Jesse Cannon, the man behind Cannon Found Soundation Recording Studios (Man Overboard, The Menzingers, Transit, Lifetime) and Musformation, is back for a brand new Industry feature in our ongoing series. Jesse’s back in his usual format this week to tackle cancelled music festivals, Rdio, MTV, Live Nation, and more. It’s a short but good one, so read up below!

The UK is experiencing an epidemic of cancelled music festivals. As the list hits the dozen mark we begin to wonder, what is going on? Oversaturation of the market? Englishmen using moshpits as dental care? Or are people just finally coming to their senses that dehydration and an MDMA hangover while Skrillex gives you a headache with his music just isn’t worth paying for? It really turns out the economy and competition from the big festival promoters are just too much for the smaller festivals to handle. It’s OK we’re sure Coachella will be three weekends this coming year. 

Rdio announced a new compensation model for when bands get their fans to subscribe to the service. Despite the fact that these guys run a tight and smart ship, this proposal fell flatter than Anthony Kiedis’s vocals. While the offer is generous at $10 a subscriber, it seems many are still concerned that the service basically gives away the artists music at a unbearable rate of compensation. I might say that begging panhandler musicians can’t be choosers.

A new service called Ovation launched this week that offers a great service to bands where they can sell a recording of the show a fan just attended right from a kiosk installed in the venue. This gives a great new opportunity for bands to capitalize on fans post show buzz and fans a great way to remember a great time of their life. No cynical comment I am actually impressed.

MTV now has a award on their O Award show for “Best Online Fan Outreach”. The nominess do include quite an impressive list of great ideas on marketing to fans. Sadly, I don’t think Jonny Craig is eligible for the laptop incident, nor are any of the bands who intentionally leaked n00dz to Is Anyone Up. Robbery.

Read More

Jesse Cannon, the man behind Cannon Found Soundation Recording Studios (Man Overboard, The Menzingers, Transit, Lifetime) and Musformation, is back for a brand new Industry feature in our ongoing series. Jesse changed it up a little bit this week to mainly focus on the incredibly interesting story of Amanda Palmer, an established musician who recently launched a Kickstarter due to being labeless and has completely shattered her goal. It’s created a very interested discussion amongst the industry, and Jesse does a great job of covering it. Check out the sixth feature below and be sure to come back every two weeks for more!

So listen, some big things happened in the music industry since we last spoke - TopSpin and TuneCore announced a partnership to make it easier to get your music everywhere, The Orchard acquired IRIS, and it looks like Facebook is drawing a line in the sand over piracy by kiciking Grooveshark to the curb. While all of this is well and good and interesting far more seismic events are occurring in the music business that are as our Vice President likes to say a BIG F**CKING DEAL. I am talking a music business event akin to when Joffrey Lanister grabbed the crown in Game of Thrones and the little guy took power. While that was a big day, we know the real action will go down when a super little guy like Tyrion Lanister can rise up to the top, this day is still a big deal for the little guys out there, just not the day where the dwarves are ready to shine yet.

The castle storming I am speaking of is DIY artist, Amanda Palmer, who is presently labeless, launched a record breaking Kickstarter last week and at present time has raised nearly $650,000 in just 11 days to fund a tour, record and art book through the crowdfunding site. So while you may shrug your shoulders and not get why this is a BIG FREAKING DEAL! I am here to tell you who this is a big crumble in the castle of the major label system that we have all grown tired of.

Training
Music fans are not the quickest evolving animals and while they evolve faster than most southerners brains seem to come around to social issues that the rest of us get (<cough>North Carolina<cough>), it still takes time for music fans to trust new technologies or even get used to purchasing music in a new way. For example, you probably know some luddite who still buys CDs just cause they are set in their old fashioned ways, or even people who are still buying records on iTunes instead of just streaming them on Spotify or Rdio.

The fact is it is a rare breed of music fan who immediately jumps to the latest ways of purchasing music the second they happen. It takes time to convert fans and for them to see they could have it better or different before they come around to changing their music purchasing ways. The way much of this evolution often happens is by either seeing the advantages of the new way of purchasing music or an artist they are passionate about leads them to this new format.

Read More

Jesse Cannon, the man behind Cannon Found Soundation Recording Studios (Man Overboard, The Menzingers, Transit, Lifetime) and Musformation, is back for a brand new Industry feature in our ongoing series. In this week’s feature, Jesse tackles the Tupic hologram, a Spotify and Coca Cola partnership, iTunes vs Amazon, Google Music, and much more. Check out the fifth feature below and be sure to come back every two weeks for more!

The biggest news of the week is that right around Easter time we raised a man from the dead and just like Jesus he was black. That’s right Tupac lives, sadly, only in holographic form. At Coachella Dr. Dre brought out a hologram of Tupac to perform a pieced together performance. The great show Pensado’s Place did a fantastic interview with the guy who did the technical side to editing together past audio clips of Pac to make it realistic. The real news however is we are all now cursed with the fact that there will be countless acts cashing in on reunion tour where they perform with hologram versions of dead members. TLC are already plotting doing this with Left Eye and I am sure some asshole is currently plotting doing it with The Beatles (anything is better than the idea of their children all touring together). That’s right, we’re screwed.

It is no news there has been a huge absence in your life ever since Nicki Minaj deactivated her Twitter and lost 11 million followers. After her fans made fun of some bad decisions she threw a bit of a fit and deactivated her account, causing many teenage meltdowns. The lesson to be learned here is just cause you are on Twitter does not mean you need to make it personal. Plenty of people stick to just tweeting the news. If you can’t handle the deep personal digs of people constantly saying SRSLY at your every move, just link it to your blog. Alas, you can come off that cliff, she’s back on Twitter.

Spotify and Coke have partnered up to give music Universal Access! I know, since Sean Fanning is involved you figured this is no news at all since obvious him and COCAINE partnered up lonnnnnggggg agooooo. You are mistaken this is the soda company and the real news is no one still knows what this means two weeks after the service announced this partnership and a BILLION DOLLARS IN REVENUE despite not turning a profit.

So, ugh, Reddit is trying to write a pop hit by crowdsourcing it. Shockingly it’s not about cute cats or a bunch of Ron Paul fans complaining about marijuana laws. The concept is simple, all of the musically inclined folk on Reddit will help write the song and since it will share the tastes of the crowd it should obviously be popular. A great idea we will see if it actually gets any traction.

Read More

Jesse Cannon, the man behind Cannon Found Soundation Recording Studios (Man Overboard, The Menzingers, Transit, Lifetime) and Musformation, is back for a brand new Industry feature in our ongoing series. In this week’s feature, Jesse tackles the Instagram buyout, LiveNation kickbacks, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Axl Rose, and much more. Check out the fourth feature below and be sure to come back every two weeks for more!

The biggest news of the past two weeks was of course Instagram. Not only was the service bought by Facebook, it also launched an Android version! This means you can now follow all of your favorite bands on the service and see all the pictures they post of their adorable pets. I am looking at you, The Swellers. 

In absolutely shocking news, the really honest and full of integrity people at LiveNation were receiving kickbacks (read:bribes) in order to promote at New Jersey venues (corruption in New Jersey????). This is bad news for a corporation who has legal investigations coming at them from every direction. With any luck we will be rid of their disgusting practices and the music industry can once again go back to what it once was. A place where conmen and cheats worked for less monopolistic institutions. 

Jimmy Iovine has said that streaming music is “inadequate” and is said to now be planning an alternative. Let’s hope that whatever it is, it sounds a lot better than those horrible Beats by Dre headphones he makes. 

“Weird Al” Yankovic is suing Sony for 5 Million in back royalties. Apparently no one has told him since the YouTube era parody songs are a dime a dozen and the value of his product has gone way downhill.

Coachella is this weekend! You can stream it on YouTube too! Sadly there is no camera on all the Bro Step guys dry heaving from MDMA dehydration.

Axl Rose has said “Thanks but No Thanks” to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for inducting him in as part of Guns N’ Roses. Some blame his new girlfriend, Lana Del Ray, while others just see this as Axl trying to prove his true legacy. The last rockstar who was able to get away with being a total selfish asshole to his fans instead of having to tweet at fans and kiss their ass all day just to get them to show up at a show. Love live Rock N Roll!

Read More

Jesse Cannon, the man behind Cannon Found Soundation (Man Overboard, Transit, Lifetime) and Musformation, is back for a brand new Industry feature in our ongoing series. In this week’s feature, Jesse tackles major label mergers, Facebook for bands, ReverbNaiton, Best Buy, Spotify, and much more. Check out the third feature below and be sure to come back every two weeks for more!

Presently we are awaiting the day that Universal becomes a big dopey Deathstar of a major label as it acquires EMI (fun fact: they are selling their Christian and Classical catalog to finance the deal, aka Jesus is paying for this sin too). This would mean it would own 40% of the music market (that number could be debated down to about half, depending how you calculate it), bringing many people to fear that this could be a monopoly. Seeing how this reduces the players in the major label game to 3, it seems this is getting close, along with the inevitability that another major label will swallow one making it a duopoly. While this may not make them a monopoly, their argument that piracy is what they consider their competition is a little silly and this could bring about unfair bargaining tactics with services like Spotify and Rdio, making music buyers have to bare the brunt of these silly negotiations. Not much good can come of this merger, but in all reality it is totally inevitable.#OccupyUniversal? Oh nevermind. 

Facebook now makes it so that every band has to have their landing page be their Timeline instead of a page with their music on it. This deals a severe blow to many bands who hoped Facebook would become what MySpace once was. Bands will now have to hope music fans learn to click on the right tab to hear their music. Sad decision on Facebook’s part.

With that bad news, I have good news! Everyone has wondered when the Internet ghost town MySpace will kick the bucket and get a viable replacement. It seems that day may have come as ReverbNation has launched a new look that really facilitates what MySpace used to do for bands and much, much, much more. The site has pushed out a new look that avoids many of the head pounding idiocy that ran rampant at MySpace and gives bands a great, free landing page for music fans to get a feeling for their music. A giant step for music kind.

Read More

We kicked off our bi-weekly column called The Industry With Jesse Cannon a few weeks ago, and we’re stoked to bring it back. Jesse Cannon has been a great friend to PropertyOfZack for years now and has produced bands like Man Overboard, Transit, and Lifetime out of his Cannon Found Soundation in addition to having a great website called Musformation, which fueled the fire to reboot his Contributor Blog feature into this new special feature. In this week’s feature, Jesse tackles Google Play, AT&T, a possible iTunes streaming service, Rdio, and much more. Check out the second feature below and be sure to come back every two weeks for more!

Google Music is now known as Google Play. You are probably wondering what I am talking about since, like Google+, no one really is using this service. With that said, there are some cool things about it. It, for one, is an easy way to give away music for free and DIY bands get on it really easily. As for fans, well it’s just another service that doesn’t have much all the other music services don’t. Hopefully this is one of Google’s “slow-grow” successes.

While many of the dinosaur bands like Metallica and Coldplay shun streaming music services like Spotify and Rdio - the smart and innovative lads in The Temper Trap have released their new record exclusively on Spotify. This is a smart move since it will make their new release even more social. This band got their following doing many smart social moves and not using conventional advertising and this move is surely a smart one many other groups will be mimicking.  

Radiohead have bucked convention again (and I am not talking about Thom Yorke’s awful “Dad Ponytail”) and started to work with the service TicketTrust. This service ensures when a fan really can’t attend a show they can sell it for a reasonable price to another fan. This takes away the horrible scalping and second hand ticket pains and allows fans to be able to listen to depressed songs with annoying atonal keyboards, errr I mean see their favorite bands without having only the fans who can afford crazy prices be able to attend.

AT&T has found another way to make their users hate them. They are now imposing even larger data limits on their customers which will subsequently also make them shy away from bandwidth hogs. This throws a big wrench in the idea behind streaming music services since it will have many users shying away from them and going back to illegal downloading.

Read More

Jesse Cannon has been a great friend to PropertyOfZack for years now and has produced bands like Man Overboard, Transit, and Lifetime out of his Cannon Found Soundation. Jesse also has a great website called Musformation, which fueled the fire to reboot his Contributor Blog feature into a special series of blogs called The Industry With Jesse Cannon. In the bi-weekly column, Jesse will talk about select stories that have been floating around the music industry for the past few weeks. We cover music news every day on the site, but it’s important to us to highlight some of the happenings in the industry as well, and we’re stoked to have Jesse put his own spin on it. Check out the first feature below and be sure to come back every two weeks for more!

Kickstarter now funds more projects than the National Endowment of the Arts. A huge turning point for people and an immense statement on the growing power of crowdfunding. This is also a relief for those of us who worried our tax dollars only go to supporting Opera instead of bribing bands into reunion shows, maybe the NEA will take the hint and start funding all those experimental iPhone cases all over Kickstarter. 

Adele is the first artist to go double platinum on iTunes. Considering this is the only record that has shown major record sales in years, it isn’t a shock. What is shocking is I thought the only place people bought her music was online at Starbucks?

iTunes has announced a new section entitled Mastered for iTunes. As you probably guessed, this is another major label scam to try to get people to buy their favorite albums again and pretend they can hear a difference in them as they listen out of laptop speakers. 

Pinterest is one of the fastest growing websites in the history of the Internet. If you have not come across it yet, it is basically a place where you can make “pinboards” of everything you are interested in. This could be YouTubes of your favorite songs or a bunch of pictures of band T-Shirts you like. Bands can also use it to bond with their fans.

Shockingly, major labels are still trying to screw artists out of as much money as possible. EMI records has been pushing a new work for hire law that will lock its artists into an even more gruesome royalty and payment plan. A great move by fat cats who still don’t get that they need to rehabilitate their image if they want people to pay for music ever again. 

Read More

It’s only been a week, but we could not be happier to welcome back Jesse Cannon for his second Contributor Blog feature. Last week we debuted sections of Jesse’s music industry-focused book, and this week Jesse was kind enough to write up a little blurb on the necessities of always being available to your fan base if you are a band. Make sure to read up and enjoy!

From Jesse Cannon:

You should never be giving your fans permission to support you. If a fan has the ability to obtain your music through illegal means, you need to give them the chance to get it through sanctioned means. Whether this is selling your music or at least getting a Email, Like or Tweet for your music. In the past I wrote about how Man Overboard handled their leak and because we immediately made it available to our fans we earned the respect and devotion of our fans. It is a win-win situation when you make your record available the second it leaks and do not present your fans who want to support you with the tough choice of getting your music immediately by stealing it, or waiting to pay you for it. This dilemma never works out for the band and is a position you should never put your fans in.

Read More

PropertyOfZack could not be more stoked to welcome Jesse Cannon as our newest Contributor. Many of you may know Jesse as Man Overboard’s manager as well as producer, but he has also worked on records with Saves The Day, Senses Fail, and The Cure, among many others. While that’s half of the reason we’re excited about having Jesse on board, the other half is that he is writing a book called The DIY Guide To The New Music Business that will be in stores this year. Within the book Jesse gives great advice for bands and business people in the industry alike. 
In his first Contributor Blog, Jesse was actually kind enough to give us a few excerpts from his book for everyone to read. It’s a fantastic read and there will be much more to come from Jesse so enjoy it all below! 

What You Are Up Against:

The Tyranny Of Dead Ideas
Labels and management companies have tried it a million times. They spend countless time and money on something that just isn’t that great and no one cares. A group will get promoted to death with tons of money poured into them but it never seems to go anywhere because the band does not have the recording and songs to back it up. They may get a little flash in the pan fame but in the end the artist is forgotten in no time and you end up meeting them five years later waiting tables at a cafe in Venice, bitterly reciting the lunch specials every afternoon. We can all think of a group whose posters we once saw everywhere and yet somehow they ended up going nowhere.  Odds are this was because they were promoting something where the songs and recording weren’t quite up to par with marketing.

Musicians love to think that if there is enough promotion and muscle behind them, anything that is put out will get popular. This myth is often derived from when we hear a band that is so bad that we can’t believe anyone likes it. And while hard work can get a band some popularity, it is never going to get them lasting fans and a career in music. Every time the major labels spend countless dollars on posters and radio for a band that flops, the idea of money equals a career in the industry is disproved. Just because you and your friends don’t like it, doesn’t mean people will buy anything - it just means you don’t understand the appeal of it. The second you realize this, you will no longer have an excuse for your own failures or a justification for not trying hard enough, by thinking it is all a game of money. That theory is sooo 1999.

Read More