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A friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) had lunch recently with some friends (who also shall remain nameless) who work at a major label (which shall also remain nameless for the purpose of this post).

So my friend is having lunch, and his former colleagues are dishing the inside dirt about one of the divisions at this particular label. Apparently, one SVP and the EVP of a major division is touting the following completely insane, high on crack idea as a major future revenue earner from a licensing perspective.

Many labels and music publishers make some nice revenue licensing master recordings to greeting card makers such as Hallmark to be used in musical greeting cards. The synergy between the emotional content of music and the emotional content of the greeting card is one of the true win-wins you can find from a licensing perspective. And sound chips are also used in many toys and novelty items.

So what's the new game changer being touted by this particular label on the sound chip front? From what I hear the idea is to embed a chip in a bank checkbook. Yes, that's right. You read correctly: a bank checkbook. So let me dissect the myriad reasons why this is the most asinine music licensing idea I've ever heard of, and why anyone touting this idea as any type of serious revenue opportunity should be laughed out the door.

1. Whose mood can be lifted by music... while in the act of writing a check? Think about this; are you ever in a good mood writing a check? Can music, even really good music, take away from the fact you are watching your money fly into the hands of a despised debtor?
   
2. Don't you throw checkbooks away when they are used up?
   
3. Considering the world of bill payment is so easily done online these days - who writes checks anymore? You don't even see people using checks in stores anymore, thanks to Debit/Checking Cards. It's chasing after a dying market. Consumer habits are changing and using new technologies. Even if you're on board with the underlying belief this is a proper licensing tool for labels and publishers - and I am wholeheartedly NOT on that bandwagon - this idea seeks to grow a revenue stream off a declining method of payment.
   
4. What is the magic, mellifluous tune one would choose to have as their "checkbook tune?" "Taxman?" "Big Spender?" "Can't Buy Me Love?" "Sympathy for the Devil?" I could go on here, but you get the point. No artist worth their salt is going to risk their rep on a licensing opportunity on this product... Okay - except Gene Simmons.
   
5. Won't people witnessing a check writer with a musical checkbook give weird looks to that person? Not just weird looks - "Your checkbook is playing music and it's freaking me out" looks. Do we need to further socially stigmatize the check writer?
   

Like I said - I heard about this third-hand, but I know the tellers of this tale and have no reason to doubt their veracity. They see how insane and desperate the major labels have become. I am begging all of you - if you hear tangible evidence of this idea coming to fruition - please give it the public flogging it deserves.

NOTE: Sorry - I started this post last week and just had the time to get it out today.

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A discussion I’ve heard far too often, both among music industry personnel and those in the media and in the corporate marketing world, is that of trying to define what "selling out" is in terms of a musical act’s relationship with a corporate brand.  On the one hand, it is an accepted fact that many acts need some kind of corporate involvement at certain times during their careers to help them financially or with major exposure boosts.  On the other hand, the artists themselves are rightfully wary of aligning themselves with brands in ways which leave them open to criticism from fans and press alike.  An article by Charles Moran in this week’s Advertising Age explores this topic again.  Charles also co-writes the great Songs for Soap blog for AdAge.com with Mike Tunnicliffe, which explores the many different brand/artist interactions taking place these days.

One thing rarely discussed is this: artists - ALL artists - need to "sell out" to corporate interests at some stage in their career, and often this involves the corporations they align with the closest and with the highest stakes for their longevity - namely their own record labels and the radio stations/video outlets (and the conglomerates which own them).  Even in this digital, DIY age the large majority of artists seek to be signed by a record label so the label can provide marketing, PR, radio promotion, and distribution of their recordings.  Once the act has music to be released, then they need to go out and promote their single across the radio stations and video channels/outlets which they depend upon to drive their music up the charts, thereby driving album sales and the revenue they might receive based on that airplay.  Yet the major labels (and those indies which are divisions of major corporations) and the big radio conglomerates use music to their own ends just as any corporate brand seeking to license the content from those acts. 

How many artists feel their careers were mismanaged by their labels, both when they were current artists and with their catalogs, after leaving a particular label?  Too many to count.  Those corporations keep cutting staff and roster acts as the industry’s physical sales woes increase.  They also have lousy reputations for being dishonest in their accounting to the artists they rely on to develop the content the companies are based on.  But those labels are still the key engines for allowing artists to create and distribute their art as efficiently as possible across a wide range of media.  Even the band Birdmonster, once touted as a completely DIY outfit in Chris Anderson’s classic business book "The Long Tail," has signed to a label.

How many artists decry how radio airplay decisions have been centralized by corporate behemoths, leaving virtually no local station autonomy and relying almost solely on audience research to make programming decisions?  How many fans hate when radio conglomerates change station formats in their local markets, thereby leaving music fans deprived of easy access to certain kinds of music?  Radio conglomerates especially just use music to sell advertising time and advertising programs to marketers.  So, in essence, while artists use radio to air their songs, the stations use the music to draw in audiences attractive to advertisers, and the artists have ZERO SAY in what advertising those stations play around their music.

Even the venue owners, ticket sellers, and concert promoters are large corporate entities which must be dealt with: Live Nation, AEG, Ticketmaster, etc...  and these companies all have divisions which deal with artist fan clubs, merchandising, and other key parts of the artist’s live performance and ancillary revenue streams.

Many artists who would refuse any proactive alignment with a particular brand neverthelsss do not complain when particular retailers, hotels, restaurants, banks, health clubs, etc... have in-store music systems which include playlists featuring their own music.

So, let me use a rather crude analogy.  Much as Madamoiseille Rimbaud, the busty French girl pleading to Mel Brooks’s King Louis in "History of the World, Part I" pleads she simply does not "do it," I reply to those artists who think they aren’t already neck deep in corporate involvement with the King’s blunt response: "Come on.  You know you do it.  We all do it.  We love to do it."  There is always a price to pay for releasing one’s art and striving to have it make an impact on as mass a scale as possible.  There is always a beast which needs to be fed.  And if you want to achieve mass success, then there is always a game to be played to fire up the engine of that success and keep it running smoothly... which doesn’t mean there aren’t conscious choices artists shouldn’t exercise, just that any claims of artistic purity are proven false on prima facie evidence alone.

Noted music supervisor Josh Rabinowitz of The Grey Group writes a bi-weekly column for Billboard magazine entitled "With the Brand."  In last week’s column (no link available through all my search efforts) he espoused the virtues of artists "selling in" to the world of music licensing and doing music promotions with brands.  Why?  The answers are obvious.  In an interconnected world where one is more likely to hear about a video via YouTube than MTV, or hear a new band or song on MySpace or "Grey’s Anatomy" than on commercial radio, then the choice to be anything but completely channel agnostic is short-sighted thinking.  Yael Naim and her song "New Soul" are part of the cultural zeitgeist due to an Apple TV ad.  And both the artist and the brand can measure their success together.  Since her song was featured in the ad her download sales have been significant, and Apple can actually, in some fashion, track how much consumers are paying attention to its advertising by watching that immediate reaction.  Similarly, the company can also check out how many YouTube views of its commercial have been seen by consumers, and, as Yael Naim’s record is released, how many albums she sells and her success in the digitsal and mobile arenas - in great part to her association with the brand.

Haven’t those been the great questions marketers consistently seek to answer: "How can I quantify the effectiveness of the advertising my company and/or marketing agencies is producing?  How can I tell, in this TIVO/DVR world, if people are just skipping through my company’s ads and ignoring them?"  The measurements above are imperfect to be sure, but they are still measurements one can gauge effectiveness by.  Was there any shot "New Soul" would have received any consumer attention in today’s oversaturated media marketplace without a major ad or television licensing opportunity such as the Apple ad?  Did she stand any chance at garnering radio airplay of any significance?  No way.

The quotient may be different for some older tracks or artists whose music is used in such a way, but not by much.  90s dance star Haddaway had his once-ubiquitous hit "What is Love?" licensed for a diet Pepsi Max ad aired on this year’s Super Bowl.  He had a tremendous increase in download sales after the ad was aired.  Was it an increase the Diet Pepsi Max brand manager thought was significant given his multi-million dollar media buy for the Super Bowl?  Who knows?  But it at least gave him some quantifiable evidence to suggest the ad was the sole reason for that sales increase.

Production music companies are more than happy to be to take corporations’ easy money and leave the moralizing to the artists with egos who find these opportunities to be analagous to selling one’s soul.  There is a market to be served and they are glad to serve it as efficiently and cheaply as possible.

So every artist needs to take a step back and truly ask themselves this: if they are willing to give up their masters to one company - the record label, or if they are willing to go and provide programming to radio conglomerates who don’t have any vested interest in music per se, then why are other types of brand partnerships taboo?  They shouldn’t be, and if you don’t think fans realize this, then you’re selling yourself... short.

Introducing the child prodigy - Miss Abigail!

Abigail sings and plays the piano (sorry tried to embed the video here, but it wouldn't fly)

Look out Alicia - Abby's gaining on ya!

I just wanted to drop a note to all my MySpace friends down in Tennessee and throughout the South affected by last night's powerful storms.

My thoughts and prayers are with you, and I hope you all are doing fine.

Take care.

PK

I just wanted to remind all you MySpacers to take time out tomorrow to go vote in your state's Presidential primary or caucus.

I'm not going to make any partisan statements about who you should vote for, or why you should vote for the incredibly inspirational Democratic Senator from Illinois I'll be voting for , but I urge you all to play a role in the nation's political process.

Take care and have a great day!

Peter

HOLY SHIT!  THEY DID IT!!!!

YOU'VE GOT ANOTHER THING COMIN'!!!!

GIANTS WIN!!!!!!!!!!  SUPER BOWL BABY!!!!

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Kenny G.  No artist's name makes the hair on my neck stand up straighter.  As someone who got involved with the music business in the 90s from a love of jazz and during the "jazz renaissance" of that decade Kenny was, in my opinion, the epitome of everything wrong with music.  The saccharine sounds.  The Michael Bolton connection.  The complete lack of soul.  Sure, the guy had chops up the ying-yang, but to what end?  The coup de grace was when he paired himself with the disembodied voice of the deceased scion of jazz music: Louis Armstrong, for a "duet" on "What a Wonderful World."

I'm a pretty inclusive music consumer and listener.  I listen to all kinds of music, even the occassional smooth jazz record.  But I draw the line with Kenny G.  Today, Starbucks Entertainment announced an exclusive release with the above-mentioned Mr. G.

When I worked at Universal Music Special Markets I really wanted to work on the Starbucks account.  They had always approached music with a very sure-handed and opinionated curatorial sensibility.  Certain music worked for their brand.  Certain music didn't.  I distnctly remember one of the first meetings I attended with someone from Starbucks in 1999.  We had someone from Verve Music Group in on the meeting.  That person tried to pitch Starbucks on doing a smooth jazz CD as part of the company's branded CD compilations for the coming year.  They Starbucks employee looked at our Verve guy like he had two heads. 

Smooth jazz was not what Starbucks was about.  They emphasized artistic quality and warmth, intimacy and collaboration.  They did instrumental jazz compilations, singer-songwriter collections, blues, Brazilian music, world music, even some classical and opera.  The music for the brand had a point of view.

Starbucks never did too much advertising.  Their advertising was their product and their stores, and the environment created in those stores.  The couches and the ability to sit and enjoy your latte were part of that environment, but the music playing in the in-store bed was what you felt, what made you feel like sitting and staying at Starbucks, that being there was worth the price of that latte.  And the music on the Starbucks CDs and the music being piped in were synched up.  When you bought one of those CDs you could take a little piece of the Starbucks brand experience home with you.

Even as Starbucks purchased Hear Music and became more ambitious, the artistic specificity remained in their brand point of view.  They launched the "Artist's Choice" series of CDs, where musicians would create compilations based on their artistic taste.  And they chose artists that furthered the Starbucks brand's image as tastemaker: Lucinda Williams, Willie Nelson, Yo-Yo Ma, Elvis Costello, Diana Krall, Norah Jones, and many others (not all the titles are in print anymore).  Even on their "Opus collection" single-artist greatest hits packages they were able to delve into some very significant artist catalogs that were normally difficult to license: John Lennon, Bob Marley & the Wailers, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Sinatra, and The Doors, to name a few.  For this they should be recognized and applauded.

Starbucks also became a more significant account for selling frontline records, records which not many other accounts were carrying.  They championed artists who were releasing good records rather than just carrying the latest record the labels wanted them to flog.

After the groundbreaking partnership with Concord Records which was responsible for the Ray Charles mega-hit Genius Loves Company the company was sitting even prettier.  But, after the massive, Grammy-winning triumph of Ray Charles that curator's sense of knowing what was right for the brand diminished.

Starbucks is a huge brand, with a massive retail footprint.  At some point earlier this decade the company decided that the exclusiveness of the type of music Hear Music was producing and buying needed to diversify to account for a wider, more diverse customer base that crossed many different age cohorts.

So there is no longer a "Starbucks sound" per se.  Starbucks can't do deals with Kenny G AND Joni Mitchell and expect there to be continued trust in the brand's musical taste or sensibility among its customers.  Similarly, on the frontline side the Starbucks Entertainment team is now stocking more big hits and well-known artists: Led Zeppelin, Alicia Keys, Wyclef Jean are current highlighted titles.  And the titles released by Starbucks by Paul McCartney, Joni Mitchell, and James Taylor haven't excited customers as much as they've generated PR buzz.

Starbucks has always aimed to be the "third place" in people's lives, other than home and work.  But, more so than they realize, Starbucks' music initiative, from its beginnings, has helped give the brand the respect it needs to keep people trusting in their brand experience.    I mean, even the baristas can't be excited at the prospect of having to have Kenny G music piped into the stores.

Starbucks needs to reclaim their musical mojo - not just take on projects because they can.  If the gentleman fron Starbucks I know who delivered that "no smooth jazz" edict to Verve back in 1999 is still working at the company I can hardly imagine how disappointed he is in this choice by the company he's worked at for so long and done so much for in developing their music business.

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David Pogue writes for the New York Times' Circuits section.  He describes how at various speaking engagements he has developed an exercise for his audiences, a kind of morality scale as to what downloading activities people consider immoral or unethical.

His great shock came when he presented this standard exercise at a college lecture.  I've posted what Pogue said about this experience below, but it ought to give anyone of my readers involved in a copyright-intensive industry: music, TV, fim, software, etc... ample pause as we consider what the generations now in college and growing up will deem just and right as we try and earn our livings off of created works.

In an auditorium of 500, no matter how far my questions went down that garden path, maybe two hands went up. I just could not find a spot on the spectrum that would trigger these kids' morality alarm. They listened to each example, looking at me like I was nuts.

Finally, with mock exasperation, I said, "O.K., let's try one that's a little less complicated: You want a movie or an album. You don't want to pay for it. So you download it."

There it was: the bald-faced, worst-case example, without any nuance or mitigating factors whatsoever.

"Who thinks that might be wrong?"

Two hands out of 500.

Now, maybe there was some peer pressure involved; nobody wants to look like a goody-goody.

Maybe all this is obvious to you, and maybe you could have predicted it. But to see this vivid demonstration of the generational divide, in person, blew me away.

There it is in black and white.  Now, I'm sure if Pogue were to ask this question in front ot students at Berklee College of Music or Belmont University's Mike Curb College of Entertainment & Music Business he'd get different responses, but I think overall, on campuses across the nation, the type of response Pogue saw would be the norm.

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Advertising Age has posted their Top 10 "2007 Best Ad Songs," noting their favorite uses of music in TV advertising campaigns.

I can see how some of these songs made the Top 10.  I love the Apple, Old Navy, JC Penney, Dove and Volkswagen ads.  I have mentioned the Volkswagen/Wilco partnership before, and it played out rather nicely in the execution.  Ingrid Michaelson, whose "The Way I Am" was featured in the Old Navy ad, questioned her own integrity when some fans ragged on her for "selling out."

I find the whole "selling out" argument to be passe.  As I commented on No Depression magazine's "Peter's Postscripts" blog - artists "sell out" to corporations every day, namely their labels and radio conglomerates.  Yet somehow Z100 or Island Records, for example, are considered holy while licensing music for a :30 spot is considered blasphemy.  Sometimes I just don't understand how people think.

I was somewhat surprised to see that one of my all-time favorite bands - IRON MAIDEN - had licensed their 1988 hit "Can I Play With Madness?" to Sony Electronics for a commercial about HDTV - easily listed as one of the "Most Questionable Ad Songs of 2007" by Ad Age.  I was less surprised Maiden licensed the track (though this is the first instance I've seen of the band licensing ANYTHING) than the agency chose that song to help deliver the message the ad was trying to send.  I found the ad preposterous just from the visuals, and when Maiden's track is added the effect is just dreadful.

From a personal perspective - I find it unbelievable that Country music has such little representation in modern TV advertising.  A colleague of mine blamed it on music publishers who seek too high a price for their sync licenses.  Many agencies still relegate music licensing, in terms of budget and creative importance, to the proverbial back of the bus.  And supply of licensable music far outweighs demand, making it a buyers market.  Sellers beware.

We can see from this list that being a current act on a major label, or even major indie label, bears little correlation to the music agencies license for their clients.  My dear artist, music publishing, and label friends, take note.  Be flexible and make deals happen.  Be proactive.  Survive and thrive - don't be watching the oncoming light become the express train as retail shrinks and radio airplay tightens.  Music exists to be listened to - however people or corporations choose to consume it.  Use that to enhance your own revenue streams and profitability.

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Taylor Swift.  Toby Keith.  Rascal Flatts.  Rodney Atkins.  Tracy Lawrence.  Tim McGraw.  Garth Brooks.  Trisha Yearwood.  Emerson Drive.  Jason Aldean.  Little Big Town.  Jack Ingram.

These are just a few of the artists who dominated Country radio in 2007.  Nielsen's year-end BDS chart for Country music airplay are out, and, by my count, independent labels (which does not mean these some of labels don't have distribution via major labels) account for 38% of the Top 100 Songs of the year.  That's got to be some kind of high-water mark in this era of major label consolidation.  Here's the label breakdown.  Here's the top artist breakdown.

I don't know if this is a tipping point for the rise to prominence of the indie label scene in Nashville, because a label's individual financial health and future is based on much more than radio airplay.  But it ought to be a signal that the major labels are not the only place to find talented, charismatic artists creating commercial art.

I don't have the countdown breakdown by music publisher, but so many indie publishers involved with country music are having incredible successes as well.

So are we in an era of de-consolidation?  Do artists, songwriters, and publishers feel encouraged?  Challenged?  Emboldened?  Insecure?  Please let me know your thoughts.

Take care.

I don't know how many of you read The Onion, the satirical newspaper and web site, but i've loved it for years.  And a few friends of mine like to riff on our own "Onion-inspired" news headlines and stories.  I came up with this one today.  Feel free to check it out and have a chuckle.

MIKE MYERS TO TRANSFORM HIMSELF INTO SHREK

Following a period of difficulty finding work as an actual actor in a cinematic motion picture Mike Myers has decided to transform himself into the actual cartoon "Shrek."  Myers described the transformation as follows: "I was just having a hard time finding work doing comedy outside of theanimated realm.  It seems like if you're not Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell, Owen Wilson, or Seth Rogen, starring in a film by Jud Apatow, then no one gives a damn aboot your ability to make people laugh."  Studio exec Jeffrey Katzenberg seemed worried: "This is a permanent process for Mike.  He can't be re-humanized.  What if we stop making Shrek movies when Jud Apatow starts making adult comedic cartoons?"  Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz refused comment.

 BIG PROPS TO ALL MY BUDDIES AT VERVE MUSIC GROUP AND UNIVERSAL MUSIC ENTERPRISES ON THE GRAMMY NOMINATIONS FOR LEDISI AND HERBIE HANCOCK!!