Career Decisions vs. Business Decisions

Based on my experience, the number 1 reason for failure of a project is a result of an artist decision rather than those that surround them. It is easier to respond and correct a business decision than it is a career decision. My suggestion to artists is once you've made your career decisions don't confuse them with business decisions.

Recording Performance

There seems to be a belief that the recording process has changed in recent years to reflect technology and shrinking recording budgets. Yes it is true that with today's technology, virtually anyone can record without the need of a large tracking room or a budget equal to the price of a median house in southern California. Regardless, the one constant that has remained is performance. With it, any properly mic'ed session, whether in the studio or live from the stage, can result in vibrant and engaging recordings that consumers will cherish and embrace. As in the past, too many artists and young producers focus on technology and budgets and not enough on performance, when in fact the reverse should take place.

John Lennon Remembered

30 years ago today I was in Ames, Iowa watching the Monday Night Football game between New England and Miami when Howard Cosell broke the news of John Lennon's death. Where were you?

Irrelevant Space?

Does anybody really care about the new MySpace reboot?

Hitting The Road

I'm about to do something I have never done in my 20 some years of working in the music business, I'm hitting the road with the band. You see I manage an artist, Maxim Ludwig & The Santa Fe Seven. William Morris Endeavor, their talent agency, booked them onto the Austin City Limits Festival this year. We're renting an RV, stopping in Phoenix for a show at the Martini Ranch along the way and then pushing it in to Austin. Nothing fancy, campgrounds and truck stops, peanut butter and jelly and the occasional fast food joint. All you supposed music people sitting in your offices who claim to be "street", I'll be looking for you (lol). Otherwise, for all that I meet, looking forward to it!

R.I.P. Robert Schimmel

Robert Schimmel survives cancer and passes as a result of a car accident. R.I.P.

John Mayer Live from Red Rocks

John Mayer will be stopping at the famous Red Rocks venue in Colorado tomorrow night (9/1) as part of his Battle Studies world tour. The show will be streamed live on Ustream, starting at 10:45 p.m. (ET) and 7:45 p.m. (PT). You can watch it here

Total Box Music

Sorry about the long delay between posts, lots have happened and things are getting interesting. Started a new company, Total Box Music , a premium packaging company to recording artists and copyright owners. We've already put our first direct-to-consumer item upd for sale, Public Enemy "Bring The Noise" The Hits, Vids and Docs Set where you can find two different configurations here. These are high-end, limited edition collections offered directly to the fans. We have also created packages for Vince Neil , Helmet , among others. As we build out our Total Music experience we hope we are ultimately benefitting both the fans and the artists with our services!

Live Music Explodes Across Multiple Platforms

There has been a recent flush of new activity surrounding live music capturing , EMI announcing their new arm dedicated to recording shows and making them available afterwards (Pixies), U2, Foo Fighters, Wilco and Shakira offering webcasts of their performances, Universal/Sony creating VEVO, an online video destination, AEG announcing their relationship with a 3D film maker and distributor to release performances from their festivals and recently EMI announced a relationship with Hulu with their artist Norah Jones airing a performance from NYC venue Le Poisson Rouge.

What does all this mean? For the fans of these artists it is a fantastic way to stay connected to your bands. For the labels I think it's a pitch to try to save their businesses and for the artists that are associated with it, please make sure your manager and lawyer haven't made the costs of capturing these events be cross-collateralized against your recoupables as a promotion and marketing cost.

I think these moves are great, I only hope they create the runway for artists that could truly benefit from these platforms. To put it in perspective, Total Live Music's current data base consists of over 77K artists having close to 1.7M events performed in over 125K venues from around the world and we have only just begun!

While I'm glad to see the likes of Dave Matthews and Ben Harper utilizing these platforms, it's the up and coming artists that could truly benefit. Time will tell if that does become the case.

The Dead Weather Book Pacific Rim Dates for Spring

The Dead Weather, featuring Jack White, have announced some upcoming dates in March performing in New Zealand, Australia and Japan. For ticket and show info follow the band link.

RJD2 to Headline US Club Tour in 2010

RJD2 will be performing in the US in 2010 in 28 cities on the east and midwest. Beginning in Washington DC on Jan. 9 at the famous 9:30 Club the tour will wind around the east and end in Urbana, IL on Feb. 20. For those in New York, he will be in a support slot at Terminal 5 on Nov. 28. Touring and ticketing info can be found here.

Dirty Projectors To Perform With Los Angeles Philharmonic

The Brooklyn band Dirty Projectors are scheduled to perform with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown LA on Feb. 27 of next year. Following in the current trend of young upcoming artists playing with a city's Philharmonic, frontman Dave Longstreth will also help choose orchestral pieces for the Philharmonic to perform. Tickets and other info are available via the band link above.

Yo La Tengo Eliminates Ticket Surcharges

Yo La Tengo has taken positive steps by eliminating ticket surcharges on the sale for their upcoming run of dates in middle-America in January. Although sometimes this means "burying the fees" in the overall price, fans will be happy to note most tickets cost $20 or less. For the list of dates and the ability to buy tickets please go here

Wilco: Live from Amsterdam

For those of you who may have missed Wilco perform via webcast from the The Paradiso in Amsterdam today they will have it archived for viewing here

Sights with Sounds: Ben Gibbard/Jay Farrar

Ben Gibbard/Jay Farrar

Although I find the album a bit sleepy, this recorded performance from the 9:30 Club in Washington D.C. on October 27, 2009 is fantastic!

Google's New Music Service

I just returned from a presentation at Capitol Records Studio A announcing the new Google music service with partnerships with MySpace/iLike, Lala, imeem, Rhapsody and Pandora. This is the same room that in the past couple of weeks I had seen Sir George Martin working on reissues and a tribute to my friend Greg Ladanyi where Jackson Browne, Danny Kortchmar, Waddy Wachtel, members of Toto and others perform Warren Zevon (Greg produced Warren's early records) songs as well as their own in Greg's honor. But today the stage was theirs, trying to make claim how they are the future of music. They basically have two assumptions; that by being at the top of the Google search for music and offering the streaming of the tracks from these legit services that it will convert to increased sales and that this will serve as a music discovery mechanism. In regards to the first assumption, it will still be difficult to compete with free but it will increase their streaming costs, a question they avoided from the audience asking if Google was helping offset. In regards to the second, they still have not proven to be the starting point for the discovery of a large amount of artists even though all these services have been around for years. I remain optimistic that we will find an answer yet skeptical that this is it. Anyway, isn't this what Yahoo has been doing for some time now?

Total Live Music, All About Live Music!

I recently had someone from of all places, iTunes, make the following statement on their Twitter account "@totallivemusic but, unfortunately, not live" I have never stated that totallivemusic.com is a live streaming site of concert events.

As a person who has helped in the production of such events I don't see a business model in this yet. Places like the AT&T Blueroom, Control Room and the upcoming streaming of the U2 show from the Rose Bowl on YouTube may all seem like a very nice thing for fans but unfortunately when the bills get paid for the cost of production and delivery you come out in the negative.

As a bootstrapping business we may in the future get into the delivery of live events once it's proven as a smart business model but for now I'll leave it up to people like Apple to cover the losses of broadcasting "live" with their iPod and iPhone sales, while we here at Total Live Music will continue to be all about live music!

Sights with Sounds

Local Natives

Will There Ever Be a Successful Online Music Business?

Here we are 10 years past the launch of Napster and we are still debating viable business models for music on the web (or anywhere else), which to date have been none. Content owners (mainly labels) blame tech companies and consumers, tech companies blame the labels and consumers don't care, although there is a vociferous minority who would have you believe it's all the labels fault. Here's what I believe, it is perfectly within an individuals right to refuse access to anything he or she may own as long as it does not create harm to other people. In other words, No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service. Labels are perfectly within their rights as owners to do whatever they want with the things they claim ownership to. If they do so and the results put them in peril, then so be it. Tech companies on the other hand need to come up with better solutions for content creators (artists) than utilities for marketing their music on the web because it's a fact the return is not covering the costs artists have to bare in the marketplace. Market forces have created generations who believe music should be free. Will we have to wait another 10 years until the content owners and the tech companies either work in tandem or figure out themselves how to have a business around music?

Houston We Have A Problem

Said to me at yesterday's Digital Music Forum West

"Why would you use T-Bone Burnett when you have pro tools available?"

I wasn't going to share it but I can't get it out of my head. I won't comment beyond that.