I Eat Music

August is typically a quiet month in music, with very little going on at all. Yet this week seems to have been a busy week for music news.

Okay, maybe ‘news’ isn’t the right term for all of it. Or even much of it. 76% seems to have involved Justin Bieber in some way, while one of the week’s major stories was whether or not Guns N Roses are still playing their upcoming UK tour dates – most importantly, Reading and Leeds at the end of the month.

That particular story all started with a tweet, as things generally do these days. A message appeared on Axl Rose’s page on the social networking site informing fans that all future dates were off. Such is Axl’s reputation for being a bit flaky, half the world had reported it as fact before anyone thought to check it out. On closer inspection, it was the singer’s first tweet for three months, and was posted via Twitter’s mobile website, rather than the Twitter For iPhone app, which Axl generally uses.

A spokesperson for Reading and Leeds quickly announced that everything was fine and that Axl’s account had been hacked. Oh, those pesky hackers, I reckon we’ll see more of them in this week’s Weekly, too. So, end of story, time to get on with our lives.

Except the story has continued to bob up again and again all week. By Thursday, it was Reading and Leeds boss Melvin Benn who was giving the statements. He’d spoken to Guns N Roses’ booking agent, who had spoken to Axl, who had said everything was still on. But that tweet remains online, and neither Guns N Roses nor any of their ‘people’ have made any direct statement, which is why the story just won’t go away.

The band played their last gig last Friday, headlining the Rock N Rev festival in South Dakota, the band’s only US date this year, following tours of South America and Europe. Next up is the band’s UK tour and more mainland European dates, which are set to begin on 27 Aug at the Reading festival, before taking in arenas across Ireland, the UK and mainland Europe through to a show in Barcelona on 23 Oct.

The fact that the band have completed all but two dates of their 2009/2010 tour schedule (and those were both due to problems with the stage in South America) does suggest that Benn is right and everything is fine. But there’s still that reputation Axl’s got himself in recent years.
Back in 2002, when the new Guns N Roses first went out on tour, Axl’s failure to turn up to a number of early shows resulted in rioting, leading to the rest of the tour being cancelled. Then, in 2006, Axl cancelled the final dates of a US tour to work on completing the ‘Chinese Democracy’ album, at the same time as firing the band’s manager, Merck Mercuriadis. By this point, the band had nonetheless played numerous shows successfully, but that’s not the kind of thing people get remembered for. Especially when they’re Axl Rose.

So, wow, look at that. All this because of one tweet, eighteen words long, which probably was put there by a hacker. But Axl really does know how to start up a fuss, even if he does it unintentionally. Any other band would have deleted the tweet and issued a statement clearing the whole thing up. Other bands wouldn’t assume that some festival in the UK could put everyone straight. But I guess that’s why other bands aren’t as entertaining as Guns N Roses.

Taken from the 20 Aug 2010 edition of CMU Weekly, which you can read here.

We don’t normally do April Fools gags at CMU, but this one seemed like a lot of fun when we thought it up. Fortuitously (for this story, not EMI), the first of April coincided with the collapse of EMI’s talks with Universal and Sony Music to license out the ailing major’s back catalogue.

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.

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.

[I didn't write this. Andy Malt does not like to write about himself in the third person]

The BBC have released the long list from their Sound Of 2010 poll, the thing where the Beeb ask 136 music pundit types, including CMU Editor Andy Malt, for their hot musical tips for the year ahead. All the artists tipped have to be new, and not have had a Top 20 single or album before mid-November. A final list of five will be announced in the New Year.

This list has a long history of tipping at least a couple of the big new musical names of the following year. Andy CMU voted for two of the artists who have made it to the final long list. There’s a Quality Street chocolate for the first person to guess which two. Well, providing you guess before one of us eats it.

Daisy Dares You
Delphic
Devlin
The Drums
Everything Everything
Giggs
Gold Panda
Ellie Goulding
Hurts
Joy Orbison
Marina And The Diamonds
Owl City
Rox
Stornoway
Two Door Cinema Club

Nick Cave has apologised to Kylie Minogue and Avril Lavigne for including them in his new book, ‘The Death Of Bunny Munro’. The book’s titular lead character is obsessed with the two singers, and in particular Avril Lavigne’s vagina.

Cave told BBC 6music: “I would like to publicly apologise to both of them, especially Avril Lavigne. Because the writing about her is darker and more invasive I guess. I know Kylie and at least, I hope, she will take it in the spirit it was written. At the time that the book was set, which was about eight years ago, or seven years ago, Kylie Minogue and her hot pants were all the tabloids wrote about in this country”.

In a recent iTunes ‘Meet The Author’ podcast, Cave said on the same issue: “I’m slightly worried about touring America, to be honest. … The whole book revolves around Avril Lavigne’s vagina. And it’s not a happy book. But I just keep thinking that if Avril Lavigne wrote a book about my dick, I wouldn’t mind”.