(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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I was listening to an interview with Sarah Vowell last weekend, in which she proclaimed that, as a writing exercise, she did not allow herself to use any F-bombs in her new book, Unfamiliar Fishes. I decided to do her one better this week — I did not swear at all. Unless you count “crap,” “drek,” or “sucks” as swear words, which I do not.

So that was fun.

ANYWAY, here’s some stuff we did this week:

• We debuted new music from All Shall Perish and Thou.
• We debuted new videos from Valient Thorr and Meek is Murder.
• Unearth’s Buz McGrath, Hatebreed’s Wayne Lozinak, and In Flames’ Peter Iwers told us about their live rigs.
• We spoke to Aaron Turner from Isis and Helms Alee.
• We checked out new releases from The Bronx Casket Co. and Bedlam of Cacophony.
• Even though Dime would never approve, we made fun of some poor kid.
• We continued to sing Spotify’s praises.
• We voted on our favorite album from The Devin Townsend Project.
• We were sexually aroused by the prospect of Disturbed breaking-up.
• We wondered whether or not the return of Megadeth’s Gigantour is a good thing or not.

Alright, we’re out. Have a nice weekend, gang!

-AR

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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Last week I reported that Spotify would be launching in the U.S. The company instead launched a website soliciting email addresses for the trial, but didn’t actually launch. Until yesterday! AND IT IS THE BEST THING EVVVAAAARRRRRR!

While rumors fly around about how the service is “invite only,” that’s only half true: to use the free, ad supported model, as of right now you do need an invite. But if you’ve got a mere 5 or 10 bucks per month to plop down for motherfucking unlimited streaming music ANYTIME ANYWHERE, Spotify is yours for the taking right now! Do you people understand the significance of this? Music consumption will never be the same.

I signed up for the service immediately, and it does not disappoint! A few observations:

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It’s a big week for streaming music services; while yesterday we were able to confirm that Spotify will indeed be launching in the U.S. this week, today we have some news about a similar service that already exists, MOG.  MOG, like Spotify, offers users the ability to stream any song at any time for a subscription fee of $5/month, or $10/month if you want to use your mobile devices too. I’ve tested their music library extensively, and they definitely have all the music any metalhead could ever want. We’ve championed MOG on MS before; in the interest of full disclosure, MOG sometimes partners with MetalSucks through the latter’s advertising arm, although MOG is not paying MS for this post or any others (MetalSucks does not endorse such sketchy behavior!).

The new MOG player offers a much cleaner interface and utilizes speedy HTML5 coding that makes the old flash player seem like a horse and buggy. The new player also supposedly features a recommendation engine that utilizes both past MOG plays and your Facebook “Likes” to suggest new music for you, but I can’t seem to get it to work (although this guy did). I’ve never been big on recommendation engines, though; I know what I want to hear. So what’s important is that the new player is easy to use, fast, sounds fantastic and is only 5 friggin’ bucks a month for unlimited music!!!

Sign up for a MOG trial here and give it a spin for free for 14 days. If you don’t like it, just cancel… but I honestly can’t see why anyone wouldn’t like this. We live in the future.

-VN

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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Spotify, the “in the cloud” all-you-can-eat streaming music service that’s wildly popular in Europe, has once again been thwarted in its attempt to break into the U.S. market. The issue, once again, is an inability to get the stubborn “Big Four” record label groups (other than Sony) to get their heads out of their collective asses and realize the power and reach of these services.

But with all the coverage Spotify continues to get in the mainstream media, how come no one is talking about MOG?? MOG’s service is competitive with Spotify’s. It offers unlimited streaming of an insanely wide variety of music (yes, plenty of metal, even the obscure stuff). No ownership of files on your hard drive is required; everything is streaming, and yes, the sound quality is good. The service also works on many mobile phone platforms and allows for a certain number of temporary downloads to those devices so you can listen even if you don’t have an Internet connection. MOG even one-ups Spotify by offering a variety of other features such as a recommendation engine similar to Pandora’s that allows users to create custom “radio stations” based on artists. Better yet, MOG is still offering a free 15-day trial of their service so you’ve got nothing to lose by trying it out. You’ll be happy you did — trust me, it’s that good. And get used to this, because it WILL be the way we all consume music in the not-too-distant future.

-VN

Full disclosure: MOG’s advertising arm sometimes purchases ads on MetalSucks. The ads are in no way related to this article.

As much crap as I’ve given Earache head honcho Digby Pearson in the past for topics such as signing generic re-thrash bands and poo-pooing the effect of Facebook and the Internet on local metal scenes, I really do appreciate that he’s letting it all hang out on his Ask Earache blog in an honest fashion even if I don’t always agree with the guy. I seriously doubt the founder of one of the most well-known metal labels in the world gives a shit what some Jewish blogger in Brooklyn thinks, but for what it’s worth I actually agree with Dig’s latest rant.

A reader question posed to Pearson asks Earache’s founder what he thinks of the idea of heavily discounting CDs to £l each [remember Earache is based in the U.K.] to boost lagging sales, and positions that idea against investing in trying to get customers to embace streaming services like Spotify. Since Spotify isn’t available in the States yet, a quick synopsis: any music you could ever want streaming from your computer or mobile device without any file ownership for a low monthly fee. I’ve tested a preview of it and it is AMAZING; it works flawlessly. Where does Pearson stand in the streaming service vs. ownership debate?

Pearson is surprisingly unattached to physical music formats — a rare thing for ANY label executive to admit — and goes on record as saying CDs and even vinyls are outdated:

People who use Spotify, like yourself, have made the culturally significant transition from the old download & ownership model to listening to music streaming from the “Cloud”. This is an important distinction. Many of my friends still insist on owning something, be it the Vinyl LP, CD or even Mp3 files on a hard drive. If its not firmly in their possession, showed off in their collection, then they don’t really feel like a proper music fan. Personally, my Cd & LP collection just collects dust now.

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A less forward-thinking company might shirk at the prospect of an unlimited music streaming service, especially one whose music business is rooted so firmly in pay-per-track iTunes and the iPods/iPhones that carry said tracks. If Apple were as thick-headed and dense as the major record labels, they’d forge ahead with their existing models while attempting to sue the newcomers into oblivion. But Apple is not that company. Apple is smart, aware and aggressive, and as such they’ve recently purchased music streaming site LaLa, a move that seems to indicate the company will soon be pursuing a subscription-based model.

And if Apple is going to make a play at a subscription streaming model, then the holy grail of music experiences — the ability to stream any song, at any time, from anywhere (aka “the cloud”) — is that much closer to becoming reality.

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Metal Insider tells us that brand new music streaming service MOG went live yesterday morning. MOG promises a deep library at a $5 monthly fee, and boasts a service “better than Rhapsody, iTunes and Pandora…combined.” [Full disclosure: MOG's advertising arm sells some ad space on this site.] With all four major labels signed on (those being Warner, EMI, Sony and Universal), a $5/month unlimited streaming service is a tantalizing proposition indeed. But the million dollar question on our minds (and undoubtedly yours as well) is: do they have metal?

Without having tested the service yet I’m inclined to say that, surprisingly, the answer is actually “yes.” Century Media, Nuclear Blast, Earache, Willowtip and a few other metal labels are distributed digitally through EMI, so those ought to be covered. Warner holds a majority stake in Roadrunner so that oughtta be a no-brainer. Relapse, Metal Blade and Victory releases are distributed by Red, which is owned by Sony. Those are all the labels at the proverbial metal big kids table right there. Obviously there are plenty of other smaller metal labels, but I’m guessing most of them also have major distribution.

This new MOG service is interesting indeed. If anyone here has tested it out, please let us know in the comments how it fares metal-wise. How does it stack up against the much simpler, sleeker Spotify? Watch a brief description of some of the service’s key features in the video below.

-VN

Our broheims at Metal Insider alerted us to the fact that Apple has a new extortion scheme product called iTunes LP and Extras, which basically amounts to charging money for a product that’s typically free on a band’s website (videos, lyrics, liner notes, etc). Apparently LP and Extras has been available to major labels with existing iTunes deals for a little while already, but Metal Insider is reporting that the platform will be available to everyone else starting in early 2010.

My question to you… is anyone going to give a shit? I can’t see anyone but the die-hardest of the die-hard fans paying extra for this content, and these kinds of fans strike me as people who’d prefer to have a physical copy anyway. Beyond that, why shell out for videos when they’ll end up on YouTube? Why shell out for lyrics when you have Google? Why shell out for digital artwork when you can just visit the band’s website or have a physical copy? Is there something I’m missing here… some kind of extra super-cool features that are going to blow my mind?

I don’t get it. Total waste of money for the consumer, and total waste of time/resources on Apple’s part. This is fuck-tarded. Let’s get Spotify going in the States so all of this crap can end.

-VN