Annual Report Time
May is the month I do the MND annual report every year. This year, I shall be publishing it for all to see!
Keep your eyes peeled, it’ll be out in about a week : )
MND for Cheltenham
Cheltenham Buskers Network
Lots of paid/free/busking opportunities up on the Busking Network FB page at the moment - definitely worth a look at this fab resource for Cheltenham musicians…
Popular Music Students to perform in Prague
February 9th 2013
A number of Popular Music students are set to get their first taste of performing on the continent next week as part of UoG POM degree showcase at Mosaic House in Prague. Students from all three levels will be performing at the venue in the Czech Republic as part of an all-course line up on the Saturday night.
The show forms just part of a trip to the city that will also see students have the opportunity to visit the Czech museum of music and see the famous Charles Bridge Band.
Visit the Facebook group here:
What now for HMV and the independent record store?
Today music retailer HMV announced it was to appoint an administrator, essentially confirming the end of the High Street music chain as we know it. With specialist outlets continuing to operate in towns around the UK this marks a significant change in the consumption of music and the impact that will subsequently have on both our High Streets and artists.
Before I continue writing, I think it’s worth revealing my opinion up front about the role of retailers in the music industry and the various interests that may inform said opinion on the matter. This piece is exclusively discussing the issue of what record stores critically deal with: physical product.
Not gigs. Not MP3s. The ‘record’ itself.
As a musician and performer I appreciate that this is one area of discussion that generates passion in abundance and I am aware that there is no way I (or anyone) could effectively cover the multi-faceted challenges and changes that the music industry faces in the future. What I’ve tried to do is use my experience and knowledge to discern the pertinent facts and distill them into something you might consider against today’s news.
Here’s my excuses:
1. I worked at HMV Cheltenham for four years. Following a turbulent time at University I returned to my home town and had to get a job to pay off a mountain of debt. Lucky I was to be employed by Nipper and Co. as it got me out of a sticky situation, opened my eyes further to the world of music and provided some fine friends. I loved it.
2. One of my first ever ‘jobs’ was for independent store Badlands, handing out flyers some 17/18 years ago. I worked two Saturdays and got paid in CDs. Only one of these CDs remain in my possession: “Senseless Things - Peel Sessions”, a trivial UK indie band performing for a legendary DJ - I am so very pleased to have possessed such good music taste at 14 : )
3. As I’ve grown older (and hopefully wiser) I’ve become much less enamoured with the concept of structured commercialism surrounding music. As the romanticism of physical product shackles dinosaurs to consumption, Radiohead (as far back as 2007) released “In Rainbows”, an album that could be purchased directly from the band for whatever the fan felt it was worth. Okay, perhaps this is a flawed business model but it certainly provokes a debate over what music is worth and who should decide its value. In 2010 Thom Yorke followed up this action with words - claiming that it is “only a matter of time” until the music business establishment “completely folds”. It turns out he might have been right all along, as international artists continue to leave major labels for management companies that deal with their affairs. Steve Albini once said that taking a percentage of an artist’s royalties is “an insult to the artist.” I would go further to claim that anyone between those who create the record (artists, producers and/or performers) and the consumer is peripheral to the consumption of music. Admittedly there is cultural capital in label association (the most effective ones operate as self-managed artistic collectives, which I think is a magnificent emergence) and independent music shops, but I believe this is to miss the crucial point of music and consider fashion over function. In these times, why should anyone other than the artist decide how much one should pay for their work?
4. I am aware of the potential irony of these statements considering I play in a covers band that does everything from The Backstreet Boys to Peter Andre (!) - so let’s not get confused. There is making money from the physical product (i.e. the ‘record’ which is what the retailer deals with) and making money from the music (i.e. the ‘recording’ which is the concept of the creation itself) - a very important demarcation. Whether it’s remixing, covers or sampling there is (quite correctly) a different conversation to be had about the ethics surrounding musicians making money from other music. To placate any sanctimonious torch-carrying protesters all the money/profit I stand to make from record sales goes to one of two places: the original artist (quite rightly) and charity. I do not make money off their records. Denniz PoP and Max Martin get theirs so don’t you worry…
5. Don’t get me wrong - I don’t hate record stores, I am simply adverse to any business primarily masquerading as anything other a commercial functionary. In all honesty I’m not even sure why this particular kind of trader is afforded any more protection than their peers. Ten years ago an artist relied on these labels and record stores. Now the recent fundamental change that humanity has undertaken - the internet - continues to empower the creative with control, yet we as consumers seem inexplicably unwilling to release ourselves from the structure that has grown up around the artists we love and the music we hold so dear to our hearts.
6. I’m a fan of music, not shopping.
Phew!
In order to consider what the future might hold for commercial record sales, first we must define the delineation of what constitutes an “independent” record shop and a “chain” record shop. One might define a chain store as having more than one shop, but what is it that makes them different? They use the same suppliers, they use the same banks, they both (usually) operate from commercial centres and they both rely on trade to sustain their activity. One might define an independent store by claiming it caters to the specialist music tastes and acting as a champion for new music - something you could argue the music press, radio and the internet have dominated for years now. Perhaps one might define them by the staff who are careful in stocking music of integrity and quality? This is by no means exclusive territory. When I worked at HMV (2002 > 2006) I’d argue that we had the best selection of music in town - and we really cared about what we stocked. Ordering was done by specialists in sections and our expertise and knowledge in these areas were valued (to a point) by the store’s management. We loved the fact that we could order in obscure and amazing records because the shop possessed the buying power to justify orders from smaller distributors and for a while, it was good.
Because of the purchasing power possessed by the store (indeed, the company), as buyers we could order in pretty much what we wanted - which we perceived as a strength over our competitors. If a customer wanted to get a ‘specialist’ record you would take a deposit, order from a distributor who would dispatch once they’d reached their minimum order value, then inform the customer once it had arrived. We could basically get anything and the process was far easier when you were regularly ordering greater amounts of stock from numerous distributors. These same records can now be obtained instantaneously with a few simple clicks and this has been the greatest (and most significant) impact to the specialist music consumer.
These shops, no matter what their philosophy or position (and like any other retail business that is not afforded the same cultural protection) need to make money - without it they simply cannot survive. Perhaps then it helps to look at the commercial sales side of the music industry as one machine rather than independent vs chain. We could look at this in a number of ways and ultimately use endless quotations and statistics to support our personal viewpoints, but the key transaction here remains between artist and fan - more specifically, who ultimately controls that value.
So - what am I trying to say? Basically one might claim that today’s news illustrates that the position of the independent record store is becoming as untenable as HMV’s and their fate is intrinsically and unavoidably linked. There are those who might foolishly welcome the downfall of such an institution, but it is a grim horizon for those who ply the same trade. These shops do not ‘protect’ and subsequently cannot ‘save’ the music industry - after all they don’t define it, they depend on it.
Even the most optimistic of economists will doubt that HMV’s 38% share of the High Street will be transposed directly onto their independent competitors. I have no doubt that initial trade will see an increase, but as production costs for physical product climbs, HMV’s administration has underlined one unquestionable fact of which we are all already aware: people are stopping buying records. I do not wish to sound uncaring, but is it the responsibility of the artist to keep these people in jobs? Is it our job as a consumer to propagate the mark up made by both retailer and distributor by purchasing from their stores? What tangible value is there to protect in these services anyway? I can’t answer in all honesty, but these questions will most certainly be addressed over the next decade.
The short term is bright for these stores with increased growth in sales and perhaps a bit more of a spotlight on the independent retailer, but the long term outlook remains bleak. As online purchasing and non-corporeal ownership continues to grow across all media, the purpose of a record shop becomes parallel to that of the print newspaper. We get our news through our phones and it’s the same for music - so why the middle man?
The majority now search for new music using the wealth or portals available in the palm of their hand - or simply follow what the hot girls/cool boys are listening to at school; in essence they have already found the new way to find music. The elevation of social media has created a perception that we are directly connected to our favourite bands and artists - one retweet and suddenly Katy Perry is your best friend. This will no doubt be reflected in the way we consume music: direct connection to the creator. This author sees nothing wrong with that at all : )
I don’t necessarily support the music industry, but I do support positive changes that enable and empower those creative people that span local bands to international artists in their ability to control the consumption and cost of their material.
After all, once you put aside the TV talent show types who pursue the ultimate fallacy that is fame ask yourself this: What artist of deserved stature, talent, originality or influence has ever claimed they made music for money?
Stephen Morris gives his opinion on the Top 10 bands in Gloucestershire for 2012!
Go on - give it a try. As much as I’m opposed to the loss of ‘proper’ Introducing, I am fair in my advocacy for promoting local music. BBC people if you read this, don’t use ‘potential audience’ figures to promote this change as this is rather misleading. In sound engineering parlance it’s the same as describing a speaker by its peak rating rather than RMS.
Ask your tech, he’ll know what that means.
Click on the picture to hear the program.
BBC is “full of shit” when it comes to supporting local and unsigned artists.
I’ve postponed the Cheltenham Festivals blog to bring you a piece of news that is utterly uninspiring and frustrating in equal measure:
We are losing BBC Introducing Gloucestershire
No preamble for this one - straight onto business.
NOTE BEFORE: IF YOU’RE A SENIOR BBC EMPLOYEE, PLEASE GO TO THE LAST SECTION OF THIS DOCUMENT TO SAVE YOU TIME
BUSINESS
I can only really discuss this in terms of how I perceive this will impact on the south-west but I imagine the situation to be repeated nationwide. I openly love the BBC and am grateful with my involvement with them over the years, but I cannot agree with this latest move. This blog is not aimed at the incredibly hard working staff of all Introducing shows - I think it’s fair to say you all do an amazing job. This is about the decisions made by your managers and how it impacts on musical communities throughout the UK.
A few years ago I met up with Rob Champion (a former BBC Gloucestershire employee) and we discussed establishing an Introducing show for the county. It was early days in my role as Music Network Developer and I’d managed to coordinate listings from around the county and procure students from the University to provide content for the show which Rob was to record for broadcast. Rob managed to get the show on the schedule and BBC Introducing Gloucestershire was born.
So it comes as no surprise I’m somewhat aggrieved we are losing this facility to the company that claims it is “Delivering Quality First” in the guise of a flacid PR exercise in downscaling.
Admittedly I knew about this some time ago - pretty much the same time the chaps at BBC Glos found out. The week of the announcement I was incidentally producing a BBC employee’s band and armed with this knowledge I addressed the situation directly with a simple question: “What’s happening to BBC Gloucestershire Introducing?”
His answer was foreboding.
“We’re making it better”
I knew from that second onwards that word had come from on high that we’d be losing “local” Introducing and moving to “regional” and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
In real terms we would inevitably be losing a critical service that has stoked the fire of local artists and musicians for the last three years or so. This change will establish yet another barrier between artist and exposure that devalues the purpose of the Introducing brand. Worse still this barrier will be established at the point it is most destructive to emerging artists.
For higher profile local artists Introducing is great forum to have their music played on one of the coolest brands created by the BBC. For new artists it is a golden gate that trades in the twin currencies of respect and recognition. I don’t know how many teenagers have sat friends and family around the radio late on a Saturday afternoon or sent iPlayer links to mates and/or that boy/girl they fancy - but I know a part of this is to bask in the glory associated with genuine radio broadcast on our beloved standard of standards, the Beeb.
BUT INTRODUCING PROMOTES LOCAL BANDS DOESN’T IT?
What the BBC is proposing (at least at the date of writing this blog) is to merge existing Introducing programming from local stations into a single regional program that is then rebroadcast through these different local radio stations at the same time. David Holdsworth, Controller of BBC English Regions conveniently skips over this fact in the press release:
“Having all the programmes on at the same time means that we will be able to give the Introducing programmes on each of our 39 stations a higher profile which in turn will benefit the local acts.”
No David, it won’t. What you are actually doing is sacrificing an essential community-based 1st tier service for a convenient rebranding that downscales your operation and promotes selectivity based on location. It won’t “benefit the local acts” simply because less people from each area will be broadcast on a show intended to cover a significantly larger area - no matter how long any new regional show is.
Spock would also question the logic behind this claim - “local acts” are called “local acts” because “local” people like them and they are popular in the “local” area. We could argue about the definitions of these boundaries but the fact is that people are simply not willing to travel very far to go and watch a local band.
Let’s not sugar coat it. For every Florence and the Machine, Two Door Cinema Club and Chipmunk you’ll get a Ting Tings. And for each of those you will get an abundance of equally awful and anodyne acts who drivel on about their feelings.
Perhaps those responsible at the BBC do not recognise (or they are simply unaware) of the critical importance within innumerable musical communities of appearing on this programs? Recognition from being played on one of the local shows is something that inspires young people to follow their creative pursuits - and keeps some not-so-young people’s dream alive… Forget your ‘big names’, for some it will be the only time they (or their music) are ever broadcast on radio. This can be such a huge factor in positively encouraging young people into creative pursuits as either a hobby or an associated career in the music industry that it simply cannot be ignored.
Some people think the music business is unscrupulous - I don’t - I think it’s fairly obvious to anyone it’s about making money. Like any good business it circulates around a product. If the product does well in test groups then investment is made to market it to the wider population, or sections thereof. The Introducing brand operates as a pseudo A&R department in this scenario: it has researchers who listen to the music, presenters who play it, managers who decide who ends up on the Introducing stages around music festivals and HoDs who deign whether someone is worthy of being promoted on a national level.
Basically, it’s the X-Factor with kudos.
This system acts as a wonderfully free opportunity for any private investor (read: record company) to cherry pick the artists they know people are responding to positively. At the end of the day why wouldn’t they? It’s like someone keeps finding all the best products in the UK, testing the market for viability of said product and then handing it directly to the already extremely rich man in the corner to go and make some more money off.
So there is in fact a contradictory element to the argument I propose. Introducing is effective in acting as an arbiter for consumption. Critically for me the BBC has failed to identify that Introducing offers much, much more than a simple “pathway to nowhere” for 99% of its supplicants who will never have professional music careers.
BUT THEY NEED TO SAVE MONEY, RIGHT?
“Think of the cost to the license payer! It’s time of austerity Andrew, surely this move makes sense!”
Don’t buy into this nonsense. Gloucestershire Introducing is allocated a single member of staff and the rest (majority) is done by (extremely) dedicated volunteers. As far as ‘services’ go it is essentially cost neutral and they know it.
SO WHAT’S NEXT?
Well, Jason Carter (Head of Live Music & Events & BBC Introducing) believes this is “a great time to celebrate all that BBC Introducing has achieved so far”
Why aren’t we celebrating it then by expanding this format to independent Introducings for all BBC local stations across the network? No offence intended Jason (I don’t know you - I’m sure you’re lovely) but with a job title like yours I am glad that you don’t really have too much to do with radio as you appear to be a bit unclear about it:
“This new dedicated Saturday night timeslot (sic) for all the BBC Introducing shows is great news and means that music fans, wherever they are, know when to tune into BBC Local Radio to discover the latest new music in their area with one single appointment to listen each week across networks.”
Firstly, isn’t 8pm on a Saturday night the time that the majority of the intended audience would/should be playing or attending shows? Is this just a glaring oversight? Or is it yet another smoking gun of bureaucratic process?
Ignoring the syntactical and grammatical inaccuracies of this statement let’s just tackle the single glaring factual one: What’s the point in standardising independent content over different geographical locations and audiences? BBC Local Radio broadcasts exclusively to different areas so what would be the point in standardising the time slot? Unless of course you were going to axe the actual BBC Local Radio Introducings and replace them with a network/regional show?
Oh, right.
Carter continues:
“It’s great to see these shows right at the heart of BBC Local Radio, continuing to build on the successful relationships with network radio”
Except they will no longer be at the heart of BBC Local Radio will they? They will be networked from a regional provider essentially dissolving the successful relationship you identify.
CONCLUSION TIME THEN IS IT?
Not really. I’ve tried to be objective when taking into account the considerable interest I have in this matter but it seems to me that integrating your local music content into regional programming is disingenuous at best and totally irresponsible at worst.
It sends a shudder down my spine to think that the ever increasing seepage of regional content into our local BBC radio station is starting to give them the shape and outlook of a commercial broadcaster such as Heart. This may seem a bit of a sweeping statement to make (especially for those who work for local BBC, I do not mean to offend you) but think about it - there is already at least some element of regional content included in your output and this is another step that is a frightening echo of the merger-upon-merger commercial radio has seen in recent years.
What’s next? I don’t want to see my local BBC radio station lose its position as a local information provider or news gathering source. I don’t want them to surrender more ground to an encroaching sense of austerity that will ultimately end up taking jobs and sacrificing quality all for the sake of crippling compliance rules, middle-mis-management and erroneously applied regulation.
These are personal concerns of mine that are indicators of an increasingly worrying trend of self-interested obedience - a trend upheld by compromising yes-men down the chain of command who are macerated by their own career ambitions.
The question I’d like to ask is what would have happened if this kind of bureaucratic infrastructure had existed when Florence or Chipmunk walked through the Two Door of Introducing? Proposed by local stations, these artists could have been ignored by a regional producer and substituted for a track from another local station to keep the figures for fair coverage balanced. Would it have been so passionately talked up by a presenter who was completely unfamiliar with their impact on their local music scene? Would the artists have even submitted themselves if they didn’t think they had a chance of being played because the show was broadcast in a faraway city with no connection to their own experiences of music and performance?
When we lose Introducing at a true local level, we will be losing what has become the ground floor for just about every young person with an instrument to get started in exposing a part of themselves in one of the most honest ways possible - music. For many, being broadcast on BBC Introducing is considered an achievable aspiration that is critical to an emerging career.
This is a position that the BBC has worked very hard to get into and it is a well-deserved one at that. I simply want someone to explain to me how these changes will make things better in any way.
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE BBC BOSS:
Hello scrollers, skippers and full readers!
If someone senior from the BBC manages to get directed to this blog I implore you to consider some simple facts before responding with the tired and uninteresting rhetoric I’ve heard previously from your colleagues:
1. Keep BBC Introducing local. You’ve established and built an enviable reputation of being the front door for many bands over the years. Don’t put that door three floors up and take away the ladder.
2. Do not forget what is on Page 1 of the BBC Public Purpose Remit (or the content that follows) that you are employed to uphold: “Representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities.” You have responsibilities that extend far beyond program output.
3. Ask yourself (and the person above you) who came first in this decision? The BBC and its funding policy? Or the local artists and musicians that will populate these shows and then one day go on to sustain your output?
December’s MAG is out!
Coming Up!
Listen to me bang on about covers, music, skiffle, reinvention and oral tradition on Claire Carter’s BBC Gloucestershire show this afternoon. This is my millionth time of being on a local radio show this year so you probably know what to expect…
