On The Record »

• The Stone Roses’ reunion, nostalgia and cultural bedblocking

  October 19, 2011 @ 8:38 am | by Jim Carroll

  Here we go again. Yesterday’s news that The Stone Roses are reforming for a couple of shows in Manchester next year (with a world tour to follow as promoters beat each other up with a big stick to have the band on their summer 2012 festival bill) will predictably dominate the music news agenda this week. Leaving aside the fact that the band were fairly ropey live as their first run came to an end – their appearances at Feile in Cork in 1995 or Reading in 1996 come to mind and leave just as rapidly – the Stone Roses were an iconic band thanks to that incandescent self-titled album. But nostalgia will always trump hindsight when musicians like Ian Brown, John Squire, Mani and Reni decide to get back together to deal with unfinished business and enjoy a large pay-day. By the by, The Rub never really happened for Reni, did it?

  There are many reasons why this reunion will receive so much coverage, but few have to do with the actual music. As we’ve seen with the recent palaver over the 20th anniversary of the release of Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album and the Pink Floyd reissues, the generation who grew up with those bands now call the media shots and hence the nostalgia factor is in full effect. It’s much easier to cover bands who already have a history rather than try to make sense of the thousands of new acts out there making exciting, vital, visceral music. It’s also much easier to cover acts which you have a clearer recollection of from their first go on the swings and roundabouts rather than do the spadework required to find a new act to enthuse about and cover them properly.

  When it comes to reunions of once heralded bands like the Stone Roses (and as we’ve seen with recent reunions from Pulp, Blur and Pixies), it’s just a case of reaching back into the archives and dusting off old copy and opinions. No need to have to work out how and where a brand new act fits into the bigger picture. No need for the commentator to have to listen to acts which he or she can’t make head or tail of. No need to pretend that you are enthusiastic about acts who really make you feel out of the loop. You can still pretend to be at the cutting edge by writing about a band who were in their pomp two decades ago.

  Nostaglia of this ilk really is a form of cultural bedblocking. Instead of giving the time and coverage to musicians and artists who are producing new, innovative, fascinating work right now, the space and attention goes to acts who’ve already been through that hoopla and who haven’t produced an iota of note in years or decades. It’s easy to do because the heavy lifting has already been done – we can see those engimatic photos of the Stone Roses the very moment we hear the first chords of “I Wanna Be Adored” – but there was a time and place for that kind of thing and that time was 20 years ago.

  I remember seeing The Stone Roses at Belfast’s Maysfield Leisure Centre in summer 1990 and it was a fantastic show. But I’ve no real inclination or desire to see those same four musicians who are simply going through the motions and doing it for the money (no doubt brilliantly, provided Ian Brown has learned to sing) in 2012. There are many more acts I’d prefer to see because those acts exist in the here and now rather than in some nostalgic time-warp where you’re trying to experience or re-experience something from the past.

  Regular OTR readers will know that we’ve little truck here with reunions because they’re such an obvious sleight of hand. It’s a far different matter when you’ve an act or a band who’ve stuck it out through the highs and, just as importantly, lows. I may have nothing good to say about U2′s recent output, but I take my hat off to them for sticking together for over 35 years. The reunion bandwagon, on the other hand, is a cynical practice, yet so many people (especially people who are paid good money to be cynical) fall for them every time. Whatever about the fans – many of whom are eager to see a seminal, favourite act for the first time and can’t be faulted for that – or the band – who, at least, are getting paid for their troubles – it’s another thing entirely when fanboys with laptops lose their reason over an event like this.

• Edward Sharpe’s ad-friendly tune

  October 18, 2011 @ 10:23 am | by Jim Carroll

  It’s the wisdom of the crowds who work in advertising agencies at play. Chances are you’ve heard Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeroes’ “Home” at this stage. Even if you don’t listen to the radio all that often, you’ll have come across it a lot over the last couple of months. Even if you believe fervently that the stations on the dial are not really going to be up in your grill about a lovely slice of winsome folkie-rock from a bunch of Californian hippies, they are – and they are getting paid to play it too.

  “Home” has featured on ads over here to flog mobile phones and insurance policies, while it’s been used across the Atlantic to sell jeans, phones, insurance and football coverage (the band’s other tune “Janglin’” found its way into a car ad). The track has also been used in a plethora of TV shows and films, but the number of ad placements it is receiving is most striking. If advertising agencies are looking for a tune to go with some heartfelt piece of footage designed to make you feel warm and cosy about the product in question, “Home” is currently the tune they’ll want on the ad.

  It’s easy to see why the band say yes to the ads. According to band manager Bryan Ling in a piece earlier this year in Advertising Age, the act gets “mid-six figures for a larger commercial deal and closer to $15,000 to $30,000 for placement in a TV show or movie trailer”. Of course, you have to split this 10 ways – the problem with a big band – but it’s still probably more than they’ll make from record sales for the first year or two.

  Add in the knock-on effects of having a song on ads in terms of royalties (radio stations are more likely to play your tune because someone else has invested money in it) and live revenue (the next time the band play an Irish venue, it will be in a bigger space than Crawdaddy) and you can see why the band says yes to “anything that has a positive message”. Those ads have meant that the band’s debut album “Up From Below” still has some life to it over two years on from its release in 2009.

  What’s really interesting to observe, though, is the safety in numbers aspect at play here from the agencies and brands. Because “Home” has featured in one successful ad campaign, it’s now far more likely to feature in many more. The creatives know it works so rather than spending time going through submissions or commissioning new tunes, they’ll simply give Bryan Ling or his publisher a call because they know that the band are likely to say yes (one music supervisor told me that there is always a handful of fallback acts that you call when everything else fails because they will always say yes – one of these acts, oddly enough, is apparently The Who) and folks already know “Home” because someone else took a chance on the song ages ago.

  No doubt, there will come a time when “Home” soundalikes are also be thrown into the mix because the band have to turn down an ad because the terms and conditions they’ve signed for a previous campaign prohibit them taking the brand’s money at that particular time. In time, of course, some other creative will stick a song by some another band to an ad and we’ll be off in a different direction again. But for now, “Home” is the tune the Mad Men want to hawk their goods and services so expect to hear it again and again in the coming months.

• Record stores return to the capital

  September 30, 2011 @ 9:48 am | by Jim Carroll

  Is this a record shop revival in the capital I see before me? Last week, E2 Music announced plans to open a pop-up shop on Dublin’s College Green in the space formerly occupied by Habitat.

  This week, it’s the arrival of Elastic Witch which is making the music retail headlines. The store will be based in the Twisted Pepper on Middle Abbey Street, a space which is now home to a club, live music venue, the 3FE coffee shop, the Loft book store and the Boxcutter barbershop.

  Elastic Witch will be run by Gib Cassidy, Logikparty drummer and formerly of Road Records. Aside from selling CDs and vinyl from Irish and international independent acts, Cassidy hopes Elastic Witch will be a “social space”.

  It’s not just E2 and Elastic Witch who are throwing caution to the wind and ignoring the widespread belief that record stores are a dying breed. HMV announced plans this week for 20 pop-up stores in the UK in the run-up to Christmas.

  There’s no doubt that there is still a market for music on vinyl and CD, once the retailers involved accept that it’s now a niche rather than a mass market. There’s going to be no repeat of those recently unearthed photos from the 1960s of masses of people flocking to HMV stores.

  But if numbers are down, there’s still enough dedicated music fans with cash to sustain a shop which knows and responds to this audience.

  Changes in the retail environment also help – neither E2 or Elastic Witch will be paying Celtic Tiger rents – but the ability to identify a customer base and get them into the shop matters more. After all if Cork can support a shop like Plugd, surely there’s also enough music fans in the capital to keep the newbies in business?

• Why bands should leave pester power to toddlers

  August 24, 2011 @ 9:29 am | by Jim Carroll

  This tweet from Nialler9 last week probably spoke for many who’ve seen their email in-boxes, Twitter feeds, Facebook pages and blogs invaded daily by bands looking for votes in online competitions.

  You know the kind: a band have entered some battle of the bands’ competition to be the first act on the bill at some sponsored-up-to-the-eyeballs’ hooley or other. In order to win this allegedly valuable prize, the band need everyone they know to click “Like” or reteweet a tweet or vote for them on some heavily branded page. Thus, because they don’t know any better, the band pester their fans, friends and people they don’t know from a gap in the ditch to vote for them with their clicks. It’s bad enough when bands do this once, but many come back again and again looking for your time, annoying you even more in the process. It’s the same kind of carry-on which a toddler usually employs to great effect to get you to buy them a bar of chocolate at a supermarket checkout till.

  The problem for bands who use pester power is that they’re really not doing themselves any favours. For a start, pestering or hassling would-be fans and influencers is not a good look. Moreover, if a band really thinks that their only chance to succeed or shine will come from winning some competition to be the first act on the bill at some sponsored-up-to-the-eyeballs’ hooley or other (a victory based on a popularity contest rather than anything to do with their music), they really need to cop themselves on. If a band think spending their time racking up emails and tweets and status updates and the like in order to publicise that competition is the best use of their time and resources, they really should be in another game.

  The only winners with these shenanigans are the brands who are behind the silly competition to begin with, not the bands who are collectively annoying everyone they know with their pleadings. It’s high fives all round for the marketing department, where the value of the prize bears no relation to the value exerted by the brand from their involvement. All the pestering, hassling and annoying is done by the band, not the brand, so the latter get to gain from the former’s exertions.

  To be fair, you can see where the bands are coming from. They operate in an ever-changing music business where it appears that new players like brands and corporates hold more sway and present more opportunities for them than the traditional industry players. If there’s a new set of rules by which to play the game, bands have to get with it. That most brands and corporates have absolutely no real interest in music or building sustainable careers or developing a band seems to be left unsaid in the brave new post-record label world. You can say many things about those old-school labels, but many actually knew that there was far more profit to be made from a band with a long-term career than an one-hit wonder. Brands want the instant hits which come from Facebook likes and calls to action.

  Turning bands into grunts for some poxy online contest with a poorer prize than you’ll get in your local bingo hall on a wet Tuesday night also reinforces the notion that bands are supposd to in constant competition with their peers for attention, profile, gigs and opportunities. If you don’t go for this amazing opportunity to be the first act on the bill at some sponsored-up-to-the-eyeballs’ hooley or other (or, indeed, any online competition where it’s about the number of people you can pester to get behind you), some other new act will get there instead and you’ll be left behind. Stupid, untrue and illogical, but many acts sadly seem to buy into this mentality.

  To be honest, acts should really view any online popularity competition with great suspicion rather than bail in with great gusto, unless they have some weird desire to help a brand reach a bigger audience. After all, in the long run, that competition and your association with a brand (who will be shaking you down for more rights than any major label would dream of demanding) is doing feck all for you, your band and your music. And you are, aren’t you, in this for the long run?

• Jedward have the last laugh

  April 19, 2011 @ 1:59 pm | by Jim Carroll

  Around about a year ago, there was a lot of guffawing about Jedward on the back of the pair getting their P45s from Sony Music after one single. But, as OTR noted when the story broke, you had to wonder who were the real dopes in all of this, as it was becoming perfectly clear that Jedward were not really in this for any sort of musical gain. Music was, after all, just one string to their rather bizarre bow and a pretty poor one at that so how any music company expected to make cash from them was anyone’s guess. You wondered just where the Grimes’ twins would go from there. One thing was clear, though: we hadn’t heard the last of them just because the Sony A&R department told them to sling their hooks.

  Fast-forward a year and Jedward are the ones with the grins. Several breathless stories last week told of a multi-million year for the pair thanks to gigs, personal appearances, product endorsements, advertising campaigns and anything else which will turn a buck for the buckos. They are even stars on the bar mitzvah circuit (and yes, there is evidence to show that this isn’t some whopper from the Louis Walsh spin machine). They are raking it in. The group who finished sixth in The X Factor two years ago are now doing better than anyone else from that TV show. Who knew?

  There are several lessons in all of this. Firstly, never write off two lads from Lucan with vertical-hold hairstyles who are managed by someone who can always find brass from muck. Secondly, never under-estimate the difficulties involved in trying to make cash from sales of recorded music in 2011 and beyond. And thirdly, Jedward are going to be with us for a very, very long time. Now, isn’t that a cheery thought for the afternoon?

• “What the hell?” Arcade Fire win Grammy for Album of the Year

  February 14, 2011 @ 9:43 am | by Jim Carroll

  There is probably a sizable bustle in your electronic hedgerow this morning thanks to the news that Arcade Fire won the Grammy of Grammies, the gong for Album of the Year, last night. There will be justifiable praise for the band and “The Suburbs”, an album which gets better and better with every play. You will be reading lines about how brilliant this is for Merge, the North Carolina-based indie label who released the album in the United States (the album goes through mega-conglomerate Universal over here). There will be high talk about what this means for the independent sector, though it will also inevitably bring in some debate about what the hell “independent” means in 2011, especially for a best-selling, globe-trotting, gong-winning band like Arcade Fire.

  It will also cause some chatter about the Grammies themselves. While it may be high season right now for culture awards, with everything from the BAFTAs to the IFTAs, the Grammies continue to exist in a camp of their own. Last night, there were 109 winners, including prizes for Best Engineered Album (Classical), Best Improvised Jazz Solo and Best Southern, Country, Or Bluegrass Gospel Album. Looking down the list, there seems to have been a Grammy for everyone in the audience who ever said “one, two, one, two” into a microphone.

  Yet you can be sure you’ll read someone described as a “Grammy Award-winning artist” or “three times Grammy nominated act” at least once before the week is out. Often, it’s just some hack shoehorning the guts of a glowing press release into a news story but more times, mention of a Grammy is seriously taken to signify something which commands attention. The band won a Grammy, they must be OK. Or at least the folks at the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences think they’re OK. Few beyond the Academy actually realise, know or even care how that august body works. We write “Grammy award winning act” and, for all we know, the winner of the prize was decided over a game of gin rummy.

  In the case of Arcade Fire, though, last night’s hoopla crowns their ascent. Three albums and hundreds of ecstatic (and occasionally not so ecstatic, like Oxegen 2010) shows later, they really are kings and queens of the new frontier. You can put them up there now with Kings Of Leon and Coldplay as bands who’ve become huge at a time when huge bands are few and far between. The traditional ways and means to create a big band (ie a recording label pimping best-selling albums and the band having big ol’ radio hits) may no longer be in effect, but Arcade Fire have shown there are other ways to skin that cat and make the crossover. There are plenty of other acts who may or may not pull off the same manoeuvre – Mumford & Sons are currently getting a lot of love in the business despatches, though they really need a few more albums under their belts-by-Boden to do it – but Arcade Fire show that it still can be done. Now for the “Grammy Award-winning Arcade Fire” press releases and news stories…

• Bands and brands

  October 13, 2010 @ 9:30 am | by Jim Carroll

  One topic which came up a few times over the weekend at the Hard Working Class Heroes’ discussion panels was the whole notion of bands and brands. Naturally, any panel discussion involve the future of funding was always going to come around to this issue at some stage.
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• Etc

  August 8, 2008 @ 9:27 am | by Jim Carroll

  You can use this weekly Etc post to plug and recommend gigs, new releases, TV shows, recipes and exotic fruit. Please be polite and declare an interest where relevant.

  This weekend’s Irish Green Gathering festival features Jinx Lennon, Giveamanakick (video below of band playing “Spring Break!” on RTE kids TV show), R.S.A.G., Margaret Healy, Ugly Megan and many more playing at Woodbrook House, Co Wexford. Organisers have been involved in a marathon sundance since midweek ahead of the fest.

  Math-rock pioneers Don Caballero play their first ever Irish show at Dublin’s Crawdaddy on November 14th.

  Cork-born, Barcelona-based house and techno producer Chymera returns to Ireland for dates at Stereotonic, Dublin, on August 15th and at the Solas Festival, Co Carlow, on August 17th.

  Quote of the week: “Nobody”. Full-time miserabist Morrissey tells Israel’s Time Out magazine who he will be inviting to his forthcoming 50th birthday party. On The Record feels rather slighted.

  Super Extra Bonus Party launch their new remix album with a Recession 2.0 special at ALT on October 10. It’s a tenner in and you get to see the band, (many) special guests and go home with a copy of the album. Here, I assume they haven’t lost that lovely trophy we gave them back in February. The cheque, I’d say, is long spent.

  

• Mercury Music Prize nominees

  July 22, 2008 @ 12:12 pm | by Jim Carroll

  The runners and riders for the latest Mercury Music Prize (which is, of course, the UK version of the Choice Music Prize) are as follows:

  Adele “19″
  British Sea Power “Do You Like Rock Music?”
  Burial “Untrue”
  Elbow “The Seldom Seen Kid”
  Estelle “Shine”
  The Last Shadow Puppets “The Age Of The Understatement”
  Laura Marling “Alas I Cannot Swim”
  Neon Neon “Stainless Style”
  Portico Quartet “Knee-Deep In The North Sea”
  Robert Plant And Alison Krauss “Raising Sand”
  Radiohead “In Rainbows”
  Rachel Unthank And The Winterset “The Bairns”

  On The Record says: give it to Burial and be done with it.

• Bud Rising calls time on several live music events

  May 23, 2008 @ 9:05 am | by Jim Carroll

  Bud Rising, one of the country’s most prominent music sponsors, is currently reviewing its involvement in the sector.
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• “The Irish music scene would not be as vibrant today without all the marketing involvment”

  April 16, 2008 @ 8:42 am | by Jim Carroll

  That quote is taken from a piece which appeared in a recent issue of Marketing magazine. It was written by Colm Ó Riagáin from Slattery Communications who has worked on music sponsorship gigs involving Nokia (yes, including those infamous Nokia Trends Lab events which seem to have gone a little quiet of late) and Hennessy.

  It’s an interesting piece, especially given how much we’re led to believe that bands will depend on brands for cashflow in the future now that the revenue stream from sales of plastic discs is no longer a viable way of putting food on the table.

  While many brands have rushed into the music arena with all guns blazing, O Riagain feels that a much more considered view must be taken by aspiring sponsorship players.

  Music is not a quick fix for brands. Those interested in marketing through music must have a long-term strategy in place and they need to ensure that their association is a collusion of brand, brand experience and interactivity that fits with music and the marketer’s objectives. More crucially, big brands should not settle for a trite association; they need to be a conduit and if the concept is not working really well after say three years, the likelihood is it never will. In other words, it is time to consider pulling the plug.

  Ó Riagáin also points out that music consumers are no idiots and can spot a dodgy sponsorship deal a mile away.

  Consumers, now more than ever, are aware of companies trying to get their attention through music in a bid to get them “on-side”, brands must give consumers ‘added value’ – often in the manifestation of something they cannot get elsewhere. A survey by UK agency, Entertainment Media Research, highlighted this issue. When consumers were asked their opinion about brands working in the music space, 82 per cent of those surveyed said that there were few brands interested in music and the rest are just jumping on the bandwagon. As many as 86 per cent thought brands needed to do a lot more than logo placement to gain their respect. More importantly for bands (not brands), 75 per cent thought that bands sell out too easily to brand sponsorship deals.

  Given that the piece is addressed at the marketing and advertising community, Ó Riagáin unfortunately does not address such issues which have been raised here and elsewhere in the past about how and why branded events are every jot as expensive as unbranded events or how to make the events more attractive to punters.

  While he cites Bacardi and their B-Live club events as an example of a successful sponsorship hook-up, it would have been interesting to see how he would judge other sponsored events such as the high-profile Meteor Music Awards or Vodafone’s Bright New Sounds using the same set of criteria.

  He also doesn’t explain the rationale behind that quote about the Irish music scene (used as the title of this post) which stands out a little like a big sore thumb in what is, in all others respects, a well reasoned piece.

  I find it hard to believe that anyone would believe the Irish music scene has benefited greatly from the huge amount of usually wrong-headed and badly judged marketing and brand activity. Beyond those promoters who have lined their pockets with cash from various beer and brand marketing budgets, Irish punters have gained mostly nothing from brand activities in Ireland, which probably explains the cynicism when yet another beer company announces yet another music festival featuring the same old line-up and the same old ticket prices.

• Vodafone’s Bright New Sounds is still at large

  February 26, 2008 @ 2:26 pm | by Jim Carroll

  Una has a link to a new Eyebrowy video plugging this dodgy competition.

  In case anyone has forgotten, here’s the post where we went through the competition, step by step, and pointed out a couple of very iffy aspects to the whole thing.

  There has been a huge response to this post, although most of the comments have come via email rather than the blog. Obviously, some people are reluctant to publicly criticise an event which stars such luminaries as Universal Music, Hot Press and Phantom FM. We, though, have no such scruples.

• Can anyone explain just what the punter gets from a sponsored gig?

  January 30, 2008 @ 8:41 am | by Jim Carroll

  This post is prompted by the confirmation of the news that Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are playing Dublin Castle on May 3. Tickets will go on sale on Friday at €49.50 a pop.

  Nothing wrong with that, you might say. Nick needs the cash, there are a lot of Bad Seeds to pay and sure, he and his Mister Thirteen And Two Thirds Percent know Irish audiences are good for the ticket price.

  This, though, is a Heineken Green Energy gig. It means Nick will be playing in front of a couple of beer lorries and banners, probably. It means the singer will be wearing a costume which makes him look like a big green bottle of beer, maybe. For sure, it means Heineken are paying quite a lot of cash to the promoter MCD to be involved in this festival and this gig.

  So what’s in Heineken’s branding of this gig for the punter? Does the punter just have to be grateful with the chance to see the act? Why does the presence of a sponsor mean that the tickets are as expensive as they would be if the sponsor was not involved? Surely the tickets should be cheaper in that case? If Heineken are paying a lot of money to be involved, why isn’t some of that cash making its way to the punters who will come through the gates in the shape of cheaper tickets?

  I’m not singling out Heineken here (I know they do a series of free gigs up and down the county which I’m sure they would claim offsets this), but it’s something which I’ve been wondering about for quite some time and which is becoming more and more relevant. As more corporates and brands move into the music market looking for exposure and association, what’s in this landgrab for the punter? For example, Nokia (by the way, whatever happened to the Nokia Trends Lab?) and Budweiser (through their Bud Rising gigs and fests) are two brands heavily involved in sponsoring music events in Ireland, yet the prices for the vast majority of their shows are as expensive as every unsponsored gig on sale at Ticketmaster.

  Any brand managers care to take time out from their hectic schedules to answer these questions?

• What do you do when you’re in a hole?

  November 23, 2007 @ 8:29 pm | by Jim Carroll

  Usually you stop digging, but there are exceptions. Like the dude at the centre of this tale

  I posted earlier today about Nialler9′s account of what happened when he went do a bit of work at Tripod the other night. Readers might want to check back on Nialler’s post because one of the Nokia dudes has got in touch and he just doesn’t seem to know what to do with his shovel. Comments 19 on are particularly good.

  Mmmm, I wonder if it’s time for Mulley to take an interest. And UnaRocks. And The Chancer. And Sinead. And Nadine. And Rick. I mean, Nokia Trends Lab DO want publicity….

• How not to brand a gig

  @ 10:13 am | by Jim Carroll

  Nialler was at the Go! Team’s gig in Tripod the other night. He was working with the excellent Super Extra Bonus Party doing the visuals. It was a Nokia Trends Lab hooley.

  Now read what happened next. Here’s one excerpt which is going to look just fantastic in the PR file:

  Twats in boiler suits hassling everyone coming in about Trends Lab with the greeting “Join our Experiment”. They may as well have said “Join our Mobile Phone Cult, mere mortals!”. Loads of cringeworthy footage between acts consisting of bands roped into talking about how great their Nokias are and how they use it interspersed with a call to text to win a phone at the gig. Does anyone in Nokia PR/Marketing understand how annoying this is for regular Joes and Janes? Do they honestly think that people are going to walk away from the gig going “Yeh, Nokia and the Go! Team, what a great partnership. Nokia kick ass!” WHAT THE FUCK?

  Remember that Nialler and his mates are probably the target audience that the marketing people are telling Nokia that shows like this will reach.

  Of course we have been here before (see number 5 here). Idiots from marketing departments just never learn, do they? It makes you wonder just what horrors are in store when Harvest Entertainment go to work. You thought record labels were bad? Wait till Nokia Trends Lab have their way.

  By the by, this isn’t the first time I’ve heard comments about the heavy-handed and power-tripping Tripod lads and lasses either.

• Marketing drive

  June 15, 2007 @ 9:48 am | by Jim Carroll

  As marketing gimmicks go, you have to admit that these Icky Thump USB drives from the White Stripes are kind of cute. There’s a Jack one and there’s a Meg one and each 512MB drive contains the band’s new album.

  Some may regard these limited edition $99 drives as a little rich given Jack White’s previous propensity for favouring analog studios and recordings.

  Then again, as their last album Get Behind Me Satan sold only half as much as the previous Elephant album, it really is a case of any (data) port in a storm

• Size matters as record industry faces squeeze

  June 1, 2007 @ 12:42 pm | by Jim Carroll

  The man who makes those snazzy “the end is nigh” sandwich-boards must be working overtime at the moment, as the major-label record industry wonders where its next tax-deductible meal is going to come from.
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• It’s a Shocka

  May 11, 2007 @ 10:17 am | by Jim Carroll

  It’s probably the first time that hair gel has made the headlines since “There’s Something About Mary”.
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• Ding-dong as Oldfield fumes over freebie

  @ 10:17 am | by Jim Carroll

  Poor Mike Oldfield. It seems that no-one told him that his “Tubular Bells” album would be given away free with The Mail On Sunday.

  From the sound of his letter to industry trade paper Music Week slamming EMI Records for this oversight, Oldfield must have only found out when he went down the shops to get a sliced pan and the Sunday papers

  “EMI’s decision to give away Tubular Bells was taken without my agreement or even the simple courtesy of EMI telling me about it”, he fumes. “To group real music with cheap loan leaflets and the other freebies that fall out of most publications is to devalue it.”

• More sell-outs?

  @ 10:16 am | by Jim Carroll

  Paula Flynn’s cover version of “Lets Dance”, currently featuring on TV ads for a certain brand of bottled water, kick-started an interesting debate over at the On the Record blog about the ins and outs of musicians singing for their supper on advertisements.

  To quote reader Kim Fowley, “if Flynn wants to work for them, why doesn’t she just get herself a suit and an office in their headquarters and be done with it?”

  Still, it hasn’t done Flynn any harm yet. Her version of “Lets Dance” is released by EMI Ireland on May 18.