Island Def Jam Sinks To New Low

I'm not so sure if this smacks of desperation or it's just another lame-brained label scheme, but Island Def Jam will include advertising on the upcoming Mariah Carey CD "Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel."

The CD, to be released on Sept. 15th, features a 34-page mini-magazine co-produced with Elle that will include the usual liner notes and lyrics along with ads from Elizabeth Arden, Angel Champagne, Carmen Steffen's, Le Métier de Beauté and the Bahamas Board of Tourism. If things go well, it's reported that Island Def Jam hopes to do similar booklet deals for Rihanna, Bon Jovi, Kanye West and others.

As an extension of the program, WalMart will supposedly merchandise Carey's new CD alongside her signature Arden fragrance (who have an ad in the CD booklet) just outside the music aisle, and intends to display them together in the beauty department (boy, I'm sure that'll really boost sales).

One of the follies of this particular campaign is assuming that the people that purchase the CD will be able to afford or even care about the luxury products being advertised. The advertisers chosen just make it look like a straight money grab by the label (which it is anyway).

Perhaps this scheme will work and even be welcomed by Mariah's fans, but you can bet that a lot of music fans will take a personal offense to this kind of blatant co-branding if it threatens to become the norm. Adverts so closely tied to the music violates the trust and bond that an artist works so hard to develop with her fans in Music 3.0. The artist is the one and only brand that the true fan cares about, and co-branding generally cheapens that experience.

While I applaud the label for thinking outside the box (sorta), music co-branding hasn't really been a big winner before in the eyes of the consumer. I can't image that Mariah's package will find a different result.

And The Concert Business Gets Worse

We've been seeing signs that the bubble has burst for the concert industry just the way it did for the rest of the music industry with this summer's ongoing discounts from mega-promoter LiveNation. Now comes an article from Reuters that indicates that virtually no one is selling out a tour this season.

That's right - even superstars like Paul McCartney, AC/DC, Bruce Springsteen, Jonas Brothers, Coldplay (big surprise), and U2 are struggling to fill seats.

For certain, the economy has finally caught up to the concert industry, but that's not all. The high prices and perceived gouging have caught up too. Couple all that with the fact that most of these mega acts have toured in major locations so much that it's not an event any more, especially for what amounts to be such a big bite out of the the consumer's pocketbook.

In fact, demand is so low that the legal ticket scalper StubHub has begun selling tickets at a massive loss instead of their normal hefty markup. Indeed, it's been reported that some consumers "have already purchased tickets as low as $1 for Springsteen and Coldplay, $9 for Kenny Chesney and $10 for the Jonas Brothers this season, with tickets listing for as low as $16 for upcoming McCartney shows this weekend in Maryland," according to the Reuters article.

It's also been reported that Live Nation is extending its half price ticket deal at ampitheaters as well as expanding its summer long "No Fee Wednesdays" promotion to include more than 1500 smaller shows at clubs and theaters.

Could this be a turning point in the concert business? Has the final music industry bubble burst? We'll know by the end of the month when the summer concert season ends.

Mixing For Internet Distribution

A different approach is required if you're mixing for Internet distribution. Here are some things to consider if your mix is intended for the many lossy encoding formats that are required to get your files online, excerpted from the 2nd edition of The Mixing Engineer's Handbook:

• Start with the highest quality audio file possible.

• Filter out the top end at whatever frequency works best (judge by listening.) MP3 has the most difficulty with high frequencies. Cutting these frequencies liberates lots of bits (literally) for encoding the lower and mid frequencies. You trade some top end for better quality in the rest of the spectrum.

• A busy mix can lose punch after encoding. Sparse mixes, like acoustic jazz trios, seem to retain more of the original audio oomph.

• Make sure your level is reasonably hot. Use the “Tips for Hot Levels,” or normalize if you must, but it’s far better to record at a good level in the first place.

• Don’t squander bandwidth. Your song might compress a lot better at 32kHz than at 44.1kHz because the encoding algorithm can concentrate on the more critical midrange.

• Don’t squash everything. Leave some dynamic range so that the encoding algorithm has something to look at.

• Use multiband compression (like a Finalizer) or other dynamic spectral effects sparingly. They just confuse the algorithm.

• Set your encoder for “maximum quality,” which allows it to process for best results. It takes just a little bit longer with today's fast computers, but it’s worth it.

• Remember: MP3 encoding almost always results in the post-encoded material being hotter than the original material. Limit the output of the material intended for MP3 to –1dB instead of the commonly used –.1 or –.2dB.

Production Workshop At Serve The Song

Serve The Song has posted, 'What Makes A Song Sound Bad - Part 2' in my Production Workshop:

In part 2 of exploring what makes a badly written song, we’ll look a bit deeper into some of the most common faults of a novice songwriter. Forgive the references to mostly old songs but I wanted to be sure that everyone has heard them before.

No Bridge - Another common songwriting mistake is no bridge. In songwriting, a bridge is an interlude that connects two parts of that song, building a harmonic connection between those parts. Normally you should have heard the verse at least twice. The bridge may then replace the 3rd verse or precede it. In the latter case, it delays an expected chorus. The chorus after the bridge is usually the last one and is often repeated in order to stress that it is final. If and when you expect a verse or a chorus and you get something that is musically and lyrically different from both verse and chorus, it is most likely the bridge (Van Halen’s Panama comes to mind).

Read the rest at Serve The Song.

I Hate The Film Look

I was interviewing a cameraman the other day and he made a big deal out of his ability to get "that film look" with a video camera. He looked at me with amazement when I told him that was the last thing I wanted.

I hate the film look. I want it real and in your face, not warm and fuzzy "like a movie." Why this nostalgia continues for the look of the 1920's astounds me. I'm pretty sure that had the film pioneers of those days had a choice between the realism of today's hi-def video and the otherworldly softness of film that they'd choose video in most cases.

I'm not talking about basic shooting fundamentals like framing and focusing, I'm referring to shooting at 24 frames per second instead of 30, shortening the shutter angle and limiting the dynamic range in an effort to make it look like the shoot was done with a film camera.

This goes especially for music video. The cinema look provides a kind of space between the viewer and the subject that seems so anti-Music 3.0. In these days of reaching out directly to the fan base, why try to keep them at a distance when they want to be as close to you as they can?

I'm about to begin writing a new book called "The Music Video Handbook" that will cover everything that a musician needs to know about making any kind of video that might be helpful to his career. I'll include a section on how to get "that film look" because I know that some readers might want that look, but I'll continue to stay away from it myself.

The Demise Of The Music Magazine

In a post on Slate.com, journalist Jonah Weiner of the now defunct Blender magazine postulates on the reasons why music magazines are quickly falling by the wayside. In the last 4 months Spin and Vibe both closed down along with Blender, and Rolling Stone cut their masthead, which leaves the world of music journalism pretty thin these days.

Here are Weiner's reasons for music magazine's demise with my comments afterwards:

1. There are fewer superstars, and the same musicians show up on every magazine cover. We used to have a new music trend every 11 years or so, which supplied us with a new round of musicians that at least some of us cared about. Grunge was about the last trend to take the music world by storm and that hit it's peak in the early 90's and was gone by the turn of the century. Here we are some 20 years down the road with nothing new to capture our musical imaginations. No wonder we're bored with music. The farm team has faded.

2. Music mags have less to offer music lovers, and music lovers need them less than ever anyway. Music magazines were the social networks of music lovers (sometimes called an "affinity group") before there were social networks. We waited for the mag to come out to read about the latest gossip about our favorite artist or a review on her latest release. No need to wait these days, you can immediately find any info from either a musical gossip site, a blog or even from the website of the artist herself. And no need to wait for reviews when you can find out everything you need to know about a new release from people you trust on any social network you choose.

3. Music magazines were an early version of social networking. But now there's this thing called "social networking." As I pointed out above, the Internet has killed any reason to pick up a magazine. You can get more info than you ever wanted with a Google or Wikipedia search for free.

I'll add a 4th.

4. The coolness factor. Once upon a time, if your friends saw you were reading a music magazine, they thought that you were cool. You were in-the-know and plugged-in. We're way past that now. Today you're looked upon as a dinosaur and as some out-of-touch relic who just doesn't get it. You talk about newspapers dying. At least they have news that's only a day or two old and even some exclusive info. With a mag, your news is at least a month old and maybe more. Who wants to be that irrelevant?

No matter what magazine you pick up these days, they're way thinner than they used to be. The advertisers have figured it out, but most publishers still cling to the past. It's hard to blame them. Who wants to change when they've had it so good for so long?

Checklist For Overdubs

I'm in the middle of writing a new book called "The Music Producer's Handbook." Chapter 14 is a series of checklists for various parts of production. Here's a checklist to use before you embark on the overdub portion of a project.

1) Do you have a list of overdub priorities? Do you know which overdubs absolutely must get done and which ones are less important? A list will keep you on track budget-wise and time-wise.

2) Can you record in the control room? Most players prefer to record in the control room because they like to hear what you’re hearing and they like the immediacy of the communication.

3) Are there too many people in the control room or studio? The fewer people, the fewer the distractions. It's best to keep all friends, associates, entourage and hangers-on out of the studio when you're working to keep the distractions to a minimum.

4) Did you move the vocal or instrument into the big part of the studio? All instruments sound best when there’s some space for the sound to develop, so move it to the big part of the studio for overdubs (after you've done any basic track fixes). You can cut down on any unwanted reflections from the room by place baffles around the mic and player.

5) When doubling, are you trying to do something a little different on each track? A different mic, mic preamp, room, singer, or distance from the mic will all help to make the sound bigger.

6) When doubling or adding more guitars, do you have a variety of instruments and amplifiers available? Two guitars (a Les Paul and a Strat, for instance) and two amplifiers (a Fender and a Marshall is the classic combination) combined with different pickup choices will allow a multitude of guitar tracks to more effectively live in the mix together.

7) Are you making it sound better, not just different? Changes aren't always for the better. Is there a big difference between what you just recorded and the original part? Does the new part make everyone in the studio go crazy in a good way?

8) Would it be better to try the part tomorrow? Is the player burned out? Does he show signs of failing concentration? You'd be surprised how much more you can accomplish when you're fresh.

9) Do you have the studio talkback mic on? Can you hear the musicians in the studio at all times between takes? If they're talking to you and you can't hear them, they'll feel isolated.

10) Do you have the control room talkback mic always on? Can the musicians hear you at all times in between takes? Periods of silence can be a mood killer.

11) Does the player want to play it again? If a player feels strongly about playing it over, he probably can do it better. Just be sure to keep the last recorded part before recording again.

If you follow this overdub checklist, I think you'll find that your sessions will run smoother and more efficiently, which should result in a better end product.

10 Pieces Of Technology I Hate

In no particular order, here are a 10 pieces of technology that make me want to scream:

Software by Microsoft - The buggiest, bloated piece of crap ever, and I'm a Mac user so I don't have to endure their operating system. How this company ever got to be the behemoth it's become is beyond me. Every time I'm forced to use Word you can bet that I will curse Bill Gates about every 5 minutes or so.

Bluetooth anything - Does any of it really work? I especially hate those cellphone bluetooth headpieces not because I use one, but because everyone that calls me that's using one sounds so crappy (there's that word again).

Clam shell/blister packaging - Thief-proof and consumer proof all rolled into one. This isn't really a piece of technology, only a by-product of it gone wrong.

The new pop-ups - I thought we all had pop-up blockers on our browsers? Yet these pop-ups and pop-unders still torment me and everyone else.

Stupid as shit cable TV boxes - How can such a technologically advanced society as ours still tolerate cable set-top boxes that still have only the intelligence of Apollo 11? Broadcast television could be so much better if only the powers that be (which I suspect are the cable companies) would load their boxes up with 1990's technology. If you want a reason why television is loosing viewers to the Internet, this is a good one.

Blu-Ray - I need this......why? The only time I enjoy HD is watching sports, it's superfluous on anything else. So why do I need to buy another player and another format? All those extras? I didn't watch 'em on DVD, what makes you think I'll watch them on BD (and I used to produce DVD extras)? Now as a bit-bucket for backup, it's a different story and I love it.

Phones that sound like crap (that word again) - Why in this day and age do wired and cordless phones sound worse than that ones that AT&T leased us for 50 years?

Monster cable - I actually don't use this because I know better, but I'm always amazed that they can charge 5 times more for a product and make people think their audio quality is going to improve as a result.

Automated phone services - I can handle a couple of "Press 5 for .......", but please, let me speak to a real person when I want.

Social networking - Does the world really need another social network and do I really have to be on it (or have the time to be on it)?

Technology is wonderful and has brought us more connectivity, convenience, and downright fun than we could ever have hoped for. It's understandable that some things start out as a good idea only to devolve into something that's exasperating. But then, some of the above look as though they're been designed to frustrate us from the start.

Digital Music Is About To Change

You can feel it in the air (or on the screen might be a better phrase). Digital Music is about to change, hopefully for the better. For years the major labels and every industry pundit has been predicting that music delivery by subscription will be the future instead of music downloading, and it looks like they might be right.

Why collect Gigs of downloads when you can listen to virtually any song you'd like to at any time, anywhere? That's the premise of subscription music, which until recently, didn't seem to have much steam behind it. Sure Rhapsody and Napster had a tad less than 2 million subscribers, but you really couldn't call that critical mass.

But in the last year, the free service Pandora has picked up steam and gave even the most casual listeners a taste of what subscription could be like. Now the buzz is that Europe's highly touted Spotify service is about to enter the States as they solve their licensing problems with the major labels, which the pundits see as a game changer.

But the 800 pound gorilla is lurking in the jungle. Rumor is that Apple will trot out a subscription service based around iTunes soon, which will open up the floodgates and change the industry forever. As industry consultant Ted Cohen said in an interview for my upcoming book, Music 3.0, "If iTunes announced subscription tomorrow, we’d be over the hump."

Yet questions remain. It seems like consumers now understand that they only get 10 songs per month for $10 from a download service as compared to 10 million songs on a subscription service. The bigger issues will become if and how the artists get paid fairly from that $10 and if publishers can build a mechanism to take advantage of the digital accounting so the songwriters can get paid as well (it's now done manually and costs too much to administrate).

The next 12 months should be very interesting indeed in the digital music world.

The Pulse Of Consumer Electronics: Newspapers

Say what you want about newspapers dying, they are still an accurate indicator of consumer electronics trends.

I've read newspapers daily since I was a kid (except for a few years when I was on the road) and I've noticed that you can pretty much spot the hot electronics item just by watching the number of dedicated product adverts and their placement in the local rag. Here's what I've noticed through the years:

Stereo equipment - Big in the 70's and 80's, until it wasn't. Ironically, the average student or consumer had a far better sounding system back then than he has now. The product was really quality audio, not stereo equipment. Quality audio is a particularly desired attribute today and that makes stereo equipment no longer a major factor in consumer electronics.

Computers - You couldn't turn a page in a newspaper in the late 80's and 90's without seeing an advert for everything from known consumer brands to small mom & pop shops building their own computers at prices you could afford (service was another matter, unfortunately). These home-brew commercial units were replaced in the 90's with national brands like Apple and Dell being sold by the local dealerships. You still see the occasional ad in the Saturday paper, but for the most part, the dedicated computer stores have gone away.

Cordless phones - Not cell phones, the ones you use in your house. In the 90's, if the ad wasn't about a computer, it was about a cordless phone. Talk anywhere in your house without being tethered to a cable. What a concept!

Cell phones - In the late 90's and early 2000's, ads for cell phones were everywhere from both tiny startups to large corporations. Every corner had a store selling cell phones (with a couple more down the block) and they all wanted you to know they had just the one for you.

Big screen TV's - Not the LCD/plasmas that we see today, but the first screens past 36 inches. It was new, it was great for sports, it was big. You needed one.

Digital cameras - The most up-to-date in electronic gadgetry, digital cameras are the latest consumer electronic item to catch the buying public's imagination. Every day, local and national stores run ads in all sections of the newspapers for cameras and accessories of all types and at all price ranges. Take pictures of your life, put them on your blog and website, share them with friends, all in higher and higher quality for fewer and fewer $$$.

I believe that the next trend will be small HD movie cameras like Flip Mino, but who knows? I do know that whatever the trend, it'll be here any moment since the digital camera craze is getting a bit long in the tooth. Until then, I need to upgrade my SLR camera.

Bad Gig Experience

Every band has bad gigs, from the most neophyte garage band to superstar acts like Coldplay. Recently I was asked to comment on some conditions that can cause a bad gig and offer some solutions. While Coldplay won't run into any of the following anytime soon, chances are that they and every other band came across these challenges at some time in their careers.

Here we go:

1) The band is constantly told, "You're too loud!", something anyone who's ever gigged has experienced.
SOLUTION: Play more dynamically. Chances are that if your audience is complaining about the volume level then you're probably playing at one level throughout every song. If you start playing dynamically then you'll never be perceived as being too loud since your music will breathe volume-wise. It's the constant din that the audience hates. To put dynamics in it's simplest terms, play as loud as you can during the loudest sections of the song, play as soft as you can during the most quiet sections of the song, and back-off on the volume during most sections with vocals (like verses).

2) Getting to a venue and finding out that you're playing in the dark because the lighting is poor or non-existent.
SOLUTION: The best thing is to buy a small lighting rig since they can be had for the price of a small amplifier these days. Lights should be considered an integral part of your show and you should always assume that the lighting will be inadequate to make you look good. Even if the lighting rig at the venue is sufficient, your lights can always be used for additional impact. At the very least, carry some colored gels with you since most lighting gels at venues are usually washed out from constant use. It's amazing how good you can look with a fresh gel.

3) The stage is too big.
SOLUTION: This doesn't sound like a problem on the surface, but I've seen too many bands try to take advantage of a large stage when they're not used to it by setting up too far away from one another and completely loosing their timing and balance. A large stage requires some getting used to and sometimes even some different gear if the monitor system is inadequate. Stay set up as close to one another as you're normally comfortable with if it's your first time on a large stage, and gradually spread out in subsequent gigs (if there are any) as you become familiar with the situation.

4) Stage is too small.
SOLUTION: So you have a 5 piece band but the stage is only big enough for the drummer and maybe the bass player? Not to worry, use the stage as a drum riser and take as much space as you need out onto the dance floor. You'll need it to put on any kind of decent show and being scrunched together on a tiny stage doesn't do anyone any good, if you can help it. This is where having your own lighting rig really helps because it can act as sort of a demarcation line of your "new stage." This only works if you're already pretty good and can get the audience quickly on your side and doesn't work if you're just starting out.

There are some other situations that can ruin a gig, like a soundman's tendency to favor kick and snare over the vocals, or slamming the audience in the eardrum with level, that I will elaborate on down the line.

By the way, there's more about this topic in "How To Make Your Band Sound Great".

Production Workshop At Serve The Song

I've just started a new weekly Production Workshop at Serve the Song. Here's a portion of the post, with a link to the rest.

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Welcome to my first Production Workshop post. Every week we’ll look at a different aspect of music, recording and performance, all with an eye on improving your songs and recordings. Speaking of songs, that’s a good place to start since if you don’t have a good song, not much else matters.

We all know it when we hear a great song because we can’t get enough of it. It makes us move, it makes us listen and it draws us in. But it’s a lot harder to write a great, or even good, song than it seems, as anyone who’s ever tried to write one knows. We can analyze great songs all day long to see what makes them tick, but sometimes can learn just as much by analyzing the ones that aren’t that great as well.

Here are a number of common traits that stick out when an artist or band that’s inexperienced at songwriting and/or arranging first play me their songs. Keep in mind that we’re talking about songs from any genre of music. No matter what it is, from rock to country to goth to rock-a-billy to alien space music, you want the song to be interesting to your particular audience, so most, if not all, of the following will usually apply.

For the entire post, go to Serve The Song.