Here are some of the bands who didn’t make it into the final story:

Coldplay + Goldfrapp = Coldfrapp
David Guetta + Jet = David Jetta
KT Tunstall + Katy Perry = KT Perry
The 69 Eyes + M83 = The 152 Eyes
Sigur Rós + Joss Stone = Sigur Joss

And here are the ones that did…

EMI to merge bands in new bid to cut costs
Following the news yesterday that all of EMI’s attempts to mortgage its recordings catalogue in the US market had failed, one last bold plan has emerged from the London-based major’s existing management that they hope can stop Citigroup from seizing control of the company when loan repayments become due in May.

It seems increasingly likely that the only way that EMI will now be able to meet its commitments to Citigroup is if it can convince investors in its parent company Terra Firma to cough up more cash. In a bid to get that support, a new internal report has proposed a radical way to enable further cost savings at the already cut-back major, principally by encouraging bands signed to the label to merge their activities, reducing upfront investment costs and financial risks.

The ‘April Report’, a name seemingly referencing the fact the major only has one month to save itself, was distributed yesterday to Terra Firma investors, senior EMI staff and key artist managers, and claims that so called ‘band mergers’ could be the solution to the major’s woes, enabling the record company to better service what some execs see as an overly expansive roster of artists by pooling marketing efforts into combined releases.

The report outlines some of the first band mergers likely to take place as part of the new arrangement, some of which seem to have already been run by affected artists and managers. If the proposals go ahead, Hot Chip will be partnered with Coldplay, and, despite having only just released their latest album ‘One Life Stand’, could be in the studio with their new bandmates and producer Brian Eno as soon as June. The new album from the combined band, working title Coldchip, should be out before Christmas.

While some merged bands will actually collaborate in the studio, other mergers will see American and British artists combined, with the singers performing under a combined brand name, but only in their home territory. This has echoes with the 1960s system where different artists on opposite sides of the Atlantic would release the same songs. It’s thought Katy Perry and Kylie Minogue, or Katy Minogue moving forward, might be the test project in this regard, with Katy representing the combined band brand in the US, and Kylie in the UK and Australia. There are, of course, also carbon footprint benefits to this particular idea.

But possibly the most surprising of the band merger proposals is that artists already involved in multiple projects with the label will have to pick one brand to perform under. This would affect the projects of former Blur members, whose new work would all be released under the Blur name. This would include all Damon Albarn projects, including Gorillaz, and Graham Coxon’s solo work.

Although it’s not clear if the band mergers proposal was included in the previously reported business plan prepared for Terra Firma investors by former EMI CEO Elio Leoni-Sceti, who quit last month, the proposal is now being spearheaded by the company’s Executive Chairman Charles Allen.

He provides the introduction to the April Report, and writes: “While it is no secret that EMI has had its fair share of problems in recent years, I genuinely believe that this measure will secure the company’s short term and long term future. I realise that many music fans will see it as a controversial move, but they must realise that it is a necessary one. Record companies need to keep their costs to an absolute minimum to stay in business, and when innovative solutions like this present themselves, we’d be fools not embrace them”.

Although most affected artists are yet to comment on the report, a source close to Hot Chip’s management last night confirmed that they had been consulted about the proposal the band merge with Coldplay. The source said: “We had our reservations about the Coldchip proposals, but, while driven by commercial necessity, they actually pose some interesting creative challenges that artists will find exciting. The Hot Chip boys are actually looking forward to working with some brand new bandmates. We’re not 100% sure how it’s all going to work yet, but given Coldplay’s huge global fanbase, it’s also a great opportunity for the guys”.

Other mergers proposed in the report include a new band called The Stones consisting of Angus, Julia and Joss Stone, and, perhaps most interestingly artistically speaking, an album by a combined Massive Attack and Liars, whose new moniker may be Massive Liars.

EMI are yet to comment on the leaked report.

See the story on the CMU News-Blog here and in CMU Daily here.

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.

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.

“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.”

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.

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.

Either way, people these days do seem to like to speak to each other at gigs. And with that pesky band playing they have to shout to be heard. What an inconvenience. I wouldn’t mind so much, perhaps, if people were talking about the music on offer, but more often than not I seem to get stuck next to someone who wants to explain at length every minute detail of their tedious life. Someone who, if you ask them to be quiet, will look at you like you just asked them if it was okay for you to be sick in their drink.

And I’m sure this problem is worse than it used to be. I went to a gig earlier this year where a member of the band actually had to shush an audience during a particularly quiet song. For some reason – despite the fact this gig wasn’t cheap to get into, and we all knew it was being recorded for a live album – half the audience thought it would be a great opportunity to catch up on some chatting. I’ve not heard the resulting live album, but if it went any way to capturing the actual ambience of the evening, it will be a very annoying thing to listen to.

I don’t think anything I’ve ever written has made me feel quite so old as this has, so it would be great if you could indulge me and hear my plea: If you’re at a gig, please, shut the fuck up.

Next week in the ‘gig rant’ slot: If I move out of the way for you, I’m expecting to move back into that space. So, don’t stand in it, you arse.

Now, I’ve never seen Tom live, so I’ve no idea if his gig ramblings are worth listening to minus the music. Perhaps they are. But this got me thinking, if I was putting together an album of just gig chatter, what would I put on there? What are the most memorable things musicians have ever said on stage at gigs I was at?

Here’s what I came up with:

Slint. At a show where they played their ‘Spiderland’ album in full, the only words uttered from the stage throughout the whole gig were: “Who called me a cock end?”

Symposium. Just prior to the release of their first single, they managed to worm their way into supporting the Red Hot Chili Peppers at Wembley Arena. At one point frontman Ross Cummins squawked: “We were playing in pubs last week!”

Radiohead. Okay, this isn’t one I was at myself, but I do hope to one day be at a show where someone says: “This one’s dedicated to the girl who just shouted: ‘Help me, Thom, I’m dying’”.

Patrick Wolf. While explaining at length how very heartfelt the love song he was about to play was, someone threw a can of beer at him. He then proceeded to call that person a “fucking mutant” for about three minutes.

The Prodigy. There is no reason to go to V Festival ever, it’s horrible. However, the one time I mistakenly went was made almost worthwhile when Maxim shouted at people frequenting nearby food stalls: “Hey, you! Why are you buying food? You don’t need food. This is food!”

Whether Tom Waits’ on-stage banter can match the quality of any of those proclamations I know not. I guess we’ll find out next month when the album is released.

Standard gripes:

• The shortlist is too mainstream
• The shortlist isn’t mainstream enough
• The shortlist is too major label focussed
• The shortlist doesn’t feature my favourite artist/genre
• The shortlist only features bands I don’t like

Well, let’s ignore the third one, because less than half the artists on this year’s list are signed to major labels, so anyone saying that is officially wrong. Unless you want to argue that only one artist from each major should be allowed to be nominated. Or that no major label artists should be allowed at all.

Maybe the list is a little mainstream, or maybe there are a lot of artists who you have heard of on it. The Horrors’ new album may have gone down well with critics but the droney shoegaze sound on it is unlikely to get them on the cover of whatever magazine it is that teenage girls read these days. However, the fact that La Roux and Kasabian are on there does suggest that to some extent this thing is based on sales, rather than talent.

The fact that your favourite artist or genre isn’t represented may not be down to the ignorance of the judges (though I’m not necessarily saying it isn’t). Did they even enter? Yes, you actually have to enter this competition. The judges don’t, as an alarming large number of people seem to think, just listen to every single album released by British artists in the last twelve months. It would take too long – there were quite a lot of them.

So, going back to my original request, until I have seen a list of every artist who entered this year, I’m going to assume that certain genres are under represented because very few artists and labels from those genres submit their work for consideration. Probably because they assume they won’t get nominated. And when you think you’re not going to get nominated the £200 entry fee and 25 copies of your album that you have to send over to Mercury HQ seems like a lot. Maybe that fee is more restrictive than it needs to be, but if I start talking about that we’ll be here all day.

But, hey, I’m coming at this from an underground angle. There are plenty of people complaining at the other end of the spectrum that bands are missing from the list who definitely will have entered. But anyone who thinks that Snow Patrol, Coldplay and Take That have been robbed can shut up.

In the end though, it’s just a list of twelve albums. It’s not a list of the twelve best albums, it’s a list of the twelve albums most people on the judging panel could agree that they liked, and the winner will be chosen on the same grounds. Last year Elbow won because they divided opinion less than Burial and because the judges realised they probably should have given the award to the band’s second album ‘A Cast Of Thousands’ in 2004. Plus, the overall list was pretty weak.

There are actually some albums I really like up for the prize this year – Bat For Lashes, Florence & The Machine and Friendly Fires. ‘Primary Colours’ by The Horrors is pretty good, but probably not really in with a chance (because of that whole dividing opinion thing again), and Speech Debelle is already getting written off as ‘the token urban artist’, which completely ignores the fact that she’s made some really good music. But let’s not get so worked up about it. If I made you a list of my twelve favourite albums, I bet you wouldn’t agree with it, and I hate almost everything you like.

Plus, let’s not forget that they once gave the Mercury Prize to M People. M People! Anyone who wins this award is basically the same as M People. If I was in a band, I’d be begging my label not to enter me.

Here, if you’ve somehow managed to miss it, is the full shortlist:

• Florence & The Machine – Lungs
• Kasabian – West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum
• Speech Debelle – Speech Therapy
• Friendly Fires – Friendly Fires
• La Roux – La Roux
• Bat For Lashes – Two Suns
• The Horrors – Primary Colours
• Glasvegas – Glasvegas
• Led Bib – Sensible Shoes
• Sweet Billy Pilgrim – Twice Born Men
• The Invisible – The Invisible
• Lisa Hannigan – Sea Sew

At the beginning of January, Reznor posted the sales figures for the album on his blog, expressing disappointment that only 18.3% of those who downloaded it chose to pay for it. Although, he does point out that, while Saul’s previous record sold 33,897 copies, this one has already made its way into the collections of 154,449 people without proper promotion.

In an interview with CNET, Reznor wonders why so few people chose to pay the “insultingly low” price of $5. However, in a separate interview with the website, Williams is more optimistic. “The only thing that I really have kept in mind is that, one, we’re two months into a project. An album is not like a film, so that like, ‘Oh, we did it, two months and it’s done, now it’s going straight to DVD.’” He says.

He also talks about the freedom releasing an album like this has given him. “I had people at Sony take me into the office and tell me, ‘But that’s not hip-hop. Your album isn’t hip-hop.’ To me that’s what this is really about. By releasing it online and not dealing with the labels, it gave me an opportunity for once as an artist that I didn’t have to compromise in the face of people who have limited ideas and conceptions about what it is to be black and make music.”

That said, artists still need to eat. So, is this an economical way to sell music? The sales figures posted by Reznor equate to $141,610 (£71,963). For your average pair of unsigned musicians, this would be a pretty phenomenal amount of money, but Saul Williams and Trent Renzor are not an average pair. Both have already made a name for themselves through traditional music industry channels and Niggy Tardust wasn’t recorded in a bedroom using the sparse collection of free samples that came with some knocked-off software. It was recorded and mixed (by Alan Moulder) properly, and that doesn’t come cheap (Williams admits that the Public Enemy sample on Tr(n)igger alone cost around $10,000). Because of this, you could argue that Reznor and Williams have in fact forced themselves into the position of your average independent artist, struggling to cover costs and crossing their fingers that they might one day break even.

You could also argue that quibbling over the sales figures for an album is elementary, because now the money’s all in merchandise and concert ticket sales. But tell that to the bands sitting in the back of vans, travelling up and down the country, just about covering their petrol costs. If recorded music no longer has any perceived value, it cuts off a revenue stream for independent artists already low on income.

Until one of these artists makes a success of a self-released download album, there is no debate to be had on the viability of the pay-if-you-want sales model. Even if all the major bands leave their labels tomorrow and set up like this, they can still afford to record in luxury, pay a PR company to promote them and rely on enough secondary sales to cover their backs. And if they can’t? Well, there’ll always be someone willing to front the money, even if they don’t call themselves a record company (though it’s worth pointing out that both Radiohead and Saul Williams both signed traditional deals for the physical releases of their new albums).

So, as the music industry changes to catch up with the internet generation, the real question may not be whether or not the new business models will work, but if they will make it easer or more difficult for independent musicians to operate. Or are these changes only cosmetic? Will anything really change at all?

Listen to Sunday Bloody Sunday (from Niggy Tardust)
Buy Niggy Tardust
Buy other Saul Williams music