Offer extended to September 8th in Canada for only $2,500 a $1,500 saving

Cakewalk Sonar V-Studio 700

Update  September 1, 2010 - Roland extends the offer to September 8th

The joke  “Only in Canada you say” seems to be true in this under-promoted special from Roland Canada on their flag-ship digital recording workstation (DAW).

This limited quantity special is available only from some Long and McQuade stores and Axe Music, although Axe didn’t confirm it yet. Ron Huestis, a fellow Islander in Halifax and DAW salesman for Long and McQuade, has the V-Studio at home and says it smokes the competition.

The Cakewalk V-Studio 700 Music Production System combines Sonar 8.5 Professional with an integrated mixing deck, I/O and Fantom VS midi synthesizer. All of those products can be purchased separately but the beauty of the V-Studio 700 is you can get an out-of-the-box experience without the hassles of connecting gear from different companies.

For people who struggle with the complexity of home recording, the V-Studio solution is very appealing. Getting Sonar 8.5 Producer running requires hundreds of complex hardware and software integration decisions. Some people like to play with gear and that includes me but I get tired of the hour setup of the Lynx Aurora to Sonar on the computer to midi connections and the Mackie control surface.  Read the rest of this entry »

Most musicians find as they get older they didn’t achieve fame and fortune

Dave Harris (image: Rennett Stowe on Flickr)

By Scott James, Echoes – Most musicians I know hold a dream to someday ‘make it’ in the music business. To play in front of huge crowds and live a lifestyle that they can only imagine. Many of us believe that we’ll someday get there. Unfortunately most of us find ourselves growing older with an ever increasing fear that we’re missing the boat.

We’re conditioned to believe that if we’re going to make it then we have to do it at a young age. I had already started to have this feeling when I was in my early 20′s. I felt like I was slacking because I hadn’t ‘made it’ yet.

So how old is too old? Well, I think what we need to look at is the fundamental equation the whole business boils down to. It’s a value exchange between the audience and the artist. The audience pays money for the value they get from the artist. So ask yourself: how old would a performer have to be before you stopped receiving value from them? Would you not pay for a great artist who was 65 years old? I would. One of the best performances I’ve ever seen was a rock and roll band of men who were all in their 80′s!  Read the rest of this entry »

Bands don’t need complicated computer systems to increase fan contact and build revenues

The Pixies (image: Wonker on Flickr)

Shane Richmond, Telegraph.co.uk – I saw the Pixies play in London a couple of months ago. I’ve been a fan for 20 years or so but this was the first time I’ve seen them. They were excellent, in case you’re interested, but it’s the technology-savvy approach to the gig that I wanted to highlight.

I first found out that the Pixies were playing in London through a service called Songkick. It uses my Last.fm profile to find out what I listen to and compares that with London concert listings – though it does other cities too. Then it emails me with forthcoming concert dates. There are other services – Bands in Town, for example, that do the same thing.

As soon as I got the email I went to the Pixies’ website and bought tickets. The tickets – not a receipt but the tickets themselves – were emailed minutes later in PDF form. I printed them off on the day of the gig and they were scanned at the venue by an iPhone-wielding staff member.

I haven’t come across that before. Perhaps there is a risk that a print-it-yourself ticket can be photocopied but I would imagine it’s a small risk. It might be riskier to do this with a stadium tour where there is more incentive for people to try to sell fake tickets.

Anyway, a couple of weeks before the show I got an email from the Pixies:

“If you’re reading this email, it means we’ll see you at TROXY London for two shows in June. We’re looking forward to it. What songs do you want us to play? Reply and tell us.”

Just before the show they emailed again thanking everyone who sent requests and saying that they had a setlist they thought we would like. Now for all I know, some guy who works for the Pixies might have dealt with all the emails and the band themselves may never have looked at them but it doesn’t much matter. The engagement – even if it was an illusion – helped to build my excitement about the gig.

A few weeks after the gig, the band emailed again, this time sending me a link to a download of two songs from the gig I went to. So I now have a very nice souvenir of the show too.

Shane Richmond, Telegraph.co.uk

It’s great to see a band engaging with their audience before and after shows. The tools they used are hardly complex – though their web operation is powered by Topspin, mostly they just asked for fans’ email addresses when they bought tickets and then sending a few emails. Imagine how much further they could take it with Twitter or Facebook or even Foursquare.

Who else is doing this? And who is taking it further?

He misses New Orleans. The music business is changing becoming more granular.

PEI lavishes $3 million on US culture while throwing scraps off the table at local artists

Taylor Swift at Cavendish Beach Music Festival, $3.5 million for "come from away" talent

The Cavendish Beach Music Festival starts today, a five day extravaganza of American country music. Big US artists like Taylor Swift, Keith Urban, a few Canadian acts and even fewer Island artists thrown in as tokens will entertain the tourists and locals. Cost to the taxpayers $2 million this year and last.

We just got finished with a 4 day Cirque du Soleil festival. Sure they are from Montreal but this is really a Las Vegas act, certainly not local PEI talent. Cost to the taxpayer $250,000 to $500,000.  Next week, we are importing US talk show hosts Regis and Kelly at a cost of $1 million plus.

Add it all together that comes to $3.5 million spent to fund cultural events on PEI for the tourists with almost zero Island culture. Or is the money being spent to entertain voters prior to the next election?

The Province did put up $300,000 over three years to kick start the Festival of Small Halls which is all about Island artists and talent. The total commitment to promoting Island artists is 1/10th the money spent on big name acts from away.   Read the rest of this entry »

Fair Dealing and Digital Locks will make Canada’s new copyright law a restriction of personal freedom and will only help big US interests

By Michael Geist

This afternoon, the government introduced the Copyright Modernization Act (or Bill C-32), the long-awaited copyright reform bill.

It is nearly two years since C-61 was introduced and nearly a year since the national copyright consultation, yet discouragingly some things have not changed. As I reported several weeks ago, Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore won the internal fight over Industry Minister Tony Clement for a repeat of C-61′s digital lock provisions and against a flexible fair dealing approach and today’s bill reflects those policy victories.

However, over the past month, Clement made steady in-roads in trying to restore some balance in the bill and achieved some wins. The bill contains some important extensions of fair dealing, including new exceptions for parody, satire, and (most notably) education.  It also contains more sensible time shifting and format shifting provisions that still feature restrictions (they do not apply where there is a digital lock) but are more technology neutral than the C-61 model.  There is also a “YouTube exception” that grants Canadians the right to create remixed user generated content for non-commercial purposes under certain circumstances. While still not as good as a flexible fair dealing provision, the compromise is a pretty good one.  Throw in notice-and-notice for Internet providers, backup copying, and some important changes to the statutory damages regime for non-commercial infringement and there are some provisions worth fighting to keep.  Read the rest of this entry »

It will have a negative effect in Canada but the US labels and producers want Canada onside

Prime Minister Harper, smugly on the side of US interests

PMO Issues The Order: Canadian DMCA Bill Within Six Weeks

By Michael Geist – Months of public debate over the future of Canadian copyright law were quietly decided earlier this week, when sources say the Prime Minister’s Office reached a verdict over the direction of the next copyright bill.

The PMO was forced to make the call after Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore and Industry Minister Tony Clement were unable to reach consensus on the broad framework of a new bill.  As I reported last week, Moore has argued for a virtual repeat of Bill C-61, with strong digital locks provisions similar to those found in the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act and a rejection of a flexible fair dealing approach. Consistent with earlier comments on the need for a forward-looking, flexible approach, Clement argued for changes from C-61.

With mounting pressure from the U.S. – there have repeated meetings with senior U.S. officials in recent weeks – the PMO sided squarely with Moore’s vision of a U.S.-style copyright law.  The detailed provisions will be negotiated over the coming weeks by the respective departments, but they now have their marching orders of completing a bill that will satisfy the U.S. that comes complete with tough anti-circumvention rules and no flexible fair dealing provision.  Read the rest of this entry »

Bob Lefsetz says yes – April Fools Joke?

Editor – EMI is is desperate financial trouble and may fall into the hands of its creditors. We have no idea if this is an April Fools Joke. The only references on the web are linking back to Bob Lefsetz.

Bob Lefsetz – And the Beatles join the iTunes Store just in time for Saturday’s iPad launch.

The deal…  Just like with Apple’s purchase of Lala, no hard numbers have been released.  But both Citi and Terra Firma are happy.  Citi gets its money back, and Guy Hands gets to save face, Terra Firma’s covenant breaches become irrelevant, there’s no need to raise and inject new capital and by selling to Jobs, et al, Hands gets to spin the concept that this was his plan all along.

Yes, the catalog license was just a ruse.  Because, after all, everyone knows that Mr. Hands is smarter than Doug Morris and Mel Lewinter.  Lucian Grainge?  He’s a glorified A&R guy with a bean counter mentality.  Hands played the Universal boys like a fiddle.  Do you really think he’d place the Fab Four’s music in the hands of such charlatans?  When he can put it in its rightful place, in the bosom of Steve Jobs, and see it live forever?  Read the rest of this entry »

SoundExchange surprises musicians with royalty checks

Grammy-winning R&B singer Sam Moore and his manager and wife, Joyce, say a lot of legacy artists haven'’t heard of SoundExchange. "They think the money isn't real," Joyce Moore says. (Brian Blanco / The Times)

Musicians are now getting their royalty checks for satellite and internet radio through SoundExchange although many can’t believe it. Some even ignore the the emails thinking it’s a hoax or scam.

“When John Boydston got an e-mail from SoundExchange saying he had several thousand dollars in unclaimed royalties, he did what most sensible people would do. He ignored it.

To the rock musician from Atlanta, “money for nothing” meant a song by Dire Straits, not a stranger contacting him out of the blue promising to cut him big checks.

But then he got the message again six months later. Curious, he called SoundExchange.

“Sure enough, they had a sizable amount of money for me,” said Boydston, 51, whose band Daddy a Go Go includes his two teenage sons. “It was several thousand dollars. That’s not a ton of money. But for a guy who makes CDs in his basement, it was enough to finance my next album.”‘ LA Times
Read the rest of this entry »

Advice is worth the price you pay

Dylan by Milton Glaser

If musicians want to be successful they need to stick to their music, practice like crazy and ignore the advice handed out by people who have no idea what’s happening. Music PEI qualifies as a place to find worthless advice on a musical career.

“Someone was giving him (Bob Dylan) advice telling him “Bob if you did this and that it might be better”  and he (Dylan) said

“Y’now, if I listened to everybody who told me how to do stuff, I might be somewhere by now.”

(1974 Bob Dylan A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks Gill and Odegard, DaCapo Press).

Dylan gave this sarcastic put-down to some of the finest studio musicians of the day including Eric Weisberg and legendary producer Phil Ramone.

It was too true: no one expected Dylan to be the next great thing at any stage of his career. No one would have picked Bob Dylan to be the most influential singer-songwriter for half a century.

Music publisher and author Randall Wixen said Dylan and The Beatles changed music publishing forever. Before Dylan, singers got their songs from songwriters. After Dylan wrote and sang nothing but his own material, singers were expected to write music as well. Not everyone follows that rule but it broke the Brill Building stranglehold on popular music.
Read the rest of this entry »

1,000 True Fans of Ellis Paul – 300 Fans = $100,000 in Contributions The Ultimate Testament to Fan Loyalty

Ellis Paul

From Music Think Tank – When I first heard that Ellis Paul an artist I have know about for years and seen one a few occasions raised $100,000 I was amazed…I had to get the story. Here it is.

Ellis Paul is an American singer-songwriter and folk musician. To date, he has released 16 albums and has been the recipient of 14 Boston Music Awards. He has published a book of original lyrics, poems, and drawings, and released a DVD that includes a live performance, guitar instruction, and a road-trip documentary. As a touring musician, Ellis plays close to 150 dates each year and his extensive club and coffeehouse touring, together with radio airplay, has brought him a solid national following.

Rachael Klien from Ellis’s management team answered these questions for Ellis while chatting with him on the phone while he drove from Virginia to Atlanta
Read the rest of this entry »

Sounds like Canada, eh?

One of the key problems we have with any sort of collection agency/performance rights organization/collective licensing scheme is that they introduce an unnecessary bureaucracy into the equation and, as a result, money gets redirected from the actual creators to the bureaucracy itself. It’s a giant economic inefficiency that harms content creators. Case in point: Michael Geist points us to the news that the Australian copyright collection group, The Copyright Agency Limited, spent more on its own staff than it gave out directly to content creators. In 2009, it paid its staff $9.4 million, and it disbursed… $9.1 million directly to content creators.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sharing music videos while promotional may be subject to take down request by copyright owner

EFF Commentary by Tim Jones

Imagine you’re a music journalist who maintains a blog. You’ve just found a great, new, virtually-unknown artist that you want to tell the world about. How can you do so, in a way that is simple and convenient for your readers, but does not place you or your blog’s host at risk of being sued?

Thanks to the increasingly aggressive copyright-enforcement tactics of the music industry, this has become a startlingly complicated question with no good answer.

In the latest signal of this conundrum, at least six music blogs were deleted last week by Blogger due to copyright complaints. It’s uncertain who made the accusations that lead to the deletions, but the most likely culprit is the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), a copyright-enforcement organization which had previously filed copright takedown notices against some of the targeted blogs. Read the rest of this entry »