The press is filled with complaints from major labels like Universal about how difficult it is these days for them to sell music.  So you’d think that given their troubles, they’d want to make it extremely easy for willing customers to purchase songs and albums from their artists.  And yet Universal Music made it impossible for me to pay for a song from one of their German artists when I tried to.

A German musician I am friendly with, knowing my taste in music, linked me to a YouTube video for a remixed song he thought I’d really like.  The song is called “Eisblumen,” by German artist Eisblume.  The song was written by German folk/goth-metal band Subway for Sally in 2005, covered by Eisblume in 2008, and then remixed by Derek Von Krogh.  I like the original, the cover, but I think the remix is truly excellent:

I loved the remix so much, I wanted to buy it.  So my first port of call was the iTunes Music Store.  Being signed to Universal Music, I figured this would be an easy song to find there.  Well…I was wrong.  The song is not in the US iTunes Music store (perhaps ironically Subway to Sally’s original version of Eisblumen which is on German indie metal label Nuclear Blast is available in the US iTunes Store…)  I switch to the Deutschland iTunes Music Store, but it won’t let me purchase the song from my US iTunes account.

Next stop, Amazon.com.  I look for the physical CD of the Eisblumen EP, but it’s import only, and not available anyway.  (Besides, importing a physical disc to the USA because I like a single song is really cost prohibative).  So I then try the Amazon.com MP3 download store, and like the US iTunes, they don’t have it.  Now as luck would have it, the day I happened to be looking for Eisenblume Remix is the same day Amazon announced that there was a brand spanking new MP3 downloads store available in Germany.  Perfect!  So I head over to amazon.de, head to the downloads store, and click to buy the song…once again, no luck.  I can barely read the German-language message it throws me, but clearly I’m in the wrong geographic location.

At this point, I ask an Austrian friend who has some similar taste in music if he woud mind buying it for me.  Since there is no Amazon store in Austria, I assumed that they’d sell him the MP3…once again, apparently Austria doesn’t count either for Amazon.de downloads, and he couldn’t buy it either!

The story gets even zanier.  The German musician above decided to buy me the Eisblumen EP via iTunes.  I received an email telling me that the gift was waiting for me, so I changed my iTunes store once again to Deutschland, clicked the link, only to be told that not only would they not sell to an American iTunes account, I couldn’t even redeem a gift card!

It would be easy to place the blame at Apple and Amazon’s feet (and yes, the gift card thing is pretty screwy if you ask me), but I’m guessing that the retailer’s hands are tied.  I’m guessing they have to keep the stores separate various local taxes and national regulations, and other things I probably don’t realize.  I’m sure they’re doing what they’re told.

Ultimately, the blame lies squarely with Universal Music.  It is easily within their power to put all of their artists on every iTunes/Amazon MP3 download store. Digital media is not like physical media, where there are warehouse and shipping costs.  Sure, the Universal Music marketing machine isn’t trying to sell Eisblume in the USA but so what?  It does’t reduce shelf space for other Universal artists if Eisblume’s digital files can be purchased in every country in the world, and they might actually sell a few.   It doesn’t cost Universal Music anything extra.  Obviously, Universal does put some German language music in the US iTunes store (Rammstein, for example).  Ember After’s album Grasping At Straws is available for download from every iTunes store in the world, and it didn’t cost an extra dime or take any extra effort.  What could possibly be Universal’s incentive to not allow paid downloads in every possible store?  Is Universal afraid that Eisblume might sell a record or two outside Germany?

In my case, I have German friends and a fair amount of FTP space, because the end result is that the German musician who purchased the EP for me was able to download and send it to me.  So in the end, I’ve got the music, and Universal got paid.

I can’t help but wonder how many people outside Germany find music they like by German artists, want to buy the digital download legally, but are thwarted by Universal’s insistance on treating digital downloads with the same regional restrictions as physical media. I’m sure Universal Music would be the first to scream and wave their corporate fist in the air at anyone who didn’t legally pay for the song…but what other options do they give a music fan without an international network?  If Universal wants to complain about how difficult it is to sell music these days, why don’t they at least take advantage of the opportunities they have.

It’s been a while since I posted a blog entry here. One of the reasons is I’ve actually been working. I’ve been working both on getting the new Logic Users Group platform up and running, and finally on more Ember After songs.  Towards that end, I finally took possession of a fantastic new guitar, which I detail here in the geartalk blog.   I also have just ordered a Dave Smith Instrumens Mopho, a fantastic analog monosynth based off the Prophet 08, but with some special editions just perfect for grinding mean industrial music: sub-oscillators, feedback, audio input.  Tasty treats, all!

Dave Smith Instruments Mopho

But all this has got me thinking about this whole Interweb, and how much time can be spent communicating on it.  Ember After has a web page, a Myspace page, an iLike page, a Facebook page, a Bebo page…I’ve almost lost track.  And of course Ember After is on Twitter.  To keep up to date on all of these would leave no time to be creative!   (Let alone do a full time job, if recording and performing music isn’t paying the bills).

And it’s not just typing to your huge (ha…) fanbase, it’s keeping up with other people—the whole point of this communication is that it’s supposed to be two-way, to bring people together, and not simply be another one-way announcement system.  But it all eats into what limited time there is to write music, which ultimately is the reason that people are following/friending with Ember After to begin with, right?

Somewhere in there is a balance.  More successful acts have discussed hiring a marketing company to take care of the mailing list/updating news/blog aspect of their “music business.”  That can really help free the artist to both communicate and create…if you’re successful enough to afford it, or have a record company willing to pay for it.  As long as the updates and blogs and tweets come from the artist, if they are propogated and managed by hired help shouldn’t mean the communication is less authentic.

But for those of us who don’t have the means or the success yet to hire a team, we’re left trying to figure out how to keep these dozens of sites and networks up to date while at the same time finding the time to make the music that you are communicating about.  And it’s a double edged sword—without communicating, nobody knows that you’ve got the music out, and without the music, there’s nothing to communicate.

For now, I’m shifting the balance towards creating.  I’ll still try and actively post whenever I have a moment, but that’s proving to be not as frequent as I wish.  I hope that makes sense.

Ah, the glorious march of technology. When we filmed the video for “Lost,” the first song we released from the album Grasping At Straws, our director Kenn Michael filmed it in HD. Of course, the main avenues for video promotion open to a band who doesn’t have a major label budget is online, and at the time, YouTube didn’t really allow high res video.

Thankfully, that has changed. So I have dutifully uploaded the high definition version of the Lost video, viewable on the Ember After YouTube channel, or below:

Friday was a new guitar day for me—always a fun day! My current main guitar is a custom guitar by Koll Guitars, and this new guitar is also a custom guitar.

Read all about it over on the Geartalk blog!

I’ll admit, I’m a tech geek.  I like to have the latest and greatest.  Sometimes I have a real defendable reason, but a lot of the time, it’s just because it’s nice to have a new piece of Shiny.  The Onion takes the piss out of all of us, and the companies that cater to us, with this latest blurb:

I think most of we musicians are trying to do this, aren’t we?  And sadly, we don’t have the financial resources or built-in fan base of Trent Reznor to start with.  But Michael Masnick, Editor of the TechDirt blog, gives a pretty convincing presentation of how this particular business model works, and works well, using Trent Reznor as his example.

Inspiring stuff as we move forward…lets see what 2009 can bring!

They weren’t very popular.  In fact, they only had one minor hit, “Bikini girls with Machine Guns.”  But The Cramps crossed all sorts of lines and leaned into all sorts of genres (punk, metal, rockabilly, psycho-billy, goth, even industrial) without ever being a part of them.  They were unique and original, dangerous and glam.  The real deal, in a landscape of imitators.

And now, lead singer Lux Interior has died at 62 of an existing heart condition.  Perhaps there won’t be the sort of eulogies for him that there are for the more successful frontmen, but his contribution is deep, unique, and powerful, and he will be missed.

Lux Interior of The Cramps

Of course, the big news of the day is that Barack Obama is the 44th president of the USA.  Somewhere over a million people braved freezing temperatures to be part of the moment in which arguably the least popular president in recent times handed the reins of power to arguably the most popular president-elect.  It was a scene of palpable hope and goodwill.

The economy has been weak.  The globe has been in chaos.  Obama will not be able to wave his magic wand and make it all better.  But there is a lot of hope that he’ll make things better, and it’s nice to feel that hope instead of frustration.  As a people, Americans like to start things anew, and this is a new beginning.  Let’s hope it’s a good one!

In more mundane news, the Ember After News page, Blog, and Geartalk blog, now have iPhone/iPod Touch compatible themes.  This means that if you’ve got one of the aforementioned devices, you can read these pearls of wisdom in a nicely formatted way.  Enjoy!

For years, the samples in the Ember After song Twenty Feet was loaded with samples from episodes of the amazing, surreal, complex British 1960s TV series The Prisoner.  The brainchild of Patrick McGoohan, the series was a spy thriller, science fiction, psychological drama, and absurdist.  It was obviously total fantasy, but it managed to capture the clausterphobia, paranoia, of being isolated, out of your own control, in a homogenized and controlled society.  ”The Village” was the home for captured spies, but it also could be any modern suburb.  And the ever present cry of McGoohan’s character—”I am not a number, I am a free man!” the cry of every misfit and dreamer who has butted against the “reality” that seeks conformity over individuality.

As a person, I was extremely drawn to the series for these reasons, as well as McGoohan’s other roles later.  As a musician, I felt that The Prisoner complimented the message of society-induced isolation of Twenty Feet perfectly.  In the final analysis, trying to get rights to sample a major television series proved too dicey for an independent act, so the samples were replaced with public domain samples with a similar feel.

But nothing can replace Patrick McGoohan, who died today in Los Angeles at 80 years old.  Thank you for your vision and your talent Mr. McGoohan—you gave creative voice to many ideas, both of your time and ahead of your time. 

Goodbye, Patrick. You’re finally free.

Here we are, a week before the music instrument industry’s big debutant ball (or candy store, depending who you ask), the NAMM show.  This show manages to attract tens of thousands of people every year—exhibitors showing their musical instruments, software, and technology; buyers representing retailers shopping for what to order; non-exhibiting companies who are attached to the industry and therefore attend the show; and of course the MI industry media, eager to get the blogosphere and magazine reading public super-excited about all the new toys.  I work for a publishing company as an editor in the music and music technology field, and that means NAMM isn’t just a candy store for me; I am there for work.  I email a lot of people, but this is where we can seal the deal, face to face.

And I think that’s why so many companies are still exhibiting at NAMM this year, and so many industry professionals attend, even though the global economy is in the toilet.  This is where you can meet with your distributors and partners, you can establish new business relationships and see what the competition is up to.  This is where you can talk to representatives in person and maybe nail down, face to face, that deal that you talked about over the phone and in email but never quite got solidified.

But I have to admit…my favorite part is the social nature of it all.  I’ve met some great people over the years I’ve been coming to NAMM.  And especially with Europeans I’ve met, trade shows are some of my only chances to see them.  It’s the same with everyone—ultimately, trade shows are about personal interaction far more than simply unveiling new products.  And so there are lots of dinners, lunches, and coffees that double as both business events and social events.  

Clearly, the business value of the trade shows are diminishing thanks to the immediate availability of information (and usually higher quality information) on the Internet, and how easy it is to get ahold of people online and on mobile phone.  That’s one reason the big boys like Apple, Adobe, and others have given up exhibiting.  But the social value—and the social business value—remains.

So I gladly take my more serious business meetings in.  Because I learn a lot, I meet people, and because you never know: today’s “serious” business meeting could be tomorrow’s coffee partner.  Because the truth is, most of us do have at least one thing in common—at one point, we also viewed NAMM as one big candy store…