DISCLAIMER: Music files shared here are for sampling purposes only and are intended to bring joy to music lovers. I strongly believe that music-sharing results in more awareness for artists and as a result, more revenue. If your music is featured in a Share Me Sunday post and you are opposed to this sharing philosophy, please email me at info@shinydotbulletin.com and I will take the file down right away. Respect.
Music industry types have put on their thinking caps and come up with a new way to extract another few pennies out of the value of a copyright: licensing lyrics to clothing manufacturers. EMI Music Publishing is the latest to embrace the trend, having made a deal with the British grocery store Sainsbury’s “Tu Clothing” line that will involve printing lyrics from the publishing house’s 1.3 million-song catalog on designs for men, women and children.
Jonathan Channon, executive vice president for EMI, couldn’t resist a bit of wordplay: “Classic songs are part of the fabric of everybody’s lives, and we’re delighted that people will now be able to wear their favorite songs through this deal.” Get thee to a punnery, Channon.
Overall, I don’t think this is such a bad idea… it’s not going to make anyone rich, but following a microtransaction model makes sense, it’s the right direction. However, it does remind me of those awful days when me mum would buy our clothes at the local Dutch Boy. [shudder]
Ahhh, the mixtape. In the olden days, if you were ever the recipient of a mixtape, you knew you were much loved. Just as Morrissey danced his legs down to the knees, you played your symbol of love down to it’s last rewind.
Times have changed and so has the mixtape. With so many formats and options to choose from, it’s hard to get a handle on how to impress your honey - burned cd, emailed mp3s, USB key, iMix ???
Favtape, the Seeqpod-powered counterpart to the still-shut-down Muxtape, has upgraded with a wealth of user-friendly features since we last looked at it. The simple layout remains the same, but now it’s easier to arrange your playlist, share your “tapes” with a static URL, embed a playlist with album art, and connect and listen from an iPhone. Because Favtape relies on Seeqpod’s web-based MP3 searching, there’s still somewhat of a hit-or-miss factor with song playback, but that also makes it less likely to come down when the RIAA gets sufficiently annoyed. Favtape is a free service, requires a sign-up to save playlists.
“It is no longer enough to be smart — all the technological tools in the world add meaning and value only if they enhance our core values, the deepest part of our heart. Acquiring knowledge is no guarantee of practical, useful application. Wisdom implies a mature integration of appropriate knowledge, a seasoned ability to filter the inessential from the essential.” — Doc Childre and Deborah Rozman
James Pew over at Studio Manifesto has taken great time and care to post an awesome collection of non-music oriented thoughts, ideas and links to inspire and guide the aspiring musician in his/her quest for personal success.
“In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. 38 years later, Jerry has produced a film about it. Using the original interview recording as the soundtrack, director Josh Raskin has woven a visual narrative which tenderly romances Lennon’s every word in a cascading flood of multipronged animation. Raskin marries the terrifyingly genius pen work of James Braithwaite with masterful digital illustration by Alex Kurina, resulting in a spell-binding vessel for Lennon’s boundless wit, and timeless message.”
Okay - it took me a minute, but I get… Kanye and Absolut have joined forces to poke fun at lifestyle marketing, the kind of marketing the music business *believes* it lives or dies on (please note emphasis on *believe*)… Instead of going the aspirational route and portraying a rich, well-dressed Kanye hanging in an elegant club drinking Absolut (the Kanye you wish you could be), their tactic is to skip the vodka cocktails and smalltalk and get to the point - see Kanye, take a pill and be Kanye - straight-up. Fuck inference …
… but wait, aren’t they still trying to peddle Absolut to y’all?
There’s an idea here but it really smacks of insincerity, don’t you think? Or perhaps it’s terrible execution of a good idea that needs more fleshing out.
Time will tell. In terms of execution, there’s zero social media on the site currently, but you can sign up for a countdown alert via email… looks like something’s going to happen in ten days.
There’s nothing like a great song to inspire music fans to want to learn to play it themselves, but doing it right is rarely easy. Enter Now Play It, a UK-based site that offers video instruction taught by the artists themselves.
Launched last year, Now Play It aims to get people as close to the artists and songs they love as possible. To do that, it offers downloadable video tutorials on the art and craft of playing hundreds of different songs on guitar, bass, piano or drums, many of them led by the artists who wrote or perform them. Paul McCartney, Blur and KT Tunstal are among the artists currently offering instruction on the site, and users can search for tutorials by artist, song, instrument, difficulty level or tutor. Now Play It’s full tutorials, priced at GBP 3.99, are typically split into three parts—lesson, recap and play-through—and are at least 15 minutes long. In-house tutorials follow the same format but with instruction by a Now Play It tutor instead. ‘Lite’ tutorials, meanwhile, are just two parts—play-through and recap—and are generally between three and six minutes long; pricing is GBP 1.99. Downloads are available in MP4 or Windows Media Video formats.
With Generation C’s penchant for content production, Now Play It is sure to find an enthusiastic audience among the many consumers out there seeking to create, to express themselves and to make the music they love their own. Being taught by a well-known artist, meanwhile—even if by video—is sure to give them a heaping helping of status skills and stories to share about the experience. Now Play It currently offers a forum for community discussion, but a logical next step, it seems to us, would be to give consumers a place to show off the results of their instruction with video and recordings of them playing the music they learned—along with opportunities to critique and discuss. If there’s anything better than content, it’s content plus community! (Related: Music school for generation YouTube.)
Well this is interesting. Via ebay, Canadian fiddler Ashley MacIsaac is auctioning 50% of his future earnings for a minimum bid of $1.5 million.
Reuters has a pretty decent article on the facts and reasoning behind the move here.
From what I understand, the deal includes royalties and future earnings spanning his entire career, not just from future publishing / recordings…
There are way too many undisclosed variables for me to make a comment on the viability of an investor recouping his/her investment but I will say this: I think it’s an interesting idea, albeit not entirely new, and I’m all for any musician who’s willing to take a risk with a new model in this rapidly deteriorating space. Obviously MacIsaac is never going to get a Live Nation 360 deal like Ms. Hips Don’t Lie, so he’s making one up himself.
The future of the music business is *not* going to be based on any one magic model alone, so the more musicians and artists willing to experiment and take risks, the better for us all.
Kudos Mr. MacIsaac - I hope it works for you and I really do hope you’ll share your learning with us.
If I pretend the term “viral marketing” is not present in this press release, I might be persuaded to believe this is a step in the right direction. Kudos to EMI. Finally…
EMI MUSIC PUBLISHING CANADA
ORGANIZATIONAL ANNOUNCEMENT
Kat Lourenco
Social Media Manager
Toronto, ON (Tuesday, June 3, 2008) EMI Music Publishing Canada is pleased to announce that Kat Lourenco has joined their team in the position of Social Media Manager.
Kat will utilize Web 2.0 tools such as social networks and viral marketing to help EMI’s new and developing artists effectively build their own real and virtual communities. Her related responsibilities include managing their extensive library of audio and video digital media.
Prior to EMI, Kat was simultaneously juggling responsibilities as an Online Marketing Rep at Universal Music Canada, a Marketing Intern at Wind-up Records Canada, and a part time sales person at HMV. She is a graduate of the Communication Studies program at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, as well as the Recording Arts Management program at Harris Institute for the Arts, Toronto.
“Our business is all about discovering Canadian talent and helping to bring it to the world market. These are exciting, changing times in the music business, and hiring Kat as our very first Social Media Manager shows how we are evolving our all-consuming efforts to help our songwriters and artists achieve their goals. With Kat?s feel for the digital world, as well as her passion for music,
we are confident she will play a key role in our future success.”
Michael McCarty, President EMI Music Publishing Canada.
WuChess, a partnership between Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA and ChessPark, a social network around online chess playing, launches today. It’s the “world’s first online chess and hip hop community” and will also include exclusive videos and mp3 of the “hottest cats in hip hop.”
See a tour of the service here. That’s as far as most of you’ll get on WuChess, because, incredibly, they’re charging $48/year to join. ChessPark, by contrast, at least has a free version (but no videos or mp3s, sadly). The company promises to donate “a portion of the profits” to the Hip Hop Chess Federation.
Awesome. Hip hop, chess and $48 per year - definite winner.
Well this is interesting. Via ebay, Canadian fiddler Ashley MacIsaac is auctioning 50% of his future earnings for a 
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