Photo by Todd Bell

I was updating MetalSucks’ Twitter account yesterday when I noticed that Chimaira vocalist Mark Hunter was in the middle of an absolute Tweet-a-Thon, answering literally hundreds of fans’ questions about the music business. (He also got some other musicians and industry insiders, including including Lamb of God’s Randy Blythe, GWAR front man/MetalSucks columnist Dave “Oderus Urungus” Brockie, and Metal Blade’s Brian Slagel involved.) And this wasn’t just non-specific generalizations, either — Hunter was being incredibly forthcoming on his thoughts about record labels, streaming services like Spotify and YouTube, how much Chimaira makes from physical CD sales, physical DVD sales, and touring, and much, much more. In fact, Hunter went on for so long that he actually EXCEEDED the limit of tweets that Twitter would allow him to send for a day, at which point he moved the conversation over to his Facebook account. I followed the back-and-forth for as long as I could, but had to bow out at a certain point to attend to other things, and made a mental note to write about it all today. And, hey, guess what? As of at least five hours ago, Hunter was still going. Wowza.

So now I’d like to go over a few of the highlights. Even if you’re not a Chimaira fan, this is worth checking out, ’cause, again, it pertains to the music industry, and is not all Chimaira-specific. And so:

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… so we put a Spotify on your Facebook, so you can Spotify while you Facebook!

If you’ve logged onto Facebook over the past couple of days you’ve no doubt noticed the LOL-inducing new sidebar feed, so poignantly repped by our good friend Xzibit. You’ve also probably noticed that Facebook now allows Spotify users to directly integrate a music feed of what they’re listening to in real time into their status updates, similar to the way Last.fm users can automatically post their live playlists to Twitter (and FB too if I’m not mistaken). It all happens automatically once you link your FB and Spotify accounts; you don’t have to manually enter each song you’re listening to. The Facebook/Spotify integration goes one step further, too, by allowing Spotify members to click “play” and listen to the same songs as their friends from within their Facebook feeds:

Even if you’re anti-Spotify, it’s incredibly hard to deny how valuable this integration will be for bands and their record labels. Let’s break it down:

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There are a number of ways record labels are attempting to combat sinking profits from an outdated business model: some have chosen to sue illegal downloaders, some have chosen to launch personal attacks at vocal bloggers, and some have even decided to look to the future by embracing new technology (!). Others simply turn to national cocaine distribution.

According to the Smoking Gun [via Metal Insider], members of a narcotics ring that sent large amounts of cocaine and cash back and forth across the U.S. in music “road cases” arranged pickups and deliveries at the offices of Interscope Records:

Department of Justice prosecutors this week provided defense lawyers with shipping records detailing “pickups and deliveries” made at Interscope’s Los Angeles office by a cargo firm that was used to transport the music cases, which were alternately stuffed with kilos of cocaine and upwards of $1 million in cash.

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Century Media and Metal Blade now have more company in the room: Prosthetic Records is pulling out Spotify, according to an article at L.A. Weekly that includes quotes from Prosthetic owner E.J. Johantgen.

Before you all get uppity on me, I actually think Johantgen has some good reasons for deciding to pull his artists from Spotify, certainly the most well-reasoned I’ve seen yet. That doesn’t mean I agree with his final decision, but they’re good reasons nonetheless and should be discussed. So:

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It would appear as if Century Media has company: Metal Blade has pulled all of its artists off Spotify. At first I thought they were employing the strategy of pulling newer albums while leaving catalogue, until I realized that the older albums I was seeing on Spotify from Unearth, Behemoth, etc were actually released on other record labels.

Look, I’ve spent enough time arguing Spotify’s virtues (read by the folks at Metal Blade, I’m sure) and I don’t feel the need to re-hash those arguments. If Metal Blade and Century Media feel they can get better payout rates from Spotify by withholding their goods, hey, great for them, and I sincerely hope they DO get better rates. But I can’t imagine said rate increases would be enough under any imaginable scenario that they’d make up for losses in sales of music ownership (CDs, MP3s) that have been increasing over the past decade.

What this is really about is looking at the future and facing it head-on: will sales of recorded music increase, or even stay where they are now? I can’t see any sane person answering “yes” to that question. Pulling out of Spotify is almost like delaying the inevitable… key word “delaying,” not “stopping.” You can’t stop progress, and you can’t stop the 20+ million people (last I checked, probably more now) that have signed up for Spotify in the U.S. who all believe that it’s worth $10/month or free with ads and low quality audio. Unless every label pulls out of Spotify all at once, which is not gonna happen.

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Alex Winter is best known to metal fans as the guy from the Bill & Ted movies who isn’t Keanu Reeves, but for the past twenty years, he’s actually been maintaing a successful career as a director; he’s helmed some not-very-well-known indie movies, like the cult comedy Freaked and the psychological thriller Fever, but also lots of television, including episodes of Jimmy Kimmel Live! and two of the Ben 10 T.V. movies (which, if you have kids, you may be familiar with). And in 2002, he acquired the life rights to Napster co-founder Shawn Fanning, and announced plans to write and direct a feature film about Napster. Unfortunately, The Social Network kinda-sorta beat him to the punch last year — even though that film wasn’t really about Napster, it now seems clear that Justin Timerberlake’s portrayal of a Napster’s other co-founder, Sean Parker, is going to stick in audiences’ minds for some time to come.

But Winter isn’t giving up on the story just yet! He’s gotten VH1 to finance a documentary on the topic. And before you think “Oh, well, so it will be some shitty, low-budget Behind the Music affair,” remember that VH1 also backed a little documentary called Anvil: The Story of Anvil.

Winter tells Deadline why he finds this whole Napster debacle so fascinating:

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Charts are a dime a dozen and often don’t tell you much you already didn’t know. But every now and then one comes along that really puts things into perspective. This animated .gif shows the sales of various formats of music by year. You can see the shift from the LP era to tape cassettes to CD and so on and so forth. The narrative here is of course very familiar already, but it’s the way it’s presented that makes the difference. Commentary from Fastcodesign.com:

… somehow, just the simple fact of stringing all these pie charts together tells you about the nature of music-format innovation. Here, the industry’s change appears inevitable, and the only surprising thing about it is how long the CD enjoyed a period of utter and total dominance. The CD ruled for far longer than most formats — and with extremely high margins, due to cheap production costs — but it was always doomed to be overturned.

Put another way: If you were a music executive sitting in a presentation 10 years ago and you’d been presented this chart, would you have any doubt that your CD business was going to die? Moreover, wouldn’t you have seen that in a historical context, the invention of the CD was an effervescent bit of luck? This ugly, animated gif carries a force that you can’t summon in a static line chart.

You can’t look at this chart without thinking, “What next?” This chart doesn’t take into account that the very idea that all people need to own music to consume it is quickly becoming outdated. MP3s as a dominant format have been around for a decade now (more if you start counting years when Napster first emerged), so perhaps the next shift is right around the corner: all-you-can-eat streaming services like Spotify, MOG, Rdio. If you’re a record exec right now, do you see it coming? Whether you see it or not… it’s definitely coming.

-VN

Thanks: Justin Reich

Let it not be said that Relapse Record is fighting the future like some metal record labels; the long-standing bastion of quality metal has announced a partnership with Moshpit Tragedy to release what they’re billing a ”sliding-payment download series.” Each week for the next 24 weeks, one new title from the Relapse catalog will be released digitally at MoshpitTragedy.com for a price of the buyer’s choosing, starting at only $2.99.

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Before we get started here, let’s set the record straight: MetalSucks is not receiving any compensation — advertising or otherwise — from Spotify or any affiliated third parties hired by Spotify (marketers, publicists, etc). I, Vince Neilstein, independent of any other writers for MetalSucks, have been writing about Spotify over the past few months — and especially the past week — for the same reason I write multiple posts about a new band I really like, namely that I think it’s awesome and I want to spread the word.

Now that the dust has settled from Century Media’s decision to withdraw from Spotify, we’re starting to hear a few artists voice their opinions on the metal label’s decision to abstain from the future. Last week Lazarus A.D.’s Jeff Paulick revealed he accepts that record sales won’t be a major money-maker for him and supports Spotify as a tool for spreading awareness about his band’s music. Today it’s Jens Ryland of Borknagar, a band on Century Media, sounding off in his own blog (actually published last week).

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(photo from old_skool_metal_head’s Flickr)

Axl and I went to Summer Slaughter in NYC yesterday. That second bottle of whiskey was a really bad idea. But before said second bottle we got to see Darkest Hour… and any time I see Darkest Hour I have an incredible urge to listen to nothing but Darkest Hour the following day. Thanks to Spotify I have their entire discography instantly at my disposal and I’m letting Undoin Ruin rock away my hangover at this very moment. If anyone else at the show had the same urge they could do the very same thing instead of being driven to piracy (because we all know people are cheap-asses and ain’t gonna shell out for DH’s ENTIRE discography at once), so at least Darkest Hour gets paid something instead of nothing at all.

What kind of ass-backwards world do we live in where Victory Records is doing something right and Century Media isn’t? Can I get an “AMEN”???

ANYWAY, the metalnets have been surprisingly quiet when it comes to bands voicing their opinions on Spotify, especially if those bands are on Century. Maybe they’re afraid to speak up, maybe they’re against Spotify and don’t wanna look like this generation’s Lars Ulrich, maybe they just aren’t sure yet; I don’t know. But Lazarus A.D.’s Jeff Paulick (whose band and label are on Spotify, btw) has broken the silence and come out in support of Spotify in a guest blog for Metal Insider, specifically with regards to the whole Century situation. What I like about Paulick’s rant is that it seems very representative of the new, young generation of musicians that understand and accept music is not going to be a huge source of income in their lives. Here’s the money quote:

I am not depending on selling music for my income. In fact, I have two jobs when I’m not touring to help with my income. I’ll take a page from a good friend of mine Buz McGrath of Unearth. On one of our first tours he told me that he wasn’t in the music business, but that he was in the ticket and t-shirt business, and there is nothing closer to the truth than that.

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And the feud continues! “The Suits” at Century Media have responded directly to MetalSucks about Spotify once again! This time they are responding to what I wrote yesterday. But it’s going to end here… this will be the end, until the next chapter. We’re going on indefinite hiatus, as industry lingo dictates.

CM has requested I publish their letter all in one fell swoop then shred it to pieces afterwards instead of going line by line, so that’s exactly what I’ll do. Here we go:

WOW!

Today it’s the “white collar criminals” from Century Media (not sure how we got there) coming back to “Vince the MAN”.

I must admit, we are all very excited here about the attention and flak we are getting for taking the liberty of saying “NO” to something we disagree with.

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When I first started critiquing Earache president Digby Pearson’s Ask Earache blog over a year ago I pegged Digyby / Earache as an out-of-touch label with all its eggs in one basket. My, how things have changed over the course of a year-plus. The Internet is a funny thing; it encourages discussion, and in some cases can actually produce change. I’m not patting myself on the back for turning Earache into a Fortune 500 company, but I am saying that the discourse I generated may have contributed in some small way to Digby taking a long hard look at the current music industry landscape and tweaking his approach. I know for a fact that Digby reads these blogs.

Dig’s latest move: capitalizing on the Century Media / Spotify backlash by issuing a press release essentially stating, “We love Spotify! All of our artists are on it!”

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Yesterday’s post decrying Century Media’s decision to pull out of Spotify seemed to ruffle a few feathers at Century, so much so that today they’ve decided not only to issue an official response but to write me a personal email! Since this is MetalSucks and we delight in this sort of back-and-forth (and we always like to give the targets of our ire an open forum to respond), I’m going to go through Century’s email and dismantle their arguments one-by-one. Here we go:
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Fans hoping to stream music by Nachtmystium, Inrtronaut, Nevermore and hundreds of other Century Media artists on Spotify are suddenly out of luck: in a move that leaves little doubt as to why the recorded music industry is in the shitter (key word: recorded), the label has suddenly pulled all of its artists off of Spotify. Word on the street is that they’re holding out for a better deal that pays more on a per-stream basis.

Full disclosure: Century Media regularly purchases ad campaigns with MetalSucks. Spotify never has.

In a nutshell, the mistake Century is making is this: it’s all about the long-term, not the short-term, you dummies.

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Cosmo at Invisible Oranges has been keeping tabs on which metal record labels are signing up for Bandcamp, a subject that is near and dear to my heart. Man, I am going to miss that guy when he’s gone.

There is no reason for a label not to be on Bandcamp: the entire catalogue is instantly viewable and streamable, a fan can easily buy music in a variety of downloadable formats (even FLAC), and the embeddable widgets make it easy to spread the word. Bands won’t get paid on a per-stream basis like with Spotify, but the income generated from download purchases should exponentially offset that loss.

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L.A. Reid is the chairman and CEO of the Island Def Jam Music Group, which, of course, includes Island Records, the label to which Anthrax were signed for all of their classic Belladonna-era releases. He’s also a judge on X Factor, the upcoming addition to the long line of idiotic American Idol-style reality talent programs, and as of July 11, he’s also the CEO of the Epic Label Group. And, at least if you believe the New York Post, after starting that nifty new gig at Epic, he told execs at that label that “I don’t want no ugly people working here; I only want good-looking people.” That seems too comical to be true — it’s basically what the Colin Farrell character in the movie Horrible Bosses does, after all — but given how fucknuts the people who run the music industry are, it wouldn’t exactly be shocking if it turned out to be a legit story.

In any case, Scott Ian apparently believes it, and I guess he wanted to show his support for Reid’s completely sound and logical decision. So he tweeted a series encouraging messages regarding Reid’s alleged declaration, in which he called Reid a “TALENTLESS piece of shit” before adding:

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In case my myriad rants on Spotify and Bob Lefsetz’ all-in-one criticism rebuttal still don’t have you convinced that Spotify is worth the $10 monthly fee to stream EVERY PIECE OF MUSIC EVER RECORDED FROM ANYWHERE AT ANY TIME, how about a first-hand account from metal luminary and Dillinger Escape Plan frontman Greg Puciato? Puciato hasn’t been shy about expressing his feelings on the music biz in the past, so I don’t see why he’d pull any punches now. Here’s Greg on his own Facebook page, according to a comment by MS reader “blah:”

Geniunely excited and blown away by Spotify. Good to see a huge positive step for the music industry. This is gonna be a critical piece of the big picture of shifting out of the “old” industry to the “new”. Makes so much sense for casual listening….my IPOD suddenly feels like a giant book of CDs.

This is for real sick. Who gives a shit about royalties….that stuff’ll figure itself out in time. More important to just get the new infrastructure in place first so that the royalty situation can then be dealt with. In my opinion, this in a few years time turns CDs and Vinyls into complete collectors items that should both be numbered and limted. There will still be people that download so they can have the music in case there is no 3G….but Spotify actually has an “offline” mode too so you can temporarily save the music you’re streaming in case you’ll be away from 3G/4G/Wifi…which in a few years time you’ll NEVER be away from anyway.

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Music industry pundit Bob Lefsetz was among the first public figures to extoll Spotify’s virtues; he’s been raving about the service for at least three years, ever since he got a beta invite to the European version and became hooked. I don’t always agree with the guy on everything, but when it comes to Spotify and the future of music with regards to streaming he’s always right on the money.

A huge number of MS readers expressed hesitation when Spotify officially launched in the U.S. last week, and many even flat out rejected the idea of a streaming service. Lefsetz recently published a point-by-point response to pretty much every angle of criticism Spotify is and will be facing, so rather than hammer the same old points I’ve been driving home at MetalSucks for the past year or so I figured I’d re-post Lefsetz’ breakdown. Comparisons to Pandora and Rhapsody, mobile access, streaming vs. piracy, Apple… it’s all there. Here we go:

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We interrupt your day of BBQ and booze with some important news: MetalSucks has confirmed from a reliable source with ties to the major record labels that Spotify has reached a deal with Warner Bros. — the last of the “big four” major label holdouts — and that Spotify is set to launch in the U.S. this week. According to our source, who wishes to remain anonymous, the initial launch will be called a beta release, will be invite only, and is already available to a select group of industry insiders as a preview.

This is big news. Huge. With the ability to stream any song from anywhere for FREE — or $10 if you want to go without ads and be able to store music for offline listening — the music industry landscape will be forever changed. Those in Europe already know.

What remains to be seen is what kind of deals the labels have commanded and the real-world monetary impact they will have on artists (will they be paid fairly?). Furthermore, since Spotify pays on streams as a percentage of the overall pie, will metal bands — the biggest of whom have a tiny market share, realistically — be able to earn any money? My gander is that yes, they will, as repeated streams and plays will add up to well more than the purchase price of a CD… but, of course, this remains to be seen.

A big day for the U.S. indeed. Happy 4th!

-VN

If Don Robertson, Brian Slagel, Jonas Nachsin etc wrote candid blogs about their label operations I’d probably pick apart their opinions too, but it just so happens Earache’s Digby Pearson is the only metal label head honcho to do so… so, here we go, once again.

The latest Ask Earache entry is the first time I can recall hearing the head of a metal record label publicly endorse Spotify, or any all-you-can-eat music streaming service. Spotify, for those unaware, is a highly successful streaming service currently available in Europe that’s been trying to break into the U.S. market for years; with licensing deals now in place with three of the four majors and a big integration with Facebook on the horizon, it looks like that may finally happen very soon. The basic service is available for free and is supported by ads, while those who pay $10/month have ads lifted (and I believe some extra premium features too). It works on your computer, your phone, streams from the cloud in high quality, etc etc.

Digby’s public stance is significant; while the world moves ahead towards digital consumption and the demand for all-you-can-eat music streaming services grows, metal labels remain doggedly stuck to the archaic CD. Even Ash Avildsen, whose Sumerian / Outerloop / Pantheon axis business model is very forward-thinking, is head-scratchingly an ardent supporter of CDs.

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