“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.”

One of the best and most misused ‘quotes’ about the music industry, allegedly from Hunter S Thompson’s book “Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ’80s”

But David Emery at About.com dug around and sourced the correct quote from the book here:

“The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.”

Thanks David.

Google is broken this morning, EST 10.18am.

Was looking around for Pro Tools 8 M Boxed/LE prices this AM and headed to Google search to check the shopping comparison for the iLok USB key. Surprised to find that the manufacturers site had been tagged with the dreaded Google malware ‘kiss of death’ page. Searching around for other terms brought up the same results.

Even Google’s own paid shopping links were being redirected to the malware page. Last gasp try to search for my own music as 99th Floor Elevators. Every search result for that term got the malware redirect including the link to my video on YouTube.

Headed to Twitter to see what people are finding.

Breaking:What’s The Matter With Google? (Geekbrief.TV)
The Day Google Broke (The Next Web)
Google Broken (Google News Search)

I’ve been using Twitter ‘seriously’ (I’m not sure how you measure that) for a few months now but I was a slow starter as I previously mentioned here.

I think at first the problem for me is that it just seemed like it was going to be another web 2.0 novelty that’d I’d quickly tire of and abandon after a while. I did abandon my Twitter profile leaving myself hanging with less than ten followers and half a dozen posts.

Not for the first time, I was wrong. There are just so many tech and music people ‘twittering’ it kind of reminds you of all the Google euphoria when the search engine was so ubiquitous that ‘to Google’ became a verb.

What helped me a lot was seeking out the help of a bunch of people that did ‘get it’ by searching Google (as always). I thought I’d gather together a bunch of the best online blog posts and articles that I found in my research.

How To Use Twitter For Music Promotion (About.com) Twitter.

About.com Music Careers writer Heather McDonald is always very concise in her writing, unlike me. Once signing up for Twitter Heather recommends, “looking for fellow music types. Music fans, journalists, artists, labels, etc – these are the people you want to follow you.” She continues.

“Twitter can be a great way to not only keep fans informed about your news but it can also make them feel closer to the whole process when you tweet about things you’re working on as you’re doing them. The trick is not to go too far and overload people.”

(more…)

I mentioned the free music as viral marketing thing in an earlier post and thought I’d expand on it here.

I’ve just uploaded a bunch of some of the earlier versions of the 99th Floor Elevators, ‘Hooked’ for free download via MiniNova distribution. Think of it as an experiment to see if this has any effect on raising the profile of the 99th Floor Elevators in expectation of new material later this year and newer remixes of ‘Hooked’ also coming from Suesse Records.

Its all packaged as a Torrent and you’ll get five remixes and the original promotional video of ‘Hooked’ that was broadcast on MTV way back when. You can see the video on YouTube (see Elevators blog post here).

The audio files are all 192kbps MP3′s and the mixes included are:

Hooked Classic Remixes

Tony deVit Classic Trade Remix. This was the one that really made things fly for the 99th Floor Elevators, taking the humble white label original mix and stretching it into a near ten minute arms in the air club monster. Much credit must be given to Tony’s low profile engineer/co-producer Simon Parkes.

Originally a national top 30 hit in the UK before being re-issued as part of a Tripoli Trax double twelve inch remix package.

KillerHurts Remix.  DJ James Nardi and production partner Julian Dwyer, took chunks of inspiration from the OD404 and Pete Wardman remixes, added their own nails and came up with probably the perfect hard-house mix ever. Available on one sided 12 inch too if you’re lucky enough to find one.

Paul King Remix. Paul basically re-invents/updates the TDV mix for the 21st century with a monster synth riff from the Gods 2.30 minutes in that’ll have arms reaching for the sky. Previously available only as a very hard to find one sided 12inch white. Over nine minutes long.

OD404 Remix. Possibly my personal favorite mix and one I never tire of. Managed to take a Euro house gay anthem and turn it into the Prodigy with kick drums. Awesome.

Phlash Pop Edit. Only ever seen on a very limited release Tripoli Trax white label vinyl 12 and later on a CD single. Phlash! were ex-Tripoli A&R guy and DJ Steve Hill and engineer Mick Shiner (aka Nylon) and if you like your dance bouncy and radio friendly this is the version for you. Infectious stuff.

If you prefer the traditional route of MP3 download then you can grab each MP3 on my Drop.io page where you can either stream or download each track before deciding on the Torrent option.

I use and recommend UTorrent for my Torrents. Its less than half a meg download and spyware free. Install if you don’t already have a Torrent client.

Go to the ‘Hooked’ Torrent download link here. It’ll automatically open your Torrent client and you’ll get a pop up box so you can select which mixes you want and which you don’t want, if you don’t want the whole bunch. Click OK when you’re done and that’s it.

The files are very well seeded (well over 100 seeds as I write) so it’ll take something like 15 minutes to download the whole 74mb collection, depending on your connection speed. There’s a U Torrent beginners guide here and details on MiniNova Torrent distribution here if you’re considering getting some of your own tracks out and about ultra quick.

I uploaded the Hooked files to Mininova lunch time yesterday, by the time I’d left work five hours later Google had already indexed ’99th Floor Elevators Torrent’ and it was being seeded by users. A day later the package has over 100 seeders which means excellent download speed and availability.

Related Links

Mininova Content Distribution (Mininova.org)
Hey Content Producers, Get In The P2P Torrent Cloud (Lx7.ca)
Embracing The Torrent Of Online Video (BBC)
Thoughts On BitTorrent Distribution For A Public Broadcaster (NRKBeta)
Why You Must and How to Implement a Free Song Strategy (UnsprungMedia.com)

• Does Your Music Have Value?
  This post was originally written as a comment on Andrew Dubber’s New Music Strategies blog recently where he asked “Why give music away for free?”
  My work involves listening to a lot of new music by a lot of independent artists, who have wildly differing attitudes regarding the value of their own music.
• 7 Secrets to Getting Your Next Job Using Social Media-Mashable.com
  Between current economic conditions and the technological evolution of the Internet, the traditional approach most job seekers have taken in the past is no longer viable.
  The approach — developing a resume and cover letter, locating jobs on and submitting your resume to corporate sites and job banks, and crossing your fingers in hopes of receiving a call from a hiring manager — is, for the most part, a thing of the past.
• How to downsize your social network portfolio | Webware – CNET
  I'm as guilty as the next person for having a social network portfolio that's too big. Aside from my Twitter account, I belong to Plurk and Identi.ca, and although I use Facebook most often, I still have MySpace and Hi5 accounts.
  But now that 2008 has passed and it's time for us to evaluate what we did last year and try to improve upon that for 2009, why don't we start by cleaning out our social network portfolio and start using only those services that we like best in each category? After all, spending more time on multiple services isn't nearly as rewarding as getting more quality time with the best services, right?

• 6 Social Search Engines to Start 2009 | Online Marketing Blog
  There are many reasons to search social media including monitoring for brand and reputation management purposes. Smart online marketers have also been using social search for other reasons including competitive research and opportunistic content marketing through social keyword trends

• Power Twitter: Inline Media, Integrated Search And A Lot More
  Version 1.0 of Power Twitter, an add-on for Firefox created by Narendra Rocherolle at 83 Degrees, was just released. If you use Twitter and were excited about services like Tweetree, this is something you’ll want to add immediately.
• Comparing Six Ways to Identify Top Blogs in Any Niche – ReadWriteWeb
  In the early days of blogging you could go to the Technorati Blog Index, enter some identifying terms for a particular niche topic and discover what the top blogs were in the field.
  Identifying top niche blogs is invaluable knowledge for anyone wanting to enter, study or market to people in a particular field.
• Tech Companies to Watch in 2009
  As we enter 2009, former tech leaders are scrambling for solutions to spark sales, while expanding 3G technology is opening new doors forambitious developers.
• Music Ally | Blog Archive » 200 digital music startups from 2008
  2008 has been a startling year for innovation in digital music. We’ve been covering startups all year in our daily bulletin, not to mention our work with the Popkomm-IMEA and MidemNet New Business Showcase awards. So we thought we’d round up some of the most interesting startups from this year.

Wikipedia describes mash-ups (or bastard pop) as a song created out of pieces of two or more songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the music track of another. One cultural commentator went a little deeper explaining, “It is merely the latest incarnation of a widely shared, deeply embedded cultural habit of cultural recombination across time and space.” Got that?

Someone else once said “all plagiarism is necessary its takes the wrong idea and replaces it with the right one”. With that in mind I find that mash-ups have actually been educational for me by taking two artists I’d never listen to alone, twisting them into something new and actually getting me to seek out original works of both artists.

After writing  about the Green Day album ‘American Edit’ here (who’s whole career was launched by plagiarizing Stiff Little Fingers) and hearing ‘Give Me Novacaine’ in the blender with Queens ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ (as ‘Novacaine Rhapsody’) it forced me to re-evaluate both artists. I’ve also mentioned a variety of mash-up projects here including Primal Scream, War Of The Worlds, The Beatles, Chemical Brothers and the Prodigy. Not all great, but always interesting.

Latest album mash-up to pop up on the radar (admittedly its been around a few weeks now) is ‘Viva La Hova’ which takes some of the better known Coldplay moments and heaps Jay-Z over the top. Over the top sounds a little raw as these things are actually woven together with intricate precision  by  Brooklyn based mixtape crew Mick Boogie & Terry Urban.

Its very good too with big Coldplay hits like the Scientist, Clocks, In My Place, Trouble and Fix You all getting twisted and reborn into hip-hop epics and not sounding out of place either. Jetcomx blog writer Jim Fields illustrates things a little better.

” Late one night, I was at a small party, doing DJ duty and selecting songs on my iPod. I searched for a while, scrolled to a song, then clicked “play.” Chris Martin, of Coldplay, began to croon out his slow ballad, “Fix You.”

Initially, the crowd was not happy with this choice. “When you feel so tired that you can’t sleep,” Chris sang, slowly. “Stuck in reverse!” he whispered. Suddenly, the word “reverse” began repeating, and a bass beat started thumping. People at the party started tapping their feet. The beat built up, people started dancing, and by the time Jay-Z (aka Jazzy, Sean Carter, Jiggaman, Hova, The Roc, etc.) began rapping, the party was bumping. Such is the brilliance of Viva La Hova.”

Apparently the whole thing has already been given the thumbs up by Jay-Z himself. The rapper had an official co-lab with Coldplay late last year when he  dropped in for a guest verse on the Viva La Vida single “Lost!”, retitled “Lost+” and appears on the ‘Prospekts March’ EP.

Download The Album Here, here and here .

Related Links

Viva La Hova (IllRoots.com)
Mixtape Mondays: Jay-Z vs Coldplay:Viva La Hova (Jetcomx.com)

• P2P Blog-Five File-Sharing Predictions for 2009
  What will happen to BitTorrent users and their favorite sites in the new year? What will happen to the music industry’s new efforts to combat piracy with the help of ISPs, and what about efforts to legalize file sharing?
• The Worst Social Media Gaffs of 2009
  There were a couple of events and phrases that popped up through the year, that I am hoping were a 2008 phenomenon and will get buried under the passage of time, like the rest of the year, including:

  “Rockstar” “Guru” and people just starting out in social media calling themselves “experts”. Maybe this was happening in late 2007 too, and lord knows I was one of those who called myself a rockstar at first and then a guru for a while after that

  (tags: social media)

An often overlooked aspect of David Lynch’s movie-making excellence is his choice of music and sound. Late last year saw the release of ‘Mashed In Plastic: The David Lynch Mash-up Album’ a collection of re-interpretations of some of the more memorable audio moments lifted from David Lynch movie soundtracks.

Mashed In Plastic gathers together a veritable who’s who of  mashup creators like Colatron,  Wax Audio, Phil RetroSpector, The Who Boys, ToToM, Voicedude, RIAA, G3RSt, Neiltomo and The Reborn Identity amongst others.

The Mashed in Plastic trailer features the music of Angelo Badalamenti, David Bowie and Rammstein, plus the man himself, David Lynch.

Its a varied and adventurous collection spanning eighteen tracks and David Lynch himself opens up the collection on Colatron’s ‘The Voice of Love Is Crying’ with a few words of his own. “Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper.”

The track molds together Rebekah Del Rio’s haunting “Llorando” ( a Spanish language version of Roy Orbison’s ‘Crying’) from Mulholland Drive, bits of Angelo Badalamenti, Chopin and Burial.

Wax Audio somehow manage to make the Beatles ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and Badalamenti’s theme from Blue Velvet sound made for each other on ‘Blue Rigby’ and Phil Retrospector twists the Beatles into another unlikely duet, this time with Julee Cruise with ‘In My Twin Life’.

Overall, as befits most anything Lynch does (although this a totally unsanctioned release of course) the whole album is a real oddity given the source material.  The remixers have added some quirks and pop twists of their own too with some unexpected sound collabs, just like the best mashers always do. So expect to hear bits of the Jackson 5, Kylie Minogue, Garbage, Leona Lewis, Smashing Pumpkins and Roni Size in amongst all the weirdness.

Mashed In Plastic Tracklisting, Download, Video

Related Links

David Lynch (IMDB.com)  (Wikipedia) (DavidLynch.com)
Angelo Badalamenti (Last.fm)
Mashed In Plastic: The David Lynch Mash-up Album (Colatron.com)

Was Googling around catching up on the latest DJ mash-ups/bastard pop mutations, which I have written about on here quite a few times, when I stumbled across this older musical mash-up from DJ Party Ben. I’ve been a big fan of Ben’s Frankenstein pop mutations for a while now and somehow I missed this one which he actually did a few years ago now.

Its a mash-up of  the Eric B and Rakim classic, ‘Paid In Full’ and the White Stripes, ‘My Doorbell’. More importantly he uses ‘Coldcut’s Seven Minutes of Madness Mix’ of ‘Paid In Full’ which first appeared in the UK on 4th & Broadway 12 inch vinyl over twenty years ago. I remember Eric B dismissing the remix at the time but it continues to be as timeless as ever and for me is up there as one of the best remixes of all time.

In the spirit of Double Dee and Steinski, Coldcut breathe new life into Eric B’s already genius work, adding a story line and surreal imagery over one of the most subtly infectious bass lines in hip-hop history.

And that all encompassing Eric B bass line was pilfered from Dennis Edwards ‘Don’t Look Any Further’. Coincidentally  Snoop Dog appears in the frat house movie classic, ‘Old School’ doing a live version of ‘Paid In Full’.

Back to the point of the original Google search. I was looking for the brilliant DJ Schmolli (Kooks vs. Beasties) mash-up, ‘Sabotaging the Kooks’ a  raucous slice of genuine pop genius and one that actually got national airplay on BBC Radio One’s morning show. You can find the free track download here.

Related Links

White Stripes ‘My Doorbell’ YouTube.com

Eric B and Rakim ‘Paid In Full’ YouTube.com

I’ve been blogging erratically since 2004 but find it hard to maintain enthusiasm and to find inspiration on a consistent basis. My blogging ‘career’ has kind of been like my music career in as much as I find it a waste of time just blogging/releasing music just for the sake of it. Its nice to at least try and be profound.

The other thing that has got in the way is my nine to five job (I envy those who manage to write full time) and more often than not, other online distractions and social media. I spent a stupid amount of time trying out every social network going, falling out with them, then jumping onto the next band wagon.

Twitter, blogging and networking on steroids

I was trawling my over loaded RSS feed reader of choice (FeedDemon for the desktop, Google Reader for the web and just to make sure Sage, in Firefox) and came across a J. Angelo Racoma blog post on Blog Herald,  ‘Don’t Give Excuses, Just Blog’ , in the post Racoma writes, ” The point is that if you’ve been busy, then you shouldn’t have to explain yourself. Just write. Just publish. Just blog.”

And he continues, ” But then the deeper issue is that the fact that you haven’t been blogging lately probably means you’ve lost interest or focus in your blogging. The solution here is to set a schedule and stick to it. Find a good pace, so you won’t have to force yourself to write when you aren’t at your best. If you can publish one good post per week, then do so. Quality trumps quantity. But regularity is important, too.”

Coinciding with reading that I’d just started using Twitter again. I’d signed up for Twitter probably six months ago used it for about three days and jumped ship and dismissed it as another web 2.0 novelty. Until my interest was re-tweaked by all the web chatter on the micro blogging format, seemed just about every big name in the blogosphere was using it and using it daily.

Going back to my forgotten profile I started to write about things I’d found online and things I wanted to share, things that gave me inspiration. I spruced up my background wallpaper using one of the many custom profilers (a new cottage industry not seen since MySpace ‘peaked’ a while back). And bingo. You know what I suddenly got it. My followers blossomed from 5 to 105 (and continues up) and it suddenly became clear that Twitter was like the networking perfect storm. On steroids.

What makes Twitter even more persuasive is the sheer amount of tools, online and desktop apps, WordPress plugins and hyper active community available. There is just no way I can get bored with this one. Its like one of those old hyper-active forums I used to hang out at but more addictive, faster and simpler.

So, with the inspiration I gathered from Twitter, I’m taking part online again and for me Twitter is all about taking part, sharing and grabbing snippets of wisdom and blogging leads. If you’re like one of those kids who used to share mixtapes, Twitter is kind of like that but sharing online inspiration instead. Most of the time. I’m learning to sweep aside those, “I’m just making some toast” type posters!

What I’m Using

I’m still getting into the swing of things and don’t really understand this # hashkey business yet but right now I’m using two desktop Twitter clients, Tweetdeck and Twirl. I can also tweet using my IM aggregator Digsby. I use Twitter Tools and TwitMe on my blog and have been playing around with various web based helpers and add on’s like Mr Tweet, Twitpic, Twitterfeed , TwittyTunes and TwitterCounter.

Twitter is a fantastic marketing tool, a terrific way to spread your message to many people at once, in an instant. But to do that, you need to build a following, you need to “find” other people who will, in turn, find you interesting enough to follow.

Related Resources

Developing Your Twitter Muscles (TwiTip.com)
Construct Your Own Top 10 Must Follow List As It Relates To Your Own Niche (TwiTip.com)
Finding Twitter Stars (KeithHopper.com)
How To Use Twitter For Music Promotion (About.com)
Can Twitter Be Used For Music Promotion (14Sandwiches.com)
7 Reasons Why Everybody In The Music Industry Should Try Twitter (Midemnet Blog)
Musicians Twitter Roadmap (MusicThinkTank.com)
Twitter on Mashable (Mashable.com)

• Hypebot: YouTube Taps Indie Music Via Rumblefish
  In what could provide another small piece of the indie music income puzzle, YouTube has partnered with Rumblefish, the indie branding and music licensing agency, to provide users with access to 25,000 licensed songs from Rumblefish's catalog.

• Bloomberg.com: U.S.-Apple to Sell IPhones in Wal-Mart Stores This Month
  Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will become the second mass-market retail chain to start selling Apple Inc.’s iPhone, with two store representatives saying the world’s largest retailer will carry two models of the Web-surfing handset this month.
  (tags: iPhone)
• 47 Essential Resources for T-Shirt Designers | GoMediaZine
  Interested in starting your own clothing line? Or maybe you just want to get an edge on some of the other designers on the major social t-shirt sites. Either way, there is a world of resources to be discovered that can help you do both.

• CD sales remain the biggest revenue driver for the music business
  Digital is the future, but analog is the present. Which is why CD sales remain the biggest revenue driver for the music business. But big-box retailers, who sell almost all of the industry’s discs, are determined to change that, by relentlessly cutting back on the amount of floorspace they allocate to CDs.
• Fatblog: Download Store Comparison – Part Deux
  We were really pleased to hear that lots of people found our post on download stores useful, so we’ve gone away, done some more research, and doubled the number of stores covered. We’ve put together a round-up of the features, file formats, prices and percentages that 14 different stores offer, for anyone who’s looking at where to sell their music.

• Tech Digest: Noise Gate: Six Tenets for a New Music Industry, Part Five
  Although piracy is undeniably bad for the music industry, there are plenty of ways around it. The sue-em-all solution hasn't worked, so what else can record companies do to slow the problem down? In this instalment, I'll share some of my ideas on how the industry can be creative in tackling the pirates. Hint: It's all about carrots.

• Music Sellers Try Fighting iTunes With ‘MP3 Compatible’ Kitemark | paidContent:UK
  Could this be the first serious threat to iTunes Store’s retail dominance? Seven other online music sellers have formed an alliance to promote their unique selling point – DRM-free MP3.
• 32.1 Million MP3 Players Sold In The UK Last Year. Huh? | paidContent:UK
  Keen to push its new MP3 kitemark, the Entertainment Retailers Association released figures today trumpeting the format in grand terms: “Never in the history of the music business have we seen a format take off like this before. There is now no doubt that MP3 is the fastest-growing music format of all time, faster than vinyl, cassette or CD,” said chairman Russel Coultart.
• Digital Growth Won’t Stop Overall Music Sales From Shrinking, According To Forecast | paidContent.org
  US digital music sales will grow by 17 percent per year on average over the next five years, to make up 41 percent of sales by 2013, Forrester’s latest Jupiterresearch forecast says.

• DIY Promo for Broke Rappers, DJ's and Musicians // Audible Hype
• How Can The Music Industry Be In Trouble With All This Free Promotion.
  2007 person-to-person music downloads were worth a staggering $69 billion, and movie/television piracy continues to grow, says a new study.

• How To Write Your Music Business Plan at Music Business Marketing
  I had a request recently on how to write a music business plan. Here’s the format I recommend my clients to follow. Call it a template.

• TuneCorner: What Every Musician Should Know About Digital Distribution, Part II
  Music distributor Tunecore fill you in on what you need to know about digital distribution.

• UK Retailer Woolworths Kills Off CD Singles, Focuses On Downloads | paidContent.org
  “CDs are alive and well for album sales, but unfortunately the physical singles market is in terminal decline.” Say Woolies as the declining retailer scraps selling CD singles to concentrate on downloads.

• New MP3 Revolutionizes Way You Listen to Music-Korea Times
  If you are a serious guitar-master wannabe and you want to focus on the tune of Brian May’s guitar and don’t want to hear Freddie Mercury’s voice and Roger Tailor drumming in Queen songs, then this may be what you have been looking for.
• hypebot: Top 10 Issues Facing Music 2.0
  Hypebot looks at the main issues facing the new music industry.