UPDATE, 2:06 pm: Reader Joe Siegler tells me that Ward didn’t “hold out” in ’97 — he was never asked to re-join the band. I apologize for my lapse in knowledge of Sabbath reunion lore. If he really wasn’t asked in 1997, that makes this whole thing all the more dramatic and dispiriting. Original story follows below…

Hope you weren’t too excited about Bill Ward participating in the upcoming Black Sabbath reunion.

Ward has always been the hold-out with these reunions. He didn’t participate when the band got back together for Ozzfest in ’97 (although by 1998, he had indeed rejoing the band), and he wasn’t a part of Heaven & Hell, the Dio-era Sabbath reunion, either. Now, according to a statement on his website, he may not be part of the Sabbath’s recently announced new album and tour, either:

Click to read more…

In the days since Megaupload was shut down last week, a new story has come to light that defenders of Megaupload are claiming illuminates a conspiracy by the U.S. government and major record labels to squash competition in the form of a new service Megaupload was planning to launch. And I’m about to squash that theory.

Before you read any further, please check out this hilarious set of photos of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom (his momma named him Kim Schmitz) doing… all sorts of things. OK… you’re back? Read on.

The article in question, which was actually published back on December 21, 2011 by Digital Music News, claims that Megaupload was getting ready to launch a digital music store and cloud locker service called Megabox in which they’d pay 90% of revenue to artists. Intriguing, right? MetalSucks readers who have been emailing us about this article and nerds on Internet message boards have been up in arms over the past few days, claiming that Universal Music Group — with whom Megaupload was actively engaged in litigation — crushed Megaupload to squelch the supposed oncoming competition from Megabox. I call bullshit.

Click to read more…

One of the many reasons I like Spotify and MOG so much are that they present a legal alternative to piracy. Why bother to spend time seeking out and illegally downloading files of varying origin and quality when, for a monthly fee that’s less than the price of one beer at a bar, you can find anything you want in good quality in a matter of seconds, do it legally, and do so in a manner in which the artists actually get paid? Sure, I lauded the pulldown of Megaupload because those fuckers earned $110 million in ad revenue on the backs of pirated content, but only one mole has been whacked and the piracy problem still looms large: Spotify is a solution.

But so far it’s been hard for content owners to claim that Spotify is a legitimate source of revenue; until now.

Click to read more…

The Sundance Film Festival, probably the most famous film festival in the United States and arguably all of North America (sorry, Toronto!), is now underway, which means there’s a lot of Hollywood wheelin’ and dealin’ going on right now. And one such wheel n’ deal comes in the form of Anchor Bay Films acquiring distribution rights to Nothing to Fear, the debut from Slash’s Slasher Films imprint. The horror flick stars Oscar nominee Thomas Hayden Church as “a charismatic but unbalanced man of the cloth.”

Details of the deal haven’t been publicly released yet, but based on my knowledge of Anchor Bay’s usual work, I’d say the fact that this is goin’ down tells us two things about Nothing to Fear:

Click to read more…

Wednesday was a big day for the Internet, as protests by Google, Wikipedia, Reddit and thousands of other websites not only raised general awareness of the dangers of the SOPA and PIPA bills working their way through Congress but also convinced a significant number of lawmakers to withdraw their support of the bills. While piracy is a big problem that needs to be addressed, SOPA and PIPA would fail to solve that problem while inadvertently trampling all over free speech rights and stifling innovation — Wednesday’s protests were a huge victory for you, MetalSucks, and everyone.

But Internet advocates took a big blow yesterday when it was announced that the U.S. government shut down the popular file-sharing site Megaupload. The timing seems apt given all the SOPA/PIPA hooplah, but that actually strikes me as a coincidence — you can’t just suddenly wrap up a long ongoing investigation in 24 hours.

Here’s something that’s probably going to surprise a lot of people who regular read my columns about the music industry, Spotify, SOPA/PIPA, etc: I actually have no problems with Megaupload being shut down. Good riddance.

Click to read more…

Spotify’s “freemium” model has been a boon to music fans but a bane to record companies. As well-chronicled on this site, certain record labels have had a problem with Spotify’s low payout rates to labels and artists, made necessary not because the head cats at Spotify are a bunch of penny-pinchers but because the vast majority of subscribers are signed up for the free version instead of the $5 or $10 per month models. That might be about to change, as a limitation on free Spotify accounts that’s been in Spotify’s Terms of Service from the get-go is about to kick in, hopefully pushing more customers towards a paid subscription.

Click to read more…

If you read my year-end list, you were probably moderately surprised that you’d never heard of, let alone listened to, my #1 pick for the year, The Project Hate MCMXCIX’s masterpiece Bleeding the New Apocalypse. The band hail from Sweden and play a unique form of death metal mixed with all sorts of strange progressions and varied influences, culminating in a titanic swath of metal dominance. Recently, we received an email from the band asking for donations, with a link to a statement on the band’s home page detailing the band’s recent split from their previous label, Season of Mist. Here’s a section of the band’s statement:

“The simple truth is – we sell 1/10 of what we used to do some 5-10 years back. And we’re not the only ones in this situation, unfortunately. And what’s the cause for this? You already know what it is – illegal downloading. The majority of people simply do not give a fuck about buying actual albums anymore, meaning the bands sell less, the labels don’t get their invested money back and ultimately this leads to said labels not being able to take chances since they know they’ll lose money.

“So, will there be another TPH album in actual physical format? As it looks, I don’t think so. After all these years that we have been putting out albums I can safely say that I have had it with chasing labels and proving we’re worth a deal.”

Click to read more…

For all the shit Century Media spewed at me earlier this year you’d think they actually disagreed with what I had to say. And while they haven’t gotten their artists back on Spotify yet, they’ve taken a firm step into the 21st Century by doing one of the other crucial things I recommended: they’ve launched their very own booking agency! Hilarious.

Click to read more…

1. Sales of recorded music will not generate significant income. Music listeners are saying loud and clear that convenience and access are more important than physical objects and sound quality. One step has already been taken with the shift from CDs to digital file ownership, and the next step is coming when digital file ownership shifts to streaming everything from the cloud (whether it’s via Spotify, MOG, an Apple or Google-led service, or someone else altogether). Labels are pissed because you can’t mark up a file or a stream as much as you could a physical object, so profit margins are smaller; it sucks, but the fans have spoken that this is how they want music, and that’s the way it is. Revenue is going to have to come from other sources.

2. Metal is going to be a young man’s game, even more than ever before. Without significant income from sales of recorded music bands are going to have to stay out on the road more of the time to stay afloat, and with more bands on the road all the time bands will be cutting into each others’ income; fans only have so much money to spend on concert tickets and merch. More time on the road means less material comforts of life and less time with significant others and family; this is lots of fun when you’re 20, but gets tiresome by the time you’re 30. Expect more bands to break up sooner and swap members more often than ever before. This is already happening.

3. Your album will be a tool to market your tour. This is a complete 180° turn from how it used to be, when you went out on the road to drive sales of your album. These days new music is an excuse to generate enough fan interest and press to allow you to get back out on the road where the real money is; ticket sales, and, of course, merch.

Click to read more…

The controversial “Stop Online Piracy Act” was dealt a blow yesterday when The Business Software Association, which includes tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, and Intel, reversed its stance on the measure. Whereas the BSA had originally supported the bill, they’ve now decided (rightfully so) that it would be way too far reaching and would tear the fabric of the entire Internet apart. From PC World [via Gizmodo]:

Valid and important questions have been raised about the bill. It is intended to get at the worst of the worst offenders. As it now stands, however, it could sweep in more than just truly egregious actors…Due process, free speech, and privacy are rights cannot be compromised.

And that’s exactly it; the bill has good intentions (stopping piracy), but the way in which it proposes to do so would go far beyond just stopping piracy into territory that threatens free speech and throws due process completely out the window. The bill isn’t dead yet by any means, but this is an important step towards either a) killing it completely, or b) re-working it into something much more fair.

-VN

You may remember the name Bob Lefsetz from when “Run MetalSucks For a Day” contest winner Justin Gosnell interviewed him on MetalSucks in September. I’ve also linked and quoted him many times before because I respect his opinions so greatly. For those unaware, Lefsetz is an independent industry pundit who writes pseudo-daily email newsletters to thousands of subscribers including industry big-wigs (I’ll bet this guy reads Lefsetz) and regular dudes in bands; he’s not beholden to any industry interests so you always know his commentary is sincere. He makes a lot of folks uncomfortable, but that’s how it goes when you’re addressing the elephant in the room and spouting a truth that no one wants to hear. Unsurprisingly, he’s a big proponent of streaming services like Spotify.

Yesterday’s Lefsetz Letter totally hit the nail on the head with regards to today’s supposed evaporating CD revenues. Rather than summarize, I just want to let you read this section and come to your own conclusions:

… everybody forgot what came before. The aforementioned overpriced CD and unreasonably high ticket prices. It was as if the rights holders and acts believed they were entitled to inflated incomes. Instead of seeing MTV and CDs as an evanescent bonus, they became an entitlement. And try taking away an entitlement, isn’t that what the debate is all about in Washington?

All of this change was brought about by the public.

Click to read more…

Last month, Billy McCarthy and James Stonich, from the Chicago band Kid Rocker, brought a lawsuit against Poison, Capital Records, and EMI Music, claiming that they were owed money because Poison guitarist C.C. DeVille stole some songs from them, including ”Talk Dirty To Me,” “I Won’t Forget You,” “Fallen Angel” and “Ride the Wind.” At the time, The Hollywood Reporter was, uh, y’know, reporting that “before… [DeVille] joined Poison, he auditioned for Kid Rocker.” The fact that DeVille’s relationship with McCarthy and Stonich was so tenuous, combined with the fact that it had inexplicably taken these men more than two decades to bring the lawsuit against Poison, made the whole thing feel, well, bullshitty.

But it might not be so bullshitty after all. McCarthy and Stonich’s lawyer is now claiming to have a recording of a 1994 radio interview in which DeVille admits that he was in a band called Screamin’ Mimis with with McCarthy (who our pal Mick Stingley tells me was also in D’Molls), before telling McCarthy that “for that first album, you should have made some money,” and  ”we have video tapes of us doing ‘Talk Dirty To Me’.” And now Metal Insider has dug up that video, which does, indeed, show DeVille with McCarthy and Stonich, performing “Talk Dirty to Me.” Check it out:

Click to read more…

A reader named Thomas sent us an e-mail last night asserting that Puddle of Mudd’s 2001 hit, “She Hates Me,” is a rip-off of Suicidal Tendencies’ “I Saw Your Mommy” — and while we obviously can’t prove that PoM deliberately stole from ST, the songs certainly do sound awfully alike. Of course, the Tendencies tune gets fast at points, where Mudd’s never does, and Mudd’s song has a somewhat different intro, but… the chord progressions during the verses are basically identical. Listen to both songs for yourself and see what you think…

-AR

Read this quote from Stu Pflaum, co-founder (with famous rapper Talib Kweli) of independent hip-hop label Element 9 [via the 10/25 Lefsetz Letter]:

Since [Talib Kweli's] release went live on Spotify we’ve streamed the album over 70K times. I know what skeptics will say; our revenue from those streams is about $7. Who cares? Our web traffic has more than tripled in terms of site visitors & discussion… we’re getting real-time feedback from listeners on which tracks they favor and are able to adjust our marketing accordingly with most of our budget still intact. The group & the album have a legitimate buzz now.

Totally nails it. It’s not about the dollars and cents, but everything else that comes along with Spotify that makes it such a great tool for artists, and for their labels too. This benefit is hard to measure in dollars, but as it turns out is the case with the Spotify/Facebook integration the value can now be approximated — and it’s staggering! So what’s behind Sumerian’s decision to leave?

Click to read more…

If you thought that release of Worship Music meant that Anthrax could finally put all the Dan Nelson drama behind them, well, you thought wrong. The New York Post reports that the former ‘Thrax vocalist is suing the band for a whopping $2.65 million:

Dan Nelson says drummer Charlie Benante, bassist Frank Bello and guitarist Scott Ian falsely stated in “numerous interviews” that he had “abruptly resigned” after getting sick, forcing a cancelation of a tour.

The $2.65 million suit also alleges that Benante last month told the rock-news site Blabbermouth.net that Nelson “was a bully.”

The Long Island native says his ex-bandmates’ “intentional defamation” has caused him a loss of income and damaged his reputation.

The Manhattan federal court filing further charges that Nelson co-wrote the tunes on the band’s latest album, “Worship Music,” but hasn’t gotten his fair share of the profits.

Click to read more…

Broward Palm Beach published an interview with Scott Ian today, in which they discussed with the Anthrax guitarist, amongst other subjects, illegal downloading. And Ian’s comments seem to have created an uproar on the band’s Facebook page. (Although the band obviously saw it coming a mile away — they humorously noted that “This post will get no negative comments” when they linked to the interview.) And since we love a good argument, and this particular topic is obviously of great interest to us all, it seems worth discussing what Ian had to say on the matter.

The conversation begins when the interviewer congratulates Ian on the first-week sales of Worship Music; Ian concedes that those numbers were great for 2011 (especially by metal standards, I might add), but also feels confident that the number would have been even higher in the days before illegal downloading. “It’s a double-edged sword,” Ian says, “because on one hand it’s like, ‘Woo-hoo, we did great,’ but then it’s also like, ‘Yeah, but how many other people stole the record, and you should have sold 150,000 copies this first week?’” He continues:

Click to read more…

Here’s a fun quote from a recent Sammy Hagar interview with Attention Deficit Delirium. Discussing the possibility of a reunion of the original Guns N’ Roses, Hagar says:

“They’ve proved it again and again and again that it ain’t [about] the money. They just don’t get along because Axl goes out for a lot less money with his version of Guns N’ Roses, and Slash goes out for a lot less money with Velvet Revolver or by himself. The amount of money they could make if they got it all back together, made a great record and toured the world would probably be as much as the Rolling Stones [get], and for them not to do it, it obviously ain’t about the money. Because they could do it. I would manage them. I’d be their manager and make sure they got the right deal from all the promoters. They could be the biggest band in the world if they wanted to.”

There’s three things I find funny about this statement:

Click to read more…

According to The Hollywood Reporter, two dudes named Billy McCarthy and James Stonich, who were members of a Chicago band called Kid Rocker, are now suing Poison, Capital Records and EMI Music  – because they claim that C.C. DeVille tried out for their band in 1984, heard a bunch of their demos, and then stole those songs, which include the Poison hits ”Talk Dirty To Me,” “I Won’t Forget You,” “Fallen Angel” and “Ride the Wind.”  THR reports that “The plaintiffs are demanding disgorgement of all profits from the songs in question, statutory damages for willful infringement, and an injunction that prevents Poison and [Bret] Michaels from performing this allegedly stolen material.”

Click to read more…

Katatonia are not on Spotify because their label, Century Media, doesn’t want them there. This is unfortunate. After I saw the band play a phenomenal opening set for Opeth a few weeks back I wanted nothing more the next morning than to dive into their back catalogue (of which my knowledge is limited), immerse myself in it, get to know the band better. I looked them up on Spotify, couldn’t find anything but one of their oldest albums, remembered they were on Century Media… and then gave up. I could’ve gotten really into their stuff, become a fan, bought t-shirts, gone to shows in the future… multiply that by the 800 or so folks at the show, multiply that by 20+ tour stops. But nope, Century Media apparently doesn’t want people to discover their bands and forge long-term fanships, only to buy CD so they can make money now.

Click to read more…

This is a really long post and I apologize in advance. I’ve tried to edit it down and this is as short as I can make it without sacrificing any of the points I’m trying to drive home. Sorry.

I got home last night around 11:30 pm, and to my surprise and delight, Chimaira’s Mark Hunter was STILL GOING on his tweeting tear (new topics of discussion include the very depressing realities of touring in a van versus paying for a bus, and how a band’s road crew can sometimes make more money than the band itself does), continuing to answer HUNDREDS of fans’ questions on all facets of the music business, and pulling yet even more industry insiders, like DevilDriver’s Dez Fafara, into the mix. In fact, Hunter was still going as of about 3 a.m. EST this morning, hours after I’d finally hit the sack, and literally just as I started typing this, I noticed that he is now awake and at it again. And I would like to re-emphasize the amazingness of this conversation. Not only should you be following Mark on Twitter, but you should also read this really, really incredible interview that Metal Insider published earlier today on the whole topic — not only is it another nice summation of much of what Hunter has been discussing, but it goes into even greater depth on many of these topics.

ANYWAY, my contribution to this ongoing discussion was to express surprise that no one had brought up the topic of publicists yet; Mark promptly did address the topic (and discusses it a little more in the aforementioned Metal Insider interview), and I’m going to publish his thoughts after the jump. But I also want to take some time and express my own thoughts on the important role publicists play in this industry. ‘Cause, as I said on Twitter last night, your band does not need to be signed to have a publicist, and, yes, if you can afford one, a good PR rep is totally worth having.

Click to read more…