Market Share Report

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But I thought EMI was history, on the brink of extinction, how could Terra Firma's company almost equal the Warner Music Group in new release market share, only half a percentage point separating the two?

HitsDailyDouble has an exhaustive market share report:

http://hitsdailydouble.com/news/newsPage.cgi?news07997m01

You may have to register first, but it's free, and you should check the site on a regular basis, there's a plethora of information. But be sure to check for biases, both positive and negative. Their vendetta against Lyor and Warner seems to be done now that they're getting paid, but I haven't quite figured out their problem with Randy Phillips. I thought the "Hits" guys were radio mavens, who moved into management as the business caved. Guess they want some of that tour money too...

Anyway, the reason EMI is doing so well is because of one album, Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now", which has sold one and a half million copies so far this year (complete chart here: http://www.hitsdailydouble.com/special/market/hits_marketshare_2010_03.htm)

And why did Sony essentially equal perennial market share winner Universal? Can you say Sade and Susan Boyle? Which sold 990,000 albums and 553,000 respectively?

And why is Jimmy Iovine's IGA second in label new release market share? Can you say Lady GaGa? Placing at number 3, with 553,000 and number 10, with 334,000?

Ain't that an interesting spread. Number one, Lady Antebelleum's album, sold 1.2 million more than GaGa's "Fame Monster", number ten.

In other words, now, more than ever, the major label game is about hits.

They don't want your single. And by this I don't mean track, rather I'm employing a baseball metaphor. You can argue they want home runs, but I'd say the major label game is really about grand slams.

I can't fault them for this, they're businesses. But what if you're an act, do you belong in this game?

If you think you can sell tonnage, if you make radio and TV-friendly music, take your chances. If you're looking to build to a solid touring base, despite lip-service, the major can't be bothered. EMI is fighting for its life, actually, it's already dead, they're just arguing in court over potential fraud in the inducement by Citibank. Do you really want to put your developing act on EMI?

Or even Sony. Sure, Susan Boyle and Sade rain down cash, but the company just wants new winners of the same stature. So maybe they'll start you, but they might finish you too. As in jumping ship to something that shows major traction, leaving you to languish in signed to the label hell.

And usually, you're signed to a 360 deal, so even if you're working on the road, you're working for the label. Which is doing exactly what for you?

It's interesting to question whether these sales numbers evidence Long Tail backlash. Whether it's about winners more than small sales for the truly obscure. But looking at the spread between the number one and ten albums on the chart shows that it's about very few winners!

The majors created their game. Blame MTV, the concomitant resurgence of Top Forty radio, media manipulation by Clive Davis and Tommy Mottola. They've been so busy swinging for the fences, that's all they know how to do.

Hell, they've fired all the little people who help you build slowly.

Sure, Kings Of Leon broke through, but how many other acts have been nurtured from obscurity to mainstream success? You need immediate action, and at least gold at the end of the sales curve in order to continue to get attention. So if you're performing anything but mainstream music, if your act and music need time to develop, run from the major label system.

You've got to be willing to slog it out until you get lucky. The major labels try to force luckiness. But the hype and the fakery end up turning people off. GaGa is so big, she's got nowhere to go but down. And there's not another GaGa stealing attention. It's kind of like the Tiger Woods crisis, it festers forever in the public consciousness, because no one that big is willing to do something that stupid. GaGa should be toning it down, reducing expectations in order to achieve longevity, instead we've got press stories about a billion video views... Shit, anything that ubiquitous is headed for overload and ultimate obscurity. Hell, ask my buddy Peter Frampton, he went for the gold after his big hit album, played to the masses with "I'm In You" and the "Sgt. Pepper" film, and still has regained neither his credibility nor sales. Who to blame? Management! Which steered him wrong.

How's the major gonna steer you?

Are they even interested in you?

Are they going to be around long enough to see you through five albums? Or, if the name remains, will the employees sustain?

Interesting times.

Canada

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DA PLANE

I do my best to fly American. Yup, that loyalty program works. If I'm Gold, which I am, I don't have to pay for bags and...I can get upgraded...which happened just last week!

But not to Toronto. The front of the plane was booked. I had to sit in the back.

Not too bad. I'm just gonna sit on the aisle and read my magazines all the way to Canada.

Then again, having priority access, being able to board the plane early, I'm in that hellacious anxiety-filled limbo, waiting to see who is going to sit next to me.

Yup, I get on the plane right away. Need to. To put all my stuff in the overhead bin! Not that I'm traveling with that much, but I want a little legroom, I don't want to put my computer underneath the seat in front of me.

So, they're loading from back to front. And I'm just behind the wall in coach... I see obese people go by... I'm losing sympathy for Kevin Smith. Or should I blame the airlines, with impossibly skinny seats and no legroom befitting a population of Lilliputians...

And finally, they're loading my zone.

And one of those guys who looks like a leaking barrel... He's towering over me.

And he's with this woman, I'm not sure it's his wife, because he's all over her, and usually years of marriage eviscerates that behavior, and they're debating whether he should sit in the middle or on the aisle and ultimately...he tells her he's gonna sit by the window.

Yay! Victory!

Then again, his significant other is a bit wide in the hips. No, that's an understatement. She's fat too, just not as fat. But then they start nookying around, as if they're going to join the Mile High Club right there in the cabin, without a blanket, and she's leaning against him, and her avoirdupois is...infringing upon my territory.

That's how you start wars. Hell, it's bad enough that the guy in front of me put his seat back all the way as soon as we leveled out.

So, feeling encroached upon, I pushed back once or twice. I mean she's leaning her ass right against mine, like I'm a cushion or something.

And she never gives me room, but ultimately gets up to pee, and goes to first class, which is a no-no, and she comes back and the guy goes to pee too and she waits in the aisle and when they come back, they switch seats!

Well, at least his hips were narrower, but all his fat is oozing over the armrest, I feel like I'm going to be crushed by the Marshmallow Man.

I get it. Fares have to be cheap or people won't fly. You've got to pack in a bunch of people to make the numbers work.

But we're a fat as hell country trying to squeeze into a skinny world. Kind of like a middle-aged matron sporting a spare tire trying to fit into a size 2. At least the fashion designers wised-up and made a size 10 the equivalent of a size 14.

So what's the answer?

I don't consider myself a member of the fat police. But either we've got to get people healthy or we need bigger airplane seats.

Then again, I read a great analysis in "Newsweek". Stating that it's not really the politicians' fault, blame the electorate, which wants tons of services for no money.

Yup, I don't want to pay any taxes, but fix my roads, give me my entitlements...

To tell you the truth, I would have rather stood up to Toronto. Like the CEO of Ryanair suggested, however facetiously.


VINCE BANNON

You know Vince, right?

Was a performer, a promoter, a record exec and now works for Getty Images.

People steal images for their Websites. So what does Getty do? It makes them available cheap, so people will go legit. Hell, they've got a whole site where the hoi polloi can post their own photos for usage, with a bunch of instructions attached, like NO ONE GIVES A SHIT ABOUT YOUR FAMILY PICTURES!

If only the labels got the message...

You want to be a distributor for everyone. And you want to make music so cheap, it doesn't pay to steal. Hell, stealing takes time.

If you think a buck a track is a good deal, you're probably not buying any...

Piracy isn't a battle to be fought with lawsuits, but pricing and ease of use.

Then again, everybody knows this except the rights holders, which is why the major labels are in decline.


MUSIC MANAGERS FORUM

They had a dinner, honoring Anne Murray's deceased manager and Sam Feldman.

Sam said some interesting things.

Like how it's the same as when he started. You put up posters and you build your act in the clubs. We're starting all over.

Sam also railed about 360 deals. Managers hate 'em. At least managers who are not so eager to commission the meager monies that come in on today's new deals. Shit, you can make more money playing the slots in Vegas.

Or, as Jake said... In a 360 deal, is the manager working for the label? The labels wants you to forgo commissions while you're building the act, but the manager's starving...

The majors believe they've won, 360s are the standard. But have they really lost. Have they got a perfect world where they rule but few want to play.


BILLY CORGAN

Yup, forgot, I read "Rolling Stone" on the plane.

Yes, I still get it. But everybody I told about this story in T.O. does not. The magazine has never meant less.

Anyway, Billy knows he's a has-been. He's using spiritual techniques to try and remain optimistic, that he can break through again.

It's fascinating. Usually stars won't speak the truth. They're delusional, being ripped off again and again yet believing it's sunny when it's raining out.

But Billy knows that people made a fortune on his music... And now, he's yesterday's news. Few want to see him. Same as it ever was. Which is why you can't be on the side of the labels, who take the lion's share of the money. Athletes have brief careers too. But they pay a lot in sports, the stars bring in the cash. Used to be you could make tons on the road, now the label wants a share of that too? Ridiculous.

Meanwhile, there's a long story on Shaun White, the preeminent snowboarder, in "Rolling Stone" too. You want to know what his passion is? Music. The hip shit, beats and such? No, Shaun loves Zeppelin, he's learning the guitar. The Top Forty nitwits are the sideshow, never forget this. The mainstream and the hip merged in the MTV era, but MTV finally removed "Music Television" from its logo, those days are THROUGH!


OLIVER

Can't remember his last name, can't remember the venue, but both made an impression upon me.

First, the club. Two rooms. Comedy in the front and music in the back. ON A WEDNESDAY NIGHT! You can feel the heartbeat in Toronto. In L.A? They're bumping asses, trying to get in TMZ.

And Oliver, who made it into the Top 22 on "Canadian Idol", don't hold that against him, did an acoustic set. Shit, he could sing well, play and you could follow along, and sing along.

This is music.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Beats are music, and that alternative dreck is music too. It's just that in this post modern world in which we live, people are doing derivations of derivations that the public can't relate to. Let's go BACK to the garden. Shit, Zeppelin, et al, were influenced by the blues. A great blues number still works. Do you really have to mess it up with speed, time changes and screechy vocals? Think about it. The best cars have the simplest exterior design. Think of the classics, stop trying to be hip.


RALPH SIMON

Worth knowing. Clive Calder's old partner. But unlike Clive, Ralph's still in the game, would be even if his old partner had cut him in on his score.

Ralph flies all over the world brokering mobile deals. He cemented the deal between U2 and BlackBerry. In the lobby, Ralph introduced me to this guy from India who paid Warner a bunch of money for mobile rights. Conversations with Ralph are deep, not just statistics.

And I told Ralph that the U.K., where he resides...is completely different from America.

In the U.K., people follow music like horse-racing, they're fans of the game. No one gives a shit about the game in the U.S.

In the U.K., radio still matters.

Radio matters less than ever in the U.S. You can be a radio star and play clubs, whereas someone without radio play can live off their tour receipts.

Point being, in the U.S. we've got utter chaos. And the rest of the world is following us. Everybody's making music, potential listeners are overwhelmed, there are no filters and there's no organization.

Filters will rule. People want to be told what to listen to. Online. Shit, they're not going to listen through endless b.s. to hear their favorite song on Pandora, that radio service has the lifespan of MySpace, it's about reading about something and hearing it INSTANTLY, clicking on it! Shit, you can even do this now, with LaLa and YouTube, never mind Spotify. But what you listen to... That's where the game gets interesting.

And recommendations won't come from computer algorithms, but people. Computers will decide what we listen to when you can have sex in an orgasmatron...


LUNCH

An A&R man told me how new bands manipulate the system. They cut a radio guy in for points, get airplay and then trumpet these spins to the label. It's all fake.

Then again, this same guy didn't say all new music was bad, just ABOVE AVERAGE!

Eureka, THAT'S IT! People send me decent stuff all the time. But one listen is enough. Or, as the publisher in attendance stated, like Steve Jobs' credo, music must be INSANELY GREAT!

Make that the filter. Before you recommend something, is it INSANELY GREAT!

That leaves just about everything out. But don't complain, face the facts. The public is so overwhelmed, they've only got TIME for insanely great.

Apple releases one or two products a year that they've been working on for years. And nobody in the building was born yesterday. You've got people who've been coding since before they grew pubic hair! That's what it takes to make something insanely great. So think about it, you just learned GarageBand, cut a song and made a deal for Tunecore to put it on iTunes. THAT DOESN'T MEAN IT'S GREAT OR THAT WE CARE!

The Long Tail means everything is available, so your friends and family can buy it, not that we, the general public, care whatsoever.

Ask yourself, in an era with infinite music at your fingertips, DO YOU WANT TO PLAY IT AGAIN?

Prior to this century, music was expensive, we had little, we played it again because we had no choice.

Those days are history, gone completely. Everything's available. How do we get people to pay attention, to spend time?

By being INSANELY great!

COPYRIGHTS & WRONGS-A Guide to protecting your music....2

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IN THE WORKS....

Musicians, songwriters, and recording artists typically encounter two types of copyrightable work: the first is the particular arrangement of notes and lyrics; the second is, the song itself. This is usually referred to as a musical composition, an underlying work (when referenced in relation to a sound recording), or just a song.

A song may have multiple writers, lyricists and arrangers, and the copyright can be split among them on a percentage basis. If you are writing with a partner or you involve others in your creative process, be sure to discuss early on how or if you will divvy up the copyright. Some songwriters assign all or a portion of their copyright to a music publisher who has agreed to market the song for them.

The second type of work you need to protect is the sound recording itself. A song may be recorded by any number of people so each recorded rendition is copyrightable. Even if you write as well as record the song, you need to protect your composition and your recording with separate copyrights. And, as with a musical composition, there may be others involved in the recording process, such as producers, who are entitled to a portion of the copyright. When an artist is signed to a record label, the label often retains the copyright of the master recording.

More tomorrow....

THE DIRECT APPROACH

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Industry directories are a must-have for music publishers. While they do not guarantee successful relationships with important industry decision makers, they do provide you with the information you need to make that first contact. The following list provides the name of each directory, its publisher's web site, and, where applicable, notes of interest.

A & R Registry, the Music Business Review (www.musicregistry.com). A comprehensive international directory of A &R staff and company executives for major and independent record labels. It also includes a useful list of music conferences and conventions.


Music Attorney, Legal & Business Affairs Registry, the Music Business Registry. A comprehensive international directory for contacts working in entertainment law.

Film & Television Music Guide, the Music Business Registry. An international directory of record labels, music publishers, film and television music departments and trailer houses, music supervisors, music placement and video game companies, composers, composer agents, orchestras, music editors, score mixers, music clearance departments, and more.

In Charge, Music Row (www.musicrow.com). This is the most comprehensive and up-to-date directory for the country music industry I've seen. Subscribers to the company's excellent Row Fax tip sheet also gain access to Music Row's expanded online directory.

Pitch This Music Directory,Pitch This Music (www.pitchthismusic.com). While this is a very limited directory for the Nashville area, it contains some exclusive, invaluable listings I've not seen elsewhere.

Producer & Engineer Directory, The Music Business Registry. Contains thousands of domestic and foreign listings for producers, engineers, and their agents.

Music Publishers Registry, the Music Business Registry. Do-it-yourself music publishers will find this international directory helpful in locating publishers for sub publishing and administrative deals. An administrative publishing deal is essentially one where a larger company handles royalty collections and disbursements, and sometimes licensing and promotion, for a smaller company such as your own.

Signing off for the weekend. More on Monday....

Publishing "ALL BY MYSELF"

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

There are many reasons to self-publish your songs. Keeping 100% of the royalties and one-time fees a song earns is just one reason. You also retain greater control over how your songs may be used and what those uses will pay. And assuming that you're highly motivated, nobody will promote your songs more than you. If, on the other hand, you were signed to a large music-publishing company with dozens of writers on staff, your songs might get lost in the crowd and never get the promotion they need to get cut. Furthermore, most song-publishing contracts specify that the music publisher keeps all copyrights to songs covered in the contract--even after the term of the contract expires and regardless of whether or not the company ever secures a cut for your songs.

Still, many songwriters sign with a music publisher for good reasons. It is extremely difficult and very time-consuming to make the required industry contacts with record-label A & R (artist ans repertoire) staffers, music producers, recording artists, music supervisors, and film and TV studios--contacts that major publishers already have. Being your own publisher also means taking on the financial onus, which includes demo production and replication, potential attorneys' fees, inventory, postage, phone bills, printing and more. And while all that money is going out, you've got to find a way to have some coming in to pay foir all that overhead. A songwriter signed to staff-writer deal with a publisher typically receives a monthly stipend to keep the credit hounds at bay. Even before (or despite never) getting their first cut, the staff writer earns a loving doing what they love the most--writing songs.

An experienced music publisher might also secure revenue-generating uses of your songs that you might not have thought of on your own, includingh sheet music, karaoke, video jukeboxes and musical greeting cards. They probably already have the contacts you lack with print publishers and subpublishers. The latter collect mechanical royalties for record sales and synchronization fees for the use of songs in TV shows and films abroad. (I'll discuss licensing for various uses of songs in more detail as we move along in this series.) Many successful publishers hire influencial song-pluggers to pitch the songs in their catalog, greatly increasing the chance of getting a cut. And many a fruitful collaboration between songwriters has been facilitated by major publishers having strong networks throughout the creative community.

You might be thinking at this point, "Screw the do-it-yourself approach. Give me publishing contract." Unfortunately, it's not that easy. As a highly successful producer and friend recently explained to me, the big publishing companies are interested in signing only songwriters who already have a track record of writing hits. Yet it's "lmost impossible" (in his words to get your first song cut--even if you have high-level industry contacts listening--without an influencial publisher or song plugger pitching you song. It's a catch-22.

Despite the sobering realities of independent song plugging, I love the business side of music publishing. I find managing my own music-publishing company to be exciting and self-empowering. But as you'll learn, it's also a lot of work...and it WILL distract you from your creative process. Find what you do the best and do it. Find what you do the worse and get with someone that is good at what you are not good at, team up with them and just get it done. It takes a lifetime to gain a ton of knowledge, and even then you may not get the results. As in a band, team work is EVERYTHING. Name one thing in your life, you do, can do or have done by yourself.

More tomorrow...Baby Steps to take.

Setting Up Your Own Music Publishing Company

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Perhaps the most commom career oriented question unsigned songwriters ask me is, "How can I get my songs published?" Many of those same writers have only a vague notion of what it means to be published. If you've already sold recordings of your songs to the public, you are a published songwriter. The federal 1976 Copyright Act defines publication (the act of publishing as "the distribution of copies of phonorecords of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease or lending." Phonorecords are defined as "material objects in which sounds...are fixed."

There are a lot of ways to make money from the use of one of your songs than just selling your recording of it. Other ay cut, or record, the song. It might be used in a movie, a movie trailer, a TV series, a TV special, a music video, a videogame, for consumer advertising, for a ringtone, or for a myriad of other uses. Promoting, licensing, and getting paid for such song uses is the job of a music publisher.

Many unsigned songwriters would love to hand off business oriented tasks to a music publisher so they can focus on the creative task of writing songs. Unfortunately, the moment you sign on the dotted line with a music publisher, you give away your copyrights and half the revenues the songs covered in the contract will earn. For these and other reasons, many songwriters choose to keep all the profits and self-publish their songs.

This article will explain the basics of how to set up and operate your own music-publishing company. To keep this article to a manageable length, my focus will be on publishing your own songs. Before I get to the nuts and bolts of becoming a music publisher, let's examine the benefits and drwbacks of doing so.

Over the next week, we wil discuss this topic at great length. If you have songwriter friends, this will be the place to get the information the way that it will best apply to you.

Tip sheets are an essential, subscriber based service for music publishers. Here are a few for country music, which include the label, artist, producer(s), contact person(s) and recording schedule for each project.

Pitch This Country Music Tip Sheet (www.pitchthismusic.com) is the most comprehensive listing of current projects for major-label and second-tier (prominent indie and joint venture) companies. Published monthly, this tip sheet is generated by successful, Nashville based song pluggers, and often includes difficult-to-obtain details on what specific types of material are being sought for each project listed (for example, "Soulful, real-life lyrics with range and attitude"). Check this site out, determine if it has value to your objectives and bookmark this page.

More tomorrow.

Fireflies

Alanis Morissette via last.fm

I needed to take a shower.

Some things are immutable. You've got to show up for appointments on time. But I couldn't get up from the computer, I needed to hear "Fireflies" one more time. And then again. And again.

That's the mark of a hit record.

Not where it is on the chart, how many people have bought it, but whether your mood completely changes when you hear it, and what you desire most in life is to hear it again!

Driving on Pico I caught the tail end of the song on Sirius XM's "20 on 20". Reminded me of the old days, driving on the Santa Monica Freeway, pushing radio buttons, desirous of hearing "Sexual Healing" one more time.

One listen is almost enough. To make you want to hear it once more. Then, with each listen you want to hear it one more time. You play it again, getting into a trance. Kind of like Alanis Morissette's "Hand In Pocket", getting infected is worse than contracting swine flu. Better than any drug, a hit song will make you feel exuberant and alive, even if the rest of your life positively sucks.

It's not about the lyrics. Hell, you catch the lyrics last. But I love that he uses "bizarre", as in "my dreams get real bizarre". Don't yours? Happens all the time, you barely remember what happens, but you wake up off-kilter, positively alone except for the characters in your nighttime escapade who are too often fictional, or possess different personalities than the people with the same visages in real life.

Where does the magic start?

Sure, there's an ethereal intro, but it's not riveting.

Then there's that hooky groove, with the big bass beat, without sounding like what's on Top Forty radio, which is only groove, sans melody. This guy with a thin voice is singing up and down the scale, this is not a Timbaland production.

Then there are the strings! Brian Wilson knew the power of strings, they're not anathema to pop music, they're not inherently schmaltzy, they add meaning, and texture.

Then the processed vocals when the song breaks down, kind of like Steve Marriott in "Itchycoo Park", if Steve Marriott was a wimp.

Then, when the verse begins again, there's more in the track. The calliope-like sound brings in joy, those strings add counterpoint. The line about the disco ball warms you up, then the whole track comes alive, like a denizen finally awaking from a slumber.

Then, back into that verse groove. You may tire of counting sheep, but now you're fully enraptured, you've left the planet, you're in music wonderland.

"I'd like to make myself believe"

That this track will be inspirational, that it will cause the business to do a 180, that melody will return, that music will eclipse marketing, that a whole row of infectious tracks will come driving down the pike.

Doubtful.

But this guy did cut this wholly alone, in his basement. He didn't go on "American Idol", didn't need Kara DioGuardi to polish it into oblivion. All he needed was tools, to follow his muse.

I'd like to make myself believe that music this good doesn't need a major label to break through. That just putting it up online is enough to get you started. That appears to be the Owl City story, then again, who knows where truth lies.

But the truth is "Fireflies" is a freakin' great track. The best on the Owl City album, but not the only good one. Check it out:

http://www.owlcitymusic.com/home.aspx

Or: http://www.myspace.com/owlcity

Or, you can watch the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-4ln_sXty0&feature=player_profilepage

Read the Owl City story here: http://www.startribune.com/entertainment/music/59802492.html?page=1&c=y