Anybody complaining about the current state of the American music industry should read this Billboard article about Iraqi pop stars:

Yousef fled the country after Uday had a group of girls beat him up at a concert, Khaled said. Former workers at Shebab recall other incidents, one involving Uday urinating on a singer.

and:

Like other exile singers, Bahr would return each year to sing for Saddam. "We had no choice so I think we can be forgiven. Most people understand this," he said.

Thankfully the RIAA has never urinated on me or had girls beat me up.

Cedric wrote in to tell me about this Mixman remix contest:

The Producers of "LADJ The Movie" have chosen 32 Tracks from the Mixman Library -- The Contest Trak-Pak. Use any version of Mixman to create your Remix. When finished, Export to RealAudio G2 format, and submit your Remix to Mixman Radio.

You can download the contest loops and a free version of StudioPro to do your remix and could win all sortsa crazy stuff like a Mixman DM2, a Gem DJ System, sample CDs, motherboards and video cards and more.

I think I'm too lazy to bother trying to learn some other software, but maybe some of you motivated people out there might be interested.

Jakob from heatstrokerecords.com wrote in to ask about my experience on CD Baby:

I know you use CDBaby for your CDs, and I was wondering, do you think it's worth the upfront cost and the cost per disc? I now own a small independent record label and I was wondering if it would be good to put our current CD in there. We aren't really popular right now, so we're looking for ways to expand our market. Has CDBaby garnered any extra sales for you? How many discs have you sold through CDBaby? Has site traffic increased at all since you started using it? And, granted my position, do you think it'd be worth it for me? Thanks.

The precious answers:

1. CD Baby has garnered only one extra sale that I know of (the person bought the CD from me and told me they found out about me through CD Baby).

2. I have sold zero of the original 5 CDs that I mailed them.

3. I only get the very occasional visitor from my CD Baby page so I'm pretty sure it's done almost nothing for my traffic.

And before I tell you what you should do, let me say that despite how grim that sounds, I'm very happy with CD Baby. CD Baby doesn't promise promotion and I think it would be a mistake to pay them money hoping it will boost your traffic. They just promise to facilitate the selling of your CD, which they do well. I'm even in Tower Records thanks to CD Baby. That combined with the potential of the upcoming digital distribution makes me very happy indeed. These are things I just couldn't have done on my own and it cost me maybe $60 US all said and done for the signup, barcode for digital distribution, shipping and CDs.

You also have to take into account that I undercut them in price ($5 US including shipping here, $6 plus shipping there), I don't have a link to them on my I Don't Know What I'm Doing page (though I should probably add one now that I think of it.) If it was the primary means of getting my album, I'm pretty sure my CD Baby sales would be way higher.

So from the looks of your page you're only offering mail order, which I'd say is a pain in the neck for just about everybody. I'd say either Paypal or CD Baby are your best bets for being able to simplify the process for customers a bit. I think I get away with Paypal okay because I have a pretty net compatible audience, but you may have more non-geeks in your audience who don't know what Paypal is, I have no idea.

Basically if I were you I'd just try to figure out if there are people who want to buy your record but are being scared away by the mail order process. CD Baby (and Paypal) will simplify this process for people. But don't expect getting listed on CD Baby to make your CDs fly off the shelves. The promotion will have to be done by you. Hope that helps!

I found out about the new Canadian levy on MP3 players today, which is a big fat drag. As Shannon explains:

Last week, the Copyright Board of Canada imposed a new copyright levy on MP3 players. This is in addition to surcharges that Canadians also pay on recordable media such as CD-Rs, cassettes, and Minidiscs (CBC has a nice summary of the existing and proposed increases). On the bright side, the Copyright Board of Canada decided against increasing the levies on these media, and also decided against imposing new surcharges on DVDs, memory cards and other removable storage media. And the fees on MP3 players were much lower than they might have been.

The original plan would have added $21/gigabyte of storage to the cost of audio players with permanent memory. That would have added $840 CDN to the cost of a 40G iPod. Instead, they went with a straight $25 CDN fee on players with 10G or more of storage, which is nearly small enough to shrug off.

On the subject of that I just got a 128 meg Creative Muvo the other day for $99 Canadian which I guess was unaffected by said annoying levy.

Looks like Winamp 5 (lite and standard) is out. At first glance they seem to have undone a lot of the awful that was added in Winamp 3. They also put the playlist time total back in, which actually was the number one reason I bailed on 3, as strange as that seems.

Update: looks like this may still be a wacky beta release. I'm actually running it and it works fine, but you may want to hold off till it's on Winamp.com.

Update #2: definitely jumped the gun, it's now up on winamp.com and the installation and program are signficantly different. So far so good though.

Apparently AOL is blocking mail from my ISP (Allstream). I just started getting notices about this the other day but have been suspicious for a while. So if you didn't get a reply from me and are on AOL, that may be why (the other option is that I'm lazy but I've been pretty good about email lately). If you've been trying to get in touch with me, please send me another email and I'll use a different mail server to reply. Thanks.

Had a real nice phone call with John Buckman, the owner of Magnatune tonight regarding my various concerns expressed in this blog entry. I probably can't remember everything we talked about, but I now know that Magnatune is trying very enthusiastically to promote itself and the artists on the label, hence the 50/50 split and the 5 year deal. The 50/50 split is both philisophical (ie. it's a partnership between label and artist) and to cover costs. The 5 year deal is mostly to make sure that when Magnatune prints up compilations and merchandise that the artists don't yank permission away from them, rendering all of that stuff worthless. Which seems pretty understandable to me. He did say something about modifying the contract to 1 year either from now on or upon the artist's request, I can't remember due to being partially brain dead.

He told me they're most likely going to put a list of the latest promotional/marketing events and items online so that while nothing will be guaranteed contractually, the fussy worried artists like me can have a better understanding of what's been going on in Magnatune promotion-wise and understand the situation a bit better and why you're agreeing to some of the things you're agreeing to. I think that's a pretty good idea.

John explained the Creative Commons to me a bit and I think I feel slightly less confused. I at least got the impression he understands it and that it's somehow useful in licensing, so that seems all right by me.

He confirmed the concerns about the non-exclusive deal keeping artists from signing an exclusive deal but added two very good points: a) Major labels are very accustomed to not owning the previous recordings of artists. Like Nirvana and Sub Pop, etc. and b) Unlike indie labels, Magnatune doesn't own the songs of the artist, the artist has just licensed those particular recordings to them for a period of time. So if for some reason you can't work something out with Magnatune and the major label, you're within your rights to re-record the album and then you have exclusive control over that recording. With an indie, they own the songs and you are total-E boned.

Anyhow, I'm sure there was more and I hope I didn't get any of the things he said wrong. Basically in a nutshell: John seemed like a real good guy with a lot of cool ideas and a passion for what he's doing. I'm really looking forward to being on board and helping out in any way I can. Also he and his wife said nice things about my music and anyone who likes my music is OK by me.

Finally got around to tidying the web design here up a bit. Let me know if there's anything I goofed on.

I finally got sick enough of the sound coming from my Thermaltake Volcano 11 CPU fan to look around at my options for quiet CPU cooling. I previously owned a Zalman CNPS3100-Plus Flower Cooler and love love LOVED it. But once I upgraded to the 2600+ from my 1600+, I could no longer use it in quiet mode because of how smoking hot the new chip is. At the time they didn't seem to have any options for me, but a bit of searching tonight found me the Zalman CNPS6000-Cu Flower Cooler:

Which is what I want and what I have now ordered. $65 Canadian before tax and shipping. I totally can't wait to get it. In fact I'm going to go sit outside in the freezing rain to wait for it now.

Interesting interview with Apple CEO Steve Jobs about iTunes, Apple and the record industry. I particularly liked his assessment of the current issues in the record industry and conclusion that record contract advances should be done away with:

The remedy is to stop paying advances. The remedy is to go to a gross-revenues deal and tell an artist, "We'll give you twenty cents on every dollar we get, but we're not gonna give you an advance. The accounting will be simple: We're gonna pay you not on profits -- we're gonna pay you off revenues. It's very simple: The more successful you are, the more you'll earn. But if you're not successful, you will not earn a dime. We'll go ahead and risk some marketing money on you. But if you're not successful, you'll make no money. If you are, you'll make a lot more money." That's the way out. That's the way the rest of the world works.

This has been my pet theory for a while, that this whole system of advancing and recouping seems really dumb given how stupid cheap it's getting to make a record. Marketing still costs plenty though (and is a pain in the ass) so I think there must still be a role for record labels in there somewhere.

Dropping Out Of School (Craig Tanis remix) Craig Tanis did a remix of my song Dropping Out Of School. It's pretty cool, thanks Craig!

Got another friendly email this morning from CD Baby. It's looking like digital distribution for my album I Don't Know What I'm Doing is getting closer and closer. So far I've had to buy a barcode for my album and today I had to get ISRC codes for the songs on the album, whatever those are. They were free though and they look like this: us-hm8-03-09972 (that's for Making Me Nervous). The impression I get is that CD Baby is saving me from doing a lot of stupid paperwork and for that I heart them. If my stuff actually shows up on all these services I never use that would be super sweet as well.

Apparently it's the 10th anniversary of Frank Zappa's death today. I'm not sure if it shows at all, but Zappa's been a pretty big influence on me both in his music and his attitudes towards recording and the music industry. One of the things I admired about him most was how practical he was in regards to his art. I tend to avoid being sentimental about artists, but every now and then I think it's pretty crummy that Frank isn't around to play around with the latest gear, use the Internet to distribute his music and to generally be a pain in the RIAA's ass.

Did the Atlanta interview, went all right. They played the first minute or so of Justin Bacon's "My Parents Are Gone For The Weekend..." on the air. It got beeped, which was fun.

My interview for "The Regular Guys" show on WKLS in Atlanta has been rescheduled for tomorrow morning at 7:15am. I will be sleepy.

Oh man, I wish I had thought of this. Instead of trying to undercut everybody by selling her CDs at almost cost, Marissa Marchant is charging more than everyone:

4 album set available for $2000.00 and $1000.00 for one cd. This is how much music should be worth, if there is talent there. They are cheapening music and talent, by selling it like it is fried chicken at kfc. I am not one dimentional. I am a singer, arranger, producer, and multi instruemntalist."

That's totally brilliant! As an indie, selling my stuff for $5 and giving away the MP3s, I have to practically BEG people to put it on Kazaa and swap it around to their friends. If I were to jack the price up to say... a MILLION DOLLARS A SONG (since along with all her many credits I also do the recording, engineering, computer tech work, mixing and mastering for my stuff), maybe people would get more of a thrill out of stealing my tracks. (via J-Walk)

Well, I've faxed off the documents and mailed the CD to Magnatune. I've talked to a lot of people about it over the past day and thought I'd share some (very possibly incorrect) observations here. A lot of musicians I know seem interested in Magnatune so maybe they'd benefit from some of this: 1. As harmless as a non-exclusive deal sounds, as far as I know, no major record company in the world is going to want to ALSO sign a non-exclusive deal. So if you're still holding out for Geffen to snatch up your album, a non-exclusive deal really isn't as benign as it sounds.

2. Various people raised the issue of the digital distribution deal (for iTunes, eMusic, the new Napster, etc) I signed with CD Baby being exclusive. This helpful page indicates that this is not a concern and that the only issue I would have is if Magnatune decided to go off and try to sell the tracks to iTunes or eMusic. In which case I'd have to choose between Magnatune and CD Baby for my digital distribution. (CD Baby says all it requires is 30 days notice.)

3. The 50/50 sliding scale model of Magnatune irked more than a couple of musicians and industry folk I showed it to. I was told that since Magnatune is not advancing you any money or promising to do any promotion, they couldn't understand why Magnatune would deserve 50% of the of the financial goodwill you generate as an artist.

When you buy a CD from Magnatune you're given the option of paying $5-$18 with $8 being the recommended price. It says underneath the pricing option "50% goes directly to the artist, so please be generous", which as several people pointed out, is the same as saying "50% goes directly to Magnatune, so please be generous".

Most other services (such as CD Baby and Cafe Press) take a flat amount per CD to ensure they profit on each transaction. Anything above that number goes to the artist. Does Magnatune necessarily deserve an equal tip each time you tip an artist on the service? For me I guess I don't really care, but it's probably something worth thinking about if you're looking at this as a potential big money maker.

4. To join Magnatune I had to agree to put a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license on the songs on my album. Whether this conflicts with my whole "no copyright" thing, I have no idea and basically I just don't have the energy to worry about it. You would think it would be easy to get the simple message "DO WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT WITH MY MUSIC, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD I DON'T CARE" across, but apparently it's a lot more complicated than that. In conclusion: I love licenses!

5. On the topic of Scott Andrew's post the other day about the Creative Commons and BMI/ASCAP royalties, you must sign a waiver when you join Magnatune so that BMI/ASCAP cannot collect royalties from Magnatune for the songs you specify. (I understand why, I just thought I'd throw that in for Scott.)

6. The contract is for five years, which seems like a dang long time. In the annotated distribution agreement it says "You give us these rights for 5 years (remember, they're non-exclusive rights, so you're not giving anything up)".

While it's true that a non-exclusive deal doesn't keep you from signing other non-exclusive deals, I think a lot of artists are secretly hoping that a really sweet EXCLUSIVE deal will come along within the next five years. Unless I'm mistaken, that means your album is effectively off the exclusive market for five years. Which I agree isn't a big concern for most people, but I don't know if I'd go so far as to say it's nothing.

Anyhow, I don't mean to harsh on Magnatune. I'm still real pleased with joining and I think they offer a cool, unique service that is bound to change and evolve over time as things get ironed out. These are all just things that came up as I was running it by friends of mine, some of whom are in the currently dying record industry.

A few weeks ago I saw Magnatune.com owner John Buckner on The Screen Savers on TechTV. It wasn't the first time I had heard of Magnatune, but I hadn't paid much attention. I kinda tune out when most people talk about music industry revolutions these days. But I listen to The Screen Savers. It was more interesting than I had originally thought. The concept is basically "shareware music". People can download 128k (i think) MP3s from artists and decide then if they want to pay to download high quality .WAV versions of the songs/albums.

I FTP'd them my I Don't Know What I'm Doing album MP3s last week for the heck of it and they wrote back today saying they'd like me to join Magnatune. I now have some forms here to fill out and send in if I so desire.

I basically have no idea if this is a good idea or not. It's apparently non-exclusive so I believe I can keep on doing what I want here, but that it will provide a service I would very much like to have: if a visitor decides they'd like to buy a high quality version of my album (or songs from it) they'll be able to do that through Magnatune and download it from them. Thereby removing my manual CD-burning, labelling and mailing labor from the picture, which would be certainly all right by me. For that it seems worth it.

I'm really interested and also terrified to see what happens! Hooray!

More Than Soup (brad sucks guitars remix) Craig Tanis aka Starfinger made a song called More Than Soup for Songfight. It made me laugh and I found it real catchy so I asked if I could remix it.

Also available is a version without guitars:

More Than Soup (brad sucks no guitars remix)

It was pretty relaxing and fun to work on a song that wasn't mine.

Wow! Adam Gessaman at idly.org made a video of himself walking to campus and back all set to my song Making Me Nervous:

Matt started by recording his feet and being the drone that I am, I decided to take his idea and copy it — even though my shoes are no where near as classy as his. It took me about an hour to patch together, and rather unlike Matt's laid-back stroll, mine reflects the insanity of the last week.

So, without further (and unwarranted) ado, here's my walk to campus and back today, [Divx MPEG-4 AVI, 18 MB] with the soundtrack provided by Brad Sucks.

Very cool! Thanks for using my song, Adam!