fair music weblog

The announcement of british band Radiohead to release their new album as download first and letting the fans decide how much they want to pay caused a lot of blog entries and comments. People are discussing if this was a good idea or not, whether it will be an example for other bands or kill the business all along. Bob Lefsetz, authority in music analysis, says very directly what he thinks about this news.

First he wonders in his The Lefsetz Letter if this news could be true, then thinks about the reasons and comes to the conclusion that Radiohead are playing by a different rule book “that says the money flows from the music, that people have to believe in you, that you’ve got to treat them right.”

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Yesterday started Capitol Records v. Jammie Thomas, the first file-sharing case to go to trial, in Duluth, Minnesota. After a calm morning session the afternoon brought a revelation during the questioning of Jennifer Pariser, Sony BMG’s head of litigation, according to Eric Bangeman’s report on Ars Technica: “(…) a Sony executive said what many observers have suspected for a long time. The RIAA’s four-year-old lawsuit campaign is costing the music industry millions of dollars and is a big money-loser for the record labels. “Saying that the record labels have spent ‘millions’ on the lawsuits, she then said that ‘we’ve lost money on this program.’”, says the report.

The british Alternative-band Radiohead just finished their new album and is first releasing it as a download. The album In Rainbows will be available as a download from 10th October on and can be pre-ordered from their website. How much it costs is up to the fans. When you go to the checkout on their website after ordering and want to know the price, it says: “It’s up to you”.

There have been rumours that Radiohead will produce their new album on their own after their contract with EMI expired, but this pricing policy for sure is a surprise.

In a recent interview with TIME singer Thom Yorke has said, “I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one. And, yes, it probably would give us some perverse pleasure to say ‘F___ you’ to this decaying business model.” So now they did.
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Hip Hop in Schwizer Dütsch (swiss german)? A tv program that is called Cafe Ristretto? A video plattform on the web that has a fixed schedule? For some days now this is real: The internet technology design studio Neotrivium, which is situated in Zürich, Switzerland, has just launched the internet music tv-station Restorm.

“We want to get swiss bands to publish their own clips”, says Restorm-founder Theo Favetto in an interview for Blick online. Charts don’t have a go at Restorm. Of course they want as well to play videos of known bands, but their main interest is to foster young swiss bands. If necessary they would even help them out with a camerateam to shoot their music clip in a professional manner. That could mean a lot for the artists publicity in the country and abroad. Because up to now when people think of swiss music they probably only come up with Alphorns and Yodeling. And it is quite unlikely that a swiss band that is rapping in Schwizer Dütsch would have a chance on MTV or at one of the Majors.

On 27 and 28 September the Expert Group Meeting on the statistical measure of the diversity of cultural expressions, organized by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the UNESCO Culture Sector, will be held in Montreal, Canada.
The experts will identify methodologies that can help measure the diversity of cultural expressions and study ways to assess and monitor this diversity to meet the requests of the 2005 Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions.
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The online music shop AnywhereCD that has been launched in April this year is closing end of September. The AnywhereCD concept was quite simple, as founder Michael Robertson writes: “(…) create an online store where customers could get the immediacy of digital files along with the permanence and familiarity of a physical CD. For one purchase price they would get the best of both worlds, with no need to take any extra steps just to get a MP3 file to play on their player. Sounds great in theory, but I wasn’t able to pull it off.”
In his blog Michael Robertson explains why his business failed and settles his account with the music business: “I met with all of the major labels (Universal, EMI, Sony, and Warner Music) and they seemed open minded to new ideas. One had a cautious ‘wait and see’ type of attitude. Another wanted millions of dollars up front. One insanely asked me if I would embed the purchaser’s credit card number in the song files they bought.”

Reading Michael Robertson’s blog one understands that AnywhereCD is one more example of the struggle that is currently going on in the music business at the turn from the material/analog to the digital age.

“Kreditkartennummern in Musik-Files” - ORF Futurezone