I Eat Music

This week it’s been hard to move for news and comment about the BBC’s Strategy Review, and, in particular, the plans to close digital radio station 6music.

And there have been a lot of emotionally charged calls for the BBC to save 6music. But I am a cold and unemotional creature. I was quite happy for Abbey Road to be turned into a kebab shop and I don’t think any band should reform ever. If something’s done with and served its purpose, it should be allowed to die. But 6music is not done with, and it’s still very much in the process of serving its purpose. So, for that matter, is the Asian Network, which is also earmarked for closure.

The BBC tell us that it wants to make cuts in order to focus more on “high quality programming”. Which sounds nice, but actually says very little. You might as well say you want to make programmes that feel more sticky. Plus, you could just as easily find money for more high quality programming by cutting the budgets and number of staff on things like Chris Moyles’ Radio 1 show, which have far too much of both. It makes no sense to completely cut services that are both high quality and incredibly important to their listeners, who are underserved elsewhere in broadcast media.

Also, we’re told that the BBC needs to give its commercial rivals a chance. If that’s the case, why aren’t they closing down Radio 1? And since when is competition a bad thing? Yes, the BBC receives its funds in an unusual way, but that doesn’t mean commercial services can’t produce better material than they can. If the entire BBC shut down tomorrow, would Sky suddenly start making programmes that were actually watchable? Somehow, I don’t think the BBC’s existence is what’s holding Sky back in that area.

And who exactly are these rivals who would thrive if 6music closes? Xfm and NME Radio are cited by some, but these stations do not serve the same audience. Because they’re funded by advertising, they have to go for the more lucrative youth market, with 6music’s listeners more likely to be in the thirty-something bracket. In fact, even Xfm’s Eddy Temple-Morris has called for 6 to be saved (see here).

While it’s true that the BBC could make significant savings in a variety of areas, and use the licence fee more efficiently, the cuts put forward just do not, er, cut it. But all is not lost, the BBC Trust still have to approve these proposals. You should tell them why they shouldn’t, and you can do that right here.

Okay, lengthy rant over, sorry. You can follow CMU’s coverage of this story as it develops here.

This is my editorial from this week’s CMU Weekly, which you can read here. I wrote something similar for the Remix Update, which you can see here.

It’s all been about the iPad this week, hasn’t it? Well, not all of it, but certainly some of it. And, in some small part, that has been my fault.

First off, tech blog Pocket-lint asked me to contribute to a feature called How The Apple iPad Will Change The World. I gave my thoughts on what effect it might have on the music industry both before and after the launch.

Then, not content with filling other people’s publications with my words, I went and dedicated my editorial in CMU Weekly to the iPad, as well. Here’s what that looked like:

I do so love an Apple product launch. The hype that always precedes them can only ever mean that the new thing Steve Jobs trots out with will be a big disappointment by comparison.

I suspect that this might be part of the plan, though. People always flock to point out that the latest Apple gadget is pointless, unoriginal and over-priced. And then what happens? Once the products are actually released – with our expectations reduced a little – those devices seem rather cool. And so you have the iPod, the iTunes Store, the iPhone and all the rest. The impact all those things have had is undeniable, despite all the initial naysaying.

Will that be the case with the iPad? Only time will tell. So far its main contribution to the world is to fill Twitter with jokes about “Dom Joly’s new iPhone” and iTampons. It’s certainly not the home computer replacement I was hoping for, and nor am I going to start carrying one around in my bag instead of my iPhone (I’ll still need that for phonecalls, if nothing else). However, if, as I suspect, the iPad turns out to really be the uber-terminal for accessing online content, at home or on the move, it becomes more attractive.

Following their purchase of digital music platform Lala.com late last year, it’s been rumoured Apple might launch a service that would let you store your entire iTunes library online, ready to be accessed from anywhere. If that included films as well as music, and assuming WiFi and mobile internet connections can handle it, you’ve suddenly got a fast, friendly and lightweight way to access all your entertainment content from anywhere.

I’m not entirely sure if that’s something worth having in addition to a laptop. Possibly not. But if you only really use your laptop as an online entertainment centre, well, then why have a laptop at all? And you should never underestimate Apple’s ability to sell something people didn’t think they wanted by the millions. As with all these things, it’s the content that really makes it what it is. All you need is one truly great app to make the iPad a must-have.

Read this edition of CMU Weekly in full here.

So, now that Rage Against The Machine have made it to Christmas number one, the conspiracy theorists have moved into overdrive. People all over the internet are devoting their Christmas holidays to uncovering the mechanics of the ’scam’. The claim being that the whole thing was planned and run by Sony Music.

“Look at all you people,” the conspiracy theorists say with a smug grin. “You all mindlessly bought into this campaign and you were just lining the pockets of Simon Cowell and his cronies.”

Of course, both Killing In The Name and X Factor winner Joe McElderry’s single The Climb were released and published by divisions of Sony Music and the company stands to gain the most financially. The same was true in last year’s unsuccessful campaign to get Jeff Buckley’s cover of Hallelujah to Christmas number one ahead of Alexandra Burke’s. As rats go, this one stinks.

Then, of course, there’s the question of who Jon and Tracy Morter, the people behind the RATM campaign, are. A couple of people who love music and hate X Factor? Or evil scheming marketing people? There are those who are determined to prove the latter, who will tell you that Simon Cowell’s claims that he offered them marketing jobs after they beat him on Sunday were empty, as they are already working for him in exactly that capacity. His apparent anger at the pair in the last few weeks wouldn’t be the first time that he’d used clunky misdirection to boost the popularity of something (Jedward being just one example).

I have a feeling these questions are going to hang around for some time. But should we care? Is it really that shocking that a company whose sole reason for existence is to sell records – gasp – might have tried to sell us some records.

It’s not the first supposedly grass roots campaign of this type, of course. And not the first with two Sony-owned songs pitted against each other. Or even the first with two Sony-owned songs pitted against each other run by the Morters (though, if you’re looking for consistency in the conspiracy theory, the Jeff Buckley campaign wasn’t them). All of which does make it easy to think this wasn’t as spontaneous as we’ve been led to believe.

Sure, either way, it’s all money in the bank for a major label, but this campaign had to be fought on major label terms. Yes, the message of Killing In The Name can be bent to fit the message of the campaign, and that is partly the reason it was a success, but it’s the major label money that was put behind it seventeen years ago that sealed the deal. There are hundreds of thousands of people out there in the world for whom that song meant something in their teens, and who also grew up at a time when the charts were an exciting and important part of pop culture. What’s more, they’ve also had time to grow nostalgic for both of those things. A more worthy, independent artist is unlikely to have had the fanbase of the right size and age to pull this off.

Even if it was orchestrated by Sony, it still needed that public feeling to work. And the intent of all those people was to stop X Factor’s monopoly of the Christmas number one and make the charts more fun in the process. On those terms, I’d say it was a job done. I don’t think many went in without knowing that both acts were signed to the same label. No one thought they were supporting independent music, surely. It was just something half a million people thought might be funny.

That’s why I forked out 29p. I loved Rage Against The Machine when I was a teenager, my entire childhood was mainly planned around hearing the charts on the radio on Sunday and watching Top Of The Pops on Thursday or Friday, and I think that inappropriate swearing is funny. I don’t think I stuck it to Simon Cowell and I don’t think the charts will be changed by this. Joe McElderry will almost certainly be at number one this Sunday, and he’ll probably be followed by something equally tedious at some point in January. But I don’t care that much.

I did consider the possibility that Sony could be behind the whole thing, but I went and bought the song anyway. If anything, I think this is the sort of thing the record labels should be doing all the time. If all music marketing enthused people like this, maybe things would be going a bit better for them.

Okay, if it turns out the Morters were in the employ of Sony (and I’m still pretty sure they weren’t), all those claims of independence are going to irritate a lot of people. But it’s marketing, people. Even if they were acting alone, they were still running a marketing campaign. Companies lie to you every day and some of them lie to you about things that actually matter.

Bill Hicks used to come on stage to Killing In The Name and rant about the manufactured pop acts of the day, like Debbie Gibson and Tiffany, in a routine that peaked with a scream of “PLAY FROM YOUR FUCKING HEART!” He didn’t care that both Rage Against The Machine and those pop acts were products of the major label system. Still, he also used to say, “If you work in marketing or advertising – kill yourself.”

Rap feuds are nothing new, but the one that has been going on between 50 Cent and Rick Ross since January has been one of the more entertaining in recent years, seeing both sides take things to amazing levels of pointless one-upmanship. But this week Ross declared himself the winner, due to relatively low first week sales of Fiddy’s new album, ‘Before I Self Destruct’.

It all started in January, when Ross released a track, ‘Mafia Music’, in which he mentioned, seemingly for no reason, the fire which had burnt down the home of Fiddy’s estranged partner and their child (said partner had accused Fiddy of being behind the fire, accusations he strongly denied). Taking it like the grown-up he is, 50 Cent promptly released his own track, ‘Officer Ricky’, in which he pointed out that Ross once worked as a prison guard. And so, a beef was born.

Since then, both men have insulted each other in the press, and released a few of those obligatory ‘diss songs’ each. But more, oh so much more than that, is the war that has waged on the internet, which has seen Ross set up a website dedicated to insulting Fiddy’s thirteen year old son, Marquise, and Fiddy commissioning a cartoon series, called ‘Officer Ricky’. Both have also enlisted each other’s former partners, and on occasion children, for videos and photo shoots.

50 Cent also published footage of Ross collaborator DJ Khaled’s mother at work, seemingly recorded without her knowledge. Although Fiddy was forced to apologise for that, of all the stunts, after it received widespread criticism from fans, journalists and other musicians. Because apparently that’s worse than starting up a website to insult a thirteen year old child.

But, anyway, it’s all over now. Or so says Ross. At a birthday party held for DJ Khalid last week, he announced to the assembled crowd that they were also celebrating “the demise of a pussy”, due to the fact that ‘Before I Self Destruct’ had only shifted 161,000 copies in the US in its first week, which by mainstream rap standards, aint that good.

Though it would only be fair to point out that Ross’ last album, ‘Deeper Than Rap’, shifted 158,000 in its first week, which was down significantly on his previous LP. He should probably hold off gloating until the release of his next one, ‘Teflon Don’, next spring. And let’s not forget, 50 Cent has a platinum mining business to fall back on, should this whole music thing go tits up.

This is my editorial from the 4 Dec 2009 edition of CMU Weekly, which you can take a little looky at here.

This week Mercury winner Speech Debelle announced that she is actively seeking a new record label, after, she claims, the company that released her award-winning debut, Ninja Tune subsidiary Big Dada, failed to distribute it properly, meaning that many people were unable to buy it when they ran to the shops to get their copy shortly after her award win.

Two months on from the Mercury Prize the album is thought to have sold just 10,000 copies (7000 more than it had before the win). This, Debelle says, is because she was signed to a small company who could not cope with demand the weekend after the award was announced.

Of course what Debelle has experienced is the main downside of working with a smaller indie label. They can’t afford to press up thousands of extra copies of an album on the off chance it wins the Mercury Prize, especially when the album is a real outsider to win in the run up to the presentation of the award.

The big pro of Big Dada for Speech Debelle prior to her Mercury win, presumably, was that none of the major record companies would probably have even considered signing her. Even if they had, it’s unlikely she would have been given the creative freedom she enjoyed with her former label, which allowed her to make an honest album with a sound that led some folks to claim it was the best album of the year.

And for every independent-signed artist frustrated that they aren’t able to reach the audience of millions they know would just love to hear their album, there are more complaining that they’ve been lost in the major label system, with their only hope of future recognition being the line-up round on ‘Never Mind The Buzzcocks’. Nobody wants that.

I wrote this for CMU Weekly. Read the whole thing, here.