So AC/DC, the scourge of the religious right in the U.S. and conservative parents everywhere, with albums such as Highway to Hell and Back to Black, have struck an exclusive deal with WalMart in the U.S. to distribute their music…and some of their hardcore fans are either furious or in shock. 

The issue of WalMart’s stringent music policy is not a small one, but I will deal with that elsewhere.

Let’s not get all worked up on this one though. AC/DC have never to my belief taken any big moral stand against the corporate establishment. They have sold millions of albums and made themselves and the label rich. To my knowledge, they have not flown to Darfur or spoken out against gun running. I don’t think they are anti-fur. They just want to play rock n roll.

Their lyrics are not a rallying call for revolution either. I am no AC/DC specialist, but a quick read of their lyrics includes one about getting beaten up by the girlfriend, one tying the girlfriend to the railway tracks, one about their girlfriend overdosing. They might say that their songs focuses on the personal relationships between man and woman and ‘good ol Rock n Roll’. Some people might find some of the lyrics offensive or uncomfortable, others just wanna rock and sing along without reading much into the lyrics. Mind you, Walmart might approve of their commitment to monogamy (Girl’s Got Rhythm).

Those fans up in arms about ACDC ’selling out’ is an interesting position for them to take. It seems the fans are ok to sing along with the band to href=”http://members.tripod.com/acdcwillie/highway.htm”>’Go Down‘ and ‘Night Prowler’ but not ok to let AC/DC secure their pension? 

Some bands start as revolutionaries then move to the right. Others flip-flop from one issue to another. Others just play music and keep their views to themselves. Not every artist is a revolutionary, not every artist has a high moral code on everything they do.

Now that artists are looking for new ways to distribute and market their music directly, there is no label to hide behind. They have to show their colours. Their fans will find out where they stand - and if it important to the fans, then they will react, and act, accordingly.

Artists now have to be clear where they draw the line. Radiohead and ACDC draw their own lines. One artist we know turned down a seven figure deal wit a brand, because the holding company is involved in arms trading. That artist draws the line very clearly. It is the artist’s choice. Yet the smart artists are also highly aware of the impact on their fanbase of any decision they take. Whether it is taking music to a new direction (Electric Bob Dylan, Christian Bob Dylan, ‘Before and After Martin Hamnett’ Joy Division) or signing up with WalMart, the artist takes the risk of losing fans. They also take the risk of gaining new ones.

AC/DC have made their choice. Maybe is is only about the money. If their fanbase collapses in the U.S. then they know the risk was too high. Somehow, I get the impression they have done their homework on this one.

However, Bob Lefsetz doesn’t seem to think so. He certainly is not happy. First, he mentions that 3 million copies of the Eagles album were shifted through Wal-Mart with no-one noticing. Three million people bought it, I think someone noticed. He suggests that these purchases were an impulse buy. Proof that it was purely down to impulse? None. I agree that supermarket shoppers make decisions on impulse at times. Supermarkets are experts at getting people to buy stuff they don’t need. Yet, shoppers in supermarkets make decisions for different reasons - their mood, time pressure, impulse, product positioning in aisles, shelf position and state of mind all affect the decision. However, to assume that all 3 million units were down to impulse purchasers is breathtaking in it’s naivety. The Eagles were never a ground-breaking act. They took what was a vibrant west coast sound in the 70s and packaged it up for the mass market. So it could make perfect sense from a consumer targeting perspective for The Eagles. A proportion of shoppers at Wal-Mart could be either those who bought Hotel California first time round or remember their parents singing along to it, or it could have been a gift purchase…or they might have liked the pretty picture on the cover.

On the one hand he seems to throw all Wal-Mart shoppers into the same trolley, then he champions the cause of the young fan who cannot get to the Wal-Mart store or cannot download it. On the first point, won’t the young fan just ask their mum/dad to buy it for them when she/her shops?

He is also stunned that AC/DC do not understand that the world is not about the album CD any more, and that it is about customer sampling digitally. He clearly is a fan of theirs and thinks they are making a big mistake. I agree wholeheartedly with him that musicians have to have a digital platform allow people to sample the music. Just one thing though, digital is global, and WalMart distribution deal is only for the U.S. Unless I am very much mistaken and unless a Chinese government style clampdown by Wal-Mart is underway, won’t the American kids will be able to find it online legally?

Maybe the hardcore AC/DC fans who have problems with this deal, but they could look at it this way: Imagine some soccer mom buying a WalMart AC/DC CD, then later getting into ‘Let There Be Rock’ as she heads off to pick up her 2.2 kids. Wouldn’t that be undermining the very fabric of society in one step?

Couldn’t that be AC/DC’s legacy to the RocknRoll revolution? 

I leave you all with something to cheer you up…Celine Dion and Anastacia doing a cover of AC/DCs All Night Long…

Some might find this joyful, some painful to watch…

Just wait for the moment when Celine says to Anastasia “Come on Girlfriend, shook me…”

Not content to sit back after signing up Madonna, Noel Gallagher’s fave rapper Jay-Z, and rockin’ dudes Nickleback to 360 degree deals, Live Nation have now decided to have a crack at the Latin music sector and signed up Columbian megastar Shakira. The story event merited a full page article on the “upstart company that is changing the face of music” in this weekend’s Observer newspaper, which claims that the US-based company have now spent over $400 million on signings, since their first deal last October.

So what are these major artists jumping ship? With so much turmoil in the record industry at the moment, it’s hardly a surprise that some artists are keen to look at any opportunity that might offer them long term financial security. And with record sales continuing to shrink it seems that the major labels are at best unwilling, and at worst financially powerless to compete, even though all of them are turning themselves into 360 degree companies.

However, at a time when the artists are probably in a more powerful position than ever, it seems odd that some of them are prepared to sign away ALL their rights to one company. Artists have long complained that record company contracts were too restrictive, with rights ownership often being the biggest big bone of contention. So what’s changed? Or is the Live Nation signing-on fee just too big to ignore?

It seems then that music and football have more things in common than we’d ever thought! The value of the top players/artists is going through the roof, contracts seem to be there to be broken, and nobody seems to know who’s job it will be to develop the stars of the future?

And to cap it all Christiano Ronaldo and Prince both think they are slaves! It’s good to know that it’s not just art and commerce that can occasionally make uneasy bedfellows!

So who will sign to Live Nation next? We reckon the odds could look something like this:

Robbie Williams 2-1 odds on favourite
Mariah Carey 7-2
Coldplay 9-1
Oasis 14-1
U2 35-2
Status Quo 49-1
Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Sun Ra and Jimi Hendrix are all 1,000,000-1 outsiders!

“They’re almost all terrible-hideous, out of date and boring - and the last place you’d go to find anything of use.”

What could ‘Music Magazine of the Year’, The Word, be talking about in their Worst Things About The Internet feature, this month? A crime so hideous that it’s up there with spam, pointless registration pages, talking smileys, premericals, and intro screens that take ten minutes to download before you can get at the site.

Well folks it’s the humble Artist Website. The Word reckon that “Fansites, done for nothing by mad people, beat them (the official site) hands down pretty much every time”

With such large sums of money being spent on artist websites these days, why do so many of them still get it wrong?

We finally got hold of the recording of our DIY: Do or Die session at this year’s Venice Festival Of Media. You can listen to it here or by downloading it to listen to on your computer, iPod or MP3 player. Again a big thanks to Maarten Steinkamp, Jon Webster, Martin Stiksel and John Ingham for making it a fascinating session…

To listen now:

To download the podcast:

For those of you who are PC users, or are not iTunes users, the MP3 version can be downloaded by right clicking your mouse, here

One of the big problems we all have when we go into a music store to browse, be it in the high street or online, is what do we want to buy? For many of us it might be what fits with our mood at the time. Music stores are generally rubbish at trying to provide this sort of help, especially traditional high street music retailers. Some stores are racked in broad genres that are so broad they are useless (ABBA next to AC/DC), while others go so niche only trainspotters stand a chance of deciphering what goes where.

Music plays to our emotions, so why do retailers so often ignore them? Especially as music can be really functional; great to drive to, great to dance to, good to have a little cry to, music to lie on a beach to, or possibly provide the perfect background to your next dinner party (that’ll be your chillout compilation then). Maybe retailers could take a leaf out of a certain UK supermarket’s book (who really didn’t like me taking a picture of their display) and suggest products to suit every mood, or as in this case a wine to go with different types of food. Shame they didn’t rack some spicy music to go with the food and wine ideas though…

After digging out my Desperate Bicycles records I decided to hunt out my copy of the first single by Scritti Politti. If that name seem familiar it may be from the hits they had in the mid 80s with singles such as Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin) or The Word Girl, or you may even know the blissfull The “Sweetest Girl”, which got to the giddy heights of number 64 in the UK charts back in 1981 (the song was also the opening track on the NME’s C81 cassette which citizen Bay has been digging big time of late). However, before the band became an intellectual pop band much beloved by certain factions of the UK music press, they made a series of independently make scratchy DIY punk records. Scritti founder and current Dalston resident Green Gartside saw the Sex Pistols on the opening night of the Sex Pistols ‘Anarchy’ tour at Leeds University, and decided to form a band.

The band came to London in 1977, moving into a legendary squat in Regent’s Park Road in Camden Town. Scritti Politti were galvanised into actiom the Desperate Bicycles and released their first DIY single, titled ‘Skank Bloc Bologna’ on their own St. Pancras label in 1978. The inside of the sleeve included information on the cost to make the single - recording (£98), mastering (£40), pressing (2,500 7 inch singles for £369.36) , Rubber Stamp and labels (£8), plus information on their distributor Rough Trade Records, then still a record shop in Notting Hill. And just in case you didn’t get the idea he first time around, they printed the costs of producing the John Peel sessions EP on that cover as well.

Green notoriously hates the bands early records, which he claimed “sounds like some anti-produced labour of negativity”, but he finally relented and let his label Rough Trade reissue “Skank Bloc Bologna” on the compilation Early, which brings together the bands first four singles and EPs. The album is available for download at emusic, or you can buy the album from the Rough Trade shop here, for the bargain price of only £6.99!

I read that Jazz Summers, manager of The Verve, was planned to meet Guy Hands, boss of EMI this afternoon. That would be one meeting I would like to be a fly on the wall. Looking forward to reading the press release for that meeting of minds. Someone should snap up the rights to the Terra Firma takeover of EMI. A book on 'How to alienate your clients in one easy step' could be the opener, as for some reason, Guy Hands seems to have forgotten that the artist is the client, not a spoilt child.

Maybe a client or two gets a little 'unconventional', but they are still clients.

And many have integrity and intense commitment to ethics. We know of artists who have turned down seven figure deals with brands because the holding company of the brand is involved in the arms business. Unconventional artists maybe, but many also set standards of ethics that inspire others. Maybe the Terra Firma play is to sit on the back catalogue business and stop worrying about new music, though this goes against the stated position that there will be a focus on A&R. Yet what artist is going to be enticed by a company that fails to engage with it's clients prior to making significant changes in both the company structure and company direction? What established artist will be keen for EMI to negotiate brand sponsorships or partnership when the boss has indicated that the artist needs to prove their commitment and worth? Surely the record label/representative/agency needs to prove their worth to the artist at a time when the artist and their manager have a lot more options in this field, including doing the brands deals themselves. Oh yes and what artist will be enticed by John Birt providing them with Blue Sky Thinking? I initially thought of a great comedy film coming out of this saga, though when one hears that so many people are to lose their jobs, the laughs disappear rapidly.

Here are my Top 5 thoughts/hopes/fears for who will reform in 2008:

 1 The Sundays - babysitters permitting

2 Cocteau Twins 

3 The Kinks

4 The Banana Splits

5 More rubbish boy/girl bands desperate to cash in… 

Any other thoughts? 

Let's face it; few music fans have ever preferred the CD booklet to the album sleeve. With CD sales continuing to drop, and downloads nowhere near replacing the shortfall in sales and revenues, could making the downloads more attractive to music fans help boost sales?

Fans have always wanted something special. Limited edition sleeves, picture discs, posters or a free 7" single have all been used by label marketers in the past to boost sales. So why is nobody trying the same tricks in the download space? In an increasingly crowded market could packaging be used to give your new release increased stand out? Would a more attractively packaged download encourage P2P downloaders to buy the real thing? After all, most download releases come with nothing more than a copy of the albums front cover. And as there's plenty of widgets that can get the cover art for you, hardly a problem. Wouldn't you think that someone would have looked at how to package a download, and to see if that was one way of making them more attractive?

Well, some labels think they may have the answer by producing a 'physical' product in the shape of a USB memory stick. Some of these little critters are really attractive (see these White Stripes examples, above). But what about the rest of the packaging? Is all we really want a flashy outer-casing? And once you have a few hundred of these pesky USB keys, how will fans use or display them? And importantly in this day and age, is it a particularly green way to release your music?

The second options to provide something for free with the download.

I finally got around to downloading LCD Soundsystem's excellent album of music to exercise to. Nike commissioned the piece entitled 45:33, which was initially only available to download from iTunes via the Nike+ website. And as with an increasing number of album releases on iTunes, it comes with a downloadable booklet. But that's where the problems start! The booklet is simply a PDF facsimile of the CD booklet. Fine you may think but, this has got to be be the most uninspiring piece of packaging I've ever seen. And it's not just this particular release. I've yet to see any digital booklet that looks like it has been designed for the computer rather than for a physical CD. And worst of all these booklets won't work on you iPod or MP3 player, which makes them virtually useless! 

citizensound says: 

It makes us wonder if labels still employed their own art departments, would download packaging have moved on? Would a new breed of digital artists and designers have been employed to develop exciting and innovative interactive packaging that added some real value to the listening experience?

Would something as simple as a karaoke functionality on the lyrics or an interactive gaming facility encourage younger music fans to pay for downloads, rather than bluetooth them from their mates in the playground?

And what do older fans like me want from this sort of packaging? In-the-studio footage of the album being recorded? Or access to technology (like U-MYX) that allows me to make my own mixes of my favourite tracks.

Let us know how what sort of packaging you would like to see attached to a music download…

Rereading those quotes from Rolling Stone, made me think of a recent article in the excellent Word magazine. In David Hepworth's "And Another Thing" column he attacked the musicians who look to blame someone else when their music doesn't sell. As Hepworth clearly points out "Those artists who used to think they could float on a puffy cloud far moved from the brute realities of commerce are about to come down to earth. The last 30 years have been a bit of a holiday from the truth. You think you've worked hard in the past ? You've barely began." Even Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood claimed in the February 2008 issue of Mojo magazine that the band have no desire to go it alone and run their own record company. "The experiment was good, but we don't wanna be spending the rest of our careers in meetings discussing Portuguese shop displays." They promptly inked a deal with Richard Russell's excellent XL Recordings, home of the White Stripes, M.I.A.and Basement Jaxx.

citizensound says:

The DIY approach may not be for everyone. Artists and their management will need to employ skilled 'specialists' to do many of the jobs that the record company once did, and if it all goes wrong who's to blame? However, the DIY route can cut down on the overheads, should help increase profits (as long as your sales still hold up) and certainly offers the artist more control - at least you'll always be the priority act!

DIY is also becoming an increasingly viable option due to the increasing number of VC's and brands playing in the music space. While VC's can offer the finance you might need, can they bring marketing or distribution expertise? It should be no surprise then that when a brand like Starbucks comes along offering the 'holy trinity' of 'finance, marketing and distribution', that artists from Joni Mitchell to Sonic Youth, are keen to see what this route can offer.