Came across an interesting post today from Scott Sorian of S-S Records. His comments on how file sharing has hurt his label’s CD sales are very interesting and his assessment of the cumbersome iTunes route seems to be on point. This is just the kind of company I had in mind when I wrote the post about digital distribution. Like so many indie labels, his company is losing the fat margins from CD sales and he is adjusting by clinging onto vinyl releases. He seems to be of the opinion that these labels are in denial but I’m pretty sure they’re not, they just don’t have much of a choice right now. Especially the ones that have already developed into machines that depend on those CD margins just to eat. It could very well be that we are on our way to becoming a mostly vinyl/digital industry with only minor complementary CD sales. Link (via)

“….Just read your thing on rapidshare and your concerns about it. I am not sure if there is much of a difference between soulseek style filesharing of LPs and rapidshare downloads of full LPs (that are in print) on specialty blogs. Though you can trust a blogger’s taste, same goes with individual soulseek posters. People not only search for specific things on soulseek, they also follow certain posters and hit all their files.

As far as the impact on a label’s sales, I can’t speak to the impact of rapidshare and a specialty blog, but I do know that the combination of soulseek, lower priced DSL, fast burners, and 10 cent cdrs killed my CD sales. I put out three cds, all great records, all that got great reviews and much airplay on WFMU and other stations. I pressed and sold 1000 each of A Frames s/t & A Frames II and sold them in less than a years time (slower than both vinyl sales by the way). I did a repressing of each thinking that they would sell the same or faster due to the Subpop signing. Funny thing happened with the rise of soulseek and the other things I mentioned: My sales of A Frames CDs ground to a near halt. Of the second pressing of both cds, I’ve sold about 300 of AF II and 500 of AF s/t and that after more than a year.

The Monoshock cd has sold about 500. Its release was unfortunately timed with the jump of popularity of soulseek. After we were done editing it Scott Derr thanked me for putting it out and hoped I was able to break even. I quipped that it would sell 1000 and download 3000. I was off. It sold 500 and probably downloaded (or was burned) 5000. Of the 500 I sold, about 450 was in the first 9 months. In the past year and a half I’ve sold 50. If not for Revolver pushing it, I would have sold far less.

Compare that to undownloadable vinyl. A Frames - Complication 7″ sold 1000 in 4 months. 1500 of A Frames - Police 1000 were pressed in November and 150 are left. I pressed 500 each of Frustration 7″ & Cheveu 7″ and that was maybe a month ago. I have 200 left of Frustration, who have a following, and 300 of Cheveu, of whom few outside Paris knew about til the S-S record came out.

I reluctantly started doing CDs because there was a call for them and I thought the profit would make it able for me to put out more and more obscure vinyl. Plus it would enable me to actually pay the bands decent money rather than give them a pile of records with the words, “Here sell these.” This worked for one pressing of each of the A Frames CDs and then the downloaders, filesharers and burners killed that. I now put out only vinyl because I love the format and it pays for itself. I can sell a small run of 7″s by a relatively obscure band in far less time than I can a CD by a known band. The way it is now putting out a CD by a known band is pretty much and announcement to people that it is now available for free on soulseek.

Because putting vinyl on to the internet involves a real time commitment and not point click copy download, only real obsessives do it. And real vinyl obsessives are always gonna track down and buy the vinyl even if it is available as a download. People also want an object that they think is real and so they buy vinyl. Cheveu’s Dog was available on their My Space site for at least 6 months before the record came out and if anything its availability has helped vinyl sales. I think this is because people look at CDs as a cheap ripoff and as disposable as a bic lighter.

You might suggest that I get into the paid download game to make up for the loss of CD sales. Being a small label, doing the pay for download thing is cumbersome and really not worth it. The major distros of downloads dont deal direct with small labels. They want volume not one download a week. So to get in with something like itunes, I would have to go through two more layers of distribution, which means the distros make more than me for doing nothing but accounting. At the end of the year, I’d be lucky to split $500 between the label and the bands.

All that said, I do an MP3 blog, though it is of music that is very obscure and/or out of print, and I download off of similar blogs. I don’t have a problem with it. What I do have a problem with is the mass denial by “indie” people regarding download/filesharing’s affect on labels. There is this cavalier assumption that everyone who checks something out via unpaid download is going to buy it. In my experience, that isn’t true. At least not with CDs. I say, just be frank. Downloading/filesharing is not home taping and it does have an adverse effect of labels, the impact being greater on small labels where 500 lost sales is a hell of a lot more than a major losing 5,000 sales. That is something that really needs to be kept in mind if one is truly a supporter of independently produced music. This isn’t about greed. It is about finding a way to pay the bills.”

Davey D breaks down the fight against the ills of radio consolidation. Link

Editor’s Note: National examples of how communities have fought to prevent mass consolidation of radio airwaves provide a lens into the uncertain future of radio. Davey D is a journalist, deejay and community activist. He is currently the co-host of Hard Knock Radio, a Hip Hop-oriented political talk show which airs daily on KPFA 94.1 FM. He also pens a Hip Hop political column for the San Jose Mercury News.

I like. Link (via)

Good interview here with Wu-Tang affiliate Dreddy Kruger, who is also the mastermind behind Wu-Tang Meets Indie Culture compilation released last year. Read on about his upcoming projects, thoughts on Ghostface and an update on Rza. Interview

Man, [Think Differently] got a whole lot. Inspectah Deck, GZA, and RZA’s projects are going to be the highlights of the year out of the 9 generals. RZA’s about to give GZA a whole album again on some Liquid Swords sh*t, and he’s doing the same with Deck. RZA’s in that zone again, where he’s just concentrating on putting his beats together to try and bring the Wu sound back. Then I got the 5% record with Lord Jamar. I’m really excited about that. That record is strictly nothing but 5%ers on there. Nothing but the gods. I’m talking about Lord Jamar, Grand Puba, GZA, RZA, GZA’s son, Ol’Dirty Bastard’s son, Lord Jamar’s son, Poppa Wu, you know what I’m saying. That’s another concept record that I put together with Lord Jamar. Nobody’s ever put out an album under The 5% title. That’s coming out in June.

To follow-up on a recent post, you can now listen to Mike Patton’s widely anticipated album Peeping Tom on his mysp*ce page. Listen, More Info

Also, peep his recent performance of the lead single Mojo with Rahzel and Dan The Automator on the Conan O’Brien show. Link

That’s right. Venezuela’s socialist government provides funds for rap workshops in some of the most dangerous towns in Caracas. Link

In a twist in Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s self-styled socialist revolution, his government, which has long pumped proceeds from oil sales into health and education for the poor, is paying for rap-crazy youths to prime their rhymes as an escape route from drugs and violence in some of Caracas’ toughest neighborhoods.

Original Uprock. Link (via)

Interesting interview with Steve Beckett, Warp Records co-Founder. Warp is a cool label not scared to release unclassifiable music. It was one of the first labels I know of with a proprietary digi store to support its releases. Lex was once owned by Warp if I remember correctly. Lex put out some ok albums with nice cover art. They have a Ghostface + Doom collabo planned to drop this year. Here’s a single from that album called Angeles. Beckett interview with Japan Times, lex site

Supernatural wants to rap for nine hours straight to beat the guiness record. Anyone have audio of the guy who currently holds the record? But will this really prove anything? Link

In my mind, one of the main goals for all musicians and indie labels in the current market place should be to leverage the distribution and exposure enhancment capabilities of the internet. That being said, it takes a lot of work and a considerable amount of resources to develop and maintain a proprietary site with a good user-friendly interface and a solid content management system. We all aren’t lucky enough to have web developers as good friends and we all can’t afford to pay for sites like the recently launched DefinitiveJux.net (which, by the way, is a great example of what consumers can expect from all artist/label sites in the near future; a portal to not only news and samples but actual 1st party digital distribution). So, if you are an artist/indie label that is still hustlin’ and saving up doe for your own proprietary website + digistore, in the mean time you might want to opt for a close second via sites like CdBaby.com.

CdBaby is not a new service to indie artists. The site has been around for a minute and has a ton of members. But recently CDBaby started to offer digital distribution as part of their service package. When you sign up a cd/album, which includes a one-time-only setup cost of $35, you can now opt to have your music sent to a variety of CDBaby’s digital partners. The partners include well respected sites like Itunes, Rhapsody, Emusic and a whole bunch of other third party digi stores. To me this is more significant than Soundclick’s recent entry into the fray as digital distributor. Soundclick offers distro for indies but only through their own site which does not offer the significant additional exposure that comes along with having access to all the eyeballs that reach sites like Itunes. That extra exposure alone is probably worth $35 (marketing costs average more than that per album, and considering the potential exposure I would argue it is worth it. You also need a barcode by the way, but if you don’t have one it will cost you about $20 to use CDbaby’s) per album, right? By the way, can you believe Soundclick has the nerve to ask to keep approximately 50% of all sales? What’s that about? CDBaby offers more and only asks for 9% of digital sales. That’s right, you keep 91 cents on the dollar (can you spell liberation?). Too bad Cheap Trick and the Allman Brothers Band didn’t have access to a service like that before they signed with Sony, they might have avoided their lawsuit (link updated) and gotten more than 4.5 cents per download. Can you believe Sony is deducting “packaging” and “breakage” fees for mp3s? What the @#$!?

Anyway, it seems the idea of providing indies with access to digital distrbution services is currently booming. Vulture Venture capitalists, are you paying attention? Some popular examples are IODA (Independent Online Distribution Alliance), Burnlounge, Musicane, and Easybe. All offer varying levels of benefits but CDBaby is probably the best I’ve seen so far. But who’s to say who will land on top of the heep? Myspace would be a logical conclusion, if they have good advice and stop dissing the original demographic that made them so popular - independent musicians. But by the looks of their recent attempt to bamboozle their users by claiming non-exclusive rights to user-created content, who knows? Itunes? Google base? Whoever it is, musicians will eventually evolve into self-sustaining record labels. Bye bye Sony BMG + friends…oh, and before you go, f u (just kidding, we appreciate all the hard work you put in over the years, but jeez, if the end is in your sights, do the honorable thing, don’t be afraid to go into the light).

SOUNDCLICK
How much do I get paid? We sell each single MP3 download for 0.75
USD and we pay you 0.37 USD for each of these sales. We sell each MP3 album for
7.99 USD and we pay you 4.00 USD for each of these sales. These are default
settings, you can set your own sales price from a wide range of sales prices.

For how long does the download link stay active? The link stays active for 24 hours
Can I sell my downloads with a higher bitrate than 128kbps? If you have a VIP account you can upload your mp3 songs in a higher bitrate. The download we sell will then actually have the higher bitrate. Standard accounts are limited to the 128kbps bitrate.

CDBABY (cdbaby.net/dd)
CD Baby keeps only 9%
Whatever income is generated from your music and paid to us,
we keep only a 9% cut, paying you 91%.
NO additional hidden fees or exceptions. NO recurring fees. NO expenses taken out of your 91%. This is a free service for CD Baby members
There is NO startup fee to get involved. You just have to be a CD Baby member, meaning: your CD has to be for sale on cdbaby.com.
If your CD is not in CD Baby already, our main $35 CD Baby set
up still applies. That $35 is for the warehousing and work to have it on
cdbaby.com.
Your album needs to have a valid barcode. If you don’t have one
already we can make you one for $20.

Short interview with Marco from Bully Records via hip hop core (translated from french) . New Grandmaster Caz/Dj Signify project in the works? link

“One thing’s for sure…it’s going to make it very difficult for people to imitate my sound”

According to his site, Dj Shadow’s new record has been completed and will be presented to Universal soon. link, thanks spine

Full streaming preview to Radioinactive’s new album, Soundtrack To A Book. Link

While listening to the Wakeup Call radio show on WBAI 99.5 FM Tuesday morning they were playing excerpts from Letter to the President and fundraising for the station. They brought up the fact that the money they’re bringing in through this latest fundraiser is 1/2 of 1% of what Clear Channel was paying DJ Star. I’m not sure how accurate those numbers are and I won’t get into DJ Star or the latest controversy but it would be interesting to confirm if some of these public radio stations really operate and provide quality content everyday on a budget that’s not even 1% of the salaries that some of these commercial radio djs earn each year. Thank goodness for shows like Underground Railroad, Democracy Now!, Global Medicine Review, etc. and thanks to WBAI for doing a such a good job with their archives (http://archive.wbai.org/).

Looks like some handy Germans figured out how to make something very close to a vinyl record using hardeware-store goods. Too bad it only lasts about two days. Google translated link (via)

Sifu Shi Yan Ming, Rza’s trainer and friend, is a progressive Shaolin Monk. Link

Yan Ming, who defected to the United States in 1992 while performing with a troupe of Shaolin kung fu experts, is hardly a typical Buddhist warrior monk. He eats meat, for instance, and he enjoys Champagne, which he calls “very special French water.”

Yan Ming, who has two children with his partner, Sophia Chang, a music promoter and the temple’s manager, also disregards the monk’s traditional vow of celibacy. “I’m too handsome for that,” he explained.

This article gives some nice numbers showing how serious the British are about their vinyl. Vinyl staging a comeback? When did it leave? Did we miss something? Link

Last year they accounted for 14.7% of all the singles sold in the UK. According to music industy figures, sales of vinyl records have soared sixfold between 2001 and 2005. Virgin Megastores reports that vinyl singles of new releases from artists like Arctic Monkeys, the Raconteurs and Pete Doherty now outsell CDs by more than two to one. The vinyl craze is not only confined to singles, with bands like White Stripes increasingly releasing vinyl long-playing albums.