Australian Independent Music Awards

The 5th Annual Jagermeister Independent Music Awards are to be held at The Forum Theatre, Melbourne on Friday October 1st, 2010, featuring live performances from British India, Cloud Control, The Amity Affliction, M-Phazes, Sally Seltmann and Joe Chindamo. Doors open at 8:00pm; tickets are $29+BookingFees and available now via Ticketmaster.

Its interesting to read the interview with Space Invadas which is currently on their website where the social norms of file sharing are discussed:

What's the biggest challenge you face as an independent musician?

The age of torrent downloads, which kinda makes it hard to make music full time if no one buys it. So I've felt the last two years it has really made it more difficult. They [torrents] are really socially acceptable now.

Unlike most major label artists that never really recouped from music sales unless there was a huge volume of sales, it seems the independent labels are hurting because they are only releasing for a small number of artists and traditionally those musicians would have seen some of that income.

Bigsound & Australia Talks

Radio National's recent broadcast of BigSound, the Queensland music conference, is available online here - it was presented on the Australia Talks radio show last week.

It is an interesting program worth a listen and available for free download. In particular new business models including fans directly sponsoring artists and the use of streaming instead of downloads are discussed.

The show starts with the proposition that this is the best time ever to be a new artist with the speakers going on to consider direct connections to fans as one of the best changes to take place in the last 15 years. The difficulties in getting heard given the cacophony of songs that are around is also considered with the clustering of fans through social networks and synching with other forms of media as ways to get through to new audiences.

The Big Sound website is available here and states that the next conference will be held from August 31st to September 2nd 2011.

Ping Pong

Social networking has been with us for a number of years with MySpace and Facebook taking the lead in providing instant access to friends and "friends" around the world.

One of the things I look at with these services is the way that musicians use them. Undoubtedly these services provide artists with a way to communicate with fans about a myriad of issues including recent releases, concert dates and every day activities. I am particularly interested in the way artists also use these services to communicate with fans about political issues and advocate participation in campaigns.

The difficulties arise with artists that do not have a strong financial backing who must spend time constantly updating and adding to their profiles - of course as well as MySpace and Facebook other services such as Twitter require ongoing maintenance.

Now days, instead of collecting the names and contact details of fans manually at gigs, these services are available on an opt-in basis for fans to "follow" the activities and events relating to artists.

To add to the mix, this month saw the introduction of another service, this time by iTunes, called Ping. Ping is best described as social networking for music. With access to the iTunes store, the connection between friends and fans is now closely related to song choices.

Released on 1 September 2010 in 23 countries it will be interesting to see how this service is used my both musicians and fans alike.

I have had a quick look around the service and it does seem to work very well with a very simple GUI. The link to Ping is on the left hand side of the iTunes page, listed under the iTunes Store.

It has only been launched this month and so far not many people have signed up to it - the John Butler Trio for example, has nearly 250,000 followers on Facebook but not yet 2,000 on Ping. Similarly Blue King Brown, one of my favorites, is not yet listed on Ping.

Further Reading
wikipedia, iTunes Ping (8 September 2010) < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping > at 10 September 2010

Wired, Apple’s ‘Ping’ Social Network Is Already Too Big to Fail (1 September 2010) < http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/09/apples-ping-social-music-network-is-already-too-big-to-fail/> at 10 September 2010

Apple, iTunes - Ping: Social Network for Music (September 2010) < http://www.apple.com/itunes/ping/ > at 10 September 2010

John Butler on political music and file sharing

I have just read an excellent interview with John Butler of the John Butler Trio - a band I have written about here before that has a number of political songs. The full interview from The Vine is available here and worth reading.

On political music:
There’s not many songs that you hear on the TV talking about things, talking about resource companies sucking the fuckin’ very spirit out of our country. There are no songs on radio that are talking about that, mainstream radio, let alone on a mainstream television show. To me, I'm behind enemy lines at the moment, man. [laughs] And I'm planting fucking bombs; I'm planting seeds probably more than bombs. That's how I look at it....

On file sharing:
My view is there are always going to be those who copy music and want to share it with friends. And that's fine with me. Hopefully if you like the music then you go and buy it. But I'm an independent company so 60% of my sale have gone down. As my music has gotten more popular, I've sold less albums. And I can understand why it's happening because the record companies to a certain degree kind of put out so much crap for so long that they lost their audience. Their audience didn't respect them, but at the same time, [laughs] losing 60% of your income makes it really hard to get out there and tour and to make albums!

Further Reading
The Vine, John Butler Interview (August 2010) < http://www.thevine.com.au/music/interviews/john-butler-_-interview20100831.aspx > 31 August 2010

International Association for the Study of Popular Music

I will be presenting a paper at the IASPM Au/Nz conference in Melbourne later this year. My paper is about relationship breakdown with political music - I will be discussing my personal connection to songs by The Herd and the change in political climate which has rendered many of their most recent songs irrelevant. In short I refer to the length of copyright protection and how many political songs depend heavily on the current social context to be effective.

You can read more about the IASPM conference here. It is being hosted by Monash University on the 24th-26th November. The conference theme is stated as:

Popular music is a dynamic cultural force. The acts of listening, playing, dancing, composing and recording are undertaken in a constant state of flux, further complicated by flows of space and time. This conference invites papers that consider popular music as a powerful social agent. This may include analysis of current or past uses of music instruments as the sound-producing objects of change, or particular uses of technologies and human voices of change. The conference also welcomes investigations of the institutions and discourses within which the sound, the event and the experience are created, and their relationships to social change.

Licensing graphic

PC Pro has an article with a detailed graphic on the licensing and rights associated with music - this one is worth a look:

PC Pro, A graphic illustration of music industry madness (13 August 2010) < http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2010/08/13/a-graphic-illustration-of-music-industry-madness/ > at 19 August 2010

Conroy on the proposed internet filter

Senator Conroy will be speaking with the triple j radio show, Hack, at 5.30pm this afternoon. You can stream the show live off the internet by going to the triple j home page here: http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/

Or, if you miss it live, you can listen to it afterward as a podcast by going to the Hack home page here: http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/hack/

Senator Conroy is the Minister for Broadband and directly responsible for the proposed internet filter in Australia.

Blue King Brown

Blue King Brown have just emailed out to say that there new album will be released in Australia on August 20th 2010. They are a fantastic independent politically motivated group and I for one have been waiting for the new album - it is called “WORLDWIZE part 1 North and South" - keep a look out for it!

Sally

Internet Filter Campaign Statements

I was just reading that the Australian Liberal Government would not back the introduction of an internet filter if they are elected to office. They consider the filter proposal to be flawed policy that will not work. They suggest it will create a false sense of security for parents without actually preventing the spread of censored information and pictures.

You can read the article from ABC News here:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/05/2974827.htm

Ozi Batla: Put it on Wax

There is a new great song out by an Australian hip-hop MC called Ozi Batla (he also MCs with the Herd). The lyrics state that downloading music has not hurt the music industry but that the internet has aided artists to make direct connections with their audience. The song was released earlier this year and is really worth taking a look at - you can see the clip here: http://www.elefanttraks.com/node/7385