Hey All,
About a month or so ago, I started taking over the Thursday night shifts from Hollywood Alley after a longtime promise to myself and Ross that if I had my own weekday night I would book something on a regular basis. I have been toying with some ideas in my head. Some involving some DJs that I know mixed with other themes. One idea is a psychedelic rock night that would mix 60s psychedelia with some of the modern neo-psychedelic rock -  ranging from 80s stuff like Echo & The Bunnymen to shoegazer rock from the 90s and the BRMC/Darker My Love sounds from today. Getting a visual artist involved has also been discussed. That may be a stretch but still might be cool. Definetly want to do something that would be easy to not charge a cover and offer some good beer specials. Another idea was a indie themed night when a DJ would play ONLY indie rock while Hollywood Alley would offer a $3 special on all microbrews.

Others have approached me about filling the void that Banned in Tempe had when it was held on this side of town (Tempe/Mesa). But has the idea of a weekly punk night grown tired?

I like what Mikey and Notah have done with the 1977 idea. Their vinyl mix of nothing but classic rock, punk, and proto-punk from 1977 and before , mixed with some old cinema favories from the 70s on the big screen really gave the Alley some atmosphere. I am not sure if I can talk them into doing something weekly without the jam band idea at the end. Yet its still an idea I am thinking about.

We are going on 2 years since The Blunt Club left us. I always believe in friendly competition, so I always thought we should have a night dediciated to more soul/R&B/Motown than hip-hop. IT would be something that doesnt directly compete with what The Blunt Club does, but still could persuade some of the regulars from the old Hollywood Alley Blunt Club days to cruise down the 101 from Club Red and check it out. I would be totally into that but wouldnt know where to start on getting a DJ with that style and collection.

In the interim, we have had some bands booked from time to time, but I want to defintely start something on a regular basis to help get our Thursday nights rocking.

So if anyone out there have any ideas, let me know. Just comment here , message me here or email me at vilvodka@yahoo.com

Hello all,
Please go to ANTI-SNOB.com to see the basic FAQ concerning what ANTI-SNOB is all about. The Q & A below is all artist related.

Q. What style of music does ANTI-SNOB cover?
A. Anything I like. ANTI-SNOB is a bit more broader than Vodka Tonic Media, which concentrated on more garage, old school punk, synthpunk, power pop, glampunk, etc. ANTI-SNOB is a more open to all forms of indie rock. This includes folk/alt-country and artists influenced by classic and psychedelic rock. I tend to stay away from top 40, hip hop, R&B slow jams, mallrock (Hot Topic punk), metal-core.

Q. Do you still book shows at Hollywood Alley in Mesa?
A. Occasionally. Booked a show at Wok Star in North Scottsdale too. If I can't help, I will atleast try to point you the right direction.

Q. Will you review my band/CD/record?
A. Sure. Maybe. I am not into giving bad reviews. I like hyping out bands I love, old and new. So shoot me a message here. If I like it I will review it.  CDs/Records can be sent to ANTI-SNOB.com c/o Vodka Tonic Media P.O. Box 1975 Tempe, AZ 85280. I love vinyl and would probably be stoked if you sent me vinyl or CDs.

Q. Do you still run Vodka Tonic Radio?
A.  In three parts.
      1. Well, the LIVE365 stream is still at http://www.live365.com/stations/vil_vodka but it hasn't been updated in over a year and I am not paying for the ability to add more songs. You'll need a paying VIP membership from LIVE365 to hear it.
       2. I plan on doing some podcasting with ANTI-SNOB, but for for the moment all Vodka Tonic Radio podcasts were removed.
       3. The flash player that ended up on the Vodka Tonic site is now on ANTI-SNOB.com as ANTI-SNOB radio. Nothing fancy, works just like the playlist.com app myspace has, but the flash player code I use lets me use album cover images and links to buy the music. I love showcasing bands through the flash player. It helps if your song is hosted on your own server, so message me if you have a song I can use.

Q. Are you managing , consulting, or offering any type of artist services anymore?
A. No, not really. We still have the "FREE MP3 of the WEEK" program. It works with our podcasting feed (over 20K hits a month). So when a band decided to give away an mp3 through us, it gets automatically dowmnloaded into hundreds of people's iTunes and iPods. And in this day and age, isn't that where you want you music to be? Those songs we do host on our server. But we need licensing direct from your band to do this.

Any questions, just message me through myspace:
Vil Vodka aka Will Tynor

Some recent links worth reading. I learned about these links from my RSS feeds for Hypebot and IndieHQ.

Wired: Vinyl is the final nail in the coffin for CD:
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/commentary/listeningpost/2007/10/listeningpost_1029

Hypebot: The Rise of the Music Middle Class:
http://hypebot.typepad.com/hypebot/2007/10/the-rise-of-the.html

Seattle Times: Indie rock struggling to make money in digital era
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/musicnightlife/2003983861_webindie.html

Been spending alot of time re-thinking the business model of Vodka Tonic Media. I think we have done some innovative things for a company with no outside funding. And now, after nearly three years, I have to ask myself if it's time to keep on innovating, or to see what is really working in the land of indie record labels and management companies and see what ideas we can adopt as part of our master plan.

What I have come up with after reading the aforementioned articles is that the landscape of selling recorded works of indie music is fucked. Let me outline the three major formats to sell recorded music and tell you how I see where they stand and co-relate with the other formats.

1. VINYL. We agree that vinyl is the premier format. It sounds better and holds a far greater aesthetic value. The problem is that, although it is growing, 90% of the potential music buyers have no idea this format still exists. And by the time everyone gets the memo, it could possibly be considered a tired trendy. Is vinyl really stable enough to build a new company around?

2. MP3s. We all agree that mp3s is the lower tier format. It sounds the worse, it holds no re-sale value, and is the easiest to dispose of. In a perfect world, mp3s would just be available for free to everyone as a means of sampling music before you purchase the most premier products of CDs and vinyl. The problem is that the world's fastest growing music store (ITUNES) sells these disposable poor-quality files for 99 cents a pop. Therefore, bands and indie labels everywhere are signing on with CDBABY, Tunecore, IODA, and The Orchard to have their music be among the iTunes catalog. If iTunes is destined to be the world's biggest music store, can a new record company afford to not offer mp3 files designed to sell? Can they afford to give digital music away in hopes to sell vinyl to a fraction of the downloaders willing to pay the premium?

3. CDs. CDs are now considered a cliché and antiquated format. But by who? Some hip columnists? Wall Street? And maybe they will be right sooner than later. The problem is that CDs they still account for about 75% of total music sales worldwide by some accounts. For the same reason Soundscan's methods over-inflate the sales of CDs compared to vinyl, it could also deflate the true landscape since indie bands are selling thousands of CDs each week at merch tables around the world. So, can a new record company really afford to dismiss the CD as a passing format? And let's suppose you make a decision to release only vinyl with a side note to your customers that CDs are passé. Can you really afford to send a possible "if you still collect CDs you may not be hip enough to buy our brand" message to your prospects? Especially in this era of so many choices?

What I have learned from the Music 2.0 era is that what can be sold can also be given away. So is the trick knowing what your potential customers expect for free vs. what they will actually pay for? Or is the trick convincing your potential customers that what they can have for free is worth paying for?

Is the cost of distribution really nearing zero?

This is what I hear. I read it in Chris Anderson's book The Long Tail. I also hear that it's the aggregators and online retailers that will benefit from the fruits of the long tail rather than each single artist.
If that is so....then why is SonyConnect going out of business?
http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2007/06/18/sony-to-shutter-connect-digital-music-and-video-store
It's true that SonyConnect only does a fraction of the business of iTunes and is probably considered a distant 5th or 6th if you were to rank the digital stores. But if distribution is cheap, and if the digital sector is planning to grow, then it would only makes sense if the SonyConnect store stays open . If digital distribution means low costs, that would mean a company could employ a minimum number of employees for which a minimal gross income could support. I am not sure what SonyConnect's sales were, but there would have to had been enough business to support a skeletal crew (brand name of Sony, with practically the same inventory as their competition, with some many exclusives that included direct downloads of the performances from Jimmy Kimmel's show.)

So what went wrong? Did Sony make the corporate mistake of overstaffing and over-forecasting?
Or do the teachings of the Long Tail underestimate the true costs of digital distribution?

I think I can make an argument for the latter. When the costs of distribution are discussed, especially when comparing to their retail counterpart, things like shelf costs, storage, delivery, returns, etc are discussed. What is rarely discussed is the administrative costs involved. Let's take accounting for example.

Imagine if you were a start up retail distributor 10 years ago. You established deals with 100 record labels. At an average 10 albums each, your company is distributing approx. 1000 albums to retail outlets nationwide. If business does well, you might think about hiring an accountant or two. So at first you let the accountant know he/she has 100 clients and will need to report and request quarterly disbursements on over 1000 items.

As your business switches from an album oriented market to a singles market, you announce to your accounting department that every album will also be sold as individual singles so customers can buy particular songs (maybe , in a physical retail example, you have an inhouse CD duplication department that produces these disks). So now instead of keeping track of 1000 different items, you are keeping track of the incoming sales about 10,000 different items.

Now, lets say that the Long Tail craze happened a few years earlier, back when physical retail was still hot. You adopt this philosophy and inform your accounting department that your company will be distributing far beyond established labels and that anyone, even some guy who plays every Monday at some coffee shop to 10 people, can sign up to have their CD distributed by your company. So instead of 100 labels…you have 1000 labels and indie artists without a label and about 20000 items to track. In addition, you will be assisting established labels to digitize their back catalog so they can be pressed and sold on CD, thus increasing your inventory by another ten fold. Do you think your accounting departmentt may grow? Maybe hire a few more accountants? If so, then your costs of distribution have increased.

Now, fast forward to the days of digital distribution (either by aggregation or  online retail) . You take away all the physical products and you will lose a lot of staffing (stockroom and shipping departments would be deleted). However, the accounting structure still stays the same and staffing would indeed increase (example: working in a educational fundraising environment, I have seen our accounting department grow as more scholarships and initiatives were created). And although accounting software has improved so much over the years, you still need people to run it, report on it, and facilitate quality customer service to your clients. So, in that aspect, the cost of distribution is NOT close to zero.

Now, I will admit that I have never worked for a music distributor of any kind so maybe I am wrong about the organizational chart of either physical retail or digital. But one thing I do know is that one of the most recent players on the new digital scene - SnoCap/Myspace -  has made a bold statement by charging 45 cents per song for their combined services. If you are selling each song for 99 cents, that comes up to be about 45%. Quite a bit chunk to pay for a service that doesn't have to pay to store your music and ship it (I am hearing that storage space on a server is getting cheaper and cheaper).

And I am certain that accounting is not the only thing that expands in the long tail environment. How about an aggregators/store's promotional department. If webspace is unlimited (unlike the limited number of pages in a brochure or limited ad space in a magazine) than the opportunity to promote (highlight/feature) more of the music you are selling becomes greater. More labels and artists can be included. Placement within these webpages can still be sold as a premium, but the more opportunity to feature one of the artists you are selling, the more people you need to staff to handle these promotional tie-ins (when a magazine increases from 70 pages to 120 pages, thus increasing ad space , doesn't the company's advertisement department increase as well?). The ironic thing about this is that the long tail supports this. When a small record store can only carry 2500 titles, they will feature about 50 of them in front racks and listening posts. Maybe much of the placement is paid for by labels, but regardless the small amount featured and placed can be considered the head while the thousands of discs that remain in their proper bin space can be considered the tail. If that record store doubles in space, they can carry twice the inventory, and feature twice as many titles in the front racks and listening booths.  Now making the shift into the digital world, inventory is unlimited, and so is specialty placement on your store's website. That increase opportunity to sell special placement requires an increase of human resources.

So, I really doubt that, even if physical recorded music completely disappears, the distribution of it's digital counterpart will ever be zero. Infact it may possibly be as costly if not more.


Vil Vodka
Prez/CEO of Vodka Tonic Media
vodkatonicmedia@yahoo.com
http://www.vodkatonicmedia.com

Some interesting pieces from people who know better than I do.

Rags Gupta talks about the "New, New Industry" and the resentment from consumers over the major labels "bait and switch" concept by selling CDs filed with one or two good songs and the rest filler. These consumers are now the ones online getting the singles only in digital format from either Itunes or P2P.
http://www.ragsgupta.com/weblog/2007/02/the_new_new_mus.html

Bob Lefstez reminds us of this same consumer resentment often, like in his blog titled "The Album's last Rites"
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2007/02/20/album-last-rites/

Chris Anderson says we should give away the music and sell the show. http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2007/01/give_away_the_m.html

We keep hearing about the death of the CD and it's number one vice; CDs cost to much and usually have only one or two good songs among filler. From there we are led to believe that we are in a transition from an album based business to one that is based on singles. First off, I've been there (I bought the Spacehog CD in 1995 and The Unband CD in 2000, among other like purchases), so it's hard to disagree, although I am very well tempted to pose an argument when I compare the recording industry with the concert/touring industry.

I really don't know how well the live music industry is doing as a whole. I hear different things from different people. But one thing I have not heard yet is an expert coining the phrase "the death of the live music venue". I think it's fair to say that live music is doing better and has a brighter future than the sector that sells recorded music on physical mediums. But when you consider the fact that there are now more mid-sized venues across the US than ever before, allowing more "one-hit" bands the opportunity to tour than ever before…when you consider that there are more live music options on any given night in any given metropolis than there was say 10-15 years ago, then you have to go back to the cancer that is killing the physical formats and ask if this same disease can kill live music.

First, let's compare the two sectors and draw similarities. As someone who has worked at many mid-sized venues and have attended hundreds of shows both professionally and personally, I can tell you that an artist's performance lasts around the same time as the length of an album give or take (between 35-60 minutes or more). I can also tell you that the ticket price for these events are around the price of a CD (although you're given a opt to experience more than one artist's music). More experiences bands with a deep catalog will charge more, just like a greatest hits package may cost more at the record store, depending on how many discs are included. In turn, these artists may play longer sets when touring. But if the CD's cause of death is based on one-hit albums, then we should keep the parallel to live music to that of developing artists touring the mid-sized market.

Now, let's apply the death alibi to the live music sector and see if it applies. It very well could, especially if it's a new artist with a minimal catalog. Even at a modest $10 price tag, a developing artist with one song in rotation on the local modern rock station will likely have too many filler songs in contrast to that hit to gain the interest of ticket buyers.  It is, how you say, a "singles business". And, unlike with Itunes, you can't pay for one song in concert at a ala carte premium.  It even holds far more disadvantages than purchasing an entire CD. While you can skip through the bad songs to hear the better ones on your CD player, you can't skip through a bad song during a live performance. You can kill time during the undesired tracks (smoke break, bathroom, merch table, concessions), but the live music experience still keeps you stuck in an old media paradigm. You can't TiVo a concert while it's happening, not while you're there. Also consider that most albums put the hits upfront while most concerts end or encore with the same hits. And although your modest ticket price will often get an extra band or two, whose to say that you will actually like the opening acts. That would be like Amazon sending you two free CDs of mediocre music for every $17.99 CD you buy from them. Is that really an added bonus? It could be. But not all music recommendation services are proven to not direct consumers to inferior music. Just like not all concert promoters are good on choosing good opening acts.

I realize that there are some socially-related pros to attending a concert in contrast to buying a CD for your listening pleasure. I realize that many consider the concert experience as a religious one. The experience in itself is unique, while still being shared by more than one person at a time. A band can mix up the set list and ad-lib content from city to city to complement the demographic, while the CD at home never modifies itself on it's own. The concert is an event that people plan, often together, while the CD is usually associated with a lone shopping experience.

With pro, cons, and comparisons between the two sectors, we should be asking the question "will the same vices that are (allegedly) killing the record store go on to kill the live music venue?". What can the live music sector learn from the recorded music sector and vice-versa? How can the two work together to keep themselves alive?
Will new bands debut a full length album (in true sequence) on stage live via satellite on your on a cable network weeks before the album is due in stores? Will CDs include concert tickets or will a CD in hand get you 10 bucks off the door when that band comes to you town? Will concert tours go back to the Buddy Holly-Richie Valens-Big Bopper days when several hitmakers are placed on the same bill to perform in brief sets, only playing their known hits? With the concert of the future look a lot like the Solid Gold TV shows from the 80s? How will an iPod world change the concert experience where, currently, consumers are expected to focus on one band for a considerable amount of time? And when a artist is able to tour for years on an extended live catalog, mixing hits with non-hits, and are successful, what can the recording industry do to parallel that success to recorded music on physical formats?

While observing the concert experience of today's youth, I can tell you this. While a band like Fall Out Boy may still only have a handful of recognizable hits, their filler material is not being ignored by the thousands of teens who scream and shake their hips at their shows. Some know the words to every song, but the others are still moving to every beat. Looking out into the crowd you'd think that everyone there owns the albums. Isn't that what the concerts are for…the real fans who go out of their way to own the disc? Are there more ticket buyers than CD-buyers today? I think so. Fall Out Boy has just barely crossed the quarter-million mark on the latest record, it's very not unbelievable that 3 months of touring is gong to net that many fans or more. But take a look at one of these shows and you will realize that it is not so much a 'singles business' after all. An artist can succeed on both their hits and non-hits. But the recording industry should make some immediate changes to their business models. First, all developing artists should have music on sale for the same price that a concert promoter would charge to see that artist by themselves in concert. While the live music venues make efforts to minimize overhead, so should the recording industry now. CDs should be $8 max for developing artists and $11.00 for developed proven artist not named Madonna or Rolling Stones. The CD should be among the most empowering purchases a music fan can make. No-copy protection, fully compatible. Most of this is obvious and agreed upon most of us outside of the industry's elite.

What is puzzling is what changes the concert promotion industry will make to make sure that they are not the next to be declared extinct. How can they get a new generation of short-attention-span, over-achieving, iPod owning, consumers who are already over-eating on media on a daily basis to commit a premium and 3 hours of their life to a concert filled with few hits and much filler???

Vil Vodka
Prez/CEO of Vodka Tonic Media
www.vodkatonicmedia.com

It's not just the major labels that don't get it. It's the mp3 companies that don't get it either.

 

  

I often think about the possibility of trying out one of the subscription music services like Rhapsody, Napster, and Yahoo.

As of now I have been a loyal Emusic customer for over a year. I use Rhapsody 25 for the times that I just have "got to hear that song" on demand.

I am also a Live365 subscriber, so I have access to an abundance of music to stream online.

I downloaded Itunes AAC files from Itunes a few times and Napster as well, but was turned off by the inability to covert them to unrestricted mp3.

I don't know if I will buy a portable mp3 player anytime soon, but if I do it will have to be flexible. It would have to be compatible to as many formats and services possible.

Frankly after 7 years as a CD burner owner, I still enjoy making mix-CDs for friends and myself, but maybe someday I will take mp3s to a place outside of my hard drive...who knows.

 

I came up with a revelation this morning and I have one company to thank. Charmin. Yes, the toilet paper manufacturer. Y'see, last night I went to grocery store for a few things and TP being one of them. My fiancé doesn't allow me to buy the cheap stuff. It has to be Charmin. So since I am an economical shopper, I buy the double-rolls. When I picked up the 6 pack of double-roll Charmin last night, there was a small package attached to the item. It was a toilet paper dispenser roller.

More importantly, it was an extension roller designed to help make the oversized double roll fit normal sized dispensers.

Do you get it? A company who created a product that was incompatible with most home toilet paper dispensers issued a free device to help their customers.

Charmin could of said "well, sorry, looks like you will need to get a new dispenser at Bed Bath Beyond" to all customers who may have complained. But they know that customers have a choice in brands of TP, just like customers have a choice in other things...like music formats.

 

So, I got home and thought about other markets more in the technology field that would go out of their way for customers. I immediately thougt "cell phones".

Wireless communications is a multi-billion dollar industry. But what if this industry followed the business model that Napster, Yahoo, and Rhapsody are currently using ? What if in 1998 T-Mobile was just a website or a phone number? And when you called they told you it was up to you to "get a compatible phone" and then supplied you with a list.

I think that if that was the case, the mobile phone industry would be hurting today. But it's not the case because all the surviving mobile companies all played an active part in making sure the customer had the right phone. Many of them offered (bottom of the line) free phones for signing a service contract, and then offered 50 or 70 bucks off a higher grade phone.

 

Whatever deal the service companies made with the phone manufacturers to offer phones for so cheap and create the paradigm of selling the service as the primary product while the hardware is only an accessory needs to be replicated and utilized in the portable mp3 field...especially if Napster, Yahoo, and Rhapsody plan to seriously compete with Itunes….especially if iRiver, Creative, and Samsung plan on getting a noticeable share of the portable device market from Apple.

 

Seriously, shouldn't these manufacturers stop trying to sell their devices directly to customers and sell in bulk to the mp3 servce providers?

 

Imagine one day you enter a Radio Shack or a Target. Next to the Stereo equipment is a kiosk with overhead banner with the Napster logo. A trained saleman talks with you about different subscription plans while you gaze over the array of different models of mp3 devices available through the nearby display cases. And then he hits you up with the good news. "Sign up for a year and you get a free 64MB mp3 player or $50.00 off any other player we have in stock". As a special bonus, the salesman lets you pick 25 songs through the store's computer so you can start listening right away.  With one visit a person is hooked up with a music subscription service and a compatible device to play it on. Even if the potential customer is an existing IPOD owner, whose going to refuse a free player just to try a very affordable service?

 

This could really be the only business model the subscription services can adopt to truly compete with Apple.

 

Apple already has a slight version of this model. No, they don't have subscription services or give out free players for pre-paying for certain amount of downloads. But they do play an active role in helping IPOD customers with their music organizational needs by supplying a free music application called Itunes. Altho, customers still have to pay 99 cents for a restricted download. Still many things like audio conversion to podcast subscribing is free through Itunes and in all makes it a nice little bonus for investing in an IPOD.

 

Historically, this type of locked-in user environment has failed due to incompatibility issues. Sony Mini-discs in the 90s? Colored TV signals in the 1930s that ONLY worked with Zenith TVs? Sears and the Cartrivision debacle? But Apple has somehow made it all work  (it’s easy to succeed when you are perceived as the only game in town) and, just like how many claim the major labels have to change their business model to adapt to the changing times, the music subscription services also need to adapt if they want to exist in the digital marketplace.

 

Vil Vodka

Vodka Tonic Media