Tag Archive for 'DIY'

Kero One – Early Believers Review

published
on March 24, 2009
by
ACtual
in artist/album reviews, culture, DIY, genres, music, music business, recording, and startups
. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .

Early Believers

When Kero One released his debut album Windmills of the Soul, he had no backing and no name recognition to speak of. The album’s success came about through his persistent work to get it heard which resulted in it becoming a hit in Japan first, a humorous twist for a Korean DIY hip-hopper born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Through this success, he has managed to remain independent, starting Plug Label, releasing The Tones’ debut album and doing end-to-end production on his sophomore release Early Believers.

It is this spirit and energy that infuses Early Believers with an unfettered sense of optimism and musical joy. From the instrumentation to the lyrics, the album is unmistakably a complete work by a focused artist. The music is consistent and full, utilizing both hip-hop and jazz influences, while the lyrics are often personal and focused on a specific story. The marriage between Kero’s thoughts and his beats serve to offer an album that never feels forced or out of place. Unlike some current hip-hop albums that feel like the goal is musical shock for shock’s sake, Kero One never tries to do too much or move too far out of his range. On the opening track “Welcome to the Bay,” Kero raps about the pros and cons of the area where he grew up over an easy synth and fresh beat produced by King Most. Jacqueline Marie provides the chorus about the mentality of never leaving the bay for a piece that is heartfelt and unmistakably San Francisco.

“When the Sunshine Comes” is an easy, sunny day melody. The pace and mood of this song seem to be the best fit for Kero’s vocals, letting him sit back and rap without tempo pressure. The smooth delivery of tongue twisters is unhurried enough that it doesn’t make the listener feel stressed that the words won’t come out. This track gives way to “Keep Pushin’,” a much more up-tempo track that lyrically resembles something Kanye might have produced, with a little more pop to it. The fusion of jazz and a glitchy stop-and-go guitar/handclap back and forth brought to mind edIT’s “Crunk de Gaulle” off Certified Air Raid material. On his “I’m better off single” track, “Let’s Just Be Friends,” Kero brings a sing-along melody to the chorus (performed by Tuomo) and manages to make his desire to stay single sound happy and upbeat. The album then moves into Latin Jazz influences on “Bossa Soundcheck,” where Kero displays the keyboard and piano education he was brought up on. Sounding like it would be best heard in a dimly lit lounge atmosphere, Kero manages to make a hip-hop song that would fool non-hip-hop fans into listening and enjoying.

A solid feature of Kero One’s music is that he doesn’t sacrifice his choruses like most contemporary hip-hop and rap acts have done to get radio air-play. There’s no, “she made us drinks to drink, we drunk them, got drunk” fillers here. The choruses are integral parts of the overall whole, demonstrated again through Tuomo’s easy delivery on “Love and Happiness,” bringing to mind some of the better work done with Codany Holiday on Zion I’s latest album. This is the second King Most produced track on the album, and together they make the only two not produced by Kero himself. In “Stay on the Grind” Kero raps about the difficulties and rewards of choosing the DIY route, and just when you thought the whole album would be hip-hop, “A Song for Sabrina” shows off the instrumental prowess in a hip-hop/jazz/funk fusion track that includes Vince Czekus on bass and electric guitar.

In the most poignant and introspective track on the album, “This Life Ain’t Mine,” Kero uses an easy and straight-forward hip-hop track to back an autobiographical story about his life and entry into the hip-hop career, looking at his choices in friends and religion. The easy keys sprinkle melodies over “I Never Thought That We” as Kero looks at his unlikely and unpredictable path from his parents’ wishes to his chosen career. And, without missing a step, the album ends on a Kero One exclusive instrumental, “On and On,” which lets the album fade out in a jazzy way, reminding the listener of the progression of the album as a whole, and that it wasn’t just rap or hip-hop you were listening to.

An easy listen, Kero One’s Early Believers takes chill to the next level at every step. Gone from this album are the stereotypes that you need raps about money and women, pop-induced repetitive hooks and coarse language to produce a solid hip-hop outing. Instead, Kero relies on excellent production, live instrumentation and honest lyrics from his point of view to make an album that flows from start to finish and will most likely end the year in more than a few top ten lists. While it isn’t edgy or controversial, and some listeners will harp on a lack of perceived street credibility, Early Believers reminds us that hip-hop doesn’t need to be any of those things to be fun. Early Believers will be available from Plug Label on April 7th. Check back here for our exclusive interview with Kero One.

Wait, You're Telling Me the Long Tail Is Flat?

published
on August 5, 2008
by
Alan Khalfin
in collaboration, DIY, music, music business, and music law
. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

Have you heard the news? Apparently the long tail is flat. For those of you unfamiliar with the long tail, it’s a theory coined by Chris Anderson (The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More) that describes the niche strategy of businesses that sell a large number of unique items in relatively small quantities. Because of the low overhead incurred through the selling of digital products, the long tail was supposed to help retailers of less popular items earn significant profit by selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers (instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items).

For musicians, the long tail of music was supposed to help redistribute the wealth a bit in the music industry. It was supposed to shift the industry away from having a few big artists that earn large profits to having many smaller indie/niche artists that earn moderate profits. The notion behind this was that through digitization, niche releases are more accessible to fans and thus easier to discover, purchase, and consume. Through this long tail of music, a musician’s middle class was supposed to have been formed. Well, where is this musician’s middle class that Gerd Leonhard and Dave Kusek wrote about a few years ago? Why has the long tail not proved to be commercially viable? Why aren’t niche artists profiting from their art online?

I suspect that the long tail theory is still viable for indie and unsigned artists to make money from their works. It’s undeniable that given the low overhead of making and distributing digital music, an artist could sell less and make more. Plus, there are more licensing/placement opportunities today than ever before and there are plenty of sites that help musicians leverage this. But still, why then is the long tail flat?

In my mind, there are three main reasons:

First, Creative Commons licensing has failed to help musicians monetize their works. Any notion of CC providing a viable profit mechanism for musicians is a pipe dream. The purpose of CC licensing is to expand the range of works available for others to legally share and collaborate on. It’s clear that this is the direction that Copyright Law should go in. It’s also undeniable that CC has a noble purpose that contributes to more creative works for the general public to enjoy. But, CC hasn’t actually been leveraged to make artists licensing works under it any money.

While the reason I make music is not to make money, I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing a little profit from my works. Perhaps, CC has overlooked this. With the vast number of works distributed under CC, how can their collective power be leveraged to compete against the market power of bigger acts. Isn’t this what the long tail is all about? If CC doesn’t figure this out, how can it reasonably expect to be an appropriate solution for distributing creative works? Right now, CC licenses seem like a better fit for reference works that people can use to share knowledge. But for unique works of art, the notions of sharing and monetization must be intertwined. Wouldn’t you rather your favorite artists not get a day job so that they can always be making new music for you?

Second, long tail artists haven’t been working collectively to distribute their music. It’s hard to argue against the power in numbers; simply put, the more people that work together on a common purpose, the higher the chance that purpose is achieved. This is the underlying theory that the American Revolution was built on (“Join or Die” anyone?), that collective bargaining is based on, and that a shit ton of sites on the web base their successful business models on (Craigslist is a classifieds aggregator; eBay is an auction aggregator). So, why aren’t long tail musicians taking advantage of this?

There have been some attempts to do this, and some are even successful. Magnatune, for example, aggregates CC works and sells them in an Itunes style store. But the biggest vault of CC works, ccMixter (CC’s own music sharing/collaboration community), has no monetization whatsoever, not even ads (which its artists could perhaps see a rev share on). Why hasn’t ccMixter leveraged the collective power of its community to make its members some money? Because of this, CC licensing seems to be more effective as a marketing tactic than a new rights management system — license one song under CC, have fans share and remix it, and have this exposure trickle over to other songs which are sold.

Merlin is a good example of an organization that is thinking about the collective power of long tail musicians. Merlin is the world’s first global new-media rights licensing agency that manages new-media rights for indie artists. The collective market share of Merlin artists is larger than EMI’s market share. That’s right, its market share is on par with the majors. Through this mechanism, indie acts can punch above their weight to eat like a bird and shit like an elephant. And while Merlin dropped the ball a bit on the Last.fm negotiations, it wil be successful if it can find novel ways to leverage the power of its artists.

Third, long tail musicians haven’t been presented with the right ways of creatively distributing their music so that they can actually make a profit. Despite the digital boom, it’s still hard for unsigned and indie musicians to make much money form selling finished songs. While it’s easy to give fans the option of buying a song, the reality is that more music is now being distributed than ever before and musicians have to compete against other long tail musicians and the many options consumers have to get the music for free.

What seems to be happening is that long tail artists are stuck on the notion of just selling finished works. If Merlin fails, it will certainly be because of this. Instead, long tail artists need to look to aggregating as many sources of revenue as possible, and to create as many value adds for their music as they can. A finished song should only be a part of the value proposition an artist gives a fan. If these value adds are engaging and give fans a new experience, they will convert casual fans into loyal fans and will give them a reason to financially support artists. While there are tools on the web such as Topspin, ReverbNation, and AWAL that currently target indie and unsigned artists, these services need to recognize that focusing on selling finished works may not be entire answer.

So how are we to aggregate and distribute the long tail of music so that its collective power starts making an economic fuss? How do we improve music discovery so more of these artists get discovered? And if we’re not able to sell songs, what other kinds of value adds can we give fans to boost our brands and how do we monetize those value adds? The answers to these questions are at the heart of a the type of service that unsigned/indie musicians need to profit from their works in this new era of music. Soon, we will all find out.

WTF is Music Publishing?

published
on June 13, 2008
by
Alan Khalfin
in music, music business, and music law
. 11 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

As a law student who geeked out on Copyright law, the single most frequent question I’m asked is: “Dude, what the hell is music publishing?” This is a very loaded question that triggers a discussion about music Copyright law and the various royalties that stem from each music Copyright.

Copyright law divides the musical process into two parts: (1) the writing of the song and (2) the recording the song. This is a distinction most DIY cats don’t make because they’re doing both! But, in the “traditional” (and rapidly fading) music industry, the songwriters wrote the songs and the recording artists recorded and performed the songs (except for the singer/songwriters who did both). Most likely, you’ve never heard of the songwriters, but are overly familiar with the recording artists.

There are thus two copyrights that apply to music (both of which come with “exclusive rights“):

1. Copyright for the Song (form PA): This covers the underlying musical composition of the song (music and lyrics) and belongs to the songwriters/music publishers. It covers the writing of the song itself, as opposed to a recording of the song.

2. Copyright for the Recording of the Song (form SR). This covers the audio recording that is made of a song. It covers the actual recording of a particular composition, and belongs to recording artists/record labels.

So, music publishing is the business of creating/administering/monetizing the copyrights for the song. Record labels, on the other hand, do the same for the sound recordings (the “Masters”). While a song is only “written” once (and can only be copyrighted once), many different sound recordings can be made of the same song (and each recording would have its own sound recording copyright). Once a first recording (“first use”) is made of the song, anybody else can then “cover” the song based on the statutory royalty.

Note, I said “cover” and not “sample”. When you’re covering something you need permission from the songwriter, and not from the recording artist who recorded the famous version of the song. In the interest of creative growth, copyright law requires that the songwriters grant you permission , via a compulsory statutory royalty. If you’re covering something, you might be able to get the license here.

So, why should musicians care about this? For a moment, lets put aside the ongoing debate of where musicians earn most of their money. At least some of the money earned actually comes from the purchase or use (licensing) of the music. In an age where a successful musician must aggregate as many sources of revenue as possible (the long tail of music revenue, anyone?), musicians should be aware of the specific royalty chains that attach to each copyright.

From each of the two copyrights, a specific royalty chain ensues. Thus, there are royalties owed to the writers (the publishing side) and separate royalties owed to the recording artists (the Master side).

On the publishing/writer’s side:

1. Mechanical Royalties: Due from sale of recordings of the song through MP3s, CDs, LPs, etc. The current statutory rate is 9.1 cents or 1.75 cents per minute of playing time (whichever is greater).

2. Synchronization Licensing Fees: Due when a piece of music is “synced” or matched with a movie, tv show, commercial, video game, etc. These fees also apply to online audio-visual production.

3. Public Performance Royalties (via ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC): When a song is played/performed/streamed/broadcast publicly (on the radio, internet, on TV, etc), royalties are owed for this use. Performances are generally broken down into feature performances and background music. If there is a sync license deal, additional royalties are owed for the broadcast of the works the music is used in.

On the label/recording artist’s side (excluding tours/merchandise):

1. Money from the “exploitation” (sale) of the Masters in various formats (MP3, CD, LP, etc). For this, mechanical royalties are due on the publishing side.

2. Master Use Licensing: A sync license only covers the license for the composition of the song, and a separate license needs to be obtained for the use of the masters.

3. Digital Performance (via Sound Exchange): There is a limited public performance right in sound recordings when performed by digital transmission (generally, there is are no public performance rights in sound recordings). For most digital performances, there is a compulsory statutory license, but for some a case-by-case license fee is negotiated.

So, if you want to make as much money as you can off your music, you gotta mix and match your revenue streams. A general understanding of both publishing and sound recording law is thus pretty darn helpful!

A good reference for the issues covered in this post is, Music, Money, and Success by Jeffrey and Todd Brabec. Please note that this post attempts to provide an overview of music law, but by no means covers all the issues that arise. Please don’t take this as legal advice!

Judson Laipply's Evolution of Dance

published
on February 11, 2008
by
Sandra
in dance, music, and video
. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , .

While this blog is centered around evolving music and the many factors influencing that evolution – emerging technologies, the deconstruction and reconstruction of the music industry, DIY culture and user-generated content, social networking etc – there is another art form that has always been and will always be intimately associated with music. Namely, dance.

Ever since our ancestors began grunting monosyllabically and banging rocks together, they were surely waving their longish arms and clumsily bobbing along to the unorganized music in their still primitive heads. Music and dance have been so intimately related throughout history that it’s nearly impossible to separate them today.

My father (a jazz musician) used to joke that musicians can’t dance, and despite their knack for playing music most of them have no sense of rhythm on the dance floor. He, of course, liked to think he was the exception to the rule. But whether you are a musician, a dancer, both, or neither, it’s hard not to appreciate the end result when a good song is paired with a good dance.

Just as music has continued to evolve in all sorts of logical and also unexpected ways, influenced by everything from digital technologies and political climates to art and fashion, dance has done the same. As seen in the roaring twenties, when “amusement, fun and lightness were cultivated in jazz and dancing, in defiance of the horrors of World War I, which remained present in people’s minds”, music and dance often express the collective mindset of a generation or a particular demographic at a given time.

Without launching into a lengthy discourse about the history of dance and its implications, let’s take a look at one man’s recap of just the last half-century of dance. Judson Laipply, an “inspiration comedian”, put together this little bit that has become the #1 most viewed (74+ million views) and #1 top rated video on youtube:

For more on the comedian or the video, check out the official site here.