Napster's Sean Parker in $2.5m wedding venue settlement

Whilst Sean Parker splashed out 10million dollars on a movie-set wedding in an ecologically sensitive area, song writers receive $0.01 a stream on Napster. Which is a tad more than Last.FM which will give you $0.00120000 a stream or Spotify $0.00490000 a stream or iTunes match $0.00560000 a stream  (stats from a cdbaby digital distribution account). The bottom line is song writers are getting ripped off by companies who are streaming their music. 

Press rewind: The cassette tape returns

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By Kate DaileyBBC, Montreal

The ArtistLaunch Radio Show

ArtistLaunch Radio Show Ep6 - Interview with Nad Sylvan, frontman for Genesis Revisited

AL Podcast/Download

Stream:

Fascinating and revealing insight into how Nad Sylvan got the job of Vocalist with Steve Hackett's Genesis Revisited. Gordon Bell asks the questions as they reminisce about past gigs and opportunities that came about because of the Internet Music Revolution and examine 6 tracks from Nads' career with Unifaun, Agents Of Mercy and Genesis Revisited. Produced By Neville Meredith.

Check out pages on artistlaunch about Nad and the bands Unifaun & Agents of Mercy.

Unifaun |  Agents of Mercy

The Smitten Ones - Cloak and Dagger

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Modern Gaming: Buying Fake Followers and Likes.

Some artists may remember the great payback for playback scam at mp3.com in the naughties. Dozens of forums were set up where artists left links to their mp3.com pages and everyone on the list, in rotation, took it in turns to use an mp3 player, set to play 2 seconds of a track and systematically play sometimes 100 tracks on an artist’s page, thus giving them multiple royalties. Some gamers made thousands of dollars cheating the system and mp3.com almost seemed to encourage it as it brought it millions of hits and website activity.

Well today gaming is still here but the scam is now buying 'followers' and 'likes' on social networks.

'Likes' and 'followers' have replaced topping OMD (online music distributor) charts. This software (status people) shows you how many fake profiles you have on your twitter account. Artistlaunch's twitter account currently reads fake: 1% Inactive: 7% and Good: 92% If you try out some of the global superstars who top twitter the results are staggering: justinbieber: Fake 51% Inactive: 24% Good: 25% lady gaga Fake: 50% Inactive: 29% Good: 21% coldplay Fake: 32% Inactive: 33% Good: 35% Try it yourself (remember to use the twitter tag, so Justin Bieber is justinbieber) http://fakers.statuspeople.com/

Taj Weekes & Adowa- Anthems Of Hope

CD Baby boasts about sales and then trashes half your stock!

On Dec 6th CD baby posted an article on their blog saying.

"As a CD Baby artist, you’re like a citizen of a small but powerful creative nation, hundreds of thousands of musicians strong. Together, you’ve earned more money from your music than the GDP of the Cook Islands. The next country we’ll surpass: The Federated States of Micronesia!

We’re very proud to have paid out over a quarter-billion dollars to independent musicians around the globe — and while that’s a big accomplishment for CD Baby, I’d really like to take this opportunity to congratulate our artists — not only the “established” ones who make their sole living from sales, but every artist who uses us to get their music out to the world."

This week the "Un-Established" artists, (to counter coin a CD baby quote) received emails telling them half their stock of CD's will be destroyed within a month unless:

(from members area Inventory Management) CD Baby will keep a 6-month supply of your CDs in stock (based on previous sales). Our warehouse space must accommodate almost half a million artists, so we cannot store greater quantities than that projected 6-month supply. If we have an excess of any of your titles (marked with a exclamation point below),

We can either:

Return them to you at your expense.

Recycle them at no cost.

You also get sent a rather threatening email stating: "Please take the steps above no later than */**/****, after which point we'll automatically recycle excess stock."

International artists on looking at the postage costs will see that having 10 CD's sent back to you will cost you $22.74 but it also says "No plastic, without jewel cases"...

ArtistLaunch thinks this is outrageous. Many independent artists have spent good money getting CD's duplicated and had them shipped to CD baby many years ago and they paid a fee to CD Baby to store them and sell them. Many artists will only sell small amounts of CD's per year but that should not diminish the fact they were sold. Due to massive saturation at CD Baby it has become harder and harder to sell CD's there but just because you haven't sold a CD for 6 months should not be then punished by the company that is supposed to be your distributor who informs you that half your stock will be destroyed unless you pay for them to be returned. This is holding independent artists at gunpoint and effectively saying unless your an established artist selling 100's of cd's and making us a nice profit you can go to hell, we don't care about you anymore.

Well we think CD Baby can go fuck themselves and we advise independent artists to remove their music from this company that boasts about huge profits and then punishes the low earning artist community by holding their CD's to ransom.

We will be reviewing alternative distribution companies and posting our results on ArtistLaunch in the New Year.

UPDATE:

Thanks to a reader who discovered this article about CDBABY:

January 3, 2013  12:00 PM   http://news.oregonmetro.gov/1/post.cfm/cd-baby-wins-recycle-at-work

CD Baby wins Recycle at Work's waste reduction raffle

Last fall, Recycle at Work, a recycling program fueled by Metro and local partners, offered a bike raffle as a way to recognize companies that participated in a waste reduction consultation. Led by regional sustainability advisors, these consultations illustrated how business of all sizes could cut back on workplace waste. From a simple composting bucket in the staff kitchen to the elimination of non-resusible coffee cups, each business in the running made unique changes following their consultation.  Local online store CD Baby won the raffle drawing, leaving its staff with both a brand-new set of wheels and increased awareness in waste reduction at work.

CD Baby’s Megan Flynn says the business' 119 employees learned a lesson in responsibility when it came to their own personal waste. "We started composting for the first time," Flynn said. "That was definitely a big change for a lot of us." Additionally, the business added hand dryers in its bathrooms to reduce paper towel waste and began reusing packing peanuts in its shipping department.

But what will an online store of more than 100 employees do with its new bike? "Lunch bike rides," Flynn said. "We're right along a bike path, so I'm hoping staff can take turns getting some fresh air on their breaks."

Yvonne Garcia, the City of Portland’s sustainability advisor, worked closely with CD Baby to suggest ways the company could crack down on waste. "It just came down to talking things through with the staff, figuring out what could be reduced for both the employees and people who use the website." The biggest issues Garcia saw were a lack of clear signage for waste and recycling and a simple lack of information when dealing with waste reduction. "It just comes down to communication," Yvonne said "It's all downhill from there."

So lets be clear, cdbaby consider independent artists cd's as waste that need to be disposed of, something to be cracked down on, they even win prizes for it...

This drive to obtain eco-kudos may be just a tad counter-productive as the artists who helped cdbaby get established in the first place start finding alternative distributors.

H.C.  Speir---Man of Vision---

By Robert Jackson

Photos are from the Gayle Dean Wardlow book "Chasin' That Devil Music" copyright 1998 by Miller Freeman publications.

When H.C. Speir of Jackson, MS. opened his furniture store at 225 north Farrish St. in 1925, he had no idea that he would make such an impact on music history.  His interest in music had begun in the Victrola assembly plant in New Orleans after being discharged from the Navy.  He later returned there to take a course in Victrola repair, in order to have the ability to "service what he sold" this gave him the distinction of being the only Victrola repairman in the county.  Victrolas had gotten their name from the manufacture name. Originally called the "Victor Talking Machine Company", it was later changed to the "Victor Phonograph machine Company " until 1929, when RCA purchased the company and changed the name to RCA Victor. He sold several styles of victrolas and (Columbia) graphonolas in his store. Even though the electric models were offered, many of the poorer black customers he catered to bought the crank model, as electricity was still an unaffordable or unavailable luxury. The crank models were priced between $9.95 and $14.95.