Musicadium Blog

Peer Group and General Pants to launch ‘Major Label’

Peer Group Media, Australia’s leading brand entertainment agency, today announce their appointment with General Pants Co. The partnership will give birth to Major Label, a pioneering ’singles only’ record label wholly owned by General Pants Co. where the artist maintains ownership of copyright, has full creative control and receives 100% of the royalties through the sales of music through digital retail stores.

The concept behind Major Label is for the 700 strong General Pants Co. staff to act as talent scouts and publicists for the label. The staff will seek out the next hot Australian acts and submit them to the music blog housed on the General Pants Co. website. Jethro Lyons, brand manager, General Pants Co. said: “Major Label is about discovering up and coming hot new Australian acts and throwing them a lifeline.”

Each month three acts will be chosen and their single released through Major Label. The singles will be available for streaming on the General Pants Co. website and available to purchase through selected online retailers.

Adam Zammit, CEO of Peer Group Media said: “Major Label is the first of its kind in Australia and Peer Group Media are delighted to be involved in the creation and delivery of the campaign. Our proven expertise in creating engaging projects within the entertainment industry makes us a perfect fit for this campaign and we are looking forward to delivering really strong results.”

Peer Group Media will be responsible for managing the overall campaign, creative, PR and artist liaison. The initiative launches on 1st March 2010.

Musicadium is proud to be associated with Major Label and Peer Group Media and General Pants in distributing the artists discovered to digital outlets the world over.

I don’t know about you, but I think about all the big questions in life - why is belly button lint blue? Will lemon juice make you thinner? Where do babies come from?

You know who knows the answers to these questions? No, not your mummy, but everyone’s favourite science boffin and new Musicadium artist, Dr Karl!

Dr Karl, an artist? Yes people, Dr Karl has been working with his mate Jay from Triple J’s Jay and Doctor and a few of his muso friends to realise his dream of becoming a rock star. The result is his new punk track “Get Fact” which will be available shortly on iTunes.

In the meantime, you can pick up Dr Karl’s new book Never Mind the Bullocks: Here’s the Science at any reputable book store. He’s also coming to sign said book at a store near you sometime in the next month, so check out the dates for his book tour here. He’s also on Twitter, or you can catch him with Zan Rowe on Triple J mornings every Thursday at 11am.

This weekend just past saw me (Tim) travel to Rockhampton to play at the largest annual All Ages event in the region, Rockfest, which in the past has been headlined by The Butterfly Effect, Kisschasy, Youth Group and Gyroscope - this year’s was headlined by the amazing Dead Letter Circus.  I played drums with The Origin Complex, the band who I played for before I moved to Brisbane.  Musicadium Artists The Short Fall and Epidemic…Over also played at this event.

I also do some “pseudo-management” for The Origin Complex, so in the lead up to the event, I was thinking in terms of online presence.  The Origin Complex already has a MySpace page and a Facebook page, but not a twitter account.

My first impulse was to not bother using Twitter for this purpose, as after a few searches via search.twitter.com, did not show up too many different tweeters in the Rockhampton region. Further research using location-based searches (rather than keyword searches) dug up quite a few more.

I saw this as an opportunity to perform an experiment on the takeup of twitter in a regional area.  I signed the band up for a twitter account and with the help of the internet and an iPhone with the twitterific application, I was able to twitter my entire Rockfest experience.  I have always said that there is no point to using Twitter without a purpose.  You need to decide exactly why you are using Twitter - this then determines the people you actively go to follow and also your “voice” when interacting with other tweeters.  I decided that the purpose of The Origin Complex’ use of Twitter was to spread the word about bands/artists making connections with fans and also to get more people in Rockhampton listen to our music and become fans.  A secondary goal was to make people aware of Rockfest in the upcoming week.  As the use of the twitter account will be ongoing, this was only a temporary goal.

The Origin Complex can be followed on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/origincomplex.

To maximise the fan connection, I wanted to avoid having any standard avatars (the logo next to your twitter name) or backgrounds.  I began by creating a background that included a picture of the singer, Glenn, and the band name and MySpace URL for the band.  I used a photo of the four members of the band as the avatar.  I wanted fans to see who the members of the band were.

Next, I used twitter’s search function to find people talking about Rockhampton.  I found numerous conversations about things going on in Rockhampton, including the local newspaper (The Morning Bulletin) and a radio station (ABC Capricornia - who, ironically, have a 40+ age group demographic and yet, are the only radio station in the region to use twitter - come on, commercial stations, you are already behind the times, please join us in the 21st century - you claim to be “down with the kids”.  From these connections, I leveraged a story (that I had to write) in the newspaper and a quick pre-record on the radio station, which aired on Friday April 3rd.  As it is a new technology and a new way of approaching promotion in the regional Queensland city, it was certainly a different spin on the other press releases, so it got a run in the local media.

I followed as many people as I could find from the local area, including Yeppoon, Rockhampton and Gladstone.  I got a few follows back, but the takeup was not massive, though still worth it!  Those who did follow the feed connected well with the band, asking questions and wishing us luck on stage.

I offered links to our various social networking sites, so there was opportunities for people to check out our tracks.  It would have been better leveraged with some more time and planning, such as the ability to give away tracks in exchange for email addresses at a website, for example.

I cannot say for certain that this is the case for all regional areas, but certainly the findings from my experience tweeting Rockfest has shown that there is a place for Twitter in creating genuine band-fan connections.

Read some post event press here: http://www.themorningbulletin.com.au/story/2009/04/06/thousands-turn-rock-out-and-mosh-music-bowl/

I can understand he’s upset about The Cure’s not so popular album release of 4:13 Dream last year but he shouldn’t be rubbishing the model of one of the (rare) successful online record launches we’ve seen.

As we all know, Radiohead stuck it to the man in 2007 with their release of “In Rainbows”. They let us decide just how much money we thought their music was worth.

Releasing the album in digital format through their website, customers could pay what they wanted or nothing at all. The site only advised, “It’s up to you.”  This didn’t dampen the value of the music. Rather, it made us think.  It gave us the power to either do the right thing by them, or by ourselves.

In an interview with Music Radar on Tuesday February 24th Smith was quoted:

“The Radiohead experiment of paying what you want - I disagreed violently with that. The idea that the value is created by the consumer is an idiot plan. You can’t allow other people to put a price on what you do, otherwise you don’t consider what you do to have any value at all and that’s nonsense. If I put a value on my music and no one’s prepared to pay that, then more fool me, but the idea that the value is created by the consumer is an idiot plan, it can’t work.”

Justifiably, recorded music has traditionally been distributed successfully by way of a physical medium; today however, sales of compact disc recordings are down. Nevertheless, consumption of music is well and truly up, festivals and club shows are selling out across Australia in a matter of minutes, and there has been an explosion of new bands, artists, genres and songs. iTunes has recently surpassed Wal-Mart as the number one music retailer in the United States and digital music now accounts for 20% of all recorded music sales, up from 15% in 2007.

Trying to back pedal after receiving bad press for his Radiohead bashing he wrote (in caps lock) a blog posted February 28th on The Cure’s website:

“ANY FAMOUS ARTIST WITH A HUGE AND DEVOTED FAN BASE (OFTEN ARRIVED AT WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM A WEALTHY AND POWERFUL ‘PATRON’ OR TWO?) CAN AFFORD TO DO WHAT HE, SHE OR IT WANTS…
INCLUDING GIVING THEIR ART AWAY AS SOME KIND OF ‘LOSSLEADER’ TO HELP ‘BUILD THE BRAND”

Despite Radiohead’s risky strategy, The Album went to #1 in the UK and the US when released physically on CD/vinyl in early 2008.  The Cure’s 4:13 Dream however peaked at #33 in the UK and # 16 in the US.

Nine Inch Nails and Bad Religion are two of many other bands who are also trying to find another revenue stream other than physical sales trying to add value to ‘the unit.’  This includes additional incentives like photos, posters, additional tracks, and other motivations to sell a “deluxe edition” of the CD or vinyl.

At the moment there is still a place for physical sales, although we can’t cling to an outdated industry model that clearly doesn’t work in the digital age. When a consumer offers a price in Radiohead’s model, they are giving a value to that artists work.  By being given the option people are more likely to assess and pay what they think is fair rather than download illegally from torrents and the like.

The music industry is far from dead: the traditional model sadly is.  Fans are willing to spend money on buying music, but the last few decades have changed the medium in which this is done.  For bands to remain both accessible and relevant to fans there is no questioning the fact that music needs to be available online in some form.

“If I put a value on my music and no one’s prepared to pay that, then more fool me”

Perhaps Smith needs to realise its just hard to put a value on anything post “Bloodflowers”.

This HypeBot article talks about the need for labels, companies and distributors to put away the idea of CDs as their main revenue generator by December 2009.

The source article from Gartner, says “…reliance on revenue from the sale of CD’s is hindering the music industry from fully embracing online distribution opportunities.”

We aren’t arguing with this point, because we are a business firmly built on looking to the future of how Music will be consumed/listened to in the days to come.  We do have questions, though - we know bands will have something to say about it (the overwhelming majority I know still believe that the first thing that they want to do for their band is record for the purpose of making a CD) and more to the point, so will physical CD distributors/manufacturers and probably labels, who are making the majority of their money from the sales/making of these.  If the events of this article were to come true, then these guys should probably come up with a quick solution.  It’s late in the game and if they haven’t got their digital strategy in place, there’s no time like the present.

We are asking you this - should the transition be a little more gradual than this, or has the CD really run its course?  Being digital-savvy here in the office, we are all confident that we could take the plunge, but are the public ready as a wider, general rule? We have all heard about the huge sales in iPods and other MP3 Players, and MP3 docks, MP3 adaptor kits for Car stereos etc., but what about actually purchasing the tracks?  Does everyone have a computer capable of doing this? Is everyone tech-competent enough to download the track and then burn it to a CD or put it on a USB stick to play in their stereo or stream it from their computer to their stereo using a wireless device such as Apple’s Airport express, using their iPhone as a remote to control their iTunes playlist?  If this becomes the standard practice, does this mean tracks will be DRM (Digital Rights Management) free? Will they be High Quality MP3s or lossless FLAC files or similar?  Do the general public know about the technical difference between a 128kbps MP3 to a 320kbps file?

We believe that this day will come, but is it right now?  It’s definitely in the mail, but should we not give them a few years to work themselves out of circulation and the less tech-inclined to catch up?  The real test would be if your parents (who, probably, have just mastered playing their CDs on their stereo) could do it. These people are still in their comfort zone with their nice, easy CD in their hands that they can see, feel, touch.  What are they going to do when realistically, they have to think about their music in terms of it being a computer file, made up of 1’s and 0’s.

I still have many people say to me that while they accept the rise in the MP3/digital revolution in music, they don’t believe the CD will ever truly die, because they still like holding the product in their hands and having the artwork and the liner notes/lyrics.  Do you believe that a digital pack, that technically, can provide more, i.e. interactive content such as weblinks, will ever replace the CD?

Never before has there been this predicament when a medium was about to be outdated.  We have never gone from a physical medium to an abstract medium, one that couldn’t be held in one’s hands - Vinyl to Cassette Tape, though there was a massive loss in sound quality and they were easily destroyed (ever try to roll the heads and get the tape back in to the Cassette after your stereo chewed it?), was a more convenient physical product, smaller in size and the making of the mix tape was almost a rite of passage.  Cassette to CD was an easy transition, as I am guessing the sound quality (though still not as ‘warm’ as Vinyl) trumped the Cassette tape and was still a manageable physical size.

What of the millions of Music stores the world over?  Will they become a series of booths that you plug your MP3 player/Laptop into, feed your cash/credit card in and fill up on tunes?  Will you miss trawling through the piles of CDs/Vinyl to find that treasured relic?  Or will you rejoice that the trawling is finally over and the search function on the iTunes store will do that for you?  Are you excited that websites like last.fm and functions such as iTunes genius are finding new and varied music for you from the world over?

A few things that the articles suggest is that CDs become press-on-demand items or giveaway promo items.  Press-on-Demand is a good idea, but as promo items?  CD pressing in mass quantities at the moment is a fairly expensive exercise for not that many products (depending on where you are and what deals you can cut) so will labels/bands bother with this??

This is all up for debate.  We are ready for the digital revolution.  Are you?  Are your parents?

1. To get on iTunes etc. you need to use a digital distributor. It is way too time consuming to do this yourself. And you need to have high level technical skills to do it. If words like FTP and XML make good sense to you, maybe you have a shot, but trust me, you need help. Better to spend hours jamming than writing code to upload an album.
2. There are four ways digital distributors make money.
   1 - Upload/Joining Fee: Be careful of joining fees. These can range really widely and this is the most obvious thing you should know before you go any further with a distributor.
   2 - Renewal Fee: There will usually be a renewal fee to have your albums online. Check whether this fee increases per album…
   3 - Royalties: Most distributors take big royalty cuts - make sure you know how much they are taking from you.
   4 - Contracts lengths and lock-ins: Make sure you know how long you are locked in for. You don’t want to find out you have to be with a distributor for five years without being able to get out of it. This is critical!
3. Musicadium is based in Brisbane and what we do is dead simple. We help you to make the most of the digital music revolution:
   1 - $39 upload fee per release. This is a one off fee for worldwide distribution.
   2 - $20 per year (one-off fee) to cover the transaction costs of paying you royalties. This does not change, regardless whether you have 1 or 100 albums online.
   3 - Musicadium gives you 100% of your royalties. We believe we had no part in the creation of the music so we do not deserve 10% of the royalties you reap for your creativity. We distribute. We ask for payment for that. You write the music. You should receive all the royalties for that.
   4 - We do not lock you in to contracts. Leave as you please (we’ve never had this happen), but you are free to go elsewhere if you feel you can find better.

1. There’s a big difference between having a long list of email addresses and having a long list of true fans. A true fan is a fan who will pay to watch you play, buy your album and tell their friends about you. Make true fans, not a list of email addresses. And you know the best way to make a true fan? Play great live gigs and then go and meet the people you are playing for. Make them feel a part of something. For all the digital music revolution talk, your live gig is still the most important things for your band to create true fans.
2. You don’t need to get signed to be successful.There are thousands of bands making a living from music right now who exist outside the realms of the major labels. You can be one of those bands. You just need three things – great songs, a great live show and true fans. Keep it simple and you’ll go a long way.
3. Despite what you’ve heard, all the old rules of music still apply. You still need a great sound, a great dynamic in the band, a great live show and great fans. The delivery channels have changed but the hunger for great music has not.

1. Digital Distribution is cheaper and easier than physical distribution. It will cost you more than a thousand dollars to manufacture and produce just a few hundred CDs that you distribute locally. Compare that to
   the cost of unlimited, worldwide, digital distribution which is generally under 100 dollars.
2. Just because your music is distributed worldwide, doesn’t mean it will be bought worldwide. It may well be cost effective to distribute worldwide through digital stores like iTunes and eMusic but what’s the point
   of having your music for sale in Japan or Russia if no-one there knows you.
3. If you’re going to distribute digitally, then promote digitally. Digital distribution is a very smart move. But it’s not enough just to distribute digitally, you need to promote digitally. You need a MySpace, you need to start talking to your fans, you need an email list of people you can tell about your upcoming shows and releases. You need to connect with the fans of your favourite bands, you need to discuss your music on forums, promote it on Facebook, write to people about it who love music. To make the most of digital you need as many people writing and talking about you as possible.

From the incomparably good Seth Godin comes this Music Lesson:

“Try to imagine something like this happening ten years ago: An eleven-year-old kid wakes up on a Saturday morning, gets his allowance, then, standing in his pajamas, buys a Bon Jovi song for a buck.

Compare this to hassling for a ride, driving to the mall, finding the album in question, finding the $14 to pay for it and then driving home.

You may believe that your business doesn’t lend itself to digital transactions. Many do. If you’ve got a business that doesn’t thrive on digital, it might not grow as fast as you like… Maybe you need to find a business that does thrive on digital.”

Not only does this encapsulate our philosophy at Musicadium, it’s a valuable insight for independent artists. Sure, people still buy CDs. But the ease with which digital allows people to buy music will mean, ultimately, that physical CD sales will go the way of the tape and minidisc.