The UK-based online music shop MusicNonStop.co.uk suddenly shut down its business back in March and left many musicians and labels in debt from unpaid merchandise. The company also left countless customers in the dark with unfilled orders in the last few days of their operation, causing many of them to lose money as well. It was sad to see a once-great site like MusicNonStop go down, but what they did to the musicians and their customers was even worse.

Now, despite all of this, Side-Line reports that MusicNonStop is planning to relaunch their webshop on August 26th under the new ownership of Grufti Limited. While this new ownership means that all the previous debts are the responsibility of the original owners, Music Non Stop Limited, there is still a lot of debate about the use of the MusicNonStop name, the close relationship between the old and new owners, and how the old stock of CDs and merchandise was transferred from Music Non Stop Limited to Grufti Limited. On one side of the debate, there is the new owner who wants to keep an institution of the industrial and gothic music scenes alive and well, but on the other side, there are lots of musicians, labels, and customers who are owed lots of money that may never be paid back. There are still plenty of unanswered questions and angry people.

That leaves us with what is perhaps the most important question about MusicNonStop’s relaunch: Should you buy your music there and give them business? With everything that has happened, I would not recommend it. But even if you ignore all of this, ordering anything from the UK for delivery anywhere else in the world is prohibitively expensive due to the poor Dollar (or Euro) to Pound exchange rate. And if you do live in the UK, I would recommend using Resurrection Music from now on. They have pretty much everything that MusicNonStop ever had, and they are significantly cheaper.

You will have no problems finding great music without MusicNonStop. I’m sure you got along just fine during their 5 month absence.

Today is the birthday of the compact disc, the first of which was released in Germany on August 17th, 1982. The first CD ever for sale was a recording of Richard Strauss’s symphony “Eine Alpensinfonie” as conducted by the famed Herbert von Karajan, and was released on Deutsche Grammophon, the company established by Emile Berliner who invented the disc record gramophone 93 years prior. The history of music sure does have a lot of ties to Germany.

A generation after the CD was first introduced, its future is questioned on an almost daily basis. CD sales are dropping worldwide and MP3 players have all but wiped out portable CD players. Fortunately, there are still some people who really only feel good if they own a CD. They like holding a physical CD from their favorite band or looking at the artwork and reading the lyrics on the pages of the insert booklet. But will this idea last, or will everything eventually just turn into digital files? What do you think? Which type of person are you?

At a music industry conference he recently spoke at, Derek Sivers, founder of CD Baby, was recently asked how to stop music piracy. Here is what he said:

“More people are killed by pigs than sharks each year, but because shark attacks are more newsworthy, they seem more prevalent. Piracy gets all the attention, but … obscurity is your real enemy. Fight obscurity until you’re a household name, then piracy will be more of a problem than obscurity. Until then, worry about pigs, not sharks.”

The audience, full of record label execs, really didn’t like this answer. That’s too bad, because they are forgetting one very important detail: They are the ones with the problem! While on the other hand, CD Baby is doing better than ever. In fact, their physical CD sales are up 30% over last year, while CD sales in the industry as a whole are going down significantly. So, if you were one of these troubled execs in the audience, would you be paying attention to Derek’s lesson or would you be shouting “I hate your point of view, buddy!” like one woman did? Wow.

Derek concludes, “Putting so much attention and energy into fighting piracy (as if, when solved, you’ll suddenly start selling 10 times more) - is misguided effort, distracting you from what you really need to be improving.” That sounds just like what I told Stefan Herwig, but he didn’t get it either.

Dependent Records announced it would be shutting down operations back in August 2007 after owner Stefan Herwig said MP3 file sharing was eating away his business. Now he is acting as the tour manager for Seabound’s upcoming U.S. tour and has posted an open invitation for anyone across the country to sit down with him and have a debate about file sharing during the off-hours of the tour. If you are interested in voicing your opinion in person to Stefan and perhaps having a bit of an argument, send him an email at stefan@dependent.de and let him know.

Personally, I think this is just the wrong discussion to be having. Arguing for or against file sharing is pointless. Illegal music downloading is not going to go away, so you have to adapt to it. You can’t fight it. It’s like a new rule in the game called the music industry. You can’t play a new game by the old rules, so record labels and bands have to change how they play the game in order to remain successful. Stefan really should be asking people what changes should be made so that downloading is no longer considered a problem. That would be worth talking about.

News via the Side-Line blog

Instead of my usual German music news post, I thought a brief chat about the music industry in general would be more gratifying tonight. As I’m sure you know, record labels have been falling apart ever since the internet made MP3 file sharing easy. But that’s not their only problem. If anything, file sharing was just the jumpstart the world needed to start thinking more closely about the music industry as a whole. The biggest topic in the news lately involves the terrible relationships between labels and their musicians. Bands around the world seem to be looking for any opportunity to leave their label behind. It’s easy to see why after reading this enlightening article.

A clip from “The life and crimes of the music biz” by Simon Napier-Bell from Guardian.co.uk.

A contract with a major record company was always a 90 per cent guarantee of failure. In the boardroom the talk was never of music, only of units sold. Artists were never the product; the product was discs - 10 cents’ worth of vinyl selling for $10 - 10,000 per cent profit - the highest mark-up in all of retail marketing. Artists were simply an ingredient, without even the basic rights of employees.

Imagine the outcry if people working in a factory were told that the cost of the products they were making would be deducted from their wages, which anyway would only be paid if the company managed to sell the products. Or that they would have to work for the company for a minimum of 10 years and, at the company’s discretion, could be transferred to any other company at any time.

Any suggestions? I have one, but it’s not going to be easy to swallow. Continue reading to see what it is.
(more…)

I have such a long list of albums being released soon to tell you about, you wouldn’t even believe. My calendar is already booked with several posts each day all the way through mid-November! I am trying to spread out the news and not shove it down your throat all at once, but I still want to give you all this info as soon as I can. So, I decided to make an album release calendar for the site. This way, you can look ahead to see what’s coming out before I actually give you the details in a blog post. How does that sound? You can expect a calendar for the next few months to be online within a few days.

The 19th annual Popkomm music conference started today in Berlin. This show, which started in 1989 in Düsseldorf, is held as a regular meeting place for the music and entertainment industries. Popkomm’s trade show is the biggest in the music industry, with over 800 exhibitors and over 15,000 visitors from around the world last year. There is also a major discussion forum at the show where different ideas are shared and industry issues are discussed. Economics, politics, and communication are the three “pillars” of discussion at this year’s conference, presented by keynote speakers such as the German Federal Minister for Economics and Technology, Michael Glos, and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media, Bernd Neumann. Several other notable people within the industry will also be speaking, ranging from musicians and producers to band managers and label representatives.

But Popkomm is not all about business, there’s a lot of fun to be had, too. Their annual festival attracts hundreds of musicians from dozens of countries to perform, essentially turning the entire city of Berlin into a huge concert venue. Last year, 70,000 people watched concerts during Popkomm, and this year the crowds are expected to be even bigger. There is also an awards ceremony where the most creative music industry ideas receive an IMEA, or Innovation in Music and Entertainment Award.

Popkomm will continue for 3 days until the 21st. If you’re fortunate enough to be in or near Berlin the next few days, check out some of the activity. You are bound to find some exhibit or concert you like.

Schools and universities across the country are starting up again for a new year, but they are missing a few students. The heads of the major record labels need to go back to business school for a quick refresher course to help out their ailing companies.

It seems to me that record labels these days are so caught up in the changing dynamics of the industry that they are forgetting the principles of basic sales. The idea of selling something isn’t to harass people about why they shouldn’t do something (like download MP3 files illegally), it’s about overcoming the objections that stop them from doing what you want (like buying a CD or legal music file) in a positive way. Labels should be better explaining why buying music legitmately is better for people. They need to make sure that people understand why their way is better for the customer than what they are doing now, pirating music. And if it isn’t (in the customer’s opinion, not the label’s), they need to develop some new product or process that is.

The key here is “better for the customer”, the music fan, the people. The people who, at the moment, don’t trust the record labels. Everything I’ve seen and read about the big record labels, and even a lot of smaller indie ones, suggests to me that they are way too focused on themselves. They just want to better themselves and their artists and don’t care all that much about the people who pay their salaries, their customers. But guess what. In business, it’s not the company CEO who calls the shots. It’s the market, the customer base. And right now, they are revolting. There is a battle going on, and the labels just keep looking for bigger guns. Instead of finding out what the customers really want, or even nicely explaining to them why things cost money, they blindly defend their ignorance in a futile attempt to survive.

Click to continue reading this post…
(more…)

An article in The New York Post tells us about a new digital music service that Amazon.com has been developing that may threaten iTunes, the currently undisputed leader in digital music downloading. Amazon’s new service, which is supposed to be launched sometime in the middle of the month, is supposed to have over 1 million songs for download from a large swath of indie labels, as well as two of the four majors. The biggest advantage to their service, for both labels and fans, is that the prices for songs are expected to be cheaper. While iTunes currently only has 2 flat rates for songs (99 cents for protect files and $1.29 for DRM-free songs), Amazon’s new system will allow labels to set their own prices which will vary depending on the song’s popularity. Full albums from Amazon are expected to be somewhere between $8 and $10.

This is great news for fans. While you may love iTunes, new competition usually means better prices and service for customers. And if Amazon knows what it’s doing, their files will be playable on your iPod. Amazon.com already offers some of the lowest prices for books and CDs, so it will certainly be interesting to see how well they do coming into the music downloading world.

News via Coolfer.

Dependent Records has established itself over the years as one of the most well-known and successful German electronic labels and is the home of artists like Rotersand, mind.in.a.box, Suicide Commando, Stromkern, Girls Under Glass, and many others. But sadly, the label announced at the start of the year that they will no longer be accepting new bands to the label and will be shutting down permanently once their contractual obligations were met. With all of the recent releases coming from Dependent, it looks like that time is probably coming pretty soon now. But why did they make such a drastic decision? It’s not money, Dependent has actually been pretty successful. The real reason why they are shutting down is because of illegal downloading and piracy.

In label founder Stefan Herwig’s own words: “This is not about money, and it never was. It’s about being encouraged to continue to release music.” He explains how few albums are being purchased legally compared to the number that are downloaded illegally from P2P and torrent sites. “A popular claim often seen on Internet fora maintains that the P2P culture weakens the majors and bolsters the independent labels. This is, we can assure you, 100% bullshit.” In reality, piracy hurts the small labels just as much, if not more than the majors, because indie labels are operating with lower numbers and much slimmer margins. Stefan gives us a further example, “if 60% of the audience at a concert gained entry with forged tickets, the promoter, the band, the concert agency, and the venue would all be broke in a matter of weeks.” The same thing has been happening with the music itself, and Dependent has just had enough of it.

It’s sad, but true. Dependent estimates that the number of illegally downloaded albums exceeds their legally purchased albums by 3 to 5 times. And with no real legal actions being taken to change the ancient intellectual property laws in Germany (or in America, for that matter), industries where this is so important are dying fast. Who knows what the future holds for indie labels and the talented but underappreciated bands they support.