Pribek

Used to be that musicians would get together…jam…book a session…start a band…stuff like that. Now, they work on “projects”.

Circumstances are always beyond my control and this time, the circumstances have landed me in Memphis. It’s all copasetic. One thing I will be doing is working on a project. I can’t tell you the details blah-blah-blah and that is the nature of projects.

And, like the deal where when one door closes another opens…when one project blows to hell another opportunity pops up. The project that bit the dust this time? Well…here’s the thing; at some point “hype” became a good word and also, the ability to spew hype became a desired character trait. But, hype is dead. There are still remnants of the golden age hyping to beat the devil. Money for vapor, that’s what they seek.

Dude said; “This is L.A. Baby, not Sleepy Hollow. You guys move much too slow”.

I guess Hollywood ain’t geared for me and old Crazy Bill.

Anyway, I’m here in Memphis chasing the music and not the vapor.

The good thing about projects is, you can have multiple ones kicking at the same time…festering and bubbling…they can co-exist and benefit each other.

It’s tough to make a buck playing music these days but, hype is dead. Embrace the project, play the music and, don’t drive in to the vapor.

Hey folks, Jayne here, again. Just spoke to Brother Pribek and although the rain has stopped the problem with the internet persists. The problem appears to not be insurmountable, but a few real life annoyances must take precedence before he can get back online.

I called the Brother after I checked over his comments and found an amazing reply to a recent nod Jack wrote about ReverbNation. Artist Johnny Rei had a beef or two to air in response to that post:

I was around top 10 in global all genres charts for whole April 2009. To my huge disappointment, my Fair Share for April was $5 (Five Dollars). I’m really, really disappointed. So if you are an artist who is working really hard for a whole month on promoting and if you think you gonna earn big money, forget it.

Click here to read the whole post and Johnny’s comment.

Below is Jed Carlson’s (co-founder & COO of ReverbNation) succinct reply:

Johnny Rei,

I was disappointed to read your criticism of ReverbNation’s Fair Share program. It appears you misunderstand the nature of the fair share program in terms of what it is, how it works, and what you should expect from it. While you are certainly entitled to your opinion, I would hope that you could be better informed before you editorialize in public. We have always worked on behalf of the artist, and it shows in almost every aspect of the site and decision we make.

Under the program artists share advertising dollars where their content is instrumental in generating the revenue. It was initially designed as a response to Artists’ concerns about how they were being treated by sites like MySpace (driving fan traffic and generating ad $$$ for MySpace, but not receiving a cut of the money). It was never intended as a primary revenue source as the total pool of advertising dollars is too small to accomplish this.

Viewing ourselves as more of a business partner to the Artists, in 2007 we launched the Fair Share program with a commitment to split 50% of the net ad revenue with those who enrolled in the program. We have been sharing that ad revenue ever since, and we can’t think of any other site that has been bold enough to follow our lead.

Admittedly, the amounts per Artist ‘will not make you rich’ (as stated when you sign up). But those payments are essentially ‘free money’ for Artists who are going to be promoting themselves with our tools anyway. If you are going to use our email tool, music/video players, Facebook app, gig finder, digital press kits, digital distribution, etc, why not signup to get something back? It’s not all that different than a Discover Card or a Costco Membership that pays you back some cash at the end of the month or year.

In your case, you actually earned the equivalent of $2.47CPM (per thousand impressions that you drove to your ReverbNation page, where we show ads) for the month of April. This is significantly higher than the average CPM. It should be noted that ReverbNation does not place ads on widgets, emails or application pages. We refrain from this in an effort to preserve the integrity of the artists’ content (we don’t think shoving an ad into your music player on your blog will enhance your efforts to become a successful musician). Additionally, we must be sensitive to where widgets are placed. If we were to place advertising into a widget on MySpace, we would be violating their terms of service.

But, it’s important to note that Fair Share is not designed to replace making great music, gigging, selling merch and tickets, getting sponsored, etc as an income stream for a musicians. This isn’t a ‘get rich quick’ plan of any kind.

Let’s take a look at the math to understand how Fair Share is calculated and distributed to the Artists:

At the end of every month, we take 50% of the net ad revenue and create an ‘Artist Pie’ full of money. We use a proprietary formula (so people can’t cheat with automated bots, fake emails, etc) to determine how big a slice each Artist receives. So, each Artist will receive a monthly ‘slice’ based on:

1. The overall size of the ‘Artist Pie’.
2. The Artist’s portion, based on the formula.

It’s very important to understand that the size of the pie varies greatly from month to month due to overall ReverbNation site impressions (growing over time), and the dollar value of each advertisement shown on the site (which is down significantly, due to the economy).

It’s also important to understand that the portion any individual Artist receives depends on how many other Artists are enrolled in the program. If you have to divide a pie among many more people, each slice will be smaller. As you would expect, we sign up lots and lots of new Artists every day to the program.

My final point it that the program is 100% voluntary. It is not a requirement in order to use our site or anything we offer. By the sounds of it, you might be happier opting out of it.

Johnny, while I am happy (but somewhat confused) that you are still using our widgets on your MySpace page, I really wish that you would have contacted us prior to flaming a good program like Fair Share on blogs and to our user base. I have reached out repeatedly in an attempt to speak with you directly, but so far you have chosen not to have that conversation. That is your choice, but it is difficult to reconcile your actions when you write so strongly, but refuse to confront the problem directly.

To anyone else that has questions about Fair Share, I’m happy to answer.

-Jed Carlson
Co-Founder, Chief Operating Officer
ReverbNation.com

Direct, over the phone quote from Jack after I (Jayne) read him this reply:

“Since I wrote the original post, in my opinion ReverbNation.com has done nothing but improve and become more user friendly which is why I am still happy about using them on my blog. Also, everytime I have contacted somebody at ReverbNation.com about any issue they have replied promptly and in a professional manner.”

And, on that note, let’s all go out with a bit o’George Clinton! Don’t forget to put your funk on and set the player on the sidebar on pause. Enjoy.

This is from the NY Times…

The estates of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II have sold the rights to the legendary duo’s songs and musicals — including “South Pacific,” “The Sound of Music” and “Oklahoma!” — to Imagem Music Group, an investment arm of a huge Netherlands-based pension fund, the company announced on Tuesday.

This stuff is going on all the time. The reason this shows up in the Times is because it’s Rodgers and Hammerstein and that resonates with most anybody. Truth is, most every writer that’s getting a little mailbox money is getting approached with a buy out.

And, here’s how it works: even though the quote says “a huge Netherlands-based pension fund”, those cats are tied in to a huge multi-media source. Hence, you will soon see Rodgers and Hammerstein songs showing up in ads for stuff that aren’t relevant and action movies. Because, the buyer is going to get their money’s worth while mostly keeping in house.

Now, the writer(s) and or estate is getting a big ass one time check. More dough than they can spend in their lifetime…in theory…but, usually doesn’t go down that way.

The folks that buy the catalog are looking at least 50 years ahead. How much money will this song make over a long period of time? And what they do is work out a mathematical “factor” for each song. The factor is based on the amount of years it will take to recoup the money they put out. If a song has a factor of 11, it means they will get their money back in 11 years. After the 11 years, the rest is gravy.

These cats are interested in songs with factors of 8-13. 22 doesn’t get them exited. See, 22 only leaves them 28 years of gravy on their 50 year plan and, they are primarily interested in 40 years of gravy.

It serves to further the bastardization of the art.

But, it also serves to get the songwriter some dough and live a comfortable life unless they piss it away.

The reason I bring all this up is; I have facilitated these kinds of deals and-it’s part of the real music business. Let me tell you this…it can be a gut wrenching decision.