scot hacker's foobar blog

Downhill Battle brilliantly critiques the financial model of the iTunes Music Store, noting that they’ve blown a great opportunity — they could have leveraged internet distribution to give the artist a much larger cut of every song sold. Instead, iTMS is just another iteration of “the man” abusing the artist. The site challenges iTMS to post the artists’ cut for each song right there in the UI. Similar discussion going on here.

First of all, Apple gets 3 times as much money as musicians from each sale. Apple takes a 35% cut from every song and every album sold, a huge amount considering how little they have to do. Record labels receive the other 65% of each sale.

Interestingly, Apple recently removed the claim that iTunes is “fair to the artists” from their web site. Downhill Battle claims this change as their victory.

And yet, Apple is losing money on ITMS, according to CNET.

My take: The solution proposed by Downhill Battle (download from free services, then donate money directly to the artist) puts wayyyy too much faith in humanity (reminds me of libertarianism’s fatal flaw – sounds ideal on paper, but no way could it ever work). Hate to sound so negative, but really — what percentage of people are going to have a download festival on Kazza and then go donate money to the artist through a separate channel? Bzzzzzt. Ain’t going to happen.

kurt von finck recently passed me a note out of the blue – his personal ruminations on how SNL’s musical guests actually mattered once upon a time. Changed our minds. Turned us on. His experience and memories mirrored my own pretty closely, and I asked his permission to re-run the note here (follow the links for background).

I happened to listen to the Elvis Costello/Beastie Boys version of “Radio Radio” recently. Very, very cool of Beastie Boys to re-create this moment with Elvis on the 25th Anniversary special. It reminded me of the two early SNL musical guests I remember. Seminal stuff at 12-14 years old.

The first was Elvis Costello’s 1977 “Less Than Zero-Radio Radio.” I already owned the “My Aim Is True” vinyl album, and at first was psyched to hear him sing “Less Than Zero.” Things didn’t work out that way.

Man, I was blown away. A new song, and the lyrics were a scathing indictment of the disco and recycled crap (Allman Brothers vs. Molly Hatchet) “classic” rock my friends were listening to. I can still see it in my mind. Here’s the episode blurb and a link to the actual performance in MP3.

The other musical act I remember is Devo. This one more people seem to remember, maybe because it was in the next season, when SNL was really becoming popular. I remember wondering if they were a goof or not, probably because of the Booji Boy sketch that preceded their second song. I think that was “Jocko Homo” (their cover of “Satisfaction” being the first tune). Here’s the blurb.

Kinda figured you all would remember one, if not both, of these performances. SNL’s musical acts today just kinda suck. “Radio Radio” has sorta come to pass, and even bands like The White Stripes seem kinda hackneyed. I want something new.

Amen to that. SNL’s musical acts were something to look forward to in the 70s and early 80s; almost a reason to watch the show in and of themselves. I got turned on to so much music from that soundstage. From the same period, add The Specials and The B-52s (if you’re going to remember this, you have to remember these acts as totally fresh). The Clash, Joe Jackson, The Cars, Sun Ra, Zappa, Talking Heads, Ornette Coleman, Blondie, The Roches, Gary Numan, Captain Beefheart, Fear, Laurie Anderson, P-Funk… If you check the musical history of the show from season to season, you can see that the creativity quotient starts to decline in the mid 80s. By the 90s it’s pretty much all pop, no risk.

It’s not all SNL’s fault that we’ve reached the current nadir or creativity on that stage – music was in the midst of an especially fertile passage. But still, there are dozens of interesting acts out there who could be filling the musical minds of new viewers with that raw thrill… the feeling that music could go anywhere, be anything, just keep exploding outward in a million new directions. Creative stuff is out there. SNL has just decided that the Clear Channel route is safer and more lucrative.

Filthy lucre.

Took time last night to see Banyan with Roger at Great American Music Hall. Pretty floatin’ show, though not quite as tight as last February’s performance. Kind of Laswell-like stew of atmosphere, jazz, funk, punk. Virtuosic, but somehow had trouble finding its overall groove. Still, how often do you get to hear Funkadelic’s “Maggot Brain” morph into Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme?” Sadly underattended – less than 100 people in the house.

Have been debating whether to go to this or to see Watt with Iggy and the Stooges in December. But that show is part of the Not So Silent Night festival, which includes a bunch of bands I don’t really care about (don’t have the time of day for Perry Ferrell, sorry, even though Jane’s drummer Steve Perkins is himself the heart of Banyan). And it’s harder for dads to go these longer performances, so Rog and I opted for something we could do quickly after kids went off to Slumberland.

This morning dreamed of parachuting/hang-gliding through an endless valley with Amy (but she was my fiance’ in the dream), through miles of craggy outcroppings, trees, lakes, contours in the land beautiful beyond all description, kind of a visual representation of last night’s music, I think. At one point my ‘chute got tangled on a tree, but all I had to do was hunch my shoulder a bit to lift it out of the branches.