I have seen in the space. Please note that this is not a “normal” sort of Press Release, and we aren’t making a big deal about this news. While the booking and organization of the club is important, the last thing we want to do is start inundating you with every bit of minutiae pertaining to the club.

But, y’all asked, and so y’all received.

Contact info below. I hope this finds you well, and happy.

Best regards,

Kerri

The agreement proposes a mechanical royalty rate of 10.5% of revenue, less any amounts owed for songwriter performance royalties, for digital service providers such that offer interactive streaming and limited downloads such as subscription and ad-supported services. When the settlement was first announced, details were kept confidential until they were submitted to the CopyRight Board in draft regulations.

In the settlement, the Recording Industry Association of America, the Digital Media Association, the National Music Publishers' Association, the Nashville Songwriters Association International and the Songwriters Guild of America have all agreed to the new rate.

The deal doesn't address rates for physical product, permanent music downloads or ringtones, but all of those issues, as well as today's agreement, are expected to be ruled on by Oct. 2 by the U.S. Copyright Royalty Judges.

For a good breakdown of what exactly Interactive Streaming and Limited Downloads entail, read this Los Angeles Times article.

Read the RIAA press release.

Via billboard.biz

To accomplish this, he proposed to waive the current 5-percent admissions tax on ticket sales for venues that meet the following qualifications:

1) capacity under 1,000
2) host/present live music on average at least three times weekly
3) hire at least 16 musicians weekly on average
4) have committed fewer than four violations of any one or more civil or criminal laws regarding health, noise, licensing, taxing or permitting in the last year.

The tax cut, which would take effect January 1, 2009, theoretically will create a more beneficial environment for new clubs to open and for existing clubs to “hire more musicians,” the mayor said. The ultimate goal, as Neumos co-owner Steven Severin stated at the press conference, is to “put more money in the pockets of local musicians.” He roughly estimated that the admissions tax can cost his club around $2,500 $3,500 a month from gross ticket sales. Severin also noted that this move may not necessarily translate into lower cover charges, as many variables factor into those prices.

Further, Nickels announced the inauguration of the music venue assistance program, which allows local businesses a single entry point to city government. The guidebook, overseen by Office of Film and Music head James Keblas, provides resources to help entrepreneurs attain success in the live-music industry. It can be accessed at www.seattle.gov/music/nightlife.

Representatives from Tula’s and Triple Door, as well as a Brazilian musician named Jovino Santos-Neto, the last of whom—somewhat oddly—waxed abstract and poetic about the power of music, supported the measure. Becca Minkoff of Triple Door asserted that the tax exemption will enable her business to take more risks and attract bigger acts.

One reporter asked Nickels if this measure was intended to counter the negative response to the city’s crackdown on some nightclubs. He replied that the reprimanded clubs were not live music venues and said that the city periodically needs to takes these actions to ensure a safe yet vibrant nightlife.

The Seattle Nightlife and Music Association (SNMA) approved of Nickels’ small-business-friendly initiative. SNMA President/Havana owner Quentin Ertel remarked, “This is a great step in the right direction. It shows that the Mayor is on the side of small business, but more importantly it shows that he is on the side of music."

Via Punknews.org:

After focusing on CD and digital releases for the past few years, Sony/Legacy has announced plans to begin releasing vinyl again. Beginning this month, the long-running major label will begin reissuing Columbia, Epic, and RCA releases.

The first batch of releases includes mainstream arists like Boston, Blue Oyster Cult, Jefferson Starship and Cheap Trick, but also Lou Reed's classic, Berlin, and Social Distortion's 1990 album, Social Distortion.

Good luck with that, Sony.

Last week, I was in NYC. I walked by Other Music, Victory Records, various little vinyl boutiques, and while, on some abstract level, I wanted to support all these businesses, I didn't come home with a single record. At my kind host's stylish but small railroad apartment, we listened to music on a nice set of speakers plugged into mp3 players and laptops. They had maybe two boxes of records. I can't remember whether or not they had a turntable set up (I don't think so).

At home, I have the same brand of shelving as every other vinyl owning young person, the one made out of 16 squares perfectly sized for 12"s (your model may have 25 squares if you're fancy). It's half full of vinyl, half full of books and other media. I have a few crates worth of records on additional shelving or in actual crates on the floor, but I'm lately convinced that I'm never going to fill the rest of this shelf up with vinyl, let alone have to someday spring for the 25 square model.

I find no joy in this conclusion. I would love to live in a house lined with shelves of records. I would prefer my living room to look like these. I just don't think it's going to happen.

Vinyl is relatively big and heavy. Airlines are charging for extra baggage, and even when they weren't, traveling with vinyl (say, enough to DJ with) is grueling compared to traveling with mp3s or even CDs. Shipping is apparently a drag as well. Apartment space for record shelving is limited.

Music is expensive. We're diving headlong into what looks to my admittedly not economically expert eyes like a serious recession/depression, and records just aren't a necessity as much as food and shelter (Segal will likely debate this point with me). Rising fuel prices only aggravate the flying/shipping issues as well. As much as I want to support these small business and be a parton of artists, I just can't give any more than I can afford. Before this job, that meant buying records as carefully as possible, downloading what I couldn't afford to buy, and supporting artists at shows and by buying other merch. Now, it frequently means building my collection through promotional copies. Both means meant more CDs and mp3s than vinyl making their way into my collection. Morgan Geist might complain that I'm not listening to his records on the proper hi-fi setup in the ideal format, but audiophile gear is a luxury that most music fans probably can't afford. Hell, even Sasha Frere-Jones is selling his record collection.

These are gloomy, doomy times—every time someone in New York asked me how work was going, I would reply that it's great, the music business is tanking, print journalism is tanking, so print music journalism is the most exciting place you could hope to be. In seriousness, it's an awesome job, I feel fortunate every day to have it, but I'm not sure it'll ever launch me comfortably into the middle class. I think I may never own a home; maybe I won't be able to hold on to all the music I love for posterity either. Maybe formats—or other, larger paradigms—will shift and force people of my class situation to leave certain things behind. I think record collections, as opposed to mp3 collections, will only become increasingly a thing of class privilege rather than of ardent music fandom (I suppose it was always this way; perhaps music fans of less means have just moved from dubbed cassettes to mp3s).

Sacrilege, maybe, but as much as I love the look and feel of vinyl, records are only of marginally more value to me than the equivalent mp3s. Or: If I have to, I can let record collecting go. At least it'll be easier to move when rising rent finally prices me out my current place.

Forcing Muxtape to shut down, administering onerous royalty rates to internet radio stations, pulling tracks by popular artists off iTunes… floundering major labels still can’t buy a clue, and this article in Advertising Age by Simon Dumenco reiterates the dismal state of things. For example:

[I]t's been a depressing summer for the delusional record industry. We're seeing a total disconnect between labels' unrealistic, old-school revenue expectations and what the market can bear. On the streaming-music front in particular, the sad reality is that advertising revenue isn't, and may never be, there to fully support the music industry's wishful-thinking profit margins… [T]he music industry… would prefer that you only listen to music when and where they want you to. And that's no way to figure out the path to future revenue.

As a music journalist (i.e., a parasite on the record industry’s bloated corpus), I derive no schadenfreude from the biz’s prolonged slump. In fact, I wish boom times would return. I would like to see record profits, from the tiniest artist-run indie imprint to the most mammoth major. Alas, I also wish I could perform 360º slam dunks… And it seems like the odds of major-label execs devising a fruitful business model in the current digital free-for-all are as likely as me beating Kobe Bryant in a one-on-one game.

Members of Great White, whose pyrotechnics sparked a Rhode Island nightclub fire that killed 100 people, have agreed to pay $1 million to survivors and victims' relatives, according to court papers filed [Sept. 2].

The settlement offer is the latest stemming from the February 2003 fire at The Station nightclub in West Warwick. Roughly $175 million has now been offered by dozens of defendants to settle lawsuits over the blaze, which also injured more than 200 people and was the fourth-deadliest nightclub fire in U.S. history.

The band does not admit any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which requires the approval of the more than 300 people suing, among other conditions.

The blaze began when the band's tour manager, Daniel Biechele, shot off streams of pyrotechnics at the start of the concert. Sparks from the pyrotechnics ignited inexpensive packaging foam the club owners had used as soundproofing around the stage. One band member, guitarist Ty Longley, was killed in the fire.

Though the band members were never charged, Biechele pleaded guilty in 2006 to 100 counts of involuntary manslaughter and was paroled in March after serving less than half of his four-year prison sentence.

Maybe those city-enforced sprinkler systems aren't such a bad idea after all.

When I saw the SoundScan charts this morning, I felt kind of bad for Slipknot. The masked metallers haven't been having the best string of luck recently, and now their album All Hope Is Gone was narrowly beaten out for the top spot on the album tally by LAX, the new album from tormented name-dropper the Game. How small of a margin did they lose by, you ask? Try 13 sales. Well, apaprently I wasn't the only one who felt bad about this: Slipknot, upon seeing this statistic, gathered up its brooding rage and did what any red-blooded American would do: They demanded a recount from the SoundScan folks. You can probably guess what happened next.

Yes, the SoundScan people found some 1,244 sales hiding within the bowels of their system, or maybe at a neglected Hot Topic somewhere in the 'burbs, and that was enough to give Slipknot the one-week win over the Game. All Hope Is Gone's final sales total is 239,516 to LAX's un-revised 238,382; whether or not the Game is going to further appeal his own SoundScan total is unknown at this point, but surely he's at least comforted by the fact that his first-week sales beat out those achieved by his former cronies in G-Unit earlier this summer.

Great, now the rockstars are acting like politicians.