The Director-General of the BBC has come under a lot of fire this week for his proposals to axe two radio stations and drop a lot of content from the website in order to redirect funding to improve the quality of programming across the rest of the BBC’s network. The stars of music and media have been laying their scorn on the DG’s plans, and the vast bulk of comments on the “putting quality first” blog post he put up on the BBC’s site were resoundingly negative, chastising him for contradicting himself by taking down some of the best, highest quality content, and defending what are clearly their own favourite services.
For my part I can’t help feeling that any announcement of cutbacks is going to provoke complaints from the people who are negatively affected. There are definitely great programmes on 6 Music and the Asian Network, but if the stations are to be closed, there’s no reason the good bits can’t be cherry picked and put on the other stations with a broader reach, swapping out for worse shows, gaining listeners and improving the quality of service for the great unwashed that haven’t discovered the newer stations, or simply don’t have DAB radios. That said, there are certainly other places the budget could have been cut from, Graham Norton’s salary, for one.
Since Damon Albarn and Jamie ‘Tank Girl’ Hewlett’s collaborative cartoon band Gorillaz were nice enough to give YouTube an exclusive on the video for their new track ‘Stylo’, YouTube have let their fictional bassist Murdoc Niccols curate a post on their Celebrity Playlist section. The mask slips a little bit, and Murdoc’s voice betrays him as an excitable 40 year old man, rather than a sharp-toothed ego-bass-maniac. Some of the videos are nice, like the clip from Jacques Cousteau’s ‘Silent World’, and others are revealing, like the dressing room rehearsal of “Hip Hop”, by Mos Def and my favourite colliery band/rap mashup group, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble (who you should definitely check out on dino-space here). Anyway, here’s the clip – and no, Charlie Bit Me isn’t on there, odd, considering the teeth thing.
Digital Music News are carrying this story about online ticket scalping – a case in which an LA based company calling themselves ‘Wiseguy Tickets’ employed a ring of Bulgarian computer programmers to buy up all the best tickets to high profile, high demand concerts and resell them online for a huge mark-up. Perhaps parting with more thansix times the face value of the ticket is painful for whoever buys the ticket second hand, but presumably no-one is twisting their arm as they click ‘confirm bid’, and as far as eBay is concerned it’s perfectly legitimate (at least in the UK – some US states have laws against it).
So who is at fault here? Blocking the public from buying tickets wholesale with highly organised, bulk buying and reselling operations seems pretty underhand and unsporting, but the scalpers are taking the risk that people will purchase the inflated tickets, so isn’t it just the normal exercise of a free market? Are the promoters missing a trick in the first place? A staggered ebay auction style release of tickets by the promoter, with say 25% of total tickets released 12, 8, 4 and 2 weeks before the gig, with prices starting at a reasonable face value would surely have the same free-market effect. There’s the strong argument that this competetive model would be a disservice to the less affluent fans, but promoters would have the same chance of selling out a venue at the starting price, and could only benefit from any uplift if the tickets ended up being worth more to a punter than the original price – if they were bid up by competing punters, and this would make it harder for scalpers to get hold of tickets in the first place, as to get them they’d have to compete with Joe Public in the first place, paying the elevated prices themselves. It would also go some way to eliminating their profits – why buy from an unofficial auction when there’s an official one happening, and could potentially make more money for the promoter, venue and artist if the ticket revenue is split out between them.
What do you think, internet people? Is sclaping fair practice, or callous parasitism? Would selling online like this just be a way for promoters to benefit at fans’ expense, or would it be a neat way of cutting scalpers out of the loop and rationalising ticket prices for the rest of us?
Not content with the 3 albums they’ve released over the last 12 months (BlackRoc, Auerbach’s solo album – Keep It Hid, and Carney’s Drummer), the Black Keys are dropping another album on the 18th of May, with a tour to accompany it, obviously.
A track listing doesn’t mean much withouth accompanying sounds, so make some grungy blues noises in your head as you read this:
Brothers
01 Everlasting Light
02 Next Girl
03 Tighten Up
04 Howlin’ for You
05 She’s Long Gone
06 Black Mud
07 The Only One
08 Too Afraid to Love You
09 Ten Cent Pistol
10 Sinister Kid
11 The Go Getter
12 I’m Not the One
13 Unknown Brother
14 Never Gonna Give You Up
15 These Days
The new Gorillaz album, plastic beach is out next week, and the video for ‘Stylo’, the first single to be drawn from was posted on YouTube yesterday – featuring an El Camino driving, sunglass toting, Bruce Willis. Bruce proceeds to chase the 3D animated crew across the California desert in a Mad Max style chase ending in true Hollywood style. We can’t embed the video, but you can watch it here, and check out the intro to their Plastic Beach concept below:
The BBC is reviewing its channel and programming lineup across all media, and looks set to cut some TV, Radio and Web services to focus its budget on making “fewer things better”. The highest profile services in line for the axe are digital/online only stations 6 Music and the Asian Network, with teen-aimed services Blast and Switch also in the firing line. The Corporation is also looking at cutting chunks out of its main web services, dropping sections with poor online audiences wholesale to reduce costs. The narrowing of services is aimed at freeing up more of Auntie’s budget to be focussed into the content on the remaining services; making less, but better content.
Strong feeling is evident among the Asian Network and 6 Music’s listeners, who are relatively few in number, but passionate about saving their stations and have already started campaigns against the cuts. Their views are not shared by everyone; Peter Bazalgette, creator of Channel 4’s “Big Brother”, applauded the cuts, and called for the BBC to retreat from more programming areas to make room for independent production companies, who have been hard hit by the recent recession. Mark Thompson conceded that some of the audiences, particularly the Teen sector that Blast was aimed at, were being better served by Channel 4 and other independent and commercial providers.
The BBC has struggled with its public service remit over recent years, trying hard to find a balance between its need to create unique, informative and educational programming as per its charter, and calls to justify the license fee with which it funds itself by making more entertainment programmes with a wider appeal. In this blogger’s opinion, a refocussing on excellent rather than broad programming is a very positive step, and a return to the values that make the Beeb so precious a national treasure.
We’re big fans of Fink, one of Ninja Tune’s artists – if you are too, then you’ll be interested to see that he’s got a free, previously unreleased download of a B-side track that didn’t make it onto ‘Sort Of Revolution’ up on his site at the moment. You will need to swap him your email for it though…
Feel like going out, but only got your dark, intense face with you? Fear not! Massive Attack have announced a Spring tour, playing big venues in the States, Australia and Belgium (but not in the UK for some reason). The tour supports their new album Heligoland, their 5th studio album.Hopefully we can look forward to some gigs nearer to Bristol once they’ve come home after this lot:
03-12 Perth, Australia – Kings Park
03-15 Sydney, Australia – Opera House Forecourt
03-19 Canberra, Australia – Royal Theatre
03-20 Melbourne, Australia – Sidney Myer Music Bowl
03-23 Brisbane, Australia – Riverstage
03-25 Auckland, New Zealand – Vector Arena
05-07 Toronto, Ontario – Sound Academy
05-09 Toronto, Ontario – Sound Academy
05-11 New York, NY – Terminal 5
05-12 New York, NY – Terminal 5
05-18 Los Angeles, CA – Wiltern Theater
05-19 Los Angeles, CA – Wiltern Theater
05-25 San Francisco, CA – Warfield Theater
05-27 San Francisco, CA – Warfiled Theater
05-30 George, WA – Sasquatch Festival
09-03 Antwerp, Belgium – Sportpaleis
Not to be outdone by streaming competitors Spotify, who are rumoured to have gained a new funding partner (and consultant) in the form of Napster/Facebook founder Sean Parker, MOG have announced second round funding of $10,000,000 dollars, which they plan to use to take the platform into Europe, as well as funding Stateside expansion. As things stand, the two competitors are entrenching in their home territories, but the date of their confrontation on one side of the Atlantic must be drawing closer, even though no dates have been mentioned by either team. MOG’s monthly subscription is less than half the price of Spotify’s, but Spotify has major label backing, plus a vocal and passionate fanbase. Pandora are keeping their heads down, and quietly getting on with dominating the internet-radio and car dashboard scene, but the clash between these two will likely define the major player in on-demand streaming. The future of this type of music consumption is far from gilt-edged, however, as Spotify are still struggling to up their paid (£9.99 a month) subscription rates to supplement their ad-funded service, while MOG are operating at about a 17% conversion rate from their free trial to a $5 a month subscription. Whether either of these approaches will be successful enough to fund them in the long term remains to be seen, but given the high level of uptake, there is certainly a market for on-demand. Who gets to service it is currently being decided.
Luxembourg’s biggest media star, Spotify has admitted a new investor to the fold, at least according to TechCrunch. Sean Parker was one of the founders of both Napster and Facebook, and would be Spotify’s first and only US investor. If the rumour is true, then it would not only help Spotify’s cash situation (always helpful), but also give them the inside track on running a music service in the States, and might give an indication that the launch of Spotify in the US is approaching.
The Director-General of the BBC has come under a lot of fire this week for his proposals to axe two radio stations and drop a lot of content from the website in order to redirect funding to improve the quality of programming across the rest of the BBC’s network. The stars of music and media have been laying their scorn on the DG’s plans, and the vast bulk of comments on the “putting quality first” blog post he put up on the BBC’s site were resoundingly negative, chastising him for contradicting himself by taking down some of the best, highest quality content, and defending what are clearly their own favourite services.
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