Segarini: The Rock Files: Fixing the Mess We’re In Part Four

So the record companies, radio conglomerates, and concert businesses are all bleeding out with smiles on their faces. They have spent the last decade dealing with their problems not by understanding and considering the consumers or their own employees, but by raising prices, limiting play lists, suing music fans, and firing massive amounts of hard working individuals who helped make them successful in the first place. While the numbers keep dropping, the company spin-doctors continue to reassure everyone with press releases and interviews that proclaim recovery, turn around, and a bright future. The Voodoo economics in play here would make Reagan applaud and P.T Barnum smile, and keeps Steve Jobs laughing all the way to the bank. Personally, my bullshit alarm just won’t stop ringing…

Thieves in the Choir: When Satellite radio’s entrance into Canada was first proposed, myself and other artists were approached to speak to the press about how good this could potentially be for Canadian music across North America. I couldn’t help but wonder why there was any hesitation, any objection, to this opportunity in the first place. Seriously, who on earth would stand in the way of this new technological marvel, considering the millions and millions of people who would be exposed to our music and artists, and the potential revenue for all concerned.

As it turned out, the opposition was coming from the very organizations and people purportedly in place to help Canadian music and artists reach a bigger audience, and even some Canadian artists themselves were saying “No!” to satellite radio. Most broadcasters were up in arms too, calling SatRad ‘competition’ instead of what it really was, an alternative to the over formatted, commercial-heavy and sadly understaffed terrestrials. “Canadians will be able to listen to radio stations without commercials and with no CanCon restrictions. How can we compete with that?” cried the Canadian broadcasters.

Among the other big organizations and watchdog groups that fought mightily against SatRad was SOCAN. Who, or what, is SOCAN? Wikipedia explains: “SOCAN (the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada) is the Canadian copyright collective for the right to communicate to the public and publicly perform musical works. SOCAN administers these rights on behalf of its members (composers, lyricists, songwriters, and their publishers) and those of affiliated international organizations by licensing the use of their music in Canada. The fees collected are distributed as royalties to its members and to affiliated organizations throughout the world. SOCAN also distributes royalties received from those organizations to its members for the use of their music worldwide.”

So they are acting on MY behalf to stop this evil satellite radio-thingy from being allowed to broadcast in Canada? I don’t remember asking them to do that. Neither did anyone else I spoke to, although some Canadian artists did speak out against satellite radio at the time. I still can’t figure out why.

The thing is, and what all these foot draggers failed to realize, is that part of the deal included Canadian only music channels. Not only would remote areas of our home and native land be able to hear this music, some for the first time, considering how many people live in rural areas with little or no radio, but the 800 pound gorilla in the room that everyone kept overlooking…the millions and millions of people in the lower 48 (Yay America!) who just might buy CD’s from and build careers for our artists far beyond what they could achieve at home. And that is exactly what happened.

I did East Coast afternoon drive (which repeated 12 hours later) for the first 3 years of Iceberg 95 (now 85), the all Canadian channel on SIRIUS. There was also CBC 3 on SIRIUS, and the Verge on XM. We all played (and the channels still do) 100% CanCon, most of which had only garnered airplay up until then on college, Indie, and a few “Modern Rock” terrestrial stations. Three years later, these artists were winning Juno awards and touring the US, including Metric, Arcade Fire, Feist, Dala, Billy Talent, hell, it’s a long list. And all of that, all that great music, would have gone unplayed by the majority, had the people “looking out for our best interests” had gotten their way. Even terrestrial, who begrudgingly met their CanCon requirements by playing endless repeats of Guess Who, BTO, Tragically Hip, Neil Young and Bryan Adams hits, eventually jumped on the bandwagon when they discovered that people actually liked the music being made by artists they had, for the most part, been ignoring. Those are the very same people that are blocking the way to the massive changes that have to take place in order for the music businesses to regain their footing in the digital age. More importantly, they themselves need to make some changes or become even more of an obstacle to artists and writers getting a fair share of the income they generate, a bigger share than they receive at the moment.

So here, in all its glory, are my suggestions for changes in the business of music. Are they the right suggestions to follow? Fuck if I know, but they do address the issues I hear from disgruntled musos, concert fans, radio listeners, and artists all the time. Civilians, those not connected in any way to the music industries, are the most vocal with their complaints, but I hear them from industry types as well, even as other industry insiders continue to try and convince me that I am talking through my hat, and that EVERYONE loves them. There would be large amounts of details to work out, and a lot of grumpy-gus whining, none-too-pleased with the initial pain of shakeing things up, but ultimately, when the dust settled, I think we’d all be happier, and the record, radio, and concert businesses would once again be as healthy as the music they depend on for their existence. Here we go…

Segarini’s Simple Suggestions… First of all, make cotton candy and corn dogs mandatory at all Lady Ga Ga shows, and force her to perform in nothing but giant red and white striped circus tents with sawdust on the floor, clowns, and an elephant. Nah…I’m just kidding.

Radio… The Conglomorates: By decree (Government? FCC? CRTC), if you have 4 or more stations in a market, your least successful station would be used as a test site for different formats, music, and talent. AM. FM, who cares? A change would have to stay on the air for at least a year. Jocks can train here. New music can be discovered here, different formats (or lack thereof) could be tried here. A farm team producing new ideas, new talent, and new approaches to the current terrestrial problems. Everubody wins…and I DARE them to try this.

Cost Cutting: Lower your executive and management salaries and bonuses instead of firing your work force. You’ll look just as good in the Hyundai as you do in the Hummer.

On-Air: No more voice tracking. Two person teams in every shift including overnights. One focused on the technical side, (operating, phones, emails, texts, etc) one main host (steers the personality of the shift, drives the info, connects with the listeners). Both capable of entertaining interaction and a working knowledge of the music they play, and a deep enough connection to the city they broadcast in to be able to clue listeners in to what’s happening there. If salaries continue to be capped, let the jocks have a negotiable amount of ads they can bring to their show from local businesses to augment their income. And please, you wacky disc jockeys, laugh only when something is genuinely funny.

Music Content: Deeper playlist overnight. At least one local artist an hour in all shifts. No artist played more than once a shift.

Commercials: No commercials longer than 10 seconds . No station I.D’s longer than 5 seconds. No commercial breaks longer than a minute. No more than 5 commercial breaks an hour. And most importantly…

The Internet: Most stations already have an internet page where they stream their terrestrial content. This is where they can really make a difference both musically, and in serving the listeners, AND create new revenue opportunities. Possibilities include video content, interview clips, and local artist (and, in consort with the labels), new artists’ downloads. Allowing listeners to go through a list of ALL the songs in the stations library and create ‘dream shows’, or request songs not normally in rotation. A ‘dream show’ could be selected once a week with the creator invited to sit in and co-host it on the air. Here is where new and local artists could be exposed, maybe even downloaded, and commented on by the people who visit the site. Your listeners would make it pretty clear if they wanted to hear this material on the air if you gave them the opportunity, and thrilled to be involved in music discovery.

A second stream, voice tracked by the on-air personalities, that plays music that goes far deeper than the over-the-air play list. A stream that offers an alternative to the tight format in place on the terrestrial signal. The music, and the jocks, could both stretch out here. The short commercials would also work here, adding income, or the stream could be commercial free, either of which would probably attract more traffic to the site, and therefore, the station.

You can now listen to streaming on mobile devices and in your car. No need for an FM reciever in mobile devices. The listeners who love hearing the same artists and songs over and over again can click on the live stream, or go back to their radio to listen. Some radio stations already see the possibilities in enhancing their websites with unique and interesting content.

Seeing as how the internet will be where we see and hear pretty much everything, now is the time for radio to increase their internet prescence and grow their audience. For example, check out KPIG, KROQ, and The Edge. There are some good ideas here, especially from KPIG. Hire webmasters with a background in music appreciation who will update your site every day and not disappear when there’s a comic book convention in town.

The Record Companies… The Major Labels: Take a tip from the indies and offer 50/50 deals to bands whose music is their selling point. You’ll get committed artists who will stay with you if they break. Recoupable costs come out of both your and the artists income. You may have picked up the bill for recording, etc, but they’re out there playing, selling your product. No marketing spending without artist approval. Continue to sign wanna-be Ga Ga’s and those who are willing to give it all up for Fame with lop-sided deals. Maybe they’ll help finance the release of some good, honest music. Send the music, artwork, and information to retailers in digital form. Let them burn the CD’s and package them in their stores on demand. Lower the price of a CD to $6.99 or less. The retailer (who should be forbidden to raise the price on Indie and budget CDs) can either pay a monthly fee for your content, or send you the negotiated share of the sales from their store. Digitize your entire back catalogues at a high sample rate (320 kps) and either open a site where the tracks can be downloaded by subscription or a reasonable price per download (anywhere from a dime to 50 cents depending on how new the track is), or join together with the other majors on a one-stop site, or simply release it all to the net for those that have ISP Downloading Subscriptions (see below) in place. No more warehousing, no more manufacturing, no more returns, AND you’re helping retailers stay in business. You’re welcome…and stop asking radio to pay more to play your content. They already do, and remain your biggest advertiser and revenue generator.

The Indies: Keep doing what you’re doing. Some of you are the future of the record business. You might want to wear something besides Think Geek T-shirts though, if you want to be taken more seriously when you go looking for distribution.

Live Concerts…

The Venues: Lower the fucking prices. Get sponsored parking, and concessions. Reduce your executive and management salaries. Nowhere on Earth should a beer cost 13 dollars. We’re music fans, not fucking rock stars.

Major Artists: Instead of charging an arm and a leg for tickets, why don’t you reward your fans and record buying public with a week in a smaller venue instead of a one night blow out in a barn. Lose the over-the-top staging and play your music and let your audience see you up close. Reduce your costs, endear your fans, and last forever. If the inflatable duck, giant penis, chorus of hoofers, and exploding stripper poles are so important to your continued existence, join forces with other like-minded artists and pull a “Caravan of Stars” tour in the ball parks and sheds. They’ll sell out, and you can charge insane amounts of money because you will have to, the spectacle fans will have a moment to remember, and tons of truck drivers, pyro techs, lackys, hairdressers, makeup artists, crew members, and artist wranglers will all be working and part of something that will rival the circuses of yore. These shows could also do business for a week at a time in Major cities. Add a roller coaster, and wack-a-mole concessions, and everyone from Grandparents to grandkids will be happy to be frisked and cough up the money for a soda and a glowstick. You could even throw an occasional lead guitarist to the tour lion.

Mid-Tier Artists: For the most part, their prices are resonable, their shows are not the same every night, and the focus is on the music, not the revolving drumkit or the bass player that sets himself on fire every night during the encore. You can still get gouged by the venue and the concessions, but these artists are the ones who tour, respect their fans, and love to play. They do not depend on radio or the gossip shows to fill the seats, and they usually outlast many major acts because their fans are loyal to a fault. God bless them.

Club Artists: These artists are honing their skills, building a fan base, and giving us live music at a reasonable cost. I would like to see the clubs give them at least a percentage of the bar (20%?) for their trouble, as most of them play for next to nothing. This is the most fun an artist will have if their career takes off. My only advice? Play like you mean it every night, even if the only people in the club are you, your girlfriend, the bartender, and a guy you knew in highschool…you would be surprised at who that guy might be. Fans should go out and support their local acts.

The Ticket Vendors: How can they sleep at night? Hidden fees, held back seats, last minute 10 dollar, 5 dollar, FREE tickets when they realize the show isn’t selling…the list is endless. The ticket sellers have been so vilified by the music fans, that most have given up buying tickets early on, leaving only the casual fan to buy a ticket for a seat for a large amount of money, only to find himself sitting next to someone who got his ticket for 10 bucks in the parking lot outside the venue. A service charge for a customer printing out his own ticket at home??? The solution to these problems…these people need to be investigated and reigned in. Are there no standards in place? Is there no governing body to address these practices? Huh? Well…?

And Finally… Monetizing the Net…

Re-defining music’s worth: I don’t care if the current crop of snot-nosed kids aren’t used to paying for music, they can learn. When I was a snot-nosed kid, we didn’t pay for television or water, but look at us now.

If the record industry, publishers, artists, and everybody else connected with music don’t do something soon, we’ll have another generation of kids that will consider music as something they don’t have to buy in order to own. The biggest problem, of course, was charging so much for it long after costs could have been cut and the prices kept reasonable. Here are some suggestions on how to have our cake and eat it too…

The P2P Sites: Instead of trying to shut them down, let’s leave them alone. Just one change. All P2P sites would be limited to 96 kps uploads and downloads. What this means is, people can still share their favourite music, and enjoy music discovery, but the quality of what they would get off the P2P sites would be the lowest possible. Most sites (like Limewire) rarely have any tracks available at a higher kps rate as it is, (optimum these days being FLAC, .wav, and 320kps mp3), but a restriction would have to be put in place for all of them. If you hear something you like here, chances are extremely good that you will want a better sounding version, but even so, downloaders would be paying something because of this…

The ISP Subscription/Tax/Service Charge: Call it what you want, it would be a nominal fee with options that would enable people to download music. For example:

$2.50 a month: 1 Gig

$5.00 a month  5 Gigs

$7.50 a month  10 Gigs

$10.00 a month 20 Gigs

$20.00 a month Unlimited Downloads

And yes, among the boxes you can check will be one labeled “I Do Not Wish To Download” Which means there will be no additional charge for your internet connection. Which also means, if you DO download music without paying you could be punished. My advice would be that you lose your internet access for 24 hours…but I might be being too harsh. How about a hundred dollar fine on your next bill?

What all of this means is this: You might be quite happy with fuzzy, low quality files for $2.50 a month, but anybody wanting to keep the music or burn CDs, they’ll need more access to download quality files. Now you can download the higher quality files from musicblogs, and other free sources, but you are generating income for the principals (we’ll get to that down below) and the musicbloggers, not looking for money in the first place, will continue to post music that many want, but is unavailable from the record companies who originally recorded it for one reason or another. Existing subscription or pay to download sites like iTunes would not be affected by this ISP charge. The legitimate sites would be registered with your internet provider, and no charge would be forthcoming from them because you are already paying at the site.

Indie and Major Label Sites: Here, the labels can either charge a subscription or by-the-track fees as long as they are low (10 to 50 cents per track) and the consumer can click on a streaming player to hear what he’s downloading before he downloads it. The music here is being paid for whether through the site itself, or, if the tracks are found on other, free sites on the net, by the ISP fee. The amount may be smaller through the provider fee, but it will generate money for the people who deserve to see some kind of financial reward. Considering the amount of music track downloads in a day (in the millions) there is money to be made here…and whatever the amount, it is far greater than zero. You can also download art work and liner notes if you want to download whole albums, and put them together at home.

Individual Artists: When people download your music, you will receive your share of the ISP fee. It will be tiny, but it will be something, or you can charge for the download yourself. Streaming individual tracks stays free, downloading the track is monetized.

The Creator/Copyright Law…

There needs to be a law put in place for the creators of the music that the labels, publishers, and lawyers “own”. There are so many ways to keep that money out of the hands of the actual creators of the copyrights (the writers) that something needs to be madated that sees these people get paid first, and fairly, and directly. Even now, organizations like SOCAN do not pay out royalties until a writer has 500 dollars or more coming to them if they do not have a direct deposit bank account. How soon after SOCAN recieves these royalties are they deposited in the writers accounts? Further, what happens to the interest accrued when SOCAN holds these funds? Do the writers eventually get them? The labels are famous for withholding royalties for everything from cross colateralized recoupment charges, to costs dating back decades that the artists are still on the hook for. Some labels and publishing companies either no longer exist, or have been sold so many times, you cannot find them anywhere. What happens to that money? The mechanicals that are never paid? Forget the copyright holders for a minute…what about the copyright creators?

What do YOU think should happen to make radio, records, live shows, and music on the internet a better experience? Please let me know…

Next Week: Summer’s over and the Monday Morning Mailbag, the Rock Files, and the Weekend Roundup all return. Put away your shorts and white shoes and get out your toques and gloves…DBAWIS will be here to keep you warm and informed.

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That’s enough for now. Email me at segarini@fyimusic.ca with your comments, complaints, and thoughts…and remember…don’t believe a word I say.

Bob “The Iceman” Segarini was in the bands The Family Tree, Roxy, The Wackers, The Dudes, The Segarini Band, and Cats and Dogs, and nominated for a Juno for production in 1978. He also hosted “Late Great Movies” on CITY TV, was a producer of Much Music, and an on-air personality on CHUM FM, Q107, SIRIUS Sat/Rad’s Iceberg 95, (now 85), and now provides content for radiothatdoesntsuck.com with RadioZombie, The Iceage, and PsychShack. Along with the love of his life, Jade (Pie) Dunlop, (who hosts and writes “I’ve Heard That Song Before” on RTDS), continues to write, make music, and record.