We've made a lot of mistakes, and we've learned

Wax Orchard survives. In an industry of bright flames and dust, we should not be here. We've had no hits. None of our albums met their sales targets. But we sold just enough to keep putting out albums - three more this year, and three planned for next year.

We should have been willing to put funds into touring, and made bands tour for longer before moving to album releases and other forms of marketing (radio, PR, etc).. Regardless of the strength of PR or college radio play, we could not sell more than a couple dozen records in cities where the band never physically set foot. The strength of the recordings did not matter. The number of friends on myspace did not matter (and as a side note, only led to a small trickle of iTunes sales).

We now believe touring is more important, rather than less important, in the digital era. It is much easier to build awareness online, but it's also easier for any listener to be aware of more new bands than ever before (i.e. the long tail). Awareness alone does not make a relationship strong enough to move somebody to buy a CD. The amount of disposable income remains fixed, and with video games, netflix subscriptions, and other new entertainment costs, is arguably shrinking for our target audiences.

We are adapting now, by focusing more on helping smaller labels gain distribution with pass-through deals, and on educating those labels in the distribution process.

We are also focusing more on video. It is difficult to think of an indie band that breaks anymore without either an absolutely stunning live show, or else some sort of online video buzz via Youtube or the equivalent.

In an era where it is so easy for artists to be heard, it is more important than ever that they also be seen. Not because we want to turn artists into brands, and not because the image is more important than the music, but simply because, in economic terms, access to new audio experiences alone is just too plentiful. Supply and demand.

Podbop rules!

Podbop is a great free search service that seriously benefits bands. It combines freely available podcast info with live event data to let you listen to free mp3s of bands playing near you in the near future!

Artist Life Cycle

After I left MusicMatch in 2002, but before I moved back to Seattle, when MP3.com was still owned by Vivendi/Universal, I consulted for them briefly on how they might get more subscriptions from artists to the Premium Artist Services. Part of my report was a vision of what I called the artist life cycle, a checklist of different services every artist probably needs at some point in their career. (The report won't make complete sense since it includes company-specific acronyms and such, but the big picture is decodable).

Three years later, I still don't see a comprehensive package in one place, although CDBaby and Apple have parts of it down.

a tiny bit of news

just two articles to brighten up (or bring in dark, foreboding clouds, depending on how you see it) your wednesday.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/19/business/media/19wenner.html?th&emc=th
Rolling Stone meets reality TV

http://post-gazette.com/pg/05354/625351.stm
on Clear Channel’s concert ambitions

have a good one...

Insane bill on the hill

Talk about the tail wagging the dog. Check out the puny little content industry try to take on the entire consumer electronics business by legislating control of digital to analog conversion. Yeah, I'm sure all the big consumer electronics companies will just bend over for this one. Just shows how desperate the situation is for the copyright holders...even the people lobbying for this bill must realize their low odds of being taken seriously.

On Branding

I was examining some of my old vinyl the other day, in the way that you can only examine old vinyl. 12" art, inserts, postcards, detachable goodies, and a real sense of importance...how does all this come from a cheap slipcover? I dont know. As I was reading all the faded, miniscule print that I normally skip over on the paper sleeve, I was struck by a thought.

So many of these old sleeves are advertisements for record labels. At the top there is some sort of cheesy line like "fulfill all your musical desires with Columbia recordings." And then there will be 20 or so titles, much like ads in papers look today for Tower Records or something. And the recordings dont necessarily have a whole lot to do with each other. They'd put Carole King interspersed with a newly released Tchaikovsky piece. No matter. The point was that you recognized these titles as Columbia titles, and when you shopped, you looked for Columbia titles to buy.

Why don't labels today engage in this sort of stuff? Is it old-fashioned, like lending libraries and Columbia House? Well, they do, in a certain sense, because there are avid fans of labels like Merge and Sub Pop and Matador. But these are definitively indie, and have built their reputations on that definition. What I mean is, why don't the Majors do something like that? In music magazines everywhere there are ads from labels; Wax Orchard has even done things like that. But I've never seen a full page ad in Rolling Stone for Universal artists. Have you? Because maybe I am just not reading enough.

It occurs to me that in light of the recent Sony/BMG rootkit scandal, this could potentially be very lucrative. There is so much talk about artists as brands, about creating a community of fans and supporters to identify with musicians in a broad sense of one's entire lifestyle, because a personal, individualized unique fan base is what keeps an artist's career going. Okay, but does it make sense to apply the same branding principles of a corporate entity to a person? Wouldn't it make more sense to draw in a fanbase for, say, Universal Music Group? Or even just Interscope? Is there any reason, or purpose, to link together the fans of Nine Inch Nails, Feist, 50 Cent, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs? I'm not sure that the crossover mentality would be there, in this niche-oriented genre universe that we live in. I'm not sure that the mission of a company like Interscope or Universal could foster the kind of following that a label like Matador can.

Well how did they do it in the days of vinyl? Maybe people have too much access now, to believe that a company like Columbia Records is really on their side. But maybe, actually, these dying beasts of major labels are in need of a real facelift, and maybe, the ever-present need to brand consumable entities will come full circle and maybe, just maybe, these companies will be forced to acquire a sense of character and goodwill, to balance out what now makes them appear simply, in the words of Steve Jobs, greedy.

A few words from the intern

So... *taps microphone* cough cough...
I make my first blog appearance today, and now I must find something inventive to say, which is turning out to be more difficult than I originally thought.
My intelligent bit for the day would have to be about the craziness of this "google.com" I've heard so much about. For the hundredth time this morning I heard about how Google is taking over the world Its stock has nearly quadrupled in one year and now sits slaughtering the rest of NASDAQ at over $400 a share. Which to me shows that we never really got out of that technology boom of the 90's it just stopped being so profitable. Meanwhile I wait for the Google record label to pop up, if its anything like the myspace one it’s sure to be good... Then again you know what they say, what goes up...

But speaking of labels, I am working at this one now (obviously), which is turning out to be even better than expected. While my friends slave over paperwork I write blog's and laugh condescendingly (well ok not really). There's a just a better dynamic working in this industry, It seems like the goal is always just to stay ever so slightly ahead of what’s popular. The lack of complete certainty and necessity for some serious foresight make it challenging, and risky enough to keep me interested (which I'll be honest, is usually really tough to do). But so far it has been fantastic.
In any case, I'll be around all year, and hopefully I can return with something a little brighter to say

Happy Holidays, from your friendly neighborhood intern, Louise

Podcast search and voice recognition

It amazes me how fast technology outstrips legal evolution. It was just a few years ago that copyright owners were getting a handle on requiring "on-demand" streaming services to pay special fees under the DMCA (see Rhapsody, MusicMatch, etc..). Now we've got podcast search engines that actually do automated voice recognition to pick out when the DJ mentions a particular artist and take you right to the music! Check it out.

news this week:

http://www.blogmaverick.com/entry/1234000273069815/
here’s a great idea…or at least worth thinking about. Pre-loaded iPods.
“there is no reason why Harry Fox cant come in to the 21st century and realize that their beneficiaries will make more money by making it easier for music lovers to consume music.”

www.pandora.com
create your own streaming radio. Pretty cool.

www.musicplasma.com
this is fun too!

http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/58993.htm
CBGBs is moving to Vegas. How punk is that?

http://www.cnn.com/2005/SHOWBIZ/Music/12/08/leisure.cbgb.reut/index.html
maybe not so fast, anyways.

http://www.coolfer.com/blog/archives/2005/12/tuesday_miscell_4.html
a stock-market pricing model for digital music, via Coolfer.

http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0549/051207_music_kexp.php
Seattle Weekly’s profile on KEXP

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/08/opinion/08mitchell.html?th&emc=th
a touching memory of John and Yoko

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-12-09/cols_pagetwo.html
Neil Young is the SXSW speaker.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/audiophiles/0,2934,68891,00.html?tw=rss.TOP
the debate of the quality of music in different formats.
“According to the RIAA, vinyl's percentage of overall sales doubled in 2004, grossing $110 million over 2000's $72 million. This growth came at a time when overall music sales dropped from $14.4 billion to $12.2 billion.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10372145/
on licensing music for indie labels

these were two really great reviews in the weekly this week, both by the same guy, go figure:
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0549/051207_music_kanye.php - kanye west
http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0549/051207_music_usefulnoise.php - the boss

http://eurweb.com/story.cfm?id=23847
indie labels and national distribution

What if iPods came already loaded?

Came across this article today:

http://www.blogmaverick.com/entry/1234000273069815/

It brings up a good point. Coolfer comments:
"A lot of people don't care about high quality, as evidenced by the mediocre sound quality of many paid downloads. Consumers just want a lot of music. They want volume. So the industry needs to figure out a way to give them volume. Period."
(http://www.coolfer.com/blog/archives/2005/12/songs_by_volume_1.html)

a 30 second google search brought up a third party company, www.joyci.com, that sort of does this. It would be a whole different story, however, if Apple started doing it in-house. Or any other hardware maker, I guess. You could keep a wish list on iTunes, and then an integrated way to buy an iPod would send one in the mail loaded with the entire contents of your list, Netflix-style.

Also discovered something else cool this week, the Music Genome Project. At www.pandora.com you can create your own "radio station" based on a really extensive cataloguing process. Combine these two discoveries, and you get incredibly specified information that, with enough input, could probably do a good job of filling up an iPod with music you will like. Or, say, 7,500 of the 15,000 songs a 60GB iPod could hold.
Working out the $$ side of it, with Harry Fox and all, could get interesting. It's sort of like the Costco approach to retail sales.

So there's pros and cons to the idea.

Coffee and Music

What is it about coffee and music? Is there some kind of innate affinity between the two entities? Maybe between the types of people that gravitate to these entities? I don't know. All I know is that music companies and coffe companies are forever doing deals with each other in ways that are really nothing but beneficial.

There is the ubiquitous Starbucks and their Hear Music division. If you live in Seattle, like us, or Austin, then you've seen the orange download stations and the burn-your-own-mix-CD booths. Or, if you live in Santa Monica (and maybe other places by now) you've been to the Hear Music Coffeehouse. Most likely though, you've just been in Starbucks and heard the music they play. It's a huge profit for them, to just sell albums at the counters, in sleek packaging, to customers who have a disposable income.

And then there is this Indie911 thing. http://www.indie911.com/caffeinated. The indie version of Hear Music. It doesn't cover a huge area (20 stores in 8 states) but it shows potential, and besides is in five Ben and Jerry's in Vermont. It's interesting, because the whole aesthetic of it is folky, handmade, and therefore more appealing than the corporate Starbucks version. The consoles are wood, the artists are all singer/songwriters, and a Waylon Jennings tribute album is the centerpiece. This is all well and good, especially for indie artists to get exposure. Nevertheless, I think in general it's a little strange to be in a coffeeshop to buy music in the first place. And anyways, Ben and Jerry's doesn't serve coffee...yet.

Do Tiny Record Labels Benefit From National Distribution?

Wax Orchard is in a good position, as far as indie record labels are concerned. We have great artists, which is true of a lot of labels, we have a savvy tech department, and we have a connection to the local music/creative scene that is entirely unique in this city. We also have national distribution. The idea behind this melting pot of sorts is that the variety of elements form an interactive framework that provides the backdrop for the fusion of all sorts of crazy ideas. In our short lifetime, we've seen evidence of this being a great benefit to the way WaxO operates.

National distribution requires lots of money. Manufaturing in large quantities, sure, but the real money-sucker is promotion. So we can get our CDs into every single Tower Records, or Best Buy, or hip indie local store, easy. But how do we get people to buy them? It's one thing to spread the word in Seattle about our band Novatone who is playing a show at such and such club in town next week. Hey, man, check it out, tell your friends, that kind of thing. It's not so hard to do that locally, even regionally, with some good old fashioned elbow grease. But how simple is it, really, to get the word out in Atlanta, or Pittsburgh, or Chicago?

The band needs to tour, so the people in these cities can see them. The band needs to be played on the radio so the people in these cities can hear them. The band needs to be written up in local papers, so the people in these cities can read about them. Touring, radio promotion and publicity all takes buckets of money.

There is so much potential, knowing that your CDs are in stores. You've got to have the dollars to back it up. Its funny the way that physical space probably directly correlates to $$ spent. I wonder if there is an equation for it: x amount of money per square mile of promotion.

some news.

some links, collected over the holiday week. enjoy!


http://www.coolehmag.com/issue6_feature2.php
This article ended up sparking some interesting conversation this week

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/business/yourmoney/20fanning.html
they profiled Shawn Fanning in the NYT.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/21/business/21link.html
sample tags and reviews on Amazon regarding the rootkit fiasco. “digital graffiti,” interesting to read and also hilarious.

http://www.stereogum.com/archives/002102.html
an interesting comment on what if apple raises the $0.99 price on iTunes

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/22/technology/22sony.html?th&emc=th
Sony/BMG sued by Texas. What? Texas does something progressive?

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/news/05-11/22.shtml#veraproject
a Vera Project fundraiser at the Showbox that’s coming up.

http://www.coolfer.com/blog/archives/2005/11/itunes_now_one.html
top 10 music retailers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/20/arts/music/20wolk.html?pagewanted=1
Seattle label Sublime Frequencies is profiled. Ethnomusicology, exploitation, or goodwill?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/25/opinion/25coben.html?th&emc=th
springsteen and bill frist.

some news of the week

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/business/yourmoney/13frenzy.html?th&emc=th
It’s a fine line between entertainment and advertising.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4434852.stm
Microsoft’s take on Sony/BMG’s rootkits

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4992405&ft=1&f=1039
NPR on ‘Geek Rap’

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/13/AR2005111301291.html
The Washington Post on why teenagers are starting to love classic rock. Profiled a bunch of kids at a high school in my old neighborhood. Entertaining.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/16/nyregion/16cnd-gotti.html?hp&ex=1132203600&en=d8480765a68066b0&ei=5094&partner=homepage
The guy who runs Murder, Inc. is on trial, and did you know he named himself after John Gotti?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1875362,00.html
something I’d never thought about before.

http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,69601,00.html
a conspiracy-flavored take on the Sony/BMG rootkit stuff, from Wired.com

http://www.slate.com/id/2130587/
Douglas Wolk on college radio (read his blog at www.lacunae.com)

On the blog called Coolfer, Damian Kulash of OK Go wrote a big rant against DRM. (Link here: http://www.coolfer.com/blog/archives/2005/11/guest_bloggin_t_1.html#more)
But the best part of it was a comment written in response, pasted below:

"I'm going to buy your Cds.I really am.but for now, i have your songs downloaded because im fifteen and dont have a job.and most of my friends are quickly becoming obsessed as well.and besides, if i didnt download the songs, id get the cd from the library and copy it anyways.this is my reality, but im gonna buy as much as possible as soon as i get a ride to the mall and convince my parents to take some money out of my bank account for it. gah."

Thoughts on the Sony/BMG Rootkit Scandal

Over the past two weeks or so, there's been a lot of press to read about Sony/BMG's covert installation of what amounts to spyware on their copy-protected releases. Millions of these CDs have been sold, and hundreds of thousands computers are already discovered to be affected. To the point where the Homeland Security folks are all up in arms b/c the rootkit has reached computers within the Dept. of Defense. Sony/BMG has responded to the crisis in an increasingly attentive way, but have not dropped their guard and flat out admitted the unethical, harmful, and possibly illegal business practice that has been exposed.

--digression--
It is a strikingly similar situation to the staunch, pigheaded, and obviously transparent responses of the Bush Administration in the past few weeks, to the continuous onslaught from liberals and moderates concerning any number of the myriad offenses and/or crimes they've committed. But this is not a blog about politics; rather, I merely draw the comparison in an attempt to show the inspiring way in which huge, seemingly all-powerful companies actually can be brought to justice, or at least brought to some kind of change. Inspiration to perservere, anyways.
--end digression--

Over the past few days, Sony/BMG has tried to avoid but now has issued a full recall and exchange program for the copy protected recordings. They have only apologized for the fact that the rootkit makes computers vulnerable to other types of digital attacks. They have yet to acknowledge their own misuse in a frank manner. Sort of like how Bush/Cheney/Rove refuse to admit mistakes even though there's obvious facts making this clear.

Here's what I think about the rootkit scandal. Sony/BMG will do what it can to keep its customers happy, and will probably take some losses as a result of what's happened. Short term, their holiday season profits will diminish, and long term, people will be wary of any recordings that have DRM-related text on the case. This wont translate to the average music consumer as a reason to boycott Sony/BMG; instead, I think that any DRM language will deter anyone who has vaguely heard of the drama. Today, Glenn Coolfer writes on his blog www.coolfer.com, "Knowing that DRM can be problematic is a lot easier to remember than which labels are under the Sony BMG umbrella." So, it would be nice if Sony/BMG was prosecuted and held accountable, but their punishment will be in sales, and will probably extend to total sales in general, at least of major label artists.

Enough press about this sort of thing will make the average consumer more likely to be aware of the issues surrounding DRM, royalties, copyrights, and all the other sorts of technical problems the industry is experiencing. It's exciting when things like this happen b/c it increases the general knowledge in the public domain. Awareness breeds a desire for freedom. You can extrapolate that to the political metaphor any way you like.

Copyright is broken

Copyright. Two words. Copy. Right.
I'm recently coming to the conclusion that on the Internet, not all information "wants to be free", and not everybody is a pirate. What people DO want, though, is to be able to listen to their favorite music when and where they please in exchange for a reasonable payment. They want to buy a right. We can call this a right to copy, but that is incidental to their true goal of univeral access. Universal access is the right people want. Listen right. As information technologies advance and entertainment is less and less frequently bound to physical media, discussions of copying, time-shifting, space-shifting and the like sound more and more like what they are - terms invented to force outdated legal language to apply to the realities of modern technology.

Listeners don't want to buy a piece of vinyl, and then a piece of tape, and then a CD, and then a right to store music on their TIVO, etc...they actually want the intangible property right for the recording licensed to them. But copyright holders have never once even considered this model. A subscription license to Yahoo/Rhapsody/etc. doesn't cut it. I'm talking about a lifetime right to consume the material on any medium.

This isn't to say that I should not have to pay for the cost of the physical goods used to store or transmit the entertainment in various forms. But that cost is very small and will continue to get smaller as compared to the web of various licensing costs depending on whether the music is heard on a subscription streaming service, on a podcast, on a CD, as a protected AAC file, etc...

If I pay Tower $15 for a CD, a reasonable portion of that money should secure my right to get the same CD from the distributor again if I lose or damage the first CD, WITHOUT paying more than the cost of the CD and distribution itself.

Going into the holiday season is a pretty intimidating time for a small little company like WaxO. There are some crazy statistics for the retail industry; I can't remember them but I do know that a HUUUUUGE percentage of all the year's money is made in Christmas shopping. For this reason, the record industry flexes their muscles like the bulked-up, hyper-testosteroned body builders that you see on TV with their veins popping out and their skin oiled to oblivion. The holiday retail atmosphere is similarly offensive and gaudy.

It's widely known that most independent labels have no chance at exposing their artists during this time of year. Releasing a CD in December is commonly seen as a death wish for people like us. We even got a lot of warnings from people about releasing albums in November. To some extent, we've come to see what people meant by those warnings; getting attention in the press and on the radio has been somewhat difficult, what with all the competition from richer, more established companies. The public is totally (if unknowingly) bombarded by information that is meant to prepare them for the retail bonanza that is December.

One of the main things we do to promote our artists are retail promotions. We set up programs through our distributor that are designed to attract customer's attention in stores. Listening stations, posters, sale pricing, positioning on racks that have high visibility, co-op ads in papers ("PISTOL STAR: Available at your local Tower Records" ) and those kinds of things. Where and when we run these programs is based on a nationwide marketing plan that targets specific cities and specific times, based around things like a band's hometown, major fanbase, or tour schedule. One of the most common ways that we receive information about what is available is through endless spreadsheets that originate in a retail store's ad menu. This gets passed along to a sales rep at our distributor, which gets sent to us, based on relevance to our artists. Then, we survey the options for that month, pick what we want, and try to claim the spot as our own.

Sounds easy, right? Sounds like an endless shopping spree, and for a while, it was. The problem is, for November and December, we received those sheets already half full; big neon blocks on an excel spreadsheet that are stamped "UNAVAILABLE." A sales rep informs me that this is because Sony/BMG has claimed them. And bought them all out. And we're talking major money here, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So how does Wax Orchard go about promoting artists in this holiday season? After all, on a much smaller scale, this is our season of profit as well, at least we hope. Being virtually shut out from one of our main avenues of promotion is a harsh reality check.

We focus on local, independent stores. We advertise in regional campaigns that major chains like Virgin and Tower reserve for indies only. We've found that you have to anticipate running into brick walls sometimes, and keep your options open, and be willing to work on a very, very local basis. This entire strategy could be extrapolated to our whole existence as an indie label, of course. There are a lot of benefits to this manner of conducting business. I can't imagine that whoever it was that blocked out nearly all ad opportunities at Tower Records in LA and New York for Sony/BMG ever spoke to anyone at any of those stores, or ever will. There's something to be said for that.

Some Interesting Stories of the Week

So every Friday this little Wax Orchard newsletter gets passed around, and now in cyberspace too:

http://musicconnection.com/currentissue/signstor/signstor.lcgi#story2
Novatone written up in Music Connection

http://www.tinymixtapes.com/2005_11_01_archivenews.htm#113111426245198995
a funny take on Napster selling out to Clear Channel

http://www.coolfer.com/blog/archives/2005/11/the_roots_to_de.html
jay-z and the roots, with links

http://www.drumtopia.com/news/05_07/NAMM_iDJ_iPod_Mixing_Cons.html
iPods and DJing

http://spaces.msn.com/members/musicfilter/Blog/cns!1pscRAjcZd0RaIm4OTgVTqEg!1084.entry
Electronic Arts: how video games will become music stores.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/08/technology/08grokster.html?th&emc=th
Grokster is shutting down

http://www.mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=84087
beatbuggy.com

http://digitalmusicnews.com/#110905best
Best Buy partners with….CD Baby?

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/news/05-11/09.shtml
coldplay-bashing, I cant resist.

http://www.blogherald.com/2005/11/07/first-video-blog-network-launches/
video blogging.

http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/0545/051109_music_24hours.php
a nice little series of vignettes about seattle and music

http://news.com.com/Opening+the+door+on+a+CD-less+music+label/2100-1027_3-5942975.html?tag=nefd.top
Warner’s new Cordless label.
Here’s the press release:
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=100835

http://www.mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=84190
this is interesting. Myspace + magnatunes + wax orchard. Or something.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/11/arts/music/11coun.html?th&emc=th
the NYT on country music.

http://www.seattlest.com/archives/2005/11/10/redbull_gives_seattle_wings.php
Red Bull Music Academy hits Seattle

more on the future of music

this last post reminded me of one of the best resources i know for people interested in these issues. The Future Of Music Coalition (www.futureofmusic.org) is an organtization in DC that does incredible things: they educate and unite musicians, policymakers, buisnesspeople, industry folk, fans and activists. Absolutely everyone involved in it has amazing credentials and a superhuman willingness to fight for what they believe in. They have a yearly summit, and this past year has lots of videos and podcasts of the seminars and panels. They are all worth taking a look at. Issues covering new technologies, distribution, payola, copyright, legal issues, the works. go here: http://www.futureofmusic.org/events/summit05/schedule.cfm to find out more.

The Future of the Music Business

Last night I sat on a CLE (continuing legal education) panel hosted by Steve Gordon, author of The Future of the Music Business and an accomplished entertainment attorney. The panel included lawyers and entrepreneurs, and Steve engaged us in discussion about P2P and new business models.

Ray Beckerman stole the show with horror stories about the RIAA suits against "John Doe" defendants, those parties whom they suspect of illegal file sharing, but in fact, most of the complaints lack any proof of sharing or the specificity necessary to prove a violation of the copyright laws, and in some cases, the IP address matching through subpeona to the ISP to discover the identity of th "Does" may be incorrect. And yet many innocent defendants are being bullied into a settlement. People who were previously neutral about copyright law are now starting to wonder if it needs revision to reduce the rights of the copyright holders.

Major backfire for the labels. See http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com

We also reviewed the legal history leading to the recent Grokster shutdown, which has done nothing to slow the actual growth of illegal file sharing.

The Wax Orchard strategies of sustainable career growth, profit sharing, and broad experimentation with many different revenue streams (beyond CDs) were echoed by the other panelists. It's good to hear out ideas resonating with other people who are trying to solve similar challenges. We also jointly acknowledged that the startup costs for this strategy are high, and it's critical to form a web of partnerships with technology middlemen companies. Luckily, the tech industry financing dwarfs the music business in scale and there are plenty of startups who need content and are ready to make those deals at reasonable prices.

Welcome and Nice to Meet You.

Today.

Today is a good day to start a blog. We release 3 albums today, Novatone, Pie, and Giant Panda (links at the bottom). What we'd like, really, is for these albums to sell. We love the music, and with our limited resources, we are doing everything we can to get it out there to the rest of the world. If we can sell this music, we can continue to spread more musical genius in the future.

So first, some introductions.
Here is the Mission Statement from our website:

"We believe artists and labels can work together to make a living in a fashion that sustains artist development and leaves the copyrights with the artist. The changes in music production and distribution technologies make this possible - the declining profitability of the major label marketing process makes it inevitable."

Wax Orchard leaves all copyrights in the hands of the musicians. We are simply here to nurture and provide exposure. Significant elements of our philosophy are honesty, clarity, and simplicity. We have no intention of making any sort of money off of music that is not equally shared by those who created it. You can see this in more detail on our website, under the "About Us" and "Services" tabs (again, see links at bottom).

The purpose of this blog:
It's time to practice what we preach. Sure, our artists and our staff know that we have our morals (and our money) in the right place. To those who are in close contact with us, we are indeed a very open company to be in business with. The changing landscape of the media has so far played a central role to the way that we work, and with a blog we are simply taking things to the next level. We want the whole world to be able to see what we go through. We envision a space in which we can bring up any sort of daily trial, thought, or experience that happens here at the WaxO office (and there are many). We want people to read this blog who are music fans, entrepreneurs, industry folk, artists, publishers, teenagers, musicians- whatever. We at WaxO are all of these things and more.

Anyone who is involved in media-related adventures, personally or professionally, will find something of use in a blog about a fledgling, ambitious young record label. And we want you to respond. We spend most of our time here debating and predicting and philosophizing and arguing...it is important to engage in a serious, spirited dialogue about the world we live in and the work we do and the things about which we are passionate. At the core of how Wax Orchard operates is a code of transparency. The combination of that attitude and this blog should turn out to be an interesting forum, so stay tuned!

LINKS:

www.waxorchard.com
www.pistol-star.com
www.kjsawka.com
www.novatonemusic.com
www.richardbitch.com
www.tresrecords.com