indieFINANCIALnetwork™

Welcome to everything financial and everything pro music business. We are here for you and your music company, to help clarify your thinking; so you can navigate successfully through the briars and brambles of this cluttered and demanding business. At the iFn we are focused on the future. Your future. We can handle the heavy lifting when it comes to YOUR finances. If you look around a little, you can see that we aren't your typical left-brained accountant types. In addition to the number crunching, which we certainly excel at, we like to think with our whole brains, and provide creative, right-brained solutions to the complex problems of the music industry.

We realize that dealing with the finances of your music company isn't the sexiest or the most exciting item on the menu, but it is essential to your survival. If you don't figure out a way to keep your finances healthy, and make wise decisions with respect to your budgets, income collection and your spending habits, chances are, you won't be around very long. If you are looking for our philosophy about the state of the industry, skip over to the RANT page. A bit of the history and biographical info about the company can be found at THINKTANK. If you are looking for the laundry list of our services, please skip directly over to the DETAILS page. For the background and activities of our current client base, skip over to PLUGS. We keep tabs on relevant articles written throughout the music industry and post them on the PROPAGANDA page as often as we can. The DIVERSIONS page features a bit of humor, hopefully an irreverent mix of fun stuff, including a link to the 1929 Ford Model A "Mutt Rod" our founder is currently restoring. RAVES are links to the other sites we find worth your while on a variety of topics. For our contact info, please head over to the REACH page. After your review, please feel free to contact us with any specific questions that may arise at 1-877-BUZZ-IFN or email us at: moreinfo@indieFINANCIALnetwork.com. We hope you enjoy your stay and that you will park yourself here often. We will update the site on a regular basis, so there is almost always something new here.

Upon the successful launch and lift-off of the iFn, our press release was picked up by Forbes.com, Yahoo Finance, Hollywood Reporter, Morningstar, Entertainment Zone, Finance Canada, Business MVP and WMSL-UK in Britain, to name a few. Here is a link to the press release on the lift-off of the indieFINANCIALnetwork: PRESS RELEASE.

REWIND: New Music Industry Week In Review

It was a holiday week in the US, but we kept coverage going all week long. It was a good thing too, because some interesting things happened:

Pandora is forcing $29.95 payments from indie bands. Founder Tim Westergren responded to the controversy and others are sharing their opinions in a poll.
Pirate Bay was sold to Global Gaming Factory and is launching The Video Bay
The Michael Jackson Effect: an unprecedented spike in sales, concert promoter AEG discusses the cancellation and a commentary "The Music Industry, Michael Jackson & The Zombieconomy"
Sony invested in digital distributor IODA
The Hype Machine blog outed artists for chart manipulation
Music analytics firm Band Metrics expanded its private beta
ReverbNation Survey: How is the Economic Downturn Affecting Artists?
Join Hypebot's online networking party
Can what's cool and uncool be rated?
Essay: The Bullet That Works Best Hasn't Changed. It's Just Changed Hands

Throwaway culture, while, perhaps, not limited to commercialized music, appears to stem from highly and quickly popularized songs that are file-shared and listened to for a short period of time. And are, then, later deleted or ‘disposed of’ from the listener’s computer or MP3 player, typically, once the song starts to fade into obscurity or has grown tiresome to the user, due to circumstances such as novelty, over-exposure, or a ‘change of taste.’

As I’ve argued previously, this can be partially attributed to what file-sharing changed about a music fan’s dynamic relationship with the culture that they consume and the numerous paradoxes of choice that are encountered within the realm of the Internet. Most predominately, file-sharing has allowed fans simulate decisions not yet made, or economically ‘committed to’ rather, and has, in turn, caused them to become ever-more passive about their deletion.

Yet, up until this point, what has largely remained a mystery is why things become unpopular and what affect adoption speed has on the abandonment of cultural tastes. Throughout their research of over 100 years of data on first-name adoption trends, Jonah Berger from the University of Pennsylvania and Gaël Le Mens from Stanford University and Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona found that tastes which quickly increase in popularity die out faster.

More interesting still, the researchers also noted that similar outcomes have been observed in the music industry, wherein, artists who shoot to the top of the charts may be perceived negatively and realize overall lower sales in comparison to those who’ve made a more gradual climb. Simply put, people may avoid buying music from an artist that they see as being short-lived, because the attractiveness of the music has decreased and lost its uniqueness.

“This seemingly counterintuitive finding,” they wrote, “has important implications. It suggests that faster adoption is not only linked to faster death but may also hurt overall success.” How these findings relate to the ten years proceeding and following the rise of Napster and file-sharing is where the big picture becomes clearer and new insight is added into what Steve Knopper deemed ‘The Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age.’

During the CD Boom, which lasted from 1984-2000, music became increasingly pressured and scrutinized, because executives started to demand that it act like every other unit. This mindset became one of the many catalysts that caused the Record Industry to change from the savvy executives who nurtured talent and developed careers to the corporate types who relied primarily on the infrastructure established through MTV, big-box retail, and commercial radio.

By the late 1990’s, Greg Kot argues in Ripped that the acts dominating the charts were marketing triumphs more than creative ones. And, with these numerous successes, ranging from Britney Spears, ‘N Sync, the Back Street Boys, and Ricky Martin, the major labels began to abandon organic growth, their long-range, career-building view, in favor of the mass-mediated, commercial music, which could provide stronger quarterly growth and profits.

"cast a divide between themselves and a
wired generation of fans far more subtle and sophisticated
than anything they could’ve ever imagined."

However, what the hit-factories couldn’t create is loyalty and their practices would go onto cast a divide between themselves and a wired generation of fans far more subtle and sophisticated than anything they could’ve ever imagined. Every time the labels used commercial radio and MTV to spike an artist’s popularity, they had risked, as the researchers noted, realizing lower overall sales, because fans may avoid investing an artist if they perceive them as a fad.

Consequentially, once the teen pop bubble burst in 2001 and the performers that had become the Record Industry’s godsend could no longer sustain their success, the labels began the wake up to the harsh realities that file-sharing seemingly induced. But, no one could forewarn them about the vicious cycle that would be created as a result of their drastic misconceptions and how the very convoluted system they spent years supporting would spiral out of control.

The mass-marketing practices that the Record Industry adopted and mastered in correlation with file-sharing’s rise into predominance may have, in turn, created the ultimate paradox. Wherein the more the major labels focused on producing music that could be highly and quickly popularized, the more expecting fans perceived these artists negatively, perhaps, avoided buying their albums, and preceded to file-share their potentially ‘short-lived’ songs instead.

But, the more the music fans file-shared, the more the major labels were almost forced to produce lowest-common-denominator music, which fed into ever-more vicious cycle. With every new release, every hot new artist that they used their marketing muscle to spike in popularity, it could be said that the Record Industry was killing itself to live. Achieving sustainability and profits the only way these music executives knew how. There simply was no turning back.

The CD-Release Complex, the backbone of the modern Record Industry, built around the idea that fans discover music through the same mediums that major labels use to promote new music, had become so engrained into very fabric of their business, that, without it, they would be lost. Still, they were blind to the fact that the very abstract system they created and used to commercialize culture and bring music to the masses had since become their mental prison.

"the allotted time table for an artist to be deemed successful
shortened and expectations were heightened."

Previously, artists were established through word of mouth and constant touring, which gradually built a following and allowed an artist develop their creativity and hone their craft. Yet, every year, for the last twenty years, the allotted time table for an artist to be deemed successful shortened and expectations were heightened. With advent of file-sharing and the advances in the Internet, that window of time has considerably shrunk to almost nothing.

On the contrary, digital culture has proved to be as unforgiving as the media landscape that preceded it. Due to the instantaneous nature of the Internet and how it amplifies word of mouth, the growth curve for an artist has compressed from a few years to a few weeks. “Now,” as Jordan Kurland, manger of Death Cab for Cutie and Feist, commented in Ripped, “you run into this phenomenon with people propping things up that shouldn’t be propped up quite so soon.”

“It is a society of instant gratification now, and bands are built up and torn down before they’ve had a chance to create a body of work that represents who they are or what they can do.” In other words, what we’re seeing within every spectrum of the Music Industry, from the top-down corporate media of major labels to bottom-up participatory culture of the Internet: artists that quickly increase in popularity die faster. And, within a climate that supports disposability, the file-sharing community will only continue to thrive and feed on the throwaway culture that is created as a result of it.

The Montreux Jazz Festival takes place every July in the Music and Convention Centre overlooking Lake Geneva in Switzerland. Since it kicked off in 1967, it has always been a plush affair (it was originally held in a casino) and right from the beginning, it attracted the best names that jazz had to offer: Nina Simone, Jan Garbarek, Ella Fitzgerald, Soft Machine and Weather Report.

But in the 1970s, organisers opened the festival to rock acts as well. This would eventually lead to the composition of the most famous song about a rock festival. During Frank Zappa’s set in 1971, the casino burnt to the ground, an eventful evening which was immortalised in Deep Purple’s Smoke on the Water, which probably even outstrips Woodstock by Joni Mitchell.

During the same decade, blues and rock fans were delighted by the chance to see such acts as Funkadelic, Carlos Santana, Eric Clapton and Joe Satriani as well as the biggest names in fusion and jazz rock. One group that was very taken with the location, scenery and sound recording facilities offered by the complex was the Rolling Stones. During the festival’s 10th anniversary, the band decamped there to record their often overlooked Black and Blue album, which features the curious sound of them playing reggae on Cherry Oh Baby. This holiday for the band led, in part, to the curious urban myth that Keith Richards used to travel to a Swiss clinic to have his entire blood supply changed.

The remit got even wider during the Eighties to include world -and indie music. The festival has -remained stable in concept since that decade and has played host to New Order, Prince, Elvis Costello and Youssou N’Dour. It’s -understandable that the world is currently rediscovering two of the outstanding albums of the pop -canon this month – Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall and Thriller. But there was also a genius -working -behind the scenes on those albums – the disco funk savant and composer/producer Quincy Jones, who was celebrated by the festival last year in a star-studded five-hour concert -involving the likes of Herbie -Hancock and Chaka Khan.

Underlining that it has not lost any of its eclecticism, this year’s stellar line-up -includes Lilly Allen, the Black Eyed Peas, Underworld, BB King and Steely Dan.

One of the most interesting guests appearing is a -returning visitor, Bill Laswell, who will be playing some 26 years after his first appearance. Laswell is a musician’s musician, combining an unpretentious, can-do attitude with an aptitude for performing and producing good results whether in the field of jazz, improv, dub, drum and bass, punk, electro or hip-hop. His natural -curiosity led to him working in what is known as “collision music”. This involves seemingly disparate elements being thrown together in an attempt to create a new sound. He has brought hip-hop and punk together with his work on the Time Zone project; melded electro, fusion and hip-hop as a producer on Herbie Hancock’s Rockit; and combined jazz with punk and heavy metal as a member of Massacre and Painkiller. Most recently, his explorations have been into low-end provision and the blending of drum and bass, dub and funk as part of the Method of Defiance group who will be playing at Montreux.

While taking a break from his rehearsals in New York, he talked about what people could expect from his appearance at the jazz -festival. “Well, it’s kind of a new idea. Originally, the name was used on a compilation of drum and bass producers collaborating with -established jazz musicians. It was always rooted in drum and bass. Then, we played live in Greece two years ago and we sort of did it for fun. What came out of it was that we were all interested in continuing as a band. Again, a lot of it is based on live drum and bass, dub and quite a lot of improv in the middle with Bernie Worrell (keyboards) and Guy Licata (drums), the frontmen Toshinori Kondo (trumpet) and Dr Israel (vocals/console). And there are two newer members, Hawkman from Jamaica and DJ Krush (the former Mo Wax turntablist).”

It’s probably fair to say that things in Laswell’s professional life probably aren’t as hectic as they were back in 1983 when he first played Montreux. He laughs and says: “I think I was playing with Sonny -Sharrock (the legendary jazz guitarist), D.ST who is a DJ and Henry Kaiser (guitarist/composer). Again, it was -improvised, but with a rhythm section. It was a long time ago, and probably a lot more in the avant-garde. But we did play pieces that featured the turntable. It was also the first time I had ever seen live -music with live painting. So Keith Haring painted live while we were playing and when the music stopped, the painting was finished, which was kind of a trip for the -audience.”

As well as Montreux, that year also saw him bring John Lydon of the Sex Pistols and the renowned Zulu -Nation DJ Afrika Bambaataa together to form Time Zone for the hit World Destruction. But apparently the outcome could have been very different: “I got a call from Bam who wanted to incorporate what he does with metal to make World -Destruction. And he said to me: ‘Do you know Def Leppard?’ And I said: ‘No, I don’t know Def Leppard.’ [laughs] At that time I didn’t know many metal people. So I told him that I had just got to know John Lydon. I told him that he was Johnny Rotten who had been in this band the Sex Pistols. I said: ‘It’s not really metal, but you might think it is!’ And he said: ‘Yeah, that sounds good!’ So we went and did this thing very quickly and it seemed very natural to me.”

He adds that despite the obvious differences, Lydon and Bam were similar characters: “They certainly had the images that kids, or people in general, notice and they stood for a particular sensibility, culture and image.”

This record would go on to- -influence a lot of modern music from the rap-rock of Faith No More to the militant hip-hop of Public Enemy, the industrial sound of Nine Inch Nails to the nu metal of Linkin Park. Laswell also would be involved in the writing, bass playing and recording of an equally influential record just some months later, Herbie Hancock’s Rockit.

“Yeah, we actually played that song at Montreux before it had even come out,” he says. “That was kind of the beginnings of progressive hip-hop in New York. If there was resistance to us using scratching as a method of soloing on a record, we certainly weren’t aware of it and again, in those days, things happened really quickly. I got a call from a guy who knew Herbie who told me he- -wanted to put together some tracks. I went to New York, saw Bambaataa and people DJing at the Roxy. I don’t even think he was really paying attention but after that night out I said: ‘I’ll come to LA in a couple of weeks and I’ll bring a couple of rhythm tracks.’ So we just recorded very quickly in a basement in -Brooklyn. We didn’t really know what it was. We took it and Herbie played over it for an hour or two and then it took another hour to mix. The whole thing didn’t take very long. We didn’t really know what we’d done. We stopped at a store that sold a lot of speakers on the way to the airport because we wanted to kill some time. The guy went to put on a rock record and we said: ‘No we don’t listen to that kind of stuff.’ We had a cassette of the rough mix we’d finished so we said: ‘Play this -instead.’ We played it and afterwards we turned round and there was just about 50 kids looking at the speakers, saying, ‘What was that?!’” He laughs. “We all just looked at each other and everyone was -thinking we might have -something.”

Perhaps it suits other artists working in adventurous fields of music to spend as much time theorising as actually playing or recording but this is not true in Laswell’s case. He is refreshingly modest about his achievements, referring to any new ground broken as a happy accident and his grafter’s attitude and lack of monomania showing him to be more in the vein of a collaborator like Miles Davis rather than a -theory-driven soloist like Ornette Coleman.

Despite the fact that he excels at combining forms of -music, he -denies interest in the fusion music of the 1970s. “I didn’t -really -relate to that kind of music. -Fusion -had a great beginning with The Tony -Williams Lifetime, with John McLaughlin and Larry Young and later with Jack Bruce. That is a -really good example of a band who play with structure but who also -improvise within that structure. That was important and some of the electric Miles Davis things, which were, again, based around -repetitive rhythm. There was a lot of room for people to incorporate sounds and rhythms and structures on top and I think that was important. The only fusion I became interested in then was through following African -music, Indian music and music from parts of central Asia and Japan. Looking back, I thought Cream was a good improvising band even though it was only in a couple of time signatures and mainly based on the blues. I thought that was more -inspiring than what fusion became.”

But fusion in its original meaning (or collision, as Laswell would probably have it) is still the order of the day at Montreux. For the musically open minded, this year’s festival is as good as any in recent memory. Where else could you see the heavy -metal, glamrock godfather Alice Cooper rubbing shoulders with the living boogie-woogie legend of New Orleans, Allen Toussaint and -the -socially -conscious hip-hop superstar Mos Def?

With all that eclectic excitement, it’s good that Status Quo are bringing their Rocking All Over the World show to town just to bring people back down to earth. And with a no Wellington boots needed policy, you can count us in.

We Love This: Do we really want to spend our precious time in this business seeing who can amass the most phony phantom friends? Is this really what the music biz 2009 has come down to? Trent, we salute you once again for using common sense! Our question is: what took you so long?

Los Angeles - Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, who abandoned the major label system and has been testing various online distribution models, has announced that he will be "tuning out" of social networking sites. After delving into social networks as a means of giving fans more access to his personal life, including a Twitter account where he spoke of his personal life, Reznor said he "will be tuning out of the social networking sites because at the end of the day it's now doing more harm than good in the bigger picture and the experiment seems to have yielded a result. Idiots rule.

"It's been an interesting experiment over the last couple of years or so. Faced with leaving the infrastructure of traditional record labels and figuring out what the right thing to do is in this new world - I found myself realizing that for me to have any concept of how to interact with the community and know what they might want / what they find appropriate, I need to immerse myself in that world and live it for a while.

The reason no record label knows how to market anything to new media is they don't live there...

They don't get it because they don't use it. What you've seen happen with the marketing and presentation of NIN over the last years is a direct result of living next to you, listening to you, consuming with you and interacting with you. Directly. There's no handlers or PR people here, it's me and my guys - that's it.

...I will be tuning out of the social networking sites because at the end of the day it's now doing more harm than good in the bigger picture and the experiment seems to have yielded a result. Idiots rule..." - Trent Reznor

Layoff described by one source as ":massive" are coming to MySpace although there is no official word yet from the company. MySpace shed 5% of its staff a year ago and laid of as many as 45 more last month. But these cuts will go far deeper, according to TechCrunch and could hit several hundred. Management will inevitably blame a tough economy and plummeting ad revenue, but declining traffic is the real culprit.

Monthly unique visitors to MySpace have fallen from 64.6 million in June of 2008 to 56.8 million in May of 2009 while Facebook rose from 35.2 million to 113 million during the same period. New leadership has been brought in both at parent Fox Interactive and MySpace to turn the ship around with music as the cornerstone of the rebuilding process.

Martin J. Thörnkvist is a music industry thinker and strategist who operates indie label Songs I Wish I'd Written and is one of the founders of The Swedish Model consortium of labels. This article first appeared on the group blog Digital Renaissance.

The future. This undefined scope of time with a divine shimmer around it. When it comes to the future of music I’ve always consider myself an optimist.

For one, I’m certain that musicians and music fans have a prosperous future ahead of them. That’s because music is the single most important ingredient in the music business soup and music is, of course, a result of an artists creative minds. And it’s when musicians interact with listeners that a window for business is opening. Not before, and not just because some A&R person, marketeer or CEO opened their wallet. That the relationship between musicians and fans is the foundation of the business and the single most important piece of knowledge that we all have to submissively recognize. This is the key to the future for the middle men we call record labels – we have to encourage the interaction and realize that it will live without us.

We middle men have to remember that we always need to convince our customers (musicians and fans) why they should engage with us....

Music on plastic discs or plain mp3s just ain’t enough anymore. Competition is hard and consumers doesn’t take bullshit anymore. If they love something you don’t offer they’ll go create it themselves.

So, how will most record labels cope with the fact that they have less power and have to dance after somebody elses whistle? Based on what we’ve learned from the recent 10 years they probably won’t do very well in the 5 years to come. Many labels are like oil tankers trying to turn around in Øresund.

But that’s the major part. I’m sure we will keep see more innovative ways of connecting with fans and giving them a reason to buy popping up here and there. Many more will experiment with new models where power is given away to the fans and where the recorded music is used as the great messenger of feelings it was constructed to be.

Music people also need to study other businesses more closely. Begin with the ones that are closest to us: media, film, literature and games. We are in need of inspiration. (I’m actually in the middle of a that process, writing a book with some of the smartest people in each of those businesses.) I would like to explore the area of inspiration a bit further. For example I’m really interested in finding out more about how drug dealers relationship with customers look and is maintained. Wouldn’t it be great if we can get listeners in for free but charge on the way out?

In the near term, Davids will continue to challenge Goliaths. The game will continue to change. And that’s good. At least it’s good for musicians and fans. The core. How the middle men in the business navigate the new map will define how well they succeed. How well the major players are at adopting change is the single most important factor on how well they’ll succeed. Change is hard, culture is hard, Davids are hard. My simple message is: When you see something new rise let the problems that come along with it lead the way to possibilities and solutions.

Oh, I almost forgot. In five years a hard drive available to ordinary consumers will carry 35 TB of data. Data = music. 35 TB = 2.5 million songs. Watch this development closely. It’s easy to get blinded by Spotify, but imagine when file sharing on the street means transferring the entire music history. At least it is a wild card. It seems that we will have to work on better ways of charging for music than 1 dollar a song. Don’t you think?

Music business angel investors can take several different forms. Your angel might be a family member or friend with deep pockets, or they may be a complete stranger with loads of cash who is interested in investing in start-up companies. Some music business angels are people who have made their money in music and want to pass along their good fortune AND their expertise. Other are simply people with money to spend who like the idea of getting involved in music. Angels will help with start-up cash, but your proposed business needs to be of a certain size to make it worth their time (see "Small Print" section below).

Venture capitalists (VCs) will invest in businesses both at start-up and at times when the company needs a cash injection to grow. If you're looking for VC funding, make sure you look for a group that has history of investing in music related businesses. Although VCs look for high risk investments, they're not always good matches with creative industries unless they're used to that realm. In other words, if you can even get them to take you seriously to begin with, they don't really care about your "artistic integrity" - they want the loot, and they want it fast.

Americans can forget about this one, but outside of the States, most countries have funding bodies that provide money for the arts, including the music industry. These arts funding groups can be great places to get the money you need because they are willing to work with music businesses of all sizes and have the ability to take chances on projects profit seekers like angels and VCs wouldn't touch. Even better, most of the time they give grants rather than loans, so you don't have to pay it back. You'll still need a good business plan to work with them, however - though in most cases, they can help you write it.

For indie labels, investment by a major label is an option. This kind of investment will typically only after you've built a proven track record of success as a label and need money to expand - start-up cash from a major is usually only given to someone who has either run a successful indie label in the past or has a good sales record as an artist.

Of course, funding from a major will require cedeing some control of your label, which has not always ended well for indies.

This is another one that is specific to labels, and it's getting a bit harder to find. However, in some cases, you may be able to get a distributor to invest in a release on a project basis. For instance, if you have a chance to work with a big name artist, but you can't really afford to come up with the advance or the money to give the album a proper push, your distributor might step in with an advance against future earnings on the album or with a loan that would make them an investor in the project, giving them a larger cut of the album's profits. Distributors might also help with manufacturing.

When you're looking for investors in your music business, it's important to remember that in exchange for the cash, you'll be giving up a chunk of your business, some of your autonomy, or both. Make sure you carefully consider the real cost of the investment - not only what you will have to pay back, but what you will be sacrificing when you work with an investor - and make sure you are clear on these points in advance. Some things to consider include:

Does your investor want to be involved in making business decisions? If so, do they have experience in the music industry or another creative industry (and if yes, do you share a similar philosophy in terms of the business)? Working with an investor with tons of music industry experience who wants to help you shape and build your business can be a great thing. Working with an investor who simply has a lot of money and wants to invest in your music related business because they think it would be kind of fun might not be such a great thing if they want some say-so in your business decisions. (Note that not all investors will want to become involved in your business. Some just want to make an investment and wait for the payoff.)

Make sure you understand if you are getting an investment or a loan. Investments bring risk for the investor, and so they understand they may lose their money. A loan needs to be paid back.

If your investor is pressuring you to sign over a large share of your business, be cautious. If large amounts of money and large shares are involved, get legal advice. Another thing to remember when you're seeking investment is that the hardest kind of business to find funding for is a very small one. Generally speaking, VCs don't want to talk to you unless you need at least several hundreds of thousands in investment. Music business angels will invest in smaller companies than that, but typically they're looking for investment opportunities at least in the tens of thousands range. Raising a few thousand dollars is the hardest thing to do. In the absence of arts councils or generous family/friends, you may need to consider savings, personal loans and credit cards if you need a relatively small amount of money to get going.

Also, be aware that music investment is usually given to businesses like labels, promotion companies, etc. Bands looking for investment will have a difficult time going through one of these routes and will need to look to labels, distributors and so on for their needs.

With upheaval comes opportunity; and ongoing problems within the recorded music industry has also led to a revival within independent label sector. While not without their own challenges, indie record labels appear to be experiencing a renaissance, thanks in part to new technologies and media that did not exist 5 years ago. Their nimbleness and a fan-like eye for emerging talent is being rewarded by a cadre of fans who continue to demand and support quality music.

In short, when the traditional gatekeepers and obstacles to reaching fans are removed, indies thrive. As proof that an indie label renaissance is well under way, indie label trade group The American Association Of Independent Music (A2IM) offered these stats: Independent labels accounted for 32% of aggregate album sales in 2008, up almost 1.5% from 2007. Independent artists won 56 awards at this year's Grammys, up from 36 last year. That marks over 50% of all prizes given out

Independent labels, as a group, are the largest owners of master recordings in the industry - over 80% of America's music is under independent ownership. These labels aren't just diverse in genre, but in size and business model, ranging from single-artist-owned labels to imprints with decades of history and catalog. That overwhelming majority of master recordings in indie hands is testament to the diversity of genres covered by independent labels. The result is music that crosses boundaries, and may account for why indies notched the best album Grammy in an 24 different genres in 2009.

Spurned by broadcast radio, indies are thriving on the top internet broadcasting platforms. Overall, independent music makes up approximately 40% of all music played at non-traditional web radio and at industry leading webcaster Pandora, over half of the music users play is independent. Consumer choice reigns at digital retailers as well, and the numbers reflect it, with indie market share at digital rising to 38%. Two-thirds of A2IM members have direct deals with iTunes, the industry-leading music retailer.

Music royalty and sales services provider RoyaltyShare is pulling out of the digital distribution business. Just a year after adding low cost digital distribution, the company is no longer soliciting new labels and is working to find new homes for existing clients.

Company spokesman Mike Kelly told paidContent that the economy had forced RoyaltyShare to de-emphasize distribution and lay-off two of its 30 staffers. Other employees are moving to the company's other operations.

Digital distribution is increasingly as commodity business with ongoing downward price pressure. Full service digital distributors like The Orchard, IODA and INgrooves are responding by adding new services like marketing and brick and mortar distribution to justify their fees.

By allowing ourselves to let go of the world that we have to be part of every day, and to surrender to another kind of world, we're allowing imaginative processes to take place
- Brian Eno

The artwork of music producer Brian Eno is illuminating the iconic sails of the Sydney Opera House as part of a sound and light festival in the city. They have become a canvas for audio-visual work 77 Million Paintings which uses "self-generating software" to manipulate 300 of Eno's drawings. He says it aims to provoke "visual ecstasy" and "heightened calm". The inaugural Luminous festival, curated by the ex-Roxy Music man, runs from Tuesday until 14 June.

The festival was launched earlier with the first display of 77 Million Paintings, which will be shown from 1700 local time each night during the festival. Eno said the constantly evolving display of colour, shape and form - already shown in the US and countries across Europe - would help people to "surrender to another kind of world". "All the things that humans do, including imagining, are the way we deal with emergencies including the global financial crisis," the 61-year-old told BBC News. "So to imply, 'oh God, there's a crisis, no time for imagining any more' - it's not true.

"This is the time for imagining and the way we learn to imagine, one of the ways we learn to imagine, is through the experience of art." The human ability to imagine made people "capable of surviving," he added. "By allowing ourselves to let go of the world that we have to be part of every day, and to surrender to another kind of world, we're allowing imaginative processes to take place."

Sydney Opera House chief executive Richard Evans said giving permission to project the work onto the sails was "not done lightly". We're not colouring in the opera house, we're actually kind of taking the art of the opera house and raising it to a different level. Sydney Opera House chief executive Richard Evans "It's a number of colours which kind of meld into one another and move around, sometimes quickly, sometimes very, very slowly, most times quite slowly," he added. "As you watch it, it's a very meditative experience. "We're not colouring in the opera house, we're actually kind of taking the art of the opera house and raising it to a different level."

Musical highlights of the Luminous festival include performances from dub star Lee "Scratch" Perry and electro-pop outfit Ladytron. Festival organisers say Eno was chosen as curator because of "his great sophistication and inventiveness". Educated in fine arts, Brian Eno leapt to fame in the 1970s band Roxy Music which he co-founded with Brian Ferry. He has since produced records for the likes of Talking Heads, Ultravox, U2 and Coldplay.

New York - Google's (NASD: GOOG) YouTube has been ordered by a federal court to pay U.S. songwriters represented by ASCAP $1.61 million in royalties, as well as $70,000 per year going forward, for the music played on the video site, Techdirt reported.

ASCAP had petitioned for a payment of $12 million for the music streamed via YouTube from 2005 through 2008, while YouTube had suggested a payment of $79,500 for the same period.

YouTube has recently been embroiled in disputes with record labels and collection societies over royalties paid for music streaming, leading some groups -- including Warner Music (NYSE: WMG), the U.K.'s PRS for Music, and Germany's GEMA -- to remove their artists' repertoire from the site entirely

Woodland Hills, Calif. - Music Reports, a provider of music rights administration services, said on Wednesday that it has started accounting to more than 12,000 music publishing administrators representing over 50,000 individual music publishers, on behalf of its digital music service clients. The accounting comes on the heels of the recent agreement on mechanical licensing between songwriters, labels, webcasters and the Copyright Royalty Board. Starting this month, music publishing administrators will be able to log into MusicReports.com to view accountings, download monthly usage reports, and update song ownership information.

Washington - Time magazine has labeled satellite radio provider Sirius XM (NASD: SIRI) as one of the "10 Biggest Tech Failures of the Last Decade," alongside HD DVD, Microsoft (NASD: MSFT) Vista and the Segway. The list, compiled by 24/7 Wall St., includes products and companies that "clearly miss the mark of living up to the potential that its creators expected." The magazine detailed how both DC-based XM and New York-based Sirius took on hundreds of millions of dollars in debt to build their services, which announced plans to merge in 2007.

By the time the FCC approved their deal 13 months later, the magazine said, "subscriber growth had slowed, most likely because of new and more popular consumer electronics devices like the Apple iPod and multimedia cellular handsets." The company's stock reached a low of $0.05 earlier this year, and its subscriber base fell by 400,000 in the first quarter. "Neither Sirius nor XM ever made a dime," the magazine said.

New York - NBC (NYSE: GE) news anchor Brian Williams on Monday announced the launch of a new Web-only indie music interview series, "BriTunes." "I have always loved identifying good music and good groups -- discovering them early (bar bands are best) and following them through their journey," Williams wrote in a blurb introducing the series, which kicks off with an interview with Brooklyn-based Deer Tick.

If you are an avant-garde artist you can become incredibly rich like Damien Hirst or famous like Tracy Emin. Hirst has made millions from his art But if you are an avant-garde classical composer you probably won't be rewarded with fame or money. Why should we find modern music so difficult to appreciate - but not modern art?

David Stubbs, author of Fear of Music - Why People Get Rothko But Don't Get Stockhausen, points out that the Tate Modern is one of the most popular galleries in Europe - but that an audience presented with the equivalent in music tends "to screech". "There is something inherently distressing about dissonant music which people find hard to assimilate; [but]...abstract or minimalist art sometimes makes good decoration," he says.

He points to large corporations which use abstract art to make a statement, in a way that cannot be done with music. And he says that the huge sums that a Bacon or a Pollock gain at auction is another way that such art is exposed to people. Gabriel Prokofiev, a composer and producer who runs an avant-garde record label, says he uses club nights to expose younger crowds to different forms of music.

He plays classical music and some "leftfield, electronic music" - as well as more challenging contemporary music. Composer David Stubbs has chosen some of those pieces of music which should be appreciated alongside works of art - and explains why.

First performed in 1894, and based on a poem by Mallarmé, this 10 minute piece is beautiful and evocative and yet is considered, retrospectively to be the first piece of "modern" music in that structurally, it departs from the rules of tonality and harmonic function which had governed classical music hitherto.

The Corsican born Varese emigrated to America where between 1918 and 1921 he worked on this piece, which takes as its inspiration the energies of New York City. "Vertical" shafts of sound erupt like skyscrapers, while sirens evoke both the hectic urban metropolis and introduce the element of "noise" into modern music first suggested by he Italian Futurist Luigi Russolo. The plural Ameriques is deliberate - new worlds, multiple new possibilities.

Parts of the third movement of this piece were used by Stanley Kubrik in his 1980 film The Shining. Although Bartok is considered a very jagged, angular musical proposition, suitable for this sort of soundtrack, this element of his music demonstrates the influence of Hungarian folk in his composition, which adds to its earthy vigour.

This 1960 piece, 35 minutes of meticulously planned yet spatially liberated electronic music has been of huge subsequent influence on the electronic and studio-based popular music ever since. ts influence stretches from The Beatles's Sergeant Pepper (on whose cover Stockhausen appears - Paul McCartney was a great fan) to modern techno - though Stockhausen himself never took any interest in pop.

An example of the link between contemporary art and contemporary music, this beautiful piece was written in 1971, a year after the artist Mark Rothko's suicide and intended to be performed in the non-denominational Rothko Chapel, which houses many of his works. t is an example of the way in which, similar to composer John Cage, modern composition draws on sound the way an artist draws on his palette.

Ryko Distribution Merged With ADA, Staffs Shuffled
April 23, 2009 - Retail By Ed Christman, N.Y.

The Warner Music Group is folding Ryko Distribution into Alternative Distribution Alliance company.

As part of the move, all labels signed to Ryko will be handled by ADA, with the transition expected to occur over the next 45-90 days. Ryko Distribution has annual sales of about $50 million; Billboard estimates the merged company's annual volume at $200 million. In order to accommodate the extra volume, ADA will add 12 people to its staff.

Meanwhile, the 25-person Ryko staff will be laid off, and those staffers can apply for the new ADA jobs, WMG sources say. Ryko Distribution president Jim Cuomo will serve as a consultant.

The Warner Music Group acquired Ryko Distribution in 2006 as part of its $67.5 million acquisition of the Rykodisc label. The label will continue to operate and will now be distributed by ADA. While it is consolidating the two independent distribution companies into one, the WMG still sees the independent sector as a strategic growth area and it is expanding ADA's capabilities, sources say.

In other moves WEA, WMG's major label distribution company, will cut maybe 10 staffers that call on smaller accounts and service those retailers through tele-marketers, sources say. Some back office functions at ADA and WEA will be combined at WEA.

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