Category: Business

Who’s your daddy? (Downbeast – music blog)

From Jeff Gauthier, on the cool new Cryptogramophone blog, Who’s your daddy? (Downbeast – music blog):

“If most new commercially available jazz CDs sell between 600-1500 units, and the average break-even point is somewhere around 3000 units, how can independent jazz labels survive, let alone take chances on edgy or unknown artists?”

The trick is to make the CDs for less money. It’s all about figuring out your priorities. Does spending $1500 extra on super cool artwork make the music better? It just added 150 or more units to the break even point. To some people the visual art is a important as the aural art. That’s a valid point, so those folks might have to save some money someplace else.

I’ve been very lucky to have John Worthington, who produces my releases and does much of the technical audio work for the same money I get (which is the last money to come in). That method keeps up both interested in controlling the costs.

The future of recording good, boundary stretching music lies in a concept that I have subscribed to for some time, and that Jeff Gauthier states so well over at Downbeast:

“So, here’s a thought. What if the process of making CDs could be approached as a partnership? What if the artist and the label could agree to work together toward creative solutions where both sides are taking equal risks?”

That’s the only way it will work.

Apple criticized for embedding names, e-mails in songs

From C|Net:

…according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). The consumer watchdog group, which focuses on the Web, claims Apple has left information belonging to customers of the new iTunes Plus service exposed. Music purchased from iTunes Plus is embedded with unencrypted customer names and e-mail addresses.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

Apple has for a long time included a customer’s name and e-mail address within song files purchased from iTunes. But the personal information was encrypted. On Wednesday, the company launched iTunes Plus, a service that features music without controversial copy-protection software.

In these songs, names and e-mail addresses were unencrypted, according to Fred von Lohmann, an EFF attorney. He pointed out that data could easily be compromised if an iPod is lost or stolen.

First off, it is nice to see the beginning of the mainstream move away from useless DRM. As for the name and email, if Apple sold umbrellas and engraved your name and email address on the handle, it would be seen as wonderful customer service and added value. 😉 This way, if you lose your new Norah Jones download, and later find a very similar looking AAC file hanging out on your hard drive, you can make sure it is yours.

Promo budgets, blogs, and weird submissions

Either people are actually reading this blog, or someone thinks people are reading this blog. In the last week, I have gotten 7 or 8 unsolicited CDs in the mail, presumably sent to me with the intention that I will write about them. Some of them are very good, and things that I dig, and I will write about them. Others are good, but so far removed from the type of things I usually listen to or write about, that I really doubt that they will get any cyber-ink here.

It makes me wonder who decides where to send promo copies of CDs. As a maker of independent CDs, I have grappled with the costs of promoting releases. I really have trouble justifying sending out hundreds of CDs to writes/magazines/bloggers when 75% of them will not even get listened to, and much fewer than that will yield coverage. I definitely send stuff to people that I think will dig it, or people that ask for it, but the expense of sending a copy to every station on a list of dozens of jazz radio stations, or every blogger listed on AAJ just seems silly, especially since many of the more conservative stations and writers won’t dig the CD anyway.

I figure it costs about $5 to send a CD to a writer, including the actual cost of the materials, postage, and the time of whoever stuffs the envelope. If some of that money were spent having associates read the writer’s writing and parsing his/her taste, it seems that eventually some money would be saved. I think the key to success in the new music industry is to only spend necessary money. If I can make and promote a CD for a reasonable amount of money, I can expect to eventually sell enough of them to make it work. If I spend $7k on promotion, I’ve got to have a huge hit (in jazz terms) to make any money.

When I started writing this blog, it was because I wanted to share the things that I found that move me. That’s how fringe art gets known, through a network of people with similar tastes and trust in each others opinions. Getting CDs from promo people tilts that idea a bit, but I don’t mind people sending me copies of stuff that I’d like to hear (and may or ma not have bought on my own). So, I will try to be as diligent as possible in always letting you know where I got the music I am writing about. If I bought it somewhere, I will say that, and if I got a copy from a PR department, I will say that as well. I will try to at least mention anything that I get that I like. If it stinks, I will probably say nothing at all about it.

One other plus to all the free CDs is that I get to read some of the completely silly stuff that is written on the one sheets that accompany the CDs. The other day I got a copy of an Ella Fitzgerald CD that is to be released in July. It is being co-released by Concord and Starbucks. The following statement is on the one sheet:

Starbucks Coffee Company provides and uplifting experience that enriches people’s lives one moment, one human being, one extraordinary cup of coffee at a time.

I’m not sure what that has to do with Ella, but it did make me laugh out loud, and laughter is a good thing.

Ed Neumeister and Artist Share

I want to write a post on Ed Neumeister‘s Artist Share projects, and I am not sure if I should start with Ed or the Artist Share concept. Each subject warrants many words.

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I’ll start with Ed. My first exposure to Ed was through my favorite big band of my early adulthood, The Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra. The guys in that band were my heros. Real working NY pros. In the late summer of 1990, I was in NY for a week visiting my friend Andy, who lived on Long Island when not rooming with me in New Orleans. I heard Ed in a quartet at Visione’s one night, then a few nights later with Mel’s band at the Vanguard. (I don’t think they had yet gone to the Vanguard J.O. name, even though Mel had passed away earlier that year.) That night at the Vanguard I asked Ed if he was available for a lesson. The next day I took the train to the town he lived in (Croton-on-Hudson as I recall), and Ed picked me up at the train station and took me to his house, where I got way more than an hour’s worth of a lesson.

We dealt mostly with practice routine. This was Ed’s suggestion. He said if we would have been in a situation where the lessons would be recurring that he could be more specific, but since this was a one shot, we would cover the most important stuff, which is organizing and focusing your practice. We also hit some improv stuff and I asked lots of general kind of “how do you make it in NY” type questions. Ed was honest and sincere, and very helpful and encouraging. That lesson still shapes the way I practice and teach.

He also gave me some interesting advice on moving to NY. He said that if my goal was to make a living playing music, then I should come on up. There was work to be had. Then he said if I wanted to play creative music that I should look at other places too, because in NY Ron Carter or Freddie Hubbard are trying to get booked also, and if the club owner has a choice between me and Freddie…

I never did move to NY. It has worked out ok for me so far.

In recent years I have become fascinated with trying to discern business models that will work for modern creative artists. In an recent internet forum discussion of piracy and DRM, my good friend trombonist David Gibson made the point that fans that feel like they can develop a relationship with the artist are less likely to pirate that artist’s recording, because there is a face associated with it, not just a record label monolith.

This is the basis of the Artist Share model. Taking advantage of internet capabilities to allow the listener to see and experience aspects of the artist and the artist’s process that can be experienced from a CD and its accompanying liner notes. When you buy in, you become a participant, and the different packages are called participant offers. I have become a participant on a few offers. The most basic level is pretty much like buying the CD. You get the CD in the mail, and access to some online goodies, and it costs about the same as buying a CD in an expensive national chain store, but you get the goodies too.

I bought Ed’s Reflections CD this way, and also bought a couple of Ingrid Jensen Artist Share CDs at a live performance, and they came with a code to enter to enroll in the participant stuff online. It is a pretty slick system. The participant content ranges from lead sheets and podcasts to video commentary and recording session footage. Ed has some very frank discussion of his career and motivations on one of his audio conversations. It is quite insightful.

One possible drawback to the Artist Share system is that sometimes the amount of stuff can be overwhelming. Some of it is streamable only, so it ties you to your computer, and I don’t always have the time to fully explore everything that is available. I guess too much of a good thing is still good. To wander off path for a minute, I wonder how appealing Artist Share is to non-musicians. I think all of this inside info is great, but does Joe Blow jazz fan care about a leadsheet to the tunes on the CD? Is there a Joe Blow jazz fan that isn’t a musician? Can we survive with only other musicians as our audience? Are we already doing that?

Sorry, I’ll try to get back on track.

Ed’s newest project is called the NeuHat Ensemble. I was sent a recording of this group from the most recent IAJE conference. This is a very interesting group. Ed composes the music and conducts, but doesn’t play trombone. It is kind of a big band with strings and more interesting woodwinds, but that description is too simplistic. Jazz is definitely the foundation of the music, but there are lots of shapes and colors that come from other areas. Improvisation is prevalent, and the improvisers are good. The studio CD should be great. It is being made possible through Artist Share participation. There are some very cool participant offers, including composition or improvisation correspondence lessons. Go here to see all the offers.

Monk Institute announcement @ Loyola

Today I had the pleasure of attending the standing ovation fest that was the Announcement of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz relocation of its college level program to Loyola University New Orleans. As an alum of Loyola, this good news for me, because my degree’s value just increased noticeably due to my alma mater having a cool new roommate. As an adjunct faculty member at Loyola this greatly increases my chances of running into Herbie Hancock or Wayne Shorter in the cafeteria…or maybe it doesn’t.

The first part of the ceremony was the regular “guys in suits introducing each other.”

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There were some encouraging remarks, especially in terms of how the Monk Institute sees its role in revitalizing New Orleans. Herbie Hancock put it well: “When jazz flourishes in New Orleans, New Orleans will flourish too.”

Terence Blanchard spoke passionately about the role of music educators in his life. He repeated some good advice he received years ago from Alvin Batiste. “The easiest thing in the world is to play like Coltrane. The hardest thing is to play like yourself. Then you are open to rejection.” Terence also related the closing of a story that Wayne Shorter told him. “It takes courage to be happy.”

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The next class for the Institute’s college program was introduced and they played “Just Friends.” Next they were joined by Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Terence Blanchard, and Thelonious Monk, Jr. on “It Don’t Mean a Thing.”

The whole ceremony was positive and it gave me a new ray of hope for New Orleans. Hopefully we can stay in this positive light.

My apologies for the crummy camera phone pics.

DJA out in blaze of glory (at least for a minute) and home jazz recording

Darcy is putting his Secret Society blog on a bit of a hiatus. He’s acting like he has to actually do some work or something. His most recent post however links to enough stuff to keep you reading until May anyway. I won’t link to all of it, just go over there and see for your self.

One discussion that I would like to add to is the one about home recording as it relates to jazz. It started with Daniel Melnick, who writes at Soundslope. He wrote:

What it really made me think about and wonder is if jazz has moved towards having more home based recording environments, as many rock musicians and producers have, and if it hasn’t, why is that the case? Recording technology keeps getting cheaper, so why is the studio even in the equation? I wonder if it has something to do with the technical difficulties of recording jazz. I would assume, based on my own rudimentary knowledge of microphones and recording technology, that making a good jazz recording requires a higher level of mastery than the average home recordist possesses. Nevertheless, I think it makes sense for jazz artists to look beyond the traditional studio environment as a means of making records if there is really value in being able to spend more time recording.

Then DJA replied:

A few factors that may partially explain why home-recorded albums don’t happen more frequently in jazz: [1] Lo-fi, as an aesthetic, lacks widespread acceptance in jazz circles — when you’re recording acoustic instruments, there really is no substitute for a good recording engineer using good mics in a really good space. [2] The buy-in and setup costs for a home studio, while falling, are still well beyond the means of many jazz musicians, especially young artists … [3] In New York, at least, many if not most musicians do not live in spaces where they can play (especially when there is a drummer invovled). [4] As a corollary to [3], many New York musician apartments are barely large enough to serve as functional living spaces as it is. Where are you going to put the home studio?) [5] The number of home-recorded commercially-released nonjazz CDs is vastly exaggerated — unless you count things like Prince records as “home recorded,” which is obviously absurd. The overwhelming majority of successful and semi-successful albums are still cut in professional recording studios.

To me the biggest issue is that you can’t record jazz one player at a time. I could pretty easily cut a pop tune on the gear I already have here in my house, especially if I used programmed drum sounds, and I don’t have a huge setup here. It would be much harder to do a jazz record, because I can’t have the bass player play, then track the sax, then the trombone, etc. It is also very hard to engineer and play any sort of session, and that is just magnified on a jazz session. There are two very different types of mental focus required, and they almost cannot exist concurrently. If I were doing a home CD with my rock band one of the other guys could engineer while I laid my parts.

I have done one album completely DIY on my laptop with two mics, but it is a duet album with only trombone and guitar. Not having to record drums makes DIY much easier. It is a download only release, and you can check it out here. Interestingly, that album is the only project that I have done that was in the black in any sort of reasonable time after its release, because it cost nada to make.

NewMusicBox : New Music Economics (Part 2): The Malady Lingers On

NewMusicBox: “New Music Economics (Part 2): The Malady Lingers On”

This is a very interesting look at the economics of performance.

In 1918, Igor Stravinsky composed The Soldier’s Tale, a new-music/theatre piece designed for a performance tour; it was initially unsuccessful and lost money. In 1976, Philip Glass premiered his own theatrical production, Einstein on the Beach; it was quite successful, playing to capacity audiences on both sides of the Atlantic. Nevertheless, it also lost money. (Glass wrote that during Einstein’s brief, sold-out run at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, the deficit was $10,000 a night.)

What happened? Stravinsky had the misfortune of seeing his planned tour cancelled due to a worldwide influenza outbreak. Glass fell victim to a subtler ailment: Baumol’s cost-disease.

Check out Part I of the series here.

(Via artsJournal.)

Noise complaints could silence jazz at King Bolden’s

New Orleans CityBusiness — The Business Newspaper of Metropolitan New Orleans: “Noise complaints could silence jazz at King Bolden’s”

Actually, they already have, at least temporarily. I was quoted in this piece.

“If we start closing the places where we can be creative and practice our art over stupid stuff it makes you want to leave,” said trombonist Jeff Albert, a King Bolden’s regular. “Before the place was King Bolden’s it was a gay strip bar/disco club. How can having a jazz band be a downgrade from a gay strip club/disco bar?”

I just want to clarify that if it had been a straight strip club disco bar, my point would be the same. Either way it would have been louder than an acoustic jazz group with no PA. Leo Watermeier, the same moron that has been busting WWOZ’s balls for years, had this to say later in the piece:

Watermeier said he doesn’t lament the loss of another jazz club in New Orleans.

“I don’t think there’s a huge market for more jazz places,” he said. “Even Donna’s struggles. It’s mostly a tourist thing. Locals don’t go sit and listen to jazz bands.”

Every time I have played King Bolden’s the crowd has been mostly if not all locals. King Bolden’s has been the site of some really great music. Vibrations that can make the world a better place. I’ve blogged about a few of them.