Taking a break

Some of you might have already noticed it: There ain’t much going on here recently. I have to appologize. I’m currently starting a new business which as you can imagine is consuming quite a bit of my time.

Nevertheless I want to come up for air real quick and post some links to what I think have been the relevant developments in music during the last couple of weeks.

First, there is this media hype regarding the proposed merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. I wrote a feature story on that for MusikWoche which can be found here (PDF in German).

Then it should be mentioned that despite doomsday predictions Universal Music Group appears to be in rather decent shape. 

Choruss is trying to make inroads onto U.S. college and university campuses. Watch a video by Warner Music’s Jim Griffin explaining the concept during his keynote at the Digital Music Forum East. You’ve read about this before, here and here.

Many go lala over Spotify. Latest version here. 

You read it first on Höf’s Mixtape: Warner Music is pushing its weight behind live and merch. Official announcement came today.

 

That’s all for now. Back to putting the finishing touches on my business plan. Stay tuned.

Bonnaroo 2009 – the lineup is out

Here are several good reasons to plan a trip to Tennessee in June. 

I highlighted the most important ones (imho). But I really, really miss one name here. Where are Fleet Foxes on this list? Ashley, please explain …

Scheduled to play Bonnaroo this year are: 

Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Phish (2 Shows)
Beastie Boys
Nine Inch Nails
David Byrne
Wilco
Al Green
Snoop Dogg
Elvis Costello Solo
Erykah Badu
Paul Oakenfold
Ben Harper and Relentless7
The Mars Volta
TV on the Radio
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Gov’t Mule
Andrew Bird
Band Of Horses
Merle Haggard
MGMT
moe.
The Decemberists
Girl Talk
Bon Iver
Béla Fleck & Toumani Diabate
Rodrigo y Gabriela
Galactic
The Del McCoury Band
of Montreal
Allen Toussaint
Coheed and Cambria
Booker T & the DBTs
David Grisman Quintet
Lucinda Williams
Animal Collective
Gomez
Neko Case
Down
Jenny Lewis
Santogold
Robert Earl Keen
Citizen Cope
Femi Kuti and the Positive Force
The Ting Tings
Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
Kaki King
Grizzly Bear
King Sunny Adé
Okkervil River
St. Vincent
Zac Brown Band
Raphael Saadiq
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Crystal Castles
Tift Merritt
Brett Dennen
Mike Farris and the Roseland Rhythm Revue
Toubab Krewe
People Under the Stairs
Alejandro Escovedo
Vieux Farka Touré
Elvis Perkins In Dearland
Cherryholmes
Yeasayer
Todd Snider
Chairlift
Portugal. The Man.
The SteelDrivers
Midnite
The Knux
The Low Anthem
Delta Spirit
A.A. Bondy
The Lovell Sisters
Alberta Cross

… more to come …

Twitter the Höf

Höf’s Mixtape has created a Twitter account a few weeks ago but I still haven’t quite figured out how to best promote this line extension. I suppose the best thing is to keep telling my readers: Höf’s Mixtape on Twitter is active and being updated regularly. Go there to follow and be followed. 

Free download: Sepalot – “120plus”

It is time for Höf’s Mixtape to start promoting artists that deserve exposure. For the premiere of this feature I chose an act that I’ve known personally for a while now, so any accusations of nepotism are completely justified. 

Sepalot’s debut album “Red Handed” (Compost Records) is no new release, in fact, the album first hit retail in early Q3/2008. Nevertheless, it is still an incredible record that I encourage everybody to buy. In the U.S. “Red Handed” is available at shops like iTunes or eMusic (not at Amazon MP3, though). German readers can also find a copy at Musicload. 

Due to the independent nature of the release and the ever shrinking budgets at indie record labels there is no video clip. But you might enjoy the live performance of “Go Get It”, an album track Sepalot and the amazing Ladi6 gave on Ken FM in Berlin. 

Sepalot (born Sebastian Weiss) is a Munich, Germany-based HipHip DJ/producer who has been really successful as a member of Blumentopf (Top 10 entries). His first works outside the band included a record of AC/DC covers, “Fraud”, and “Eskapaden”, a soulful project he did together with fellow Munich music charmer, singer/songwriter Esther Adam.

Sepalot is a DJing staple around Europe and as such he developed new musical styles in recent years. Apart from his HipHop roots he also includes soul, funk, and more & more electronic elements in both, his DJ sets and his records. 

Living proof of his eclecticism is “120plus”, Sepalot’s latest mixtape that he did for Red Bull Music Academy Radio. You can listen to it here. And this is the tracklisting: 

• Kill Bill /// LA Riots
• Hardcore Girls (JC Remix) /// The Count & Sinden
• Massive – Original Mix /// Crookers
• Turn It Up 4 Dilla /// Crookers
• I Get Money (DJ Mickell Remix) /// 50 Cent
• Roll With Winners /// Hervé & A-Trak Feat Cadence Weapon
• Fix Up Look Sharp (Mick Matias Remix) /// Dizzee Rascal
• Bump Uglies (Stupid Fresh ‘Wizards In Oz’ Mix) /// Bass Kleph
• Run It (Sinden Remix) /// EPMD
• Nervous Breakdown – Original Mix /// Nervous Breakdown – Original Mix
• Mango Meat /// Mandrill
• Fever – Sinden Rmx /// La Lupe
• Did it Again – Sepalot (Zed Bias Remix) /// Sepalot
• Robot Club Rock /// DJ B Stee
• Restless (Fake Blood Remix) /// UNKLE
• Shut Up and Let Me Go (LAZRtag Remix) /// The Ting Tings
• Bassline Time /// AC Slater
• Love to Push It  Ursula 1000  /// Crookers vs. Salt n Pepa
• Pro Nails (Rusko remix) /// Kid Sister

If you care for more of Sepalot’s mixtapes check out his blog. He posted the best of his mixes there as free downloads.

But I am not going to send you all over the web to find his stuff without offering you a free download here as well, courtesy of the artist himself. The .zip-file you can find here includes two versions of “Go Get It”. More remixes of tracks featured on “Red Handed” are on their way, including works by AC Slater, LAZRtag, DJ Rob 3, Barletta and HanzSolo. 

For those of you who want to know more or get in touch with Sepalot I recommend his manager and publisher Sophie Raml at En4er and his booking agent at Little Black Dress.

So bad, I’m at a loss of words

If this is indeed an in-house Microsoft spoof (as some people believe it to be), then can somebody explain to me why the laptop looks a whole lot like a MacBook Pro?

The music business is no place for pessimists and naysayers

Yesterday I allowed myself to look at recent events in the industry with a worried attitude. Wrong, say people who know better. Pierre Perrone at the UK’s The Independent walked the grounds of Midem and talked to some industry figures who all seem to be rather upbeat about the times ahead. Here are some examples of their quotes. Quite infectious. 

“The doom and gloom people, it’s time they left and retired” – Harvey Goldsmith
 ”It’s tough out there, nobody’s denying it, but what do we do to get out of it? (…) How can new bands utilise the internet to help them break through? How does it all work for the fans? How do the fans hear about new artists and start to get involved with them? The new braves, Reverb Nation and Hot Spin, and all these new technology opportunities, basically help acts break through and help fans get to the acts. MidemNet showed the solutions are coming through. There are ways of connecting fans with new acts so everyone’s gung-ho. The doom and gloom people, it’s time they left and retired. Every day you wake up, somebody sends you a track to listen to or you hear about a band you go and see them live, you just get really invigorated and turned on by it. (…) We’ve got ourselves in a mess, now let’s dig ourselves out of it and just get on with it. I feel we’re going to have a great year.”

“I’m very optimistic about the future of live music” - Michael Eavis
“This is my first Midem and I got this green award. I’m very optimistic about the future of live music. People respond to an artist, they buy the records, or now the downloads and they come to the concerts. Live music, especially in Britain, is a very vibrant force. It’s very attractive and it’s good fun.”

“This industry has always lived with piracy” – Alison Wenham
“The British are good at internationalising their business – we only have 8 per cent of our sales in the UK. This industry has always lived with piracy. The supply chain has been disrupted by the demise of Pinnacle but the independent industry is mercurial. We don’t like the duopoly, Sony and Universal, routinely controlling 80 per cent of the charts and the visibility, but I’m always hopeful. You’ve got to remember this industry has been going through an agonising decline for eight years. We haven’t suddenly hit the buffers like the finance industry. So we are rather war-torn but we’re also hardened and resourceful.”

“Are music fans going to stop enjoying music? It’s not going to happen” – Feargal Sharkey 
“All of us have to grapple with a little thing called evolution which has a nasty habit of sweeping you aside as irrelevant should you decide not to cooperate. But the most important thing is the music. We know 63 per cent of 14- to 24-year-olds in Britain are downloading music and not paying for it but, on the upside, we also know they are passionate about music. It registers above mobile phones, game consoles, DVDs. Are young people going to suddenly stop wanting to be creative and make music? Are music fans going to stop enjoying music, wanting it as part of their lives? It’s not going to happen. All the music industry ever did was provide a bridge between creators and fans. That bridge is always going to be there.”

“We have to accept that there’s going to be a new way of doing things” – Brian Message 
“I’m really optimistic about the future of the music industry. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy. The gravy train of the past is gone. It was a great production line, great returns, being able to buy copyrights and own them forever. Managers used to make 20 per cent commission for no investment. We have to accept that there’s going to be a new way of doing things. Flexibility is the key. There are no rules anymore. The key word is value. Free music is a valuable part of the artist proposition. If we need to get into a market where we don’t have a base, we can do something with free music to stimulate interest. Let’s focus on that artist-fan relationship. But there’s a myriad of choices out there. There’s no one model any more. It’s not easy. Everybody needs to be creative and come up with what they think is the best plan for their artist. “

Creating surefire hits: 6-4-5-1 chord progression

If you’re still wondering how that spat between Coldplay and Joe Satriani turned out you should give it a rest and check out this little clip. I’ve seen this posted on multiple sites today, so I’m just going to repost it here for some weekend amusement. 

Plagiarists of the world unite. A&R people rejoice. They have found the hit formula. 

What if … Terra Firma hadn’t bought EMI?

Billboard recently had a long conversation with former Sony Music U.S. head Don Ienner. Online you’ll find a rather lengthy, seemingly unedited version of the interview (and that’s only part 1!). Once you get past all the historical parts Ienner and Billboard’s Bill Werde buried some nice details on the failed attempt of a Ienner-led consortium that wanted to buy EMI in 2007. 

Ienner goes on record that he was involved in a group that had made the second-best bid to take over EMI Music. Key funding for this buyout would have been provided by One Equity Partners (JPMorgan). It wasn’t enough, though, as we all know. Terra Firma bid one or more pounds per EMI share over the group’s offer and won the auction. 

Ienner says, had his group won the bid, he himself would have run EMI, “because I believe in the catalog. I believe that for the price that we were going to get it, it was going to be a very profitable company, and I believe that we were going to be able to run it like a real music company.”

Part of Ienner’s team ready to take on leading roles at EMI were Rick Dobbis, former head of international at Sony Music, Ken Antonelli, founder of indie distributor RED, Mike Shalett, founder and former CEO of SoundScan, and ex-Viacom man Mike Dolan. 

Aside from Ienner, who is wondering: What if ….?

R.I.P. Dietrich Eggert

This past weekend, on January 9, Dietrich Eggert left the music business for good. He had turned 53 last November and will be missed by many in the industry. My contacts tell me Dietrich was found dead near a lake, COD hasn’t been officially released yet. 

Most recently Eggert had been working as MD at Harm’s Way Management & Consulting in Berlin. Before that he headed V2 Germany until the label was sold to Universal. He was best known as head of Promotion at Rough Trade Records (later Jive/Zomba), a position he held from 1986 until 2002. 

Farewell, Dietrich.

UPDATE: Find a nice obituary by Manfred Tari at MusikWoche.

While I was away …

Welcome back, readers of Höf’s Mixtape. Sorry it took me so long to get back online. While I was kicking back in Germany the music world continued to create news. More than I anticipated, actually. In retrospect, though, none of them were real game changers or sensations. But for matters of completeness and for my own sanity I compiled what I think deserves mention. 

Instead of rounding up the old news in chronological order I am listing them by relevance. So this is what’s been missing here: 

• The biggest tours of 2008 were not by the biggest CD sellers. The global #1 was Madonna with a gross of $281.6 million according to Pollstar, followed by Céline Dion with sales of $236.6 million. Bon Jovi sold tickets worth $176 million. Fellow Jerseians Bruce Springsteen & the E-Street Band raked in $166 million in ticket revenue, and The Police managed $120.6 million in sales. Completing the list of Top Tours in 2008 are Neil Diamond, the Eagles, André Rieu, Kenny Chesney and Coldplay. 
• Steve Jobs decided it’s time to say good-bye to the old pricing dogma of 99 cents per song and got rid of DRM in the iTunes Store as well. Downloads (in the AAC format!) will now come without digital locks at three different price points. Watch for iTunes users predominantly cherry-picking songs at 69 cents. $1.29 anybody?
• Related I: iPhone users can now shop wirelessly at iTunes via 3G (fast, sort of) and EDGE (really not fast at all). Can you hear AT&T and other carriers who are trying to sell DRM-ed OTA downloads cussing at Jobs?
• Related II: Apple so far has sold six billion songs via iTunes. Averages around two billion a year now. 
• The recorded music market in the U.S. remains a battlefield. Album sales were down 14.4% in 2008 at 428.4 million units according to Nielsen SoundScan figures. Digital track sales rose 27% to 1.07 billion units, digital albums gained 32% and sold 65.8 million units. The CD album which still accounts for 84% of the entire business collapsed another 19.7% to 360.6 million copies sold. Vinyl, however, made a comeback to 1.88 million albums (an increase of 89%). 
• More SoundScan I: Album market share (catalog & current combined) leader was again Universal Music with 31.52% of overall sales (slightly down), followed by Sony BMG (25.30%, slightly up), Warner Music (21.38%, up by more than one point) and EMI (8.97%, slightly down). The combined share of independent labels decreased half a point to 12.83%. The same pecking order applies to download market shares. 
• More SoundScan II: The best selling albums of 2008 were “Tha Carter III” by Lil Wayne (2.874 million units), “Viva La Vida”/Coldplay (2.144 million), “Fearless”/Taylor Swift (2.112 m) and “Rock N Roll Jesus”/Kid Rock (2.018 m). Top selling album artist was Taylor Swift who had two titles in the Top Ten for a total of over 4 million sales. The best selling digital tracks were “Bleeding Love” by Leona Lewis (3.42 million units), “Lollipop”/Lil Wayne feat. Static Major (3.161 million), “Low”/Flo Rida feat. T-Pain (2.979 m) and “I Kissed A Girl”/Katy Perry (2.977 m). Top selling digital artist was Rihanna with a total of almost 10 million sales. 
• More SoundScan III: Where does the shrinking number of album buyers get their fix? The mass merchant category (Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, etc.) is still #1 at U.S. album retail with a share of 37% (down 3 points, though), followed by chain music stores (i.e. f.y.e.) with a 33% share of the market (also down 3 points) and the non-traditional outlet segment with almost 25% (up 7 points) and indie music stores covering the rest. NTOs include digital, internet, mail order, venue and non-traditional retailers, with digital accounting for 65% of the segment. 
• While 2008 was an annus horribilis for the U.S. record industry, the business accross the pond did far better than expected. BPI figures show the labels sold 133.6 million albums in the UK - a decrease of only 3.2% (some pundits were fearing up to 10%). The singles market was up 33% with 115 million units (mostly downloads) sold. 2008’s best selling album was Duffy’s “Rockferry” with 1.685 million copies. But Take That came awefully close with 1.446 million copies of “The Circus”. The record only had one month to achieve this sum. Even more impressive: The best selling single was “Hallelujah” (a Leonard Cohen cover) by X factor winner Alexandra Burke. The track sold 888,000 units in just two weeks. Overall entertainment sales in the UK were encouraging considering the tight consumer budgets everywhere. The Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) said its members sold more product in 2008 than ever before. 
• At the RIAA some people started using their brains. The label group decided it’s time to end the witch hunt on music fans. Since the RIAA started suing alleged filesharers in 2003 legal proceedings have been opened against about 35,000 individuals. P2P fans shouldn’t pop the champagne bottles yet, though. The WSJ wrote: “Instead, the Recording Industry Association of America said it plans to try an approach that relies on the cooperation of Internet-service providers. The trade group said it has hashed out preliminary agreements with major ISPs under which it will send an email to the provider when it finds a provider’s customers making music available online for others to take. Depending on the agreement, the ISP will either forward the note to customers, or alert customers that they appear to be uploading music illegally, and ask them to stop. If the customers continue the file-sharing, they will get one or two more emails, perhaps accompanied by slower service from the provider. Finally, the ISP may cut off their access altogether. The RIAA said it has agreements in principle with some ISPs, but declined to say which ones.” Good luck with that. 
• Just when you think reason is taking over, something stupid happens. Like Warner Music pulling their content from YouTube. It’s about the money, what else.
• Meanwhile, Universal Music says online video streaming is making a significant contribution to the company’s bottom line. eLabs EVP Rio Caraeff told CNet that the category was up 80% last year in U.S. revenues. Company insiders estimate Universal’s video streaming business at around $100 million. 
• No surprise then that the majors are rumored to plan their own video streaming service, perhaps in collaboration with Hulu or YouTube – think “YouTube Music” like MySpace Music. 
• Wholesale distributor EUK was killed after administrators failed to find a buyer for the company. 700 people were laid off. 
• As a result of the EUK drama British retail chain Zavvi (formerly known as Virgin Megastores) went into administration on December 24. Some 2,300 permanent staff and around 1,000 part-time workers are in danger of losing their jobs. Zavvi operates 125 stores, HMV is said to be interested in buying some of the locations. 
• Stateside, retail chain Trans World Entertainment (f.y.e.) also experienced a dissappointing holiday sales season. Comparable store sales in the nine weeks to January 3 decreased 14%. Total sales for the period were $287 million (down 24%). TWE closed 18% of its locations during the quarter. 
• What to do when your CD sales are tanking? If you ask Mike McGuire at research group Gartner, all you need to do is let go of the physical format alltogether. Rather than focusing on the the retail CD as a primary revenue generator, McGuire says, labels should move to a “digital first” strategy before Christmas 2009. Well, I don’t know …
• Universal Music Germany bought out joint venture partner X-Cell Records. 
• The highest German Court (BGH) ruled on the licensing of music as ringtones in a case that had been ongoing for years. In short, music publishers cannot ask for a two-tier licensing system that compensates both, the actual recording and the sound editing. Expert comments can be found here and here.
• Prince wants to release three albums this year. All without the help of traditional label means. Physical formats will be carried by one undisclosed major retailer, digital will be handled by one as-of-yet unnamed download store. 
• Removing DRM for download sales at Amazon MP3 so far has failed to put a dent into Apple’s lead with iTunes. But at least they can claim to be #2 now without being heckled. 
• 2009 will be a year of jam band glory: The Dead will go on their first tour since 2004, Phish will reunite and probably play Bonnaroo, and the Allman Brothers Band will celebrate their 40th anniversary with some live shows.
• Last.fm had to lay off 20% of its staff. 
• Anatomy of a flop. GNR’s “Chinese Democracy” at Best Buy? Nobody seems to care. Not even Axl. 
• The Long Tail? Not so long, after all. 
• Michael Robertson (MP3tunes) writes an open letter to Douglas Merrill (EMI). Good read. 
• Sales of Nokia’s “ComesWith Music” cell phones in the UK have been “OK, but not earth shattering”.