oh, go for it then

Exclusive: Columbia Urban Team Takes Shape
August 27, 2007 - RB Hip-Hop

By Hillary Crosley, N.Y.

Rick Rubin's Columbia is beginning to take shape as Kyambo "Hip-Hop" Joshua has been named the president of Columbia's urban department, Billboard.biz has learned. Formerly the senior VP of A&R at Warner Music Group until 2006, Joshua began in the music industry working A&R at Roc-A-Fella Records, developing the sounds of Jay-Z, Beanie Sigel and Freeway.

Joshua, who spoke exclusively with Billboard.biz about his plans for Columbia's new urban department, began his Columbia post in early July after departing Atlantic last year. “Creatively, it wasn't working out so I told them that I didn't want to be there anymore and they agreed,” the exec says.

Joshua's entry to Columbia burgeoned when the exec began shopping an all hip-hop independent label to Rubin, among other people. “[Rubin] said he'd like to invest in [the label]. And then, a few months later, he got the position at Columbia and I called to congratulate him. He said, 'If I do it, I want you to do it with me.' I always meet with him when I go to L.A., so we've been talking since March," Joshua says.

Columbia's new urban president recruited Chicago producer and Kanye West mentor Dion "No I.D." Wilson to head Columbia's A&R department. Wilson says he agreed to join Columbia because he knows exactly what Joshua and Rubin want and is confident neither will become entangled in company politics. Though Wilson's contract isn't finalized yet, he's verbally agreed to the as-yet-untitled A&R position.

"Hip-Hop and I have been close friends for a long time, and now that he's the president of Columbia's urban department, it makes sense," Wilson says.

"We're trying to create an A&R position that's both an A&R and production situation. Everything needs to be correct. I'm not just looking for a title. I want to make a useful change in what's going on, it has to be more than babysitting," he continues. "Hip-Hop told me to get writers and musicians together as well as all of the resources so we can offer artists more than just direction. I hate to use the same example everyone uses but similar to how they put together Motown. We want to put together records the old way."

Joshua agrees. "When I say the old way," says Joshua, who also manages Kanye West and producer Just Blaze through his HipHopSince1978 entertainment company, with partner G Roberson.

"I mean, when the record labels were run by music people and not like corporate executives, lawyers and others that make the deals," he says. "With Kanye, I found him and built a relationship because I really believed in him. We want to create an environment that's more music friendly and not so systematic."

Joshua says Columbia probably won't re-negotiate distribution for West's G.O.O.D. Music label because, "that's not what Kanye is focusing on right now." But Columbia will continue to work with G.O.O.D. groups like the quirky producer-mcs, Sa-Ra.

"The key is making everything make sense financially and creatively," Wilson says. "There are a lot of mistakes we don't want to make like spending more money on an artist that has a lot of spins but doesn't end up selling any records. We'd rather put money into artists that grow organically. If you look at artists like Jay-Z, they didn't jump out of the box with millions in record sales, they built their careers. People are going to be happy with what we have in the works. I can't tell you who, but it's quality stuff people will be glad to hear."

Joshua is in talks with singer Maxwell to get him on track to finish his oft-delayed album, "Black Summer's Night." Joshua has offices in New York and Atlanta, and will make frequent trips to L.A., Rubin's home base.

At press time, several calls to Sony BMG/Columbia had not been returned.

Posted by Minoru at 8:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reviews and ticket sales have been mixed for the old time rockers including The Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Genesis, the Who, the Police and Black Sabbath who have been hitting Germany’s concert circuit.

Older rockstars touring Germany are part of a wider trend as bands try to compensate for falling record sales, but never before have so many old-established acts swept the country, known for its loyal rock fans, efficient organization and high ticket sales.

http://www.kingsofar.com/2007/08/27/german-critics-mock-and-bash-old-time-rockers/#more-1531

Steve Jobs said in his company-wide meeting on June 28 that he would rather Apple cannibalize its own sales than be cannibalized by someone else. This means that Apple has to, by default, have an aggressive product strategy that maybe seems a little too fast for some people (including me).

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2007/07/19/rumor-bolsters-2g-iphone-launch-in-2007

Posted by Minoru at 7:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/the-world-according-to/2007/08/23/Mark-Cuban

Lloyd Grove: As recently as May 2007, you told the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet that government policy could encourage internet providers to make the necessary investment in fiber optics to significantly increase bandwidth to home users, in line with industrialized nations such as Japan, Germany, and South Korea, and that the economic benefits would eventually outweigh the costs. But last month, you declared: “The internet is dead. It’s over.” You said it’s “for old people” and it’s a “stagnant consumer platform.” Did you change your mind between May and July? Who or what killed the internet? And aren’t you biting the hand that fed you?

Mark Cuban: The internet of today versus what I suggested to the committee would happen if internet speeds to the home increased to 1 gigabyte per second, is like comparing the plane Orville and Wilbur Wright built in 1903 to a brand-new Boeing.

We have reached a point of diminishing returns with today’s internet. The speed of broadband to your home won’t increase much more in the next five years than it has in the last five years. That is not enough to work as a platform for new levels of applications that will require much, much higher levels of bandwidth.

Broadband to the home isn’t fast enough for downloads of movies at DVD quality to be ubiquitous. That means it’s no longer a platform for technological innovation.

Think of it this way. Way back when, electricity changed the world. It was the platform for everything electronic that we do today. Do you get excited about electricity or is it just a utility? Maybe old people who remember the advent of electricity still get excited about it. No one else does.

The internet is in the same position today. It’s no longer an exciting platform for societal and business change. It’s a utility. It’s something that is exciting to people who remember the old days of the internet.

The only way to change that is to upgrade the platform for bandwidth transport across the country to a minimum of 1 gigabyte per second throughout to every home. At that point kids will come up with new and unique applications that we can’t imagine today. That’s when it becomes exciting. Until then, it’s dead and boring.

L.G.: Has buying a distribution company and a chain of 57 theaters worked out well thus far?

M.C.: Yep. They are making money, and they give us the unique opportunity to control our product. No other studio can do a nationwide sneak preview of their movies like we can because no other studio owns a national theater chain. No network other than HDNet can offer Ultra V.O.D. [video on demand], where we allow our V.O.D. partners to sell movies two weeks before they are in theaters. Only HDNet can offer a sneak preview of a movie the Wednesday before it’s released in theaters.

The ability to offer consumers what they want is a great opportunity for us. If any other studio tried it, the other theater owners would boycott the studio in a heartbeat.

Posted by Minoru at 6:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

http://www.crazysexycancer.com/

Crazy Sexy Cancer is airing on The Learning Channel (TLC) this wednesday, August 29th at 9 pm! (EST, I think)

xoxo to jackie farry!

Posted by Minoru at 9:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

(c) 2007 bob@lefsetz.com

From: bob@lefsetz.com
Subject: Labels
Date: 28 August 2007 18:29:51 GMT+09:00
To: xxxxxxxx@mac.com

Springsteen's new album should be free.

If you're signing a long term contract with a record label, you're a fucking idiot. Expect the music business to turn into the movie business VERY quickly. If you're involved with a company, it's going to be a ONE-OFF! Kind of like Garth made a deal with Wal-Mart and now he's left them behind, the retailing behemoth no longer serves him.

What's Bruce's strength? LIVE! That's what got Jon Landau all excited in the first place, when he saw Springsteen live. Hell, I had both the first and second Bruce albums, and even though I loved "Spirit In The Night" and "Sandy", it wasn't until I saw him at the Bottom Line in '74 that I realized he was the real deal, not a Dylan-imitator, but a whole new thing.

Bruce ended up selling quite a few albums. But that was back when AOR was king and rock music ruled the airwaves. Today? WHAT AIRWAVES?

Is Bruce Springsteen gonna get any airplay? Maybe for a minute or two. Hell, let's say his album has got a new "Born To Run". Do you think even THEN radio is gonna play it? If you do, you don't listen to radio.

Stunningly, "Time" and "Newsweek" might both still put him on the cover, but their power has diminished so much that I don't know another person who reads the latter except me. And they've both become lifestyle publications, they can't compete with the 24 hour news cycle on both TV and the Web.

We're all getting our information from somewhere different. There is no center. And what the major labels are playing to is the center.

So if you're young and you've killed someone, or you're good-looking and you've exposed your private parts to the world, maybe there's enough train-wreck value to get your track on Top Forty radio. Still, the album probably won't sell. And almost no one will want to see you live. This whole game is the sideshow. The main affair is in the arena. And how is releasing his new disc via Columbia driving patrons to see Bruce Springsteen?

Oh, just by going on the road, people will want to buy tickets. But he won't sell out. That's a dirty little secret, that a bunch of E-Street Band gigs were papered the last time out. You need to drive people into the seats. How are you going to do this?

Of course, Bruce got a big check from Columbia. The deal helped Andy Lack lose his job. But was the money WORTH IT TO BRUCE? Hell, if I were him, I'd negotiate to give the money BACK! Maybe let Columbia keep the catalog. But the new discs? Bruce should be able to make the appropriate deal at the time of release. And a superstar selling a ten plus dollar disc of new material is now the wrong paradigm at the wrong time. Because, NO ONE'S GONNA HEAR IT!

That's the goal, to get people to hear it.

Prince is the leader here. He looks au courant, he looks happening, he makes people think he's valid and not just an oldies act by giving away his new material. Hell, everybody at the gig gets it. They got it with the newspaper. It's all over the place in a way that Springsteen's music won't be.

Even the Eagles. They'll get a ton of promotion from Wal-Mart, but imagine if the record was FREE at http://eaglesband.com/. A track a week, every week for twelve weeks. Oh, there are TWENTY TRACKS? Then for TWENTY WEEKS! If you're LUCKY, radio will play ONE track for that long. As for going on another... If you're a heritage act, GOOD LUCK!

It's time to be innovative. It's time to question the old game.

Right now, music is free. And dedicated fans expect to be able to hear EVERYTHING before they buy it. Oh, oldsters have old fans, but so many boomer concertgoers aren't even interested in the new music. They just want to hear the hits that made them fans to begin with. You're gonna charge in excess of ten bucks. A boomer isn't like a kid, he'll kick the tires FOREVER before purchasing a CD. He wants VALUE! BOOMERS complain about movie prices, not kids. Kids see a shitty movie and want to go to another flick the next night. A boomer sees something bad and he swears off movies FOREVER!

What does it take to get a boomer to buy an album?

First, he's got to be aware of it.

It's not 2002, when "The Rising" was released. Bruce Springsteen playing on the VMAs, in the rain? The VMAs' ratings are off fifty percent this decade. And even Aerosmith, the perennial, doesn't get a slot anymore.

As for VH1? Gossip central.

Oh, you can get print. But you just can't get big time traction.

EVERY record released today lands with a thud. It's not only those of the boomer acts, but Fitty's too. And Kanye's. If you think the public at large cares about the release battle of 9/11, you've been reading too many magazines. PEOPLE DON'T GIVE A SHIT! If they did, radio ratings would be through the roof, AND THEY'RE NOT!

Bruce Springsteen. What does he need the label for? To get on "The Today Show"? Letterman? All he's got to do is pick up the phone.

And why did he make an album anyway. Who can digest an hour-long opus anymore, especially busy boomers. Why not a four song EP, all killers, that people can digest in twenty minutes and play over and over again. That they'll sit through in concert, instead of making cell phone calls and going to the toilet.

Why should an album be an hour long? Why should it have ten tracks? If you're not questioning why, you're about to be left behind. Sure, if there's mania, like with "High School Musical", people want the disc as a souvenir. They want EVERYTHING, the t-shirt, the tour booklet, the lunchbox. But there's not this kind of mania for Elton John and Billy Joel.

Elton? His last album, an ill-conceived follow-up to "Captain Fantastic", was dead on arrival. Imagine if Elton gave away a cover a week for the rest of the year. Yup, Elton's played covers. Imagine the reception for those tracks in concert! People want to hear what they know, and they don't KNOW the new albums of the classic rock superstars.

Not that one needs to do covers. But WHATEVER you do, it's got to be GOOD! It's no longer about quantity, but QUALITY! Music isn't scarce, it's overwhelmingly present in the marketplace. The key is to rise above, to get people's attention, to gain their trust. Selling an overpriced disc of tracks that don't change people's lives is not an enticing proposition.

Get the music in people's hands. Don't stream it on your Website, don't just have four tracks on MySpace. Make your shit available EVERYWHERE! You get it with the aforementioned "Time" or "Newsweek", they'd make that deal in a HEARTBEAT! You get it at Whole Foods. You can download it from the band's site. Along with artwork. You can participate in a discussion of its quality on the act's Website. You can enter a contest for two tickets to paradise, front row seats in New York or L.A. Create community. Ever seen MySpace or Facebook? It's not only teens that are lonesome, who want to belong, who want to connect and hook-up. But Bruce Springsteen is gonna sell an inert piece of product shrink-wrapped in a record store. How eighties.

It's the twenty first century. If you're a classic rock act, your bread and butter is the road. Think of how you can get the most tushies in the seats. Think of how you can appear current. Think of how you can whet the appetite of your fans for the show. Think of how you can get people talking about not only you, but your music. Forget the major labels, forget radio, they don't give a shit about you. GO STRAIGHT TO THE FANS!

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Posted by Minoru at 7:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From: bob@lefsetz.com
Subject: Rhapsody America
Date: 22 August 2007 17:10:29 GMT+09:00
To: xxxxxxxxxxx@mac.com

What if MTV just doesn't count anymore.

MTV is like a band. Which instead of worrying about its integrity, pursued the flavor of the moment, did what was expedient, to garner cash now. If only Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam ran MTV, then it might mean something.

Kind of laughable if you think about it. In this sold-out era, MTV has sold itself out, and is left with a meaningless carcass. MTV promoting a music service is like a whore promoting abstinence. It's a disconnect.

Oh, don't tell me about the VMAs. The VMAs are a meaningless trainwreck equivalent to a TMZ broadcast. If you think it's about music, then you don't listen to music. Really, it's about advertising. MTV will do whatever it can to sell advertising. Leaving a hail of bullets and used up reputations in its wake. How about an update on all those who've appeared on MTV. Not only the rappers, but the reality "stars". I'd say MTV ruins lives. But, it did this after it helped ruin music.

Yup, MTV ruined music. Through OVEREXPOSURE! Acts take time to develop. Put them on TV right away, and you kill them, they never get to "Sticky Fingers", but are stuck at "Tell Me" and "Not Fade Away". Decent tracks, but the Stones would be a footnote if they hadn't developed over a series of albums.

And that's the Vedder/Pearl Jam point. They know the axiom isn't true. All publicity isn't good publicity. It just makes you a joke. Pearl Jam can sell out arenas. Vanilla Ice? All the one hit wonders broken on MTV? They can't even sell out clubs.

So, this channel, which has failed online, with not only its own site but Urge, is suddenly going to be successful in the Net music sphere?

Make me laugh.

First and foremost, MTV has to explain rental/subscription. That's too complicated for the idiots both steering and populating the channel. They can display boob jobs. And conspicuous consumption. But the intellectual quotient of MTV is equivalent to that of a Twinkie. Nonexistent.

Funny how in an era where it's all about respect, and that's what Facebook has, respect for its audience, MTV is about appealing to a lowest common denominator, it has CONTEMPT for its audience. To watch MTV isn't to be a member of the club, but to laugh at the idiots on the channel. THIS is going to sell a music service? ARE YOU FUCKING NUTS?

I can't blame Rob Glaser/Real/Rhapsody. They need to pull a rabbit out of the hat, they need some momentum. This will give them the advertising they can't afford, but it won't turn the service into a powerhouse.

Rhapsody is a great concept. Unfortunately, if it's not the Antichrist, it's the anti-Apple. Why is Apple successful? USABILITY!

I consider myself a geek, and I like Rhapsody, but damned if I can figure out how to use it. The interface is so complicated, that "intuitive" never comes into the picture. You've got to search on album or act or title, there's not one global search like in iTunes. There are different clicks for seemingly every performance option. And I STILL can't figure out how to play one track continuously, and I've been using the site for YEARS!

So suddenly, all those MTV watchers are gonna sign up and love it?

There were MP3 players before the iPod. But they had no traction. Software stunk, and file transfer was slow. This MTV/Rhapsody alliance is no threat to the Cupertino company.

For another reason too. The Real Rhapsody Sansa player is the best advertisement for the iPod ever made. Transfer can take forever. It's got the durability of a Pez dispenser. And, once again, it's so counterintuitive you want to throw it against the wall out of frustration.

Conceptually, Rhapsody plus Sansa is great. As a practical matter? It's not in the league of iTunes plus iPod. Hell, if Steve Jobs created a subscription service, he'd kill Rhapsody in an hour. But Steve says he doesn't want to do this. Steve's about as trustworthy as Alberto Gonzalez, but if what he says is true, rental subscription will continue to be a nonstarter.

As for selling non-DRM tracks at Wal-Mart. Did you read Jobs' diatribe? iPod owners buy almost NO tracks at the iTunes Store.

You want to know what sold the iPod? And continues to sell it?

Word of mouth. Oh, don't tell me about expense and battery problems, iPod owners are the equivalent of Moonies. They wear those white earbuds, even though they sound like shit, so everybody will know how with-it they are. And they rave about their devices. And buy Macs to go with them. Apple is affordable BMW/Ferrari. Not only do their products LOOK cool, they work INCREDIBLY!

Sale by track is death. If you doubt me, look at the statistics.

People aren't buying iPods to download from the iTunes Store. They're buying them to fill with their ripped CDs, their friends' ripped CDs and tracks stolen P2P. That's a fact. No amount of advertising on MTV is gonna change this behavior.

That's what's wrong with major media. It misses the point.

The days of push advertising are done. Now it's about quality products. That people pull, that sell themselves. That's Apple. Deal.

If you want to compete with the behemoth, don't try to convince people to buy what they don't want, create a usable product, which is cheaper and better.

Let's see... Who has failed so far? Not only Creative, but Dell. Apple's CLEANING UP! They've got well-designed machines that anybody can use. And they win because what the press said was their Achilles heel, the ownership/control of both hardware and software, is their silver lining.

Don't believe the hype. Rhapsody America won't make a dent.

And MTV no longer matters.

Rhapsody itself is a great service, but it's more beta than final draft. And when the public experiences it, it's gonna reject it, and the iPod/iTunes monolith will grow ever stronger.

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Posted by Minoru at 4:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

this past weekend i was working the summersonic music festival. i've been helping out since the first one, which was in 2000, i think. i've done all of them apart from 2002 when i was in new york working on something else.

i'm very used to the festival now and i can pretty much do it on auto pilot most of the time. i do all sorts ranging from passive interpretation to saving the arses of artists and getting their shit together (they shall remain nameless till i publish my memoirs......... not) to having immense jolly, gay, perverted fun in a coalmine.

amidst all this jolly, gay, perverted fun, the past weekend, tony wilson passed away.
in relation to it, i got to hang out with johnny marr, who is now in modest mouse (modest mouse, you're fucking great, keep up the insanity!!!!!!!!!) and he mentioned that he saw tony wilson about 3 weeks ago for an internal get together and that he was shocked to see him age. i only met tony wilson once at midem, maybe in the early 90's. i probably exchanged a word with him, too scared to talk to the man back then.

i do often think though, what would of happened, if i didn't buy that blue monday 12" in 83? or, if i didn't buy speak and spell in 82? or senses working overtime in 82? what would of happened to my life and perspectives?

then i think about the now, do the kids that buy music now take us that seriously? or do we take our jobs with some sense of being and purpose? are we merely swindling the kids of their pocket money, because they haven't figured out a way to download for free? lots of blurry, unclear thoughts. link to reality check. i was having a conversation about this with c last week. she was pointing out my lack of enthusiasm. a lot of people do, actually. i am enthusiastic, but i'm not really intent on showing it to the rest of the world. call me an elitist snob or whatever you want, but if you don't get what i do, and i don't really intend to explain it to any great detail (it is boring). i just usually end up wasting energy doing it. but, if someone shows some interest like my new friend a did with guitar cables, then i will spend many a late night hours talking about things i have found.

the music business as we have known it to be, is well fucked. but you know something, we dug our own grave to an extent. we lost it. we lost the chain in a a very simple creative to production process, we lost sincerity, a sense of community, lost to the lure of money, lost core values. rumour has it that rick rubin is hiring a lot of good people to make a comeback of columbia. we need to be humble about this again, go back to the days before the music business was run by spreadsheets and ageing former lawyers who could not make it in any other profession. now, we can be creative with a spreadsheet.

out of pure desperation ("aaaaaarrrrgh, the world is crumbling in front of me, britney, why are you so damn ugly????") record companies who don't know fuck about selling t-shirts of booking shows (dude, before you start doing that shit, let's start from the basics) want "360 degree deals" (360 my fucking arse, you can have 12 degrees), or, "the $ is in touring" so short sighted, greedy fucks book their bands in bloody every festival there is during summer and saturate the scene, put the talent on ridiculous slavery schedules, you fly them across the world, next day have them 2 shows in a row, then they fly half way across the world again and do 7 shows in a row.......... the guys are so tensed up that any minor problems gets amplified. dude, think about it. 9 shows in 11 days, and you're practically flown across the world during that time. like, the body needs rest? ever thought about that? like, to "save costs" you sacrifice health? and if prolonging, sanity? have you ever thought about that if you need proactive help from the "locals", the locals as in myself actually need a bit of time to understand each other and have a relationship? especially for neurotic but capable arseholes like me? yes, we do deal with the same stage, backline, pa, and all that bs, but the whole thing is driven by humans that have physical conditions, feelings and moods, that need to be considered, ever thought about that, yer fucking twat with the fake cuban cigar? if not, good luck with music2.0, cos when your soliders in the trenches walk away, you're the one that has to be the merch boy/girl. or you'll find some 18 year old intern that wants to hang out with the band for 3 minutes and leaves because their facebook is more interesting that reality.

aaaaaanyway, i am kind of relieved in some ways to see the music business crumble now. why? cos people who are in it and remain will probably be there for a reason that exceeds their self reasons. money is important, organization is important, a sense of community and structure is important. however, we still need to maintain that venom, that fire. that indescribable sense of immense gay silly jolly fun that we get when we all fucking click as a ball.

tony wilson, i hope you raise havoc whereever you went.
i sold my blue monday 12" years ago when i turned cd, man, that was a mistake.

[don't watch this if you're pc sensitive]

Posted by Minoru at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

http://prod1.cmj.com/articles/display_article.php?id=42547513
: The New Piracy: From Search To 'Search And Destroy'
By Kory Grow

On April 19, Pissed Jeans leaked. A 27-year-old from Minneapolis going by the handle Werewolvez logged onto the message board for Modern Radio, a Twin Cities-based indie label, and wrote, "Enjoy this link stolen from another board for the new Pissed Jeans Hope For Men record out on Sub Pop in awhile (sic). Should work for a few days." "Awhile" was actually June 5—nearly two months before the release of the Allentown, Pennsylvania post-grunge quartet's anticipated sophomore album. Yet anyone searching for the band or album name on Google could stumble onto this board, find the link and download the whole record.

This is the new piracy. While pre-legal Napster clones and torrent sites remain the ire of many record labels' legal departments, search engines have quietly become the more dangerous enabler. Search engines lead to blogs and boards that link to other sites hosting compressed files of entire albums, requiring no passwords or secret handshakes for access. Just as their original music sources are harder to trace, these sites provide anonymity to pirates as board posters and bloggers trade links, creating a blur of IP addresses as they trade hands. Also, the added accessibility search engines provide creates a lower common denominator between those who are obsessive music fans and those who just want to download albums.

In the case of the Pissed Jeans leak, the links led to Sendspace, a large file-sharing site, hosting a 76- megabyte zip file containing MP3s of the entire album. Less than an hour after the initial post, a user by the name of "subpop" logged on and posted a response: "Hello. We recently looked at your blog and found you've been distributing our record to your readers for free. How nice of you! Pissed Jeans - Hope For Men. Accessed: 632 times. Since we have access to the numbers for Pissed Jeans, I assume you'll be sending us the wholesale amount for the copies you distributed? 632 copies at $9.16, wholesale = $5,789.12." The letter was signed "Bruce Pavitt, Sub Pop Records," and it quickly inspired a bevy of outcries. "This isn't a blog!" said one confused message board user, while another said, "OMG, Sub Pop is going to sue TOM!" referring to the board's moderator. Werewolvez posted, "You'll never catch me alive, motherfuckers!" and within a couple of hours posted links to other albums.

Ironically, that reply didn't actually come from Sub Pop. (Pavitt, who founded the Seattle label in 1986, retired about five years ago, according to the label's publicist.) It seems this joke was lampooning itself and how difficult these links are to track. In actuality, this form of piracy—specifically using large-filesharing sites such as RapidShare, Megaupload, Mediafire, Yousendit and countless others that host full albums (sometimes even artist discographies) that are easily Googleable—is cumbersome to wrangle, due to the alacrity with which links spread across message boards and blogs. That makes them equally as difficult for labels to squelch. Stuart Meyer, who does production and A&R for Sub Pop, explains: "You can get something taken down [from a file-sharing site] and you can frustrate somebody's looking for something, sure, but as soon as it's [actually released]... it's everywhere."

Meyer says he's looked into taking legal action against the search engines themselves that lead downloaders to these sites, but he hasn't had much luck. "It just kind of seems to be a thing that no one is monitoring yet...," Meyer says. "The torrent sites... were hot as hell and it seems like the RapidShare stuff has replaced that, to some extent."

The Internet has shown an ability to boost underground musical artists to the same level of availability as mainstream artists. So it's been artists from the niche genres—mostly found on labels who cannot afford or choose not to employ preventative copy protecting technology—that have been "shared" the most, be it indie rock, extreme metal or underground hip-hop. Reynold Jaffe, who handles indie metal label Relapse's business and legal affairs, says his label has been aware of search-engine piracy since it evolved from standard peer-to-peer sharing networks. To combat the piracy, Relapse leaks MP3 files named to look like their releases, but in actuality are recordings of "traditional Bulgarian Tuba skronks" or "John Fahey-esque acoustic guitar ramblings," according to Jaffe.

"What we're seeing for the first time in the history of the music industry," Jaffe says, "is the consumers and music fans calling the shots. For decades, everything was controlled by the labels... Unlike the switch from LPs and tapes to CDs, the move from CDs to MP3s was not label-driven. This is a phenomenon created by consumers, which the music industry has been forced to react to."

Bloggers and message board users like Werewolvez probably do not set out to destroy independent artists' careers, but are instead bygone products of major-label mistakes such as letting Big Box physical retailers sell CDs under cost (thus lowering consumers' perceived value of what they'll pay for music) and the copyprotection scandal (where Sony BMG added a hackable root kit on every CD) making labels the "enemy." To wit, most music blogs that link to file sharing sites carry disclaimers like the one on Bolachas Grátis, a Portuguese site: "The postings are for promotional and preview purposes only and all music downloaded from here should be deleted within 24 hours. If you like the albums you downloaded here, please support the artist by buying their CDs (sic)." Whether or not these leaked links are truly altruistic or just indifferent to sales concerns is up for debate. In any event, search enginebased sharing is a complicated conundrum that will take the force and resources of the corporations behind the majors to settle the problem, technologically and socially. Though, as Jaffe points out, "The major labels have lost the support of the public... So your average music fan doesn't give a hoot about the major labels' woes. In fact, most probably root against them."

Bruno Coelho, 23, is one of Bolachas Grátis' six contributors. Reached via MySpace, he was happy to answer some questions about his blog. Rather than some faceless pirate, he seems more like a friendly music obsessive. Bolachas Grátis' links come from other sharing blogs and he does not use peer-to-peer (P2P) programs. He and his friends do not know where the leaks originate. He and the other contributors also post on an online music-discussion community called Fórum Sons, and they started this blog to separate that site from this Bolachas Grátis' illegal activities. While he acknowledges trading files is forbidden in his country, he also adds, "The laws in Portugal about music are very antiquated," which is a sentiment most of these types of bloggers share worldwide.

Much like the home-taping scare in the '80s, most of these sites have originated in countries where their citizens cannot easily access American independent music. The fact that search engines make these sites accessible to anyone has been an unexpected byproduct. Raquel, 27, whose last name was unavailable, is another poster on Bolachas Grátis. She says, "At first only Fórum Sons users knew about it, but soon the word was spread and we are getting visitors from everywhere in the world." Most importantly, were Bolachas Grátis to ever get shut down, Coelho says he and his friends would either start another blog, find another way to share the albums or just not offer them publicly. "We're aware it might [get shut down] in the future," Raquel says. "We just think it's worth doing this sort of public service for anyone who can't, for any reason, keep buying all the records they want to listen to."

Of the two or three labels that have contacted him about removing links on the blog, Coelho says, "If I had a record label, I'd look at share blogs as a friend that would help the promotion of the bands/albums and not like an enemy. The artists don't make money only by selling albums. In reality, the bigger part of this money goes to labels and other people. The bands make money at concerts and they only have people at the concerts if people know them. Blogs like Bolachas Grátis give the [exposure] that they need. But most of the record labels don't think like that, and if they want, I remove the links." (Incidentally, bands are getting less money from labels as a result of downloading's perceived loss of profits, making it harder for smaller bands to tour.)

So while Coelho's Robin Hood logic about music economics is skewed, it is nonetheless the opinion most 20-something bloggers share. As a result, in their measures to combat any and all piracy, some labels have started to take on file-sharing blogs. One repeat defender on the labels' behalf is John Giacobbi, the managing director of the UK-based company Web Sheriff, a subsidiary of Entertainment Law Associates. With the motto "Protecting your rights on the Internet," the company has worked with artists as diverse as Jamiroquai, the Village People and, recently, Bloc Party, policing P2P sites and blogs. Calling from his office, Giacobbi explains, "We actually rationalize and reason with the bloggers, and, generally speaking, that's proven to be very successful, as people can appreciate where we're coming from, as opposed to threatening people, which I think is... an inappropriate thing to sue fans just for their own exuberance and over-enthusiasm." In treating bloggers with respect, Giacobbi says he's gotten the most compliance. While he's never specifically taken on Google or other search engines, he does have working relationships with the myriad largefile- sharing sites, who all remove the illegal content when asked. Still, it's much different from other piracy cases he's tackled. "It's like an indefinite process," says Giacobbi. "So what we do is we'll police a major album for two to three months until the release to preserve sales for like a specified period after the release."

At this point in time, however, other than contacting each blog or going straight to the file sharing sites as Giacobbi does, there is no easy solution. Watermark technology has made some leaks traceable (usually to journalists or recording studio employees) but even then, when an album is out there, it's out there. For Sub Pop's Meyer as with Bolacha Grátis' blog disclaimer, it just comes down to trust. "It's funny, I read these blogs sometimes and the kids will be like 'I'm going to buy this when it comes out,' and I'd like to say that I believe that they do," Meyer says. "I mean a lot of people were saying that about the Shins, and it sold real well."

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Begin forwarded message:

From: Bob Lefsetz
Date: 8 August 2007 18:01:56 GMT+09:00
To: ME
Subject: The Warner Stock Drop

Now the financial community thinks the labels suck too.

The public has known it for years. Ever since Tommy Mottola rammed his high concept crap down our throats in the nineties. That's what the business became. One note "superstars", who either rapped about bitches and ho's or believed melisma was the highest form of vocalization. What's worse, the albums contained were made up of filler rivaling that of the pre-Beatle days, when it was truly a singles business. Only one problem! You couldn't buy the single! Ha! Fuck you customer!

Until Napster and CD burning, when the public took the music business back.

How could people do this? Didn't they know that music was a controlled environment? That it couldn't exist without major labels run by titans? You'd think Warner, et al, had a deal with Guitar Center, disallowing purchases unless you had a deal. But this was and is untrue. Anybody can make music. And now, more than ever before in the modern era, they don't want to make it for a major label.

Many people believe the owners are not going to fix radio. They're just gonna consolidate and add commercials, withdrawing cash until nobody listens anymore and the stations have been devalued to next to nothing. But the head honchos at labels are not that cynical. They believe they can pull a rabbit out of the hat. Rather than cutting new music production and blowing out their catalogs, they're making like it's 1996, and one of these evanescent no-talents is gonna sell ten million copies of his vapid album.

Yup, they truly believe. It's astounding the crap being thrown by the major labels. We've just got to stop P2P. Digital's gonna replace discs. It's kinda like the Administration and Iraq, EVERYTHING they've said is wrong, exactly the opposite, in fact.

Let's start with the fallacy that without them, there will be no music. That if people don't pay for music, people will stop making it. But instrument sales are through the roof. Seemingly everybody's making music. And everybody can record it in GarageBand, if not Pro Tools. And distribute it on MySpace. Oh, all of this is for free, but it can be done! What is the labels' answer to this?

Buy a disc. It's of higher quality.

But they only know how to sell the discs of people with Top Forty hits. And Top Forty is airheads and rappers. Stuff MOST people ARE NOT INTERESTED IN!

Think about this. They're trying to sustain their business by selling narrowcasted crap in a world where you can steal all of these wares instantly on the Net. Talk about a failed strategy!

And now the Street knows it. As represented by the stock of Warner Music. EMI? It was so bad, they had to blow it out to private equity. People know there's no future in recorded music, because the labels MADE IT SO! Rather than stroking their chins and trying to figure out the new world, they're just repeating what they used to do in the now gone twentieth century. It would be as if Smith Corona was telling everybody the typewriter was gonna make a comeback.

But lately, the labels haven't even been saying THIS! They're shrugging their shoulders and stating that music is a bad business, and they need a piece of management/touring. Huh? Isn't that like GM saying they need a piece of Exxon Mobil?

Gasoline works fine in Toyotas. People don't have to listen to major label releases. You can't get a gig only if you have a major label deal. Actually, many of the new touring bands are making it without a major label! Their fans are happier, and whatever music they can sell...they get to keep the lion's share and NOBODY TELLS THEM WHAT TO DO!

What do we need the major labels for if they can't sell music?

It's not like we've got a dearth of managers, and we need the wisdom of the majors. It's not like so much of today's music can get on the radio, where labels have their relationships. As for TV? TV kills acts! Ask everybody from Buck Owens to Vanilla Ice. Buck felt his appearances on "Hee-Haw" made it so nobody took him seriously, it was in all the obits. Vanilla Ice? All he's got is TV, making appearances based on his coming out of the backwoods/where is he now factor.

And it's not like labels can HELP with touring. They're not licensed agents, and they're not interested in careers. And there are plenty of merch companies out there.

What CAN the major labels provide? MONEY! That's all! But the deal is so heinous, that many musicians now say no. Not only the newbies, but the stars, who can get paid from Starbucks to newspapers.

The labels can double-talk all they want, but their only solution is to figure out a way to get paid for music. That's their business. But they've devalued music, and refused to license just about anybody with a reasonable digital distribution model. So, until they can figure out a way to monetize the way people now get music, from their friends, they're fucked. And no amount of spin can help them.

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