Need any more evidence that Clear Channel is the anti-Christ? Look no further. "We want to be artist-friendly," says the company's VP for live recording. I'm sure the new PBS Frontline episode called "The Way the Music Died" will unleash similarly delicious ironies.
Posted by Vernam at May 27, 2004 06:31 PM | TrackBackOh yeah, I agree downloading isn't the many-headed hydra the RIAA makes it out to be. His suggestion was more about the near monopolistic control of major venues, radio and distribution. A band who went against the wishes of the major labels could find themselves ostracized even in booking shows and getting airplay. Witness the crash and burn experience Pearl Jam went through, trying to do it themselves. Hard to say if that was total conspiracy bunk. The 'industry' definitely isn't pretty.
Posted by: deano at June 4, 2004 10:32 AMYeah, I was thinking about Unicycle while reading the Clear Channel story. Your VC friend probably saved you big bucks in the long run . . . "Hurting the bands" sounds a lot like the faux-argument that downloading tunes is anti-artist. I've yet to see any metrics that show it depresses sales, for one thing. But even if it did, artists make most of their money from gigs and merchandise, anyway. Ask any one of them if they'd accept a moderate loss of CD sales (IOW, whatever amount they lose due to downloads) in exchange for increased name recognition, live crowds, and merch (IOW, income they don't share w/ the label), and the artists would jump at it.
Convince Moveon.org they need to take on the record industry as soon as the election's over. ;^)
VC
Posted by: VC at June 1, 2004 02:05 PMThat was happening way back in unicyclerecords.com days. This was pre-napster, by the way. When I was trying to get VC funding, a friend who was on my dotcom advisory board (who will remain publically anonymous, since he really is a decent fellow and is now very high up in the Sony Music echelon) got me an audience with 2 big silicon valley VCs. You'll recognize at least one of their names. One of the partners went on to be CEO of a *very* visible early P2P outfit - I should leave it at that. Anyway, they liked our instant live music concept & execution, but were cautious about how the major industry players would react. I had the founder/pres of Rykodisc in my camp, as well as a bunch of other name-brand indies, but had gotten nowhere with the majors. He said he'd make a call and get back to us. Two days later, I heard back.
'Good luck, but it'll never fly with them.' He also said the majors, if these 'third party plays' ever got any real traction, would put pressure on the indies, via distribution, air-play and venue influence. He even implied that in a way, I'd be hurting the bands, if they ever did make it big, by them being associated with this. All that was off the record, of course, but it was clear they - and the 'smart' money - wasn't going in for anything like it. Not at all. I cut and ran. I guess I saved myself more wasted $ and a lot of heartache. Learned a few things, though.