It got me thinking about the whole "touring equals profit" bit of Conventional Band Wisdom, and how, more and more, it seems to be something of a lie.

Never mind the fact that this idea is extremely rock-centric; smaller hip-hop, R&B, and pop acts don't really have the network of smaller venues where they can rake in this alleged money. With gas prices still pretty darned high, the economy doing its best late-period Ottoman Empire impersonation, and a general lack of importance placed on the procurement of music via the exchange of goods and services, this whole gas shortage just seems like piling on.

Having been a publicist, I've dealt with a lot of bands on the road, and I remember back in 2004 that bands would go on tour with glee. Back then, gas prices were higher than they'd ever been; the national average was around $1.74 in August 2004. Oh, to be young again! My band was pretty new at the time and just starting touring, and I distinctly remembering the total gas cost of taking my car to Louisville and back from Athens, Ga., being around $100. And keep in mind that people were still buying CDs then! There was still a chance of making a profit.

Now, it's doubtful. More and more of my artists were telling me that they had to work a day job and couldn't hit the road. At first, I thought they were missing out on golden opportunities. Hit the road! Make new fans! Do it the way our indie forefathers did it! But these days, a day job seems like a way to go. Unless someone provides me with a statistic that people are going out to shows more, I'm gonna assume that they aren't. Going out costs more for music consumers: ticket prices are higher, traveling costs are higher... hell, beer costs are higher. Bands have to ask more from clubs. Clubs have to charge customers more to cover the bands, etc., etc. It's a downhill slide that ends with the music consumer eating a load of crap.

Let's crunch some numbers:

• My band, Wilson Phillips Milk of Magnesia, is playing a show in Charleston, S.C., a little weekend jaunt. It's 267 miles from Athens. We'll round that up to 275 counting stops, etc, so the total round-trip distance is 550 miles.
• Our van gets 15 mpg going downhill at 55 mph, but let's just be charitable and say it gets that because South Carolina is flat.
• WPMoM has a guarantee of $150 at the 350-capacity Club XXX, which is an OK guarantee, truth be told.
• There's some good local press running before the show, we have two local bands on the bill with WPMoM, and about 100 people turn up at five bucks a head.
• After taking out production costs ($150), the club splits the door ($350) between the three bands. In fact, one of the bands is nice enough to round our cut up to $150 because we're the out-of-towners!
• We sell 10 CDs at $10 a head for a profit of $100 (not taking into consideration what we already paid for these). Wow!

That's a pretty good night in the indie world by any measure: solid guarantee, triple-digit merch sales, and a good cut of the door. But let's look at how much gas cost sucks out of that.

+$100 for the $100 guarantee
-$146 for 550 mile round trip ÷ 15 mpg x $4/gallon gas
+$150 for the door
+$100 for merch sales (not counting the investment that already went into this)
=$204

Now, this is without anybody eating or drinking anything, nothing breaking down, and everyone crashing somewhere for free. Most bands I know would consider this a successful show, but remember that taking this band on the road is supposed to be how the members make money. WPMoM has four members, so each person's cut is $51. And keep in mind that this is a good night. A really good night!

It's easy to make this kind of argument with a hypothetical, so let's look at a real band on the road! Athens' band Hope For Agoldensummer (disclosure: friends of mine) conducted a short tour in the spring of this year, and made it "open book," so to speak; they put up a handy dandy little spreadsheet of their expenses for us to look at.

The average gas price when they went on tour was around $3.60 a gallon. The band traveled, over the course of two weeks, as far away as Michigan in a journey that went up the East Coast, over to Chicago, and back down to the South. They are a drumless trio that can travel a little bit cheaper (check out the lack of food costs?!). They paid themselves each $500 for two weeks worth of work (to make up for not having a job). In the end, with some good door money along the way and solid merch sales, they still came out in the hole. Yes, they did have to repair their van for $885. But take that out and they still clear $353! And repairs are the kinds of expenses that seem unexpected, but often are the rule rather than the exception when touring in a van. $1030 for fuel costs. Just four years ago, that cost would be halved! The band would have at least broken even! Now, they are $500 in the hole. And what can $500 buy a band? A whole lot, actually. How about two weeks of non-commercial/college radio promotion? Or another small pressing of CDs? Or a lot more t-shirts? Or further repairs of the van? Or a couple of days in the studio? Or an amp?

And there are so many bands just like this out there, toiling away under the notion that it's a meritocracy, that just one more town and one more show will make all of the difference while bands that haven't played 10 shows (but happen to live in Brooklyn) become Bands To Watch and are magically whisked away to Best New Musicdom and record deals, and, ironically, the tour support that fake bands like WPMoM or real bands like, er, HFAGS need.

I fully admit that touring is still the best way to put one's music out there into the public, and that it's still the most effective way to make money for bands when it's truly successful. I just don't believe, given the current economic climate, that it's the fiduciary panacea that people think it is. Not to mention that right now, it's a pain to find gas in one quarter of the country.

Think I'm a Negative Nellie? Think I'm taking a small sample? We'd love to hear from bands, labels, and more as to whether touring is actually effective.

I grew up assuming that anyone on tv was mind-bogglingly rich. It's a common enough mistake that I share with the cast of Big Brother. Sometimes, it's true. Some pop stars are very, very rich. Jay-Z's various businesses have earned him $1bn. Former Beatles are on £500 million each. The members of Coldplay are worth £30m each. Even Craig David is sitting on £10m.

I don't think it's going to last. Why should a musician who sells one million albums a year be paid so much more than the editor of a national newspaper that sells one billion copies a year? In ten years' time, maybe five, being a pop star will be a profitable profession. Like being a barrister or a consultant. But not like being a juice carton magnate.

This isn't a moral or cultural opinion. Gary Glitter can earn £50,000 a year on royalties accrued every time Rock & Roll (Part 2) is played at an NFL game. So what? All that tells us is that he was lucky enough to be part of the never-to-be-repeated phenomenon that was The Music Industry of the Latter Years of the 20th Century.

I immediately trust him because of his droll Big Brother quip. And, to answer his question: most people don't usually want to be/have sex with newspaper editors, and will not pay money to consume their image.

Not surprisingly, times were good. Vinyl records were cheap to manufacture but hard to copy. Recording studios were vastly expensive to hire, so musicians were dependent on the industry to get records made. Most of all, as internet marketeer Seth Godin reminded executives at Columbia Records last year, people didn't like pop stars, they loved them. It seemed natural that pop stars should be rich. And they were.

Now, all that is gone, washed away by the digital tide. The great, profit-hyping discovery that was the CD - we can get everyone to buy their record collection all over again, for twice the price! - proved in the long run to be the industry's nemesis. Too late, the labels realised that in fact they had been flogging infinitely duplicable digital masters to the public. And nobody ever got rich selling something expensive that you can get for free.

I do take issue with the "people don't love pop stars anymore" argument (exhibit A). If anything, people (especially young people) love musicians more than ever because they have so much access to them. Unfortunately (for the musicians, at least) this modern idol worship is as free as it is instantly accessible.

Internet clever person Kevin Kelly has written a great essay called 1,000 True Fans. He sets out how a musician (or writer, or artist) should be able to make a comfortable living (say $100,000 a year) if they can offer sufficiently enticing products to a sufficient number of true fans. His maths are fuzzy but his basic argument is sound. It's no longer enough to have two million people like your song, buy the single and earn you a house. They'll just download it, and you won't see a penny. Instead, you need a deeper relationship with fewer people.

By "deeper relationship" he means "a really good merch table."

What will it look like from the rock star's end of the telescope? In fairness, most working musicians in rock and roll's Premiership, if not its Big Four, have accepted that the days of driving Rolls-Royces into private pools are long gone. In the 1970s, Elton, Led Zep and the Stones set the standard of rock star ostentation that is now of use only to filmmakers and potboiler novelists. Today's famous musicians work harder and are paid less, and in the future it'll only get worse. A rock star used to be a demigod who bathed in money each morning. In the future, they'll look with envy on Java programmers or hedge fund managers.

That may be a tad drastic, but not far off from the truth. (Although one hopes that they'll see a better fate than the one possibly faced by hedge fund managers.) On the one hand, it's kind of interesting in a nice way to see the "rock star" ideal deflated a bit—there's no real reason why someone who can write a good pop song should have the right to extravagant conspicuous consumption. On the other hand, what is the rock illusion going to consist of if it can't be at least partially defined by the shorthand term "cool"? The most successful rock stars around right now are Nickelback—they even sell records!—but they don't come close to the idea of 1970s-era rock cool by any stretch of the imagination.

Musicians may finally be learning their place, but the world will definitely lose something as a result.

Why Should Rock Stars Expect to be Rich? [The Word]

# What’s on the card: The music will be in the form of MP3 files, with no digital rights management restrictions. It will be encoded at 320 kilobytes per second, a higher quality than most download services. The labels also hope to add value to the cards with liner notes, lyrics, videos and other digital goodies. SanDisk is working on adding other enhancements, like songs that can be played a few times but then must be paid for to be unlocked.

# Easy to use: If you want to get music onto a cellphone that has a MicroSD slot, sticking one of these cards in the slot is easier than trying to download songs and transfer them to the phone. (Sure, you can download songs over the air, but that will cost you $2 a track, thanks to the labels. And lots of people don’t have data plans on their phones.) If you want to listen to music on your PC or on your iPod, downloading it from iTunes may be easier, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was another segment that would find the tangible experience of buying the package in a store to be more attractive (particularly if the price and bonus features made it a better proposition than iTunes).

I don't know about bonus features being make-or-break for anyone—seriously, are people still trying to push the whole "wallpaper for your mobile phone" angle—and the fact that these releases can't be immediately played in cars (at least not yet) seems like it would be a dealbreaker for many a suburban customer who wants immediate musical satisfaction. Forget the "iTunes is the future" argument; whether or not the casual consumer will be ready to shift her buying habits away from CDs is something of a long shot at this point. This is wholly anecdotal evidence, but a recent trip to a Best Buy revealed a very-well-stocked rack of those gift cards that were redeemable for full albums—and the titles in stock were the likes of Celine Dion's Taking Chances and Carrie Underwood's Carnival Ride, i.e., albums that were in the initial product launch earlier this year. It didn't seem like those particular shelves had been in need of replenishment ever.

I suspect that the only thing saving SlotMusic from that same fate is the fact that the drives are formattable, and if each album is below the $10 mark, at least making the cards cheaper than blank one-gig flash memory drives should at least appeal to people who want a bargain on portable memory storage. Hey, a bargain's a bargain, even if you have to rid said bargain of the New Kids On The Block album before it actually becomes useful.

SanDisk, Record Companies Plan New Media Format [WSJ]

^* Oh, the jokes that will ensue if the Pussycat Dolls album is among the launch titles.

Jon Caramanica reports:

Spending so much time on other people’s work reflects a populist instinct, but sometimes it wasn’t called for. Her signature song, “My Heart Will Go On” from the film “Titanic,” is essentially about being alone. And though she delivered it here dressed in funereal black, it came at the show’s end as she marched around the stage convivially sending off a crowd that was already making for the doors; the lightness of the room was at odds with the gravity of the song.

That may have been the wrong moment for approachability, but not all of Ms. Dion’s sensors had been dulled. Earlier, she brought Charice Pempengco, a young singer from the Philippines with an impressive voice, onstage. (Ms. Pempengco came to her attention through an appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”)

They performed “Because You Loved Me,” though Ms. Dion mostly stayed out of the way as Ms. Pempengco explored the song’s heretofore unheard rougher edges, with ample gesticulations and melisma. As Ms. Pempengco brought the crowd to its feet, Ms. Dion struck poses behind her: awestruck wonder, heartfelt empathy, ambient triumph.

Upstaging Celine? You better believe there's video:

Oh boy. This girl's album is so going to be the Noel of 2008, isn't it.

Charice Pempengco [Official site]
Oprah to manage Charice's US career [Inquirer.net via StreetCred.com]
Earlier: Just What The World Needed: A Younger, Bigger-Voiced (And Female) David Archuleta

^* OK, we spelled it wrong back then, sorry sorry.

Tired of representing your affection for a musical act with T-shirts, wall calendars, and cruises? Want to get back to what it was all about in the first place—the music (and the accompanying profits)? SongVest has a deal for you!

Starting next month, Madison, Wis.-based SongVest plans to auction on its Web site portions of the rights to 18 songs recorded by Garth Brooks, Aerosmith, Cher and others...

One of SongVest's co-founders, David Prohaska, says his company is pitching the songs as the ultimate memorabilia, rather than as money-making investments. Among the tunes SongVest is selling rights in are the "(Theme from) The Monkees" and "Friends in Low Places," which has long served as the signature anthem of Mr. Brooks. Some titles are expected to fetch more than $250,000 on the auction market.

It'll be somewhat like when Michael Jackson bought the Beatles publishing, except on a vastly smaller scale. The only catch: You won't have any control over how the song is used and where. Basically, you'll get a certificate, and, if you're lucky, a semi-regular royalty check. Just like the stars do!

The idea was partially inspired by Christian rock act Stryper, who auctioned off half of their interest in "Always There For You" and another song last year for $25,000—ten times what the songs would theoretically be worth via a traditional sale. (You can judge for yourself.) Frankly, I think whatever church is paying the pastor who purchased the tracks might want to reconsider their salary structures.

The song list isn't terribly exciting at the moment (country songwriter Trey Bruce, who has written a number of Randy Travis tracks, dominates what's available), but if anyone wants to chip in and purchase "I Swear" as a collective, I'm in for $20.

Dream On: Own Part of a Hit Song [Wall Street Journal]

Yes, the album's back just in time for the release of iTunes 8, and the fact that its return was so splashy made me wonder just what sort of back-room wrangling went on to get the album back on the store's virtual shelves. (I haven't seen any egregious placement of Estelle songs on iTunes' Pandora-like "Genius" feature yet, but give it time.) But is the marketing really working? "American Boy" is No. 21 on the singles chart, just ahead of David Archuleta's "Crush"; meanwhile, the album has squeaked back into the store's chart at No. 97. Me, I'm just hoping that this means we're going to avoid a rerun of the "Rockers As New Zeppelins" phase that Chris Molanphy outlined in this space two weeks ago.

iTunes [apple.com]
Earlier: Once More, With Loathing: Are Labels Moving To Kill The Single Again?

Sure, the Nintendo Wii's Everybody Votes Channel, in which Wii users get to sound off on whether they do things like take vitamins (no) or think feeding pets from the table is OK (yes), may not be the most scientific of settings for a survey on peoples' concertgoing habits. But given that the same populace is likely to have more than three television sets in their home, wouldn't they be exactly the sort of hyperconsumers that the self-proclaimed tech elite loves to spout off about when they're making their pie-in-the-sky proclamations on how musicians will make money in this new, hostile-to-buying-records environment? I'd think so. And I feel like this little bit of pseudo-science is also a fine excuse to link you all to a pretty great, if quite gloomy, essay by Rhodri Mardsen on the new nature of the business that I found over the weekend:

As we all know, net-savvy music fans can download a track they love, for free, by any major label act you care to mention in a couple of minutes flat - so why on earth should we expect them to actually give us money for our tunes? The ease of using BitTorrent, Limewire, Soulseek and all these networks is erasing any guilt complex that music fans might have had over enjoying music that they haven't paid for. There's nothing we can do about this, that's just the way it is. Deep down, I probably still believe that rewarding musicians financially for managing to come up with something that isn't complete shit is the right thing to do - but filesharing is compulsive, it's a tool you can't NOT use once you know about it. What I do find hilarious is when people attempt to morally justify it. They either claim that they're "sticking it to the man" (as if most musicians are swanning around in limousines, when the vast majority are scraping a living by working part time in Halfords) or "it's OK, bands can make money by touring, instead". Which is like casually suggesting to the owner of an off licence, after he's spotted you nicking a bottle of wine, that he can sell a few crisps to make up for it. And anyway, The Rolling Stones might well gross millions on a world tour, but nearly all bands lose money hand over fist while on the road. People might come out with stats about live music revenues being on a gradual incline, but believe me - having been in bands known and unknown, and done tour budgets for countless others - touring represents a black hole of disappearing cash for musicians. Sound engineers might get paid, promoters ensure that they get their cut, but precious little filters down to the musicians, unless they're lucky enough to get tour support from the record company. Which is actually an advance. Which means that, er, it's their money in the first place. But anyway, after you've pointed all this out, the filesharer just says "well, bollocks, I'm just going to do it anyway." And this kind of logic is impossible to argue with.

There's more at the link, and I'd reprint the whole thing if doing so wasn't kind of a jerk move.

Please Buy My Record: The Futility Of Flogging Music [Music Think Tank]

The album's backend comes courtesy of Yahoo! Music head Ian Rogers' new digital-music venture Topspin Media, which also helped out with the digital backend Nine Inch Nails' The Slip and which, unbeknownst to me, put out new music by the Distillers' Brody Dalle last week. (Time to update my RSS!) Rogers detailed how Topspin was involved in the production of Everything in a post on his company's blog. Why not read it while listening to the new tunes?

Everything That Happens Will Happen Today [Official site]

But even as it strikes novel deals with a handful of artists and labels, Wal-Mart is preparing changes in its approach to selling the vast majority of music. It is unclear what the upshot of those changes will be, but one likely scenario involves cuts in the number of music titles the chain carries.

The announcement also comes several days after Wal-Mart bucked industry trends with reporting a 17% rise in fiscal second-quarter net income, though the world's largest retailer also warned sales gains ahead will be muted by the slow economy, soaring inflation and the end of U.S. tax-rebate checks.

Even so, Wal-Mart said it expects to fare better than other retailers this year. "While inflation and higher fuel costs are pressuring suppliers, retailers and customers world-wide, we're confident that Wal-Mart is well positioned," Chief Executive H. Lee Scott Jr. said in a statement.

Wal-Mart executives, frustrated by perennially declining CD sales, have been quietly exploring changes in their approach to selling music. The company has described different versions of its potential new strategy to different players in the music industry.

As previously outlined, those strategies have included cutting shelf space, reducing prices to levels that may make even the most ardent filesharer take a look, and—oh yeah—cutting shelf space for albums that it doesn't have "exclusive" deals with. Whether or not the majors will actually go along with these plans is still up for debate—the WSJ reported a couple of months ago that the labels didn't like the idea of devaluing their product even more than it already has been—although the situation would seem to be dictated by Wal-Mart, what with their history of gripping suppliers' balls in their vise of being the only game in town.

AC/DC to Sell New Album Only Through Wal-Mart [WSJ]
Earlier: Wal-Mart Talks Money With AC/DC, Prepares To Slash Shelf Space Even More
[Pic via Epicycle]

In honor of this announcement, I'll try a little "strategic partnering" of my own on this Friday afternoon and share the recipe for a Bacardi Cocktail, which I've adopted from Wayne Curtis' fine And A Bottle Of Rum: A History Of The New World In Ten Cocktails. It's one of the best books I've read in the past year, rich in both history and spirit recommendations, and it has a pretty great investigation into the rum company's emigration from Cuba.

Bacardi Cocktail
2 oz. White Bacardi rum
1 tbsp. lime juice
1. tsp. simple syrup (bar sugar also acceptable)
1/2 tsp. grenadine

Shake the ingredients with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a lime slice.

I'm well on my way to becoming a brand ambassador!

Bacardi Brand Teams Up With Blogs [Billboard]
And A Bottle Of Rum [Amazon]

Ulrich said he's definitely noticed an upswing in Metallica's popularity since its songs started appearing in games, particularly with one part of the target audience.

"Dad's a little cooler than he was yesterday," Ulrich said. "I now have a 7-year-old whose favorite band is Mountain, and a 9-year-old who's into Black Sabbath and Danzig" — all veterans of the "GH" series. "It's a great way for kids to be exposed to stuff that transcends generations."

I don't know about you, but for some reason that wistful quote about Lars' kids thinking their dad is lacking in cred gives me an uneasy feeling about a next-generation sequel to Some Kind Of Monster being made in, say, 10 years or so. (Or maybe a reality show. At this point, it's the same difference, right?)

Video-game news: Metallica's 'Guitar Hero' album [AP]

The appearance of a free MP3 album in the physical marketplace has Coolfer getting a little snippy at folks who would declare the CD dead.

Proving the CD is just more pointless than ever, Nine Inch Nails frontman will release The Slip in the dead format via RED Distribution. The title will arrive to no fanfare on July 22.

This all makes perfect sense. The CD is dead. Has been for years. The old business model is dead. Has been for years. There are no record stores left. Haven't been for years. The price of recorded music will drop to zero. It has to. Or so I read.

To be fair, TechCrunch acknowledged the potential for "limited edition physical copies of music," which is exactly what form The Slip is proposed to take. This release isn't really a sign of Reznor backing off, just giving his most hardcore fans something new to cuddle.

NIN's 'The Slip' Hitting Retail July 22 [Billboard]
Reznor To Release Album In Dead Format [Coolfer]

The music business has looked on with fascination in recent months as Live Nation spent huge sums to attract not just Madonna and Jay-Z, but also Irish rockers U2 and teen sensations the Jonas Brothers; the latter two deals give the company fewer rights, and so are presumably less lucrative.

The strategy has been rough on Live Nation's stock price, which has fallen more than 44% since its first big deal, with Madonna, which was announced in October. But "360 deals," as such all-encompassing arrangements are called, are becoming increasingly common as the music industry attempts to overcome its woes....

The combination of businesses is risky, however, in part because profit margins in concert promotion are perilously thin, and a bad tour could undercut the overall value of a package deal.

For record companies, such deals have usually been with unproven bands whose rights they can buy cheaply. But Live Nation, under Mr. Cohl — its largest individual shareholder and head of its Live Nation Artists unit — has been pushing the strategy's limits.

People close to Live Nation say the company hasn't veered from its commitment to the 360 strategy, despite disagreements over how many of the deals to strike. Live Nation has held talks for a similar deal with South American rocker Shakira, according to several people involved, though no agreement has been reached.

The battle that has played out in recent weeks was complicated by Mr. Cohl's threat to take with him stars he says he brought to Live Nation over the years, including the Rolling Stones and U2. In the ensuing discussions, Mr. Cohl was reminded that his employment contract would bar him from competing with Live Nation for eight years if he left.

Something tells me that this isn't going to be won or lost by either of the executives making a passionate case for or against their position, but by stock price.

Live Nation's Leaders Battle Over Strategy [WSJ]

From the Journal:

Wal-Mart's current talks with the four major music companies have their roots in 2007's post-Thanksgiving shopping season. Wal-Mart at the time cut CD prices aggressively and saw a strong bump in sales. As a result, the chain approached music companies in February and asked them to commit to deep, across-the-board price cuts, to as low as $5, and to no more than $12, per disc.

The labels — owned by Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, EMI Group Ltd., Warner Music Group Corp. and Sony BMG, a joint venture of Sony Corp. and Bertelsmann AG — balked, arguing that reducing prices so sharply would undercut the value of their product everywhere. The two sides began discussing other changes they could make.

Among the options under consideration are reductions in inventory, aimed at weeding out poor-selling titles. Wal-Mart has indicated to some music executives such cuts would be extensive, while others have been told they would likely be minimal.

Wal-Mart's senior vice president for entertainment, Gary Severson, says that in the next six months, "you'll see us clarifying our offering, whether through price or assortment." He adds that the extent of any planned cuts "depends on the store."

However, one thing that will not be cut are the special editions of albums, also known as "the ways some less reputable artist try to pad their SoundScan tallies." (Surely you know of at least one artist who offered different bonus tracks to different chains, thus throwing down the gauntlet for "real fans" to buy as many as five copies of an album. Whether this strategy will work in the face of a cratering economy, of course, remains to be seen.) From the Times:

Exclusive album deals have been happening for some time with that goal in mind. Wal-Mart and Best Buy, the two largest physical retailers of music, often get special editions of albums, with exclusive songs or video footage. In 2005, Wal-Mart made a deal to become the exclusive distributor of Garth Brooks albums, including a new collection of outtakes. But the Eagles and Journey are the first two major acts that have released albums of new material that are available at only one retailer. And although record labels tread carefully around such deals, for fear of upsetting rival stores, bands need not be so sensitive.

This summer Wal-Mart will carry an exclusive release by the young country singer Taylor Swift in a promotion that also calls for Ms. Swift to promote L.E.I. jeans. (In this case, Ms. Swift's label was part of the deal.) And Mr. Azoff said that he was already talking to Wal-Mart about an exclusive deal for Fleetwood Mac's next release. "Classic rock really works there," Mr. Azoff said.

Something tells me, Irv, that any genre would "really" work at Wal-Mart, given the megamart's increasing status as the only music-retailing game in many towns and the plummeting sales expectations across the board.

As CDs Decline, Wal-Mart Spins Its Strategy [WSJ]
For Some Music, It Has To Be Wal-Mart And Nowhere Else [NYT]
[Screen grab via Epicycle]

Amos' new album is slated for a spring 2009 release, and given that her manager described it to Billboard as "a project of new music and visuals" I'm going to guess that the freedom afforded to her by her newfound independence, the fact that she has a 480-page book devoted to her work coming out, and the devotion of her fanbase will result in her making her own pretty hate machine all over again.

Ask Billboard [Billboard]

• The album's available in MP3, FLAC, Apple lossless, and WAV format.
• The FLAC, Apple lossless, and WAV versions of the album are being distributed via BitTorrent because of the huge file sizes, while the MP3 version is a plain old download.
• Downloading the MP3 version was pretty easy—no server crashes or endless "Please wait..." messages.
• The album's protected by a Creative Commons license that allows remixers to remix, bloggers to blog, or people who troll arena bathrooms to leave it on USB drives in stalls.
• CD and vinyl versions of the album will be out in July, with "details to come." Is it too much to hope for a 3-inch CD box set that's free with a street address? Probably.
• The first person to comment on Reznor's blog post announcing the album did, in fact, say "FIRST." Ah, Internet.

the slip [dl.nin.com]

"It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do," he said. "I don't think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time."



Speaking as Radiohead was promoting its pro-social initiative with MTV against sex- and labor trafficking, Yorke said successful bands have new ways to communicate directly with fans.



"We are about that direct relationship (now) because we are big enough to establish that," he said.

The band has a new video for "All I Need," which was produced jointly with MTV Europe for its anti-human-trafficking MTV Exit campaign. According to Thom, it's all "about exploiting a situation while you have the chance." In more ways than one, dude.

Thom Yorke: Radiohead's stunt was 'one-off' [Hollywood Reporter]

"I know that a lot of people who spent time with the album were like, 'I gotta get this dude some money.' They came back and paid," Williams says. "We got a slew of people who were starting to feel guilty about the amount of time they were spending dancing to the album and looked back and gave their $5. So I feel like it's been wonderful, a marvelous result for me. And at the end of the day, it's been about the exposure. Not only the exposure to me and my music, but for me, who always falls in the category of being a 'message writer,' there are a lot of people being exposed to perhaps a new way of thinking, some new ideas, and that really excites me."

The irony of his work drawing attention through an ad promoting sneakers is not lost on Williams. "It's weird, but their ads give attention to the music. You walk away thinking, 'That's a cool song,' not 'I've gotta get those shoes.' "

At the very least, this seems to give some credence to Reznor's attempted business model. If you can get a large group of people to check something out, you might get a large enough fraction to pay for it.

Saul Williams still hasn't found his niche, and he's thrilled [Chicago Tribune via Songs For Soap]

Jermaine Dupri and Island Def Jam Music Group Launch New Hip-Hop Label in Partnership with TAG Body Sprays
JD tag announcement [YouTube]

This idea has been bandied about since Napster first began to wreak havoc on the industry a decade ago, but it seems to be picking up steam in recent months. First, Columbia Records co-chief, Rick Rubin claimed the subscription model might save the industry six months ago in The New York Times, and this week Sony BMG honcho Rolf Schmidt-Holtz told a German paper that Sony has been "in discussions with other music labels and partners to offer an online music subscription service." Warner also confirmed to the LAT that they too had been in such discussions.

While talks reportedly remain in the early stages, it's difficult to imagine that this strategy is going to pay off, what with companies like Rhapsody and Napster already extant and struggling to break even—and not even touching the obvious reality that people aren't going to want to pay $5 a month for something that they can already get for free with a rudimentary knowledge of Google. Ultimately, it seems that the industry is taking the cross your fingers approach and taking financial advice from yet another Tribe song: "Luck of Lucien."

Music companies take a new look at subscriptions [LAT]