Pribek

Let’s say for instance, that you and your garage band have been in the woodshed a couple of nights a week for several months. And, you’ve been working up some of your favorite quirky cover tunes. It’s getting pretty groovy, you’ve got a couple chicks hanging around dancing barefoot on the concrete floor when you practice, and you want to get the word out, spread some love, make a name and roll the dice.

So, the plan is to have the keyboard guy bring his laptop over one night and you cats will record your best version of your favorite one of said quirky cover songs and graciously let the public download it for free over the web.

And let’s just say, that people just love your innocent charm, bad boy attitude, ambivalence, sarcasm, tattoos, pierced tongues and rockin’ sound. And, for those reasons, an enormous amount of people, let’s say 100,00, bypass the glut of other free mp3s available all over the web and they download your quirky cover song.

And….let’s just say that 6 months down the road, nobody from any label has called, no text message from Jimmy Kimmel’s people, and the only gig you can find is the one where you rent the Knight’s of Columbus Hall out for a night, the bass player’s wife is pregnant again and, everybody decides to part ways temporarily, amid vows of loyalty and promises to never stop rockin’ over a few warm beers.

Life goes on, nobody got hurt and, hey! At least you are on 100,000 iPods.

Have you ever heard of the Harry Fox Agency?

Don’t feel bad if you haven’t. HFA is in the business of administering music publishing. They collect money from music sales, take a percentage, and disperse the rest to music publishers who, in turn, take their percentage and disperse the remaining portion the the songwriter(s).

From Billboard…

HFA offers new mechanical licensing options for limited downloads, interactive streams, and ringtones through its bulk-licensing program and continues to offer statutory rate mechanical licensing for permanent digital downloads.

The Copyright Royalty Board set the mechanical rate for songs at 9.1 cents, plus 0.2 cent for each additional minute beyond five minutes; ringtones for 24 cents; and limited download and interactive streaming royalty rates are based on a percentage of income from online digital service providers.

In straight talk, every time someone downloads a song at iTunes, 9.1 cents out of that 99 cents goes the Harry Fox Agency and then some to publishers, and some to songwriters.

That 9.1 cents is really the big sticking point. That’s why you can’t put your cover song on the various social networks etc. for free download legally at this time. It’s still a future-world promise at this point. Reason is, none of these social networks etc. have figured out how to make 9.1 cents per song download through advertising.

So, back to the above tale of the lovable, underdog garage band. As it stands, legally; these guys owe the Harry Fox Agency $9,100. HFA is known to have thorough but, not necessarily swift, accounting methods. But, one of the things about the digital age is; there is going to be a record of those 100,000 downloads forever so, swift accounting isn’t the big priority. That right there, is something I don’t hear anybody talking about.

Things could really open up if anybody could record a version one of their favorite tunes and put it up for public consumption at the place where the public is (social network). There are promises out there, speculation on the table but, until one of these outfits figure out how to make 9.1 cents; it’s not going to happen.

An interesting post over at Hypebot about Jango, a music site that is offering artists a chance to buy airplay…

For $30 for 1,000 plays, indie artists get airplay to fans of etablished artists of their choice. If a band’s fans say they remind them of U2; then that band can now target airplay to U2 fans only. A display ad running alongside encourages listeners to rate the song or become a fan. In addition to targeting by music taste, artists can also target listeners by age, gender and location….

…Internet broadcasts are not regulated by the FCC in the same way as over the air broadcasters; so what Jango is doing is perfectly legal. But is it right? In a fractured and cluttered media landscape should artist’s pay to get played? How will Jango’s audience react to the new music by artists they’ve never heard of.

Any time something like this comes along, people get to throwing the word “Payola” around.

A few thoughts about payola;

Payola enabled a guy like Sam Phillips to break an artist like Johnny Cash. It wasn’t all bad. If you had an act that was outside of what the big labels would be interested in, you could go around to DJs with whiskey and women and give your horse a shot in the race.

After payola was outlawed, there were still a lot of DJs partaking. That didn’t really end until large corporations started buying stations and taking the play list out of the DJ’s hands and homogenizing the formats. But, that didn’t end payola, it still exists. There are a ton of above board and below board methods to get around it. The little guy isn’t able to get in the game, that’s all.

So, addressing the questions posted above about what Jango is doing.

“what Jango is doing is perfectly legal. But is it right?”

I don’t see any harm in it; it’s advertising. Jango runs the risk of throwing a bunch of crap out there and turning off their audience but, that’s another matter. Here’s a question; What would stop a record company from buying a bunch of spots on a major TV network and drilling some new song in to the public psyche by hammering it in to their brains the same way a breakfast cereal company does? The answer is money. People think that the music business is bigger than it is and they always have.

In a fractured and cluttered media landscape should artist’s pay to get played?

Sure, why not, give it a try. But, you have to look at it realistically. 1,000 plays is no big deal. 1,000 plays=1,000 impressions.
For perspective, if you got a song played on a big station in a big market, just one time, that could be a half million impressions. And one spin on a big time radio station isn’t going to feed the bulldog. If you had 30 spins on each of 50 stations in good markets, then you might make a dent.

How will Jango’s audience react to the new music by artists they’ve never heard of?

I suspect that Jango will run in to the same wall that all internet advertising does; you have to get them to click. But with something like this, you need them to click and come back for more. So, it all depends on the crap quotient. If the listener clicks a few times and they get bad songs, poorly recorded and performed, they won’t keep clicking.

Some things just defy description but, if you’re looking for a way to spend some time curiously wondering then go visit the Japanese gallery of psychiatric art which, consists of; “Images from Japanese psychiatric medication advertisements : 1956-2003″.

Now I’m aware that the Japanese have a flair for advertising that eludes a lot of Westerners. This stuff is sort of on a different level though.

For instance…

Noritren®
~nortriptyline~
1972, Psychiatria et Neurologia Japonica

and…

Serenace®
~haloperidol~
1970, Psychiatria et Neurologia Japonica