Nail in Singles coffin a little deeper

This weekend saw the first official singles chart to include Internet-downloadable music.

As much as it's a big confidence booster for the emerging distibution method, it's a worrying nail in the coffin for the venerable single - 7", 12" and CD - that's been a mainstay in the British record industry for over half a century, in one form or another.

Sure the format has taken it's knocks and the CIN - those people who officially make chart rules - don't seem to be able to figure out how to get more people to buy singles, but I'd like to think we can rescue the physical distribution model before the singles chart ends up being just like the States.

Link: NME story

MY VIEW: Just a side note, why does the CIN insist on music fans buying a single spanning two or three very very short discs at variable cost? I can end up spending more on a single than I do on the whole album, usually with the same version of a song spread over three or four formats.

Case in point being the new Nine Inch Nails single, "The Hand That Feeds You" released today. There's actually three pieces of music available - the single version, and two remixes. For some reason, it's taken Island 3 formats to release all these tracks (including having all three on the CD single), including 2 mixes on a 9" vinyl single, and 2 on a DVD single.

It's ludicrous when you get examples like Japan and the US where the few singles that are released are jam packed with enough goodies to sway fans to make the purchase.

Drum up interest with gimmicks?

With the release of the new Nine Inch Nails albums mere days away, the promotional stints to drum up interest in the album are coming full whack.

Not only will With Teeth be released on the new DualDisc format, lead nail Trent Reznor has now released lead single "The Hand That Feeds" in Apple's Garageband format, so fans can remix and deconstruct it to their liking. According to the readme file that comes with the .sit download (told you it was Apple-only), Reznor explains a few things:

"I've been interested in the idea of allowing you the ability to tinker around with my tracks - to create remixes, experiment, embellish or destroy what's there. I tried a few years ago to do this in shockwave with very limited results."

And here's info on what you can expect in the download:

"What I'm giving you in this file is the actual multi-track audio session for "the hand that feeds" in GarageBand format. This is the entire thing bounced over from the actual Pro Tools session we recorded it into. I imported and converted the tracks into AppleLoop format so the size would be reasonable and the tempo flexible."

Giving fans loops and samples isn't anything new, but it's always nice to see a band offering fans a little more than the usual remix, b-side, video, dreaded limited edition digipak combination for releases.

Now only if these bands would realise that the Mac population is really, really small that would be a cool thing.

Link: NIN.com File Download An early remix

Not surprised

Music could be consigned to the rubbish tip of recent memory if a recent report is to be believed.

Research group Nielsen Entertainment have released a study outlining where various entertainment products fit in the purchasing priority list for men and music comes in a paltry third. Leading the charge are video games and DVDs. More worrying for the record industry is that a large chunk of these game players are now over-40s.

Economically, of course, we will always spend more on video games and DVDs, as they are roughly £30 and £15 each respectively, whereas a CD can be had for about £9.

It's almost odds on that the RIAA and the BPI will use this red rag to issue more calls for lawsuits and to cry foul that piracy is killing the music business.

Nobody likes competition, but the least these two ostriches could do is take their heads out of the sand and realise that the entertainment landscape is not where it was in the 90s, when the competition was low-rent video game consoles with lacklustre games and the VCR.

These days, the PS2, X-Box, GameCube, DS, PSP, Gameboy and PC offer amazing value for money and the top name video games like "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" and "Halo 2" are making waves across the board, not just to the geeks who sit in their parents sitting room for weeks on end. They're also commanding advertising budgets that many indie record label would salivate over.

The other accomplice in the music downgrade, DVD, has revolutionised the way we view entertainment. Fuelling an explosion in the sales of Dolby Digital and DTS enabled home systems, the discs also feature a myriad of bonus material and extra features that makes a CD's bonus offer - a lyric booklet or pictures of the band, maybe - just that more pathetic.

Some record labels have attempted this by offering value-added bonus DVDs with CDs, but these efforts are as value-bare as a lyric-less CD booklet. A video, two or three live tracks and not much else. The DVD's 4.7GB limit barely gets a seeing to on many of these discs.

Sure the governing bodies of music can cry foul and sue everyone and anyone, but if they actually decided to see the competition for what they were and try to find ways of embracing the forms of entertainment people actually want, they'd be much better off.

What's in a word?

Late last week, ex-Happy Monday Bez was quite ecstatic because yet another Happy Mondays greatest hits album was being released on Monday and he was hoping the proceeds would lift him out of his bankruptcy.

So, Monday came and much to the surprise of probably everyone except those at London Records, "Greatest Hits" appeared on the shelves in shops across the land.

What's so odd about this? Well, given that the Mondays haven't released anything of any importance in over a decade, the decision to weave together a new collection of hits, mixes and misses seemed to be a strange idea for the record label.

Suffice it to say, the released that appeared on the shelves this past Monday was actually the same desperately released "Greatest Hits" that London released in 1999. Need more proof? Well, there's the 1999 copyright. How about the dead giveaway? NO RINGTONE ADS!

I'm torn between what is the most interesting element here. Either this reissue trying to be pawned off as a new release or the fact that it was reissued in the first place.

The Mondays played a gig with the Farm a couple of weeks back in Brixton and Bez was on some reality show months ago. The timing just doesn't seem to correlate with anything. It's almost like London were cleaning out their warehouse and decided it was high time to get rid of a load of Mondays Greatest Hits albums. Not even at budget price!

To add insult to injury, the original Mondays best of disc "Loads" (along with the bonus disc of mixes entitled "Loads More") was a much better deal than this recent (I'm talking 6 years ago here) release.

At least those of us that bought "Greatest Hits" six years ago don't have to fork out again for what could have been a disc "with new mixes" or "previously unreleased tracks" or "something new worth forking out for".

My money's safe this week.

Roxy Reuniting

I guess the news of a new Roxy Music reunion tour a couple of years was sorta big news, apart from the fact that it was a skeleton Roxy crew. Only Phil, Andy and Bryan had returned to the fold, accompanied by non-Roxy musicians.
Word out now is that not only are the full-on Roxy Music touring this summer, but they're also going into the studio. And when they say reunion, they mean it literally.
Founding member Brian Eno, who left after the band's second album is due to rejoin with the band almost 32 years after leaving. His involvement will apparently include touring and working on the band's new album, their first since 1982's brilliant "Avalon".
As Eno has divided the last three decades creating ambient music and producing albums for the likes of David Bowie and U2 (the latter with partner in crime, Canadian Daniel Lanois) it'll be interesting what influence his attendence will have on the band's new output.

Technology comes to the masses

Running on Wired's news site is a great article detailing how one of the internet's newest technologies is being used to promote new music.

For the South By South West (SXSE) music conference in Austin, Texas, organisers have managed to secure free tracks from around 750 bands to offer to the public. These tracks, in mp3 format, have been zipped up into one big 2.6GB BitTorrent file to be shared on P2P networks.

This allows massive downloads without the organisers having to run up massive bandwidth charges. Excellent.

The event also has several key applications that allow attendees to navigate the conference via their iPod.

Now before a showcase gig, you can see where the show will be as well as listen to a sample of the band to see if it's worth bothering in the first place.

It'll be interesting to see what the organisers for June's NXNE in Toronto have up their sleeves.

Comment: You have to had it to conferences like this and the indie labels who seem to be embracing new technologies and ideas, instead of trying to sue them out existence.

The promotion these bands will get is invaluable, but if the RIAA had their way, BitTorrent, MP3 and P2P in general would be as dead as Johnny Carson. Forward thinking? Not really.

Link: SXSE
Link: Wired news story

Pricing oddities and stuff

Upon hearing the news that Woolie's online shop has dropped the price of their downloads to 67p, I thought I'd go over to their website and take a looksie.

All in all, everything seems to be in order. Although, they purport to sell "singles" for 67p. What they actually mean is single tracks. You're not getting videos and b-sides and remixes for your sub-pound purchase.

Most albums are also priced at the more favourable £6.80, which - for a 10 track album - actually works out to 68p per tracks, but we won't bitch about a penny.

Funnily enough, checking out the new Lemon Jelly album, the site is still charging £9.35 for the downloadable version, even though you can buy each track seperately for 67p... and if you do, I'd suggest leaving off the first intro track, it's only 24 seconds and doesn't really do anything... that way too, you get the album for £6.03, saving a whopping £3.32 off the lazy "click one button to order the whole download album" price.

Link: Lemon Jelly and the price discrepancy