Apparently even Octopus are listening to The Beatles

With The Beatles coming to streaming, like a Santa arriving on December 28th, there's a thing on their website which shows where people are taking advantage of the new streams.

The Daily Mail explains how it works:

Although official streaming figures are yet to be announced - and Google and Spotify said they likely won't be released until next week - the official The Beatles site features a globe that 'glows yellow' in the regions where people are streaming right now.

Well, there's a thing. Here's a grab:

Goodness, even the oceans are glowing yellow. Presumably that's all the music pirates, then.

The Beagles come to Spotify

A band that wasn't on Spotify is now on Spotify. Experts say this event is culturally significant, as it means that the digitally savvy ones in the family are now going to have to spend most of tomorrow explaining why Apple Music isn't iTunes.

Pandora pony up for pre-72 recordings

Before 1972, recorded music in America wasn't "protected" by copyright. Some streaming services have been taking advantage of this to stream vintage tracks without feeling the need to pay for the rights.

The RIAA wasn't happy about this, and so threatened Pandora with court to demand payment.

Before it came to this, Pandora was bullish:

In response, Pandora issued a statement to The Hollywood Reporter: "Pandora is confident in its legal position and looks forward to a quick resolution of this matter."

The resolution was pretty quick, but, erm not in Pandora's favour:

Pandora Media Inc. will pay $90 million to record labels to settle a dispute over oldies, the Internet radio giant said Thursday.

The agreement with the group of labels -- composed of Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Capitol Records and ABKCO Music & Records -- resolves yet another major battle over royalties for recordings made before 1972.

So, are Pandora upset? Apparently not. Oh, no. This is, honestly, the outcome they were hoping for:

Pandora Chief Executive Brian McAndrews, in statement, said the company was "excited" to have the dispute resolved. "We pursued this settlement in order to move the conversation forward and continue to foster a better, collaborative relationship with the labels," he said.

Yeah. Thank god, eh? All they wanted to was make a massive payment and knock a fifth off their share price. That was all Pandora ever wanted. All they asked for. They're excited. Real excited.

Robert Forster: Streaming Now

The new Robert Forster album, Songs To Play, is streaming over on The Guardian website right now.

Listen with No Rock: Nada Surf

Coming shortly from Nada Surf is an album which records their March 2014 Seattle gig. They're thrown us a bone in the shape of this track:

Gennaro Castaldo Watch: The stream flows uphill

Our old friend, Gennaro Castaldo - now chief insight-piper at the BPI - has popped up in Silicon Republic making excited noises about how streaming might help turn the decline of physical sales:

“The whole streaming thing, I think, has been a bonus that hasn’t been anticipated,” [he] says, suggesting that these UK results may well equate to similar findings in Ireland.

“It was thought it would carry on the digital trend. It has in one way, as more and more of us are doing it, but it has also permitted the idea that some people can buy music, too.”

Castaldo suggests streaming can actually be looked at as a shop window of sorts, pushing people towards actual purchases, although not to the level of before.

“No, it won’t be the mainstream activity, all of the time,” he said, “but there is potentially a new narrative where you can stream and buy physical. It’s allowing us to think of a new form of music consumption that might not have seemed possible when digital downloads had a decade of growth, fuelled by iTunes.”

The idea that people listening to music they don't actually own could lead to people going out and spending money on music isn't a crazy one. In fact, it's the same thing that most people spent telling the BPI would happen back in the days of the Napster Wars. The BPI wouldn't have it then, so it's nice that it's finally catching up to where everyone else was in 1999.

Obviously, there's a difference in a legal streaming service and a digitally sourced unlicenced track; the latter, the artist made absolutely nothing from the transaction, but with Spotify et al, the artist has to wait for a lot more transactions before their earnings reach even that level.

Shirley Manson isn't impressed by streaming

You know who's not excited about streaming music? Shirley Manson, tha's who:

"Now you get music for free. If people understood the economics of streaming they would be a little more sympathetic to an artist's plight," she explained.

Manson added that part of the blame lies with the record companies, who don't suffer in the same way that their artists do.

"It's a crime spree. I don't think people understand that record companies still continue to make enormous amounts of money. They strike the deals with the streaming companies," she said.

Well, yes, they do. While muscling to the front making it difficult for individuals to work directly with streaming services to get a larger share of the (face it) small royalty on offer per single play.

"It's a f**king racket," Manson added, before expressing optimism that a fairer system will emerge. "It's early days though and I do think it will be changed."

Maybe.

Although Tidal is dying on its arse, because its solution was to charge listeners more, rather than divvy up the take more fairly.

Which means hopes of a better world means either the tech companies, or the record labels, decide that they should give a bit more of their chunk to the artists.

The history of the tech and music industries suggest that Manson might be waiting for a long time for the sunny uplands.

Listen with No Rock: Glockabelle

Meet - if you've not already had the pleasure - Glockabelle. I think this might be the first track I've ever come across which could have the power to give syanathesia to people who aren't synesthesic:



That's the lead track from her new Wolf BBQ EP. I suspect not everyone will like it, but if you do, you'll like it very much.

She's going to be in the UK supporting The Go Team in June before doing some dates elsewhere in Europe. She also has website.

Steve Albini isn't impressed with Tidal

It's not just a damning-but-amusing comparison with another celeb-led endeavour from Steve Albini [via NME]:

Now, the Shellac and Big Black member has spoken to Vulture, raising doubts over the platform and calling it a "budget version of Pono", Neil Young's high-definition music player

Albini also shows his working:

"Historically, every time there’s been a new technological progression, there’s been a new convenience format [for listening to music]," Albini is quoted as saying. "So the question is, is it possible for something to be more convenient than streaming? And the answer is obviously yes. If you want your music to play at the push of a button, convenience is going to trump sound quality 100 percent of the time."

"It's for the same reason that if you had a screen that displayed paintings in your living room, very few serious art enthusiasts would care for such a screen despite the fact that it might show you very high-resolution images of artworks. They want to own a piece of art that is a direct connection to the person who made it. Having an HD screen in your house that would display artwork might have a market, but it’s not the same market as people who are interested in owning art."

Actually, he might have wanted to go with the idea that most people are quite happy to stick up a poster with a Matisse printed onto it, even though that might not be the real thing. But aside from a poorly worked through metaphor, his basic point (that there's no mass market for paying through the nose for a product where there's a perfectly good-enough, cheaper, free version) is sound.

Listen with No Rock: Sharon Van Etten

That's the lead track from Sharon Van Etten's I Don't Want To Let You Down ep. You can buy it in *rubs eyes* June, apparently. June!

Tidal: Artists unite to launch doomed streaming service

A bunch of rich people have come together to launch a video music streaming service:

Alicia Keys, Arcade Fire's Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, Beyoncé, Daft Punk, Jack White, Jason Aldean, J. Cole, Jay Z, Kanye West, Deadmau5, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna and Usher – rubbed elbows onstage at the swanky launch event while two others beamed in digitally (Calvin Harris and Coldplay's Chris Martin). Aside from making a spectacle, the musicians made the case for an artist-owned streaming service.

Fun fact: besides being millionaires, most of those people also used to make records at some point.

An artist-owned streaming service isn't a bad idea, it's just that one which is owned by rich, dominant artists isn't really going to do much for the 99% of musicians who don't have to worry about which house they left their other wallet in.

Naturally, the whole thing is being ridiculously oversold:

"We come together before you on this day...with one voice in unity in the hopes that today will be a moment that will forever change the course of music history," said Keys, the only artist to address the audience, in an exuberant speech. "Our goal is simple: We want to create a better service and a better experience for both fans and artists, and that is our promise to the world."

No, you just want to keep a bigger share of the royalties. The world doesn't need you to promise about this sort of thing.

Keys, of course, has been involved in a big tech launch before, having signed on to be the face of Blackberry shortly before that company introduced its 'rotting turd' range of phones.

I know what you're thinking. Is there a risk this event couldn't be self-agrandising enough?

No, they stepped up on that one:

[Keys] explained that the mission statement of the musicians, who stood patiently listening to the speech, was "to preserve music's importance in our lives." She spoke of artists delivering "exclusive experiences" via the service and ultimately finding a way to "preserve" the industry and the value of music. She also quoted Friedrich Nietzsche: "Without music, life would be a mistake."

Although since the point of Tidal is about restricting the flow of music, and when they speak about 'music's importance' what they really mean is 'the price of music to the listener', arguably they're making Nietzsche's mistake more, not less, likely.

But quoting a philosopher beloved of the Nazis might not have ratcheted up the pomposity to the sort of level we'd expect with Madonna and Jack White involved. Could you push it a little further, guys?

"Today is the day," she repeated before inviting her co-owners to sign what she called a "declaration," though she did not expound on what it said. "This is the beginning of a whole new era," she said before each present musician made his or her way over to a podium to sign a document.

Oh, yes. Signing a declaration. Because it's historical, right? That'd do it.

Unfortunately, video of the event wasn't put on YouTube so nobody really noticed this happening.

Tesco blinks

Rather overlooked in the news of Tesco's contractions on many fronts yesterday was the offloading of Blinkbox, its electronic music/books/movies service.

Tesco had bought into Blinkbox during the height of its imperial expansion, on a vague theory that because it flogged CDs and DVDs it should be selling digital equivalents. It started to make a bit more sense when Tesco launched the Hudl tablet, but in the end it's decided that it's a distraction from selling bread and cheese.

New owner is TalkTalk, although it's not yet clear how keen they were on the content business, and how much they just wanted to get their hands on the Tesco phone and broadband customers. (Obviously, they were part of the deal. You can't buy anything related to telecommunications without it coming as part of a bundle.)

Grooveshark is convinced it's coming back stronger

It's Groovesharknado. Or possibly Groovesharknado 2. Or maybe 3.

Yes, beleaguered music upload-file-sharing-streaming type site Grooveshark is going to be reborn next year as a legitimate, licenced streaming service. Americans who want a streaming service, but for some reason haven't signed up to a streaming service, will be able to sign on for ninety nine cents a month.

Ninety Nine Cents A Month. For unlimited music.

Given the complaints about the size of royalty cheques which come from Spotify, at that pricepoint Grooveshark will be needing to use standard form to issue payments.

Michelle Shocked attends to new dog audience

Last time we heard from Michelle Shocked, she was trying to explain her disappointing-cum-heartbreaking anti-gay ranting as some sort of play acting.

She's back, though, and going after a softer target - digital music executives. And she's, erm, using the medium of songs only dogs can hear (a step forward from stage shows only Republicans can stomach, I suppose):

She recently released a silent album on CDBaby.com called “Inaudible Women,” containing 11 brief “songs” named after big-shots in the music industry. With titles like “David Drummond (Google, Youtube),” “Robert Walls (Clear Channel),” and “Chris Harrison (Pandora),” she’s calling out people who run the digital streaming world.

Or possibly acting the part of someone who calls out the people who run the digital streaming world.

Dygeddit? It's not a silent album, because that would be bad and break the rules; it's an album with music on, but music that only dogs can hear.

A spokesperson for some dogs issued a statement, saying that while they enjoyed her early work they're more excited for the La Roux album right now.

Are you ready to be heartbroken, Lloyd Cole fans?

Lloyd Cole is thinking about withdrawing his music from Spotify for artistic reasons:

“I think I am going to withdraw from Spotify and use it for what it is good for, sampling. If they (record buyers) like it they are going to need to buy it somewhere.”

It's not entirely clear how Cole fans are going to sample his music on Spotify if, erm, he takes his music off Spotify.

But then he doesn't really seem to understand how streaming works:

But is streaming good for the music business?

“So much of our culture is technology driven, it’s ‘I can, therefore I do’ but when your hard drive crashes and you have no back up you might wish you had bought those files as CDs.”

If your hard drive crashes, why would that cause a problem if you're subscribed to a service that streams music?

But it's not really that Cole is worried about the potential wiping out of people's collections. This is about money. Sorry, art. It's about art:

Downloading and then streaming just isn’t the same, he laments.

“The order people listen to a record is very important. Can you imagine Sgt Pepper’s in any other way?”

Yes, I can, because skipping Mr Kite entirely is what everyone does, Lloyd.

Lloyd remembers how he met some of his earliest band members.

“They bought ‘Never mind the bollocks’ (Sex Pistols) when I was about 14, ripped up the sleeve and then safety pinned it back together and then carried it around all day. The way it should be.”

Hmm. It sounds like your band mates had taken a product produced by an artist, and reassembled it in a way that they thought was better. Why is it so bad when people approach a tracklisting in the same way?

Charts: Surely they've streaming already?

An announcement from the South Bank...
Just before we get to the announcement from the South Bank, what's with the Official Chart Company and the BPI having some of the most expensive office space in London, right down opposite Parliament? Given everything the BPI does is funded by its members, which means ultimately it is money that otherwise would have gone to musicians or songwriters, shouldn't it look to taking cheaper rooms? I suppose they'd argue that being in the old GLC buildings is great for access to the people who make law, but is that true? Do they communicate by semaphore from across the Thames? Or just nip out and hang around outside the Tesco Express hoping to bump into Michael Fabricant? Because they could do that with an office in Uxbridge and an Oyster Card.
The Official Chart Company has announced that streaming will be added to the toxic brew ("mix") which makes up the charts:

Official Charts Company boss Martin Talbot told BBC News that the changes are "about future-proofing the charts".

"So far this year we've seen nine tracks which have been streamed more than one million times in a week," Talbot explained. "Last year there were only two tracks that had reached that kind of level."

Bastille's 'Pompeii' is the most-streamed track of all time in the UK so far with 26.6 million steams to date but only made number two in the singles chart based on sales alone.

Bastille were given the announcement to make:

On one hand, this makes sense, and it's surprising that it hasn't happened before - like, eighteen months ago, probably.

On the other... this is a bit problematic. The Billboard charts always included radio play alongside sales, on the basis that that was a measure of popularity. The UK charts never did, for the two strong reasons.

One, that just because something is being listened to on the radio doesn't mean it's being enjoyed (look how long DLT broadcasted for).

Two, that radio play is a lot more nebulous than sales. How do you weight a play on Little Rissington FM against someone paying 79p to buy a track? Can you be sure all those plays for that local band on Froome Sound are because the band is popular, and not because the station manager's daughter is the bassist?

So, sesnsibly, the charts focused on a slightly more trustworthy measure of popularity - a financial transaction.

Obviously, this was, and is, still open to gaming - managers filling the trunks of their cars with godawful CDs by their terrible bands, purchased to give them a boost; slipping singles into different sleeves. But it was a least bad situation.

The problems with radio play are multiplied by streaming. How many 'listens' indicate an enthusiasm that equals someone willing to shovel over some money over to own that track?

Maybe the falling price of a single has made this argument less compelling, but even so - does 'I keep hearing about this Kasabian all over the place, I wonder she's like, I'll go to Spotify and play her song OH MY GOD THIS IS AWFUL are they all this bad? I'll try another OH MY GOD THIS IS WORSE' really have the same weight as someone who thinks 'I love Lana Del Ray, I've already bought the CD single but simply can't wait for it to be delivered so I'll get the download too'?

And if you accept that a single Spotify play can't equal a purchase, you suddenly find yourself having to create an exchange rate. And once you do that, your chart becomes opinion-based, not fact-based.

There is such an exchange rate:

To reflect the difference in weight between streaming and purchasing, 100 streams will count as equivalent to 1 single (download or physical single) in the chart compilation process.

Oddly, the amount of cash earned by a musician for their track being streamed on Spotify isn't 1% of the amount they get, so you have to wonder about the 'science' behind this particular ratio.

And that's before you ask the question about how you can be certain there are ears listening to the stream, rather than just a handy-dandy little script or two deployed across a number of computers?

Will Amazon trickle out a stream?

The New York Times reckons that Amazon might quietly launch a music streaming service today.

That they'd pick World Cup Of Soccer day to do this suggests it's the softest of soft launches. Which may be down to the likelihood that one of the majors - UMG - doesn't appear to have been signed up yet.

Bloom fades

Self-proclaimed niche-streaming service, Bloom FM, has closed after their backer, TNT, suddenly yanked funding.

The service is looking for a buyer; it reckons it has a week to save itself.

Beats gets going

Overpriced headphone manufacturer Beats has taken a step closer to launching its streaming music service, with an app going live in the Apple app store:

The service, which goes up against the likes of Spotify, Rdio, Pandora and iTunes Radio — as well as Mega CEO Kim Dotcom‘s new music streaming service Baboom – will cost $9.99 per month for unlimited streaming from its catalog of more than 20 million songs.

Besides the ability for journalists to mention Dr Dre in articles about the service, it's not entirely clear what Beats believes makes it different from other streaming services.

The company's business models so far has been to encourage conspicuous consumption - people pay over the odds for oversized headphones so they can wear them on the tube or bus. It's not obvious how this will work for streams of music.

Listen with No Rock: Warpaint

Warpaint are sharing out a free track from the new album. And it's a Biggy. As in that's what it's called, and also how large it is: