I never met Steve Jobs. Still, I feel that in many ways, I would not be living the life I lead today were it not for his vision and his company. I’m sure I’d still write and make music, of course, but in many ways, it was the elegance of the Mac, how it became more than a tool. but a creative partner, that nourished my own creativity and exploration. And that’s what Steve did. He built a company that built products that nourished creativity. And there are a lot of people like me, who never met Steve Jobs, but have had our lives enriched by him.

Thank you, Steve.

And as the angels carry you away, look down, and see just how many lives you’ve touched, how many people are using Apple products, and how much light has been brought to the world thanks to creative people and their Macs, iPhones, and iPads.

You will be dearly, and deeply, missed.

I recently spent some time with Spotify, the “subscription” service that let’s you play any song in their library as many times as you want for a fee. The used quotes above because if you’re willing to accept advertisements, and only listen on your desktop, the “fee” is nothing. If you want the full package, with mobile application support and everything, it will cost you about $10/month. I tried the free service.

First, my impressions:

• I think the player looks cool, a sort of “iTunes in black.” Then again, it’s all in the eye of the beholder; Michelle hates the looks.

• I like being able to connect to Facebook, and see the playlists of those people whom I’m connected with. Although I wish there were some kind of Pandora/iTunes genius like method of auto-creating playlists from songs.

• Spotify’s song lists are a bit…wait for it…”spotty.” It imported my 88-song main playlist, and couldn’t find 36 of those songs. Not a great success rate. And this is mostly major-label stuff, not particularly indie or obscure. Of course, there’s another issue here—if the name of an album is even slightly different between iTunes and Spotify, Spotify can’t figure it out. For example, I have the cover of “Fortunate Sons” by Dropkick Murphys. iTunes lists the album as “Dropkick Murphys Singles Volume 2″ and Spotify lists the album as “Singles Vol. 2″ so Spotify couldn’t find the song, and gave me an empty link on my playlist even though it had the song.

• I can’t find a way to get a “controls only” view of Spotify, so you’re stuck with the full window onscreen, or hiding the app. Not ideal for a desktop player.

So software and feature-wise, I think it’s needs a bit of work in the execution.

But my main disappointment with Spotify is how horribly it pays artists. I believe that the current rate is 0.002¢ (in other words, two tenths of a penny) per complete stream (meaning, the entire song is streamed). The result of this is that Lady Gaga can have her single played over a million times, and still earn only around £100. To put that in perspective, from traditional terrestrial radio she would have earned about £15,000. But forget about the superstar level of plays—it means an independent artist, will not earn enough to pay even one month of expenses, let alone the cost of producing the song itself. FWIW, my own group, Ember After, has a small but significant number of plays, and so far we’ve earned around 4¢ from Spotify.

I think the “theory” behind the Spotify deal is that they earn a certain amount of money from subscriptions every month, and from this amount, a percentage is earmarked for artists/labels. The amount of that percentage is then split among every single artist who has plays that month, with more plays getting paid more.

In other words—it’s basically asking for the content first, setting a terribly low expectation for future reimbursement, and saying “if we make money, you make money.” It sounds “fair” at first blush (since the pay scale is equal if you’re a superstar or an unknown bedroom warrior), until you realize that it’s really asking artists to invest in Spotify’s success without ever getting a decent return. Moreover, most Spotify users use the free service, so they aren’t adding to the subscription pot anyway. The article linked to above said that in 2010, they had 7 million free subscribers, to 300,000 paid subscribers. I’m sure both have gone up by now, but clearly, most people will use Spotify for nothing, which means that while those users generate ad revenue for Spotify, they don’t generate any money for artists. So despite Spotify’s initial claim that “we’ll all get paid together” it seems that Spotify makes money off artists in ways that they don’t get any money from.

There’s probably more to it. I know that the major labels, for example, also get free advertising on Spotify in exchange for their catalog. So I may have heard/read/understood some of the details wrong. But I think my understanding is fairly accurate.

And this makes me sad. Not just as an indie musician who wants Spotify to pay me. But because the less musicians get paid, the less they’ll be able to continue to make music. And that means ultimately, Spotify (and other services that pay rates this low) strangle the very supply of music that makes them money.

Seriously, is 1¢ so much to ask? ONE. WHOLE. PENNY? Even a million plays would only result in $10,000. You couldn’t live on that. But it sounds more fair, doesn’t it? If Spotify is earning money off of subscriptions and advertisements from those million plays, doesn’t it seem fair that they should pay ONE. WHOLE. PENNY to the artist who wrote that music? One penny sounds like such a small amount—and it is…and yet it’s many times more than they’re paying.

Ultimately, I’m guessing that subscription services will be the way of the future. But my hope is that the services that end up winning (my bet is that it will be Apple, Amazon, and Google-based services) will pay more than Spotify to the people who make their service possible.

Last night, Dave Gahan of Depeche Mode performed at a Music Cares benefit concert at Club Nokia here in Los Angeles. One of the songs he performed wasLove Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division. One of my favorite  singers, performing one of my favorite songs. Amazing.

Man…I can remember playing gigs with my previous band, Darkling Thrush, which weren’t just uphill battles, but really trying slogs. Our first shows, we had friends come to see us, so there was some love in the crowd. After we’d been at it for a couple of years, we had a number of actual “fans” and so we got some appreciation. But in that middle section, when our friends had seen us enough to not come to every gig, but we didn’t have any real buzz, we often played to the bartender and his dog, or to folks who happened to be at the bar but couldn’t have cared less who we were. In fact, I remember one gig in which I was sick, laying down in the back seat of my car, our guitarist also was sick, but we soldiered on anyway…and nobody cared. Our drummer was the one who got pissed off and let the apathetic crowd know it, but we all felt it.

I assumed that once you reached stadium levels, that didn’t happen anymore. You always had people at shows who appreciated you were there, at whatever level of crowd you’re playing to.

Guess not. I thought Amanda Palmer’s blog entry about an exclusive Duran Duran gig was very interesting. This was definitely one of those gigs. As big as Duran is, even they aren’t immune. Palmer is a very stream of consciousness writer so it’s quite wordy but she does capture her feeling well. As much as it would be fun to play out with Ember After…not a gig like that. Not. At. All.

Now that I’ve got my novel, The Deviant officially out, I can focus more on making music. And just in time for the NAMM show! My career as a music technology book editor sends me there every year, and it’s always fun to catch up with friends and look at the cool toys.

On my personal blog, I wrote an entry about the NAMM show, if you’re interested.

I’ll have more to say after I’m back.

2010 was outwardly, both for Ember After, and for my other projects, a “works in progress” year.

2011 will be a year of releases.

Musically, a “maxi-single” with two incredibly good, incredibly catchy songs is about to be released. The final song and mixes are being finished right now. We’re close! Once the music is done, mastering, digital release, and a full website redesign will follow quickly. And maybe even a new video!  Look for that in the next couple of months. I’ll keep you informed!

As far as personal projects go, my first release is at hand! I’ve written a novel, The Deviant, which is now for sale at Amazon.com and elsewhere. It a urban fantasy/paranormal romance novel about a 13th century German vampire, Heinrich, hiding in plain site in a Central California town, trying to blend in…all the while, a spate of murders are being investigated. My website has more, including half the book posted online and available as a free PDF or eBook download. If vampire fiction (real vampire, not Twilight sparkly daylight walking teen vampires in love) is interesting to you, please check it out!

Okay, more music coming up!

When I was 18-years old, I spent half of my Freshmen year student loan on getting a Tascam Portastudio 246 to write and record songs. It was a 4-track recorder with a six-track mixer. And it was expensive—I think it cost me around $1000 back in 1988. Not quite the education Wells Fargo planned on paying for, I’m sure, but it certainly was instrumental in my future career as a pro audio writer.

Today, more than 20 years later, Tascam has released the Tascam Portastudio iPad app. It too is a 4-track recorder, although with only a 4-track mixer.

Even if you don’t already own the iPad, you can buy this Portastudio for about half of what I paid for mine. Of course, I could plug individual guitars, basses, and microphones into my Portastudio (in fact, my 1988 Portastudio was still in use recording band rehearsals for over 10 years) and this one can only record one thing that is plugged into the headphone input. Then again, my Portastudio couldn’t play Angry Birds.

It’s more than a bit amazing for me to think that almost a generation later, some kids just getting into recording their music will get their own Tascam Portastudio, this time in app form, to start writing and recording songs. The more things change…

This is one of the things that I’ve been up to while finishing up the next Ember After EP:

http://www.karmakatanddogma.com — enjoy!

You may be wondering why a “real band” would be writing about a game that involves playing a “fake band.” In fact, this game has gotten a lot less “fake,” and that’s why I have to admit, I’m pretty jazzed about Rock Band 3 by Harmonix/MTV Studios. We have Rock Band 2, which is a ton of fun, and Rock Band 3 looks like a very nice evolution of the game. Where Guitar Hero has been moving into more ways to “fake it” so to speak, Rock Band has been getting more “real” about it. First of all, they’ve added keyboards, so you can buy a Wireless keytar looking thingie which has been reviewed favorably as a real MIDI controller on some gear blogs. And also, there is a “pro” mode, in which you can use this Wireless Fender Mustang Looking MIDI controller and actually play MIDI guitar so that you’re not pressing random “light circles” as they come down the screen, but playing the notes of the song. They keyboard also uses the real notes of the song, not simply random light circles.

Thing about this for a moment—with the new Rock Band, not only are you having fun playing rock star, but you are also learning to play or improving your skill with a real instrument. This is seriously cool—it means that kids that get into the game at the “pro” level will start to develop some real skills. Music should be fun, it should be something everyone gets to enjoy at their own level, so this really interests me. And think of how easy it is to move from this to, for example Garageband ’11, part of Apple’s iLife ’11, which also includes free beginner lessons from pro teachers. A teen can now, with just a game system and some free (or incredibly cheap) Mac software “play” themselves into basic rock guitar skills, and then get some real pointers from pros, all at home. Adults who’ve wanted to learn to strum some chords can now do so with their family and everyone can enjoy the experience together.

As a musician, I think this is incredibly awesome, and this was always the promise I saw in these games. I’m glad to see it finally hitting the shelves!

(and on a personal note, as a left-handed MIDI guitarist, it will be interesting to see how the pro controller, which can be software-configured for lefties, will work in comparison to the more professional audio-to-MIDI converters. I’m guessing that this will actually be better, since it doesn’t require conversion. And thousands cheaper…)

I’ll probably do a geartalk post about GarageBand ’11 after I have it. But for now, let me leave you with Bob Lefsetz’s words on the Apple Event, specifically aimed at musicians.