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Web-Only Album Wins Grammy
blamanj writes "Jazz artist Maria Schneider won a Grammy last night for her album 'Concert in the Garden.' What makes this unusual, according to CNET, is that she might be the first artist ever to win a Grammy for an album distributed solely on the Web. None of the sales were in record stores, and the album was financed through Artist Share."
This would be more exciting if anyone at all cared about the grammys.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Does that mean that Grammy is rewarding talented artists too?
It'll be interesting if a pop singer pulls a similar stunt for his/her next album, and we'll have a real comparison, and see how (un)important a publisher is in terms of marketing and sales.
Is publisher still an important factor?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Was anyone else sooo annoyed at how much crap they spewed about downloading music last night?
Must-not-watch TV!
Wake up call....
Dear RIAA,
PWNED,
Toddy boy
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
See how it works RIAA? people release albums to be LISTENED to, not to be controlled... and when they do they SUCCEED.
I've downloaded most of Maria's album, and am looking for the final pieces. This is how distribution can and SHOULD work
This can't be right. The RIAA told me in my latest session, where I get hooked up to this machine.... with electrodes and stuff.... it shocks me :( ... that only mass-marketed artists are successes, and that the internet gives you herpes.
Come on, when a dead guy nearly sweeps the awards (regardless of the fact that Ray was talented), truly this an industry running out of options.
How will the RIAA remove her from the public eye? Or will they just make her an offer she can't refuse and bring her to the dark side?
As a musician, I hope her win is a precedent that will be emulated over and over.
When they realize that they now are losing control of their artists. I have not heard of her before, but this is nice in that web based distro of music won a Grammy and I hope that this is the first of many more for here and other artists.
Panic now, beat the rush!
i didnt think the grammy's were about commercial exposure or success, but rather about the quality of music...(checks online) wait, maroon 5 won a grammy? well, fuck that, i was wrong.
Still, a good sign.
-Rob
Marriage doesn't have to suck!
she will probably have to sell the award on ebay to compensate her webhost for the server that just went down in flames.
What's really interesting is that the album was made with no involvement of a record company at all.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
For someone that is coming from the bottom up, i can say that time is the key. Without millions of dollars to spend on promotion, independant artists have to find a different way to communicate with the masses.
.02
Internet is their greatest tool, so with a bit of time and dedication you can reach millions of people from the comforts of your own home.
I don't think it's about the music industry now, it's about the new uprising of artists taking a step on freely distributed music. The RIAA has their game, but we have ours too.
Instead of changing them, lets just use our own method.
that's my
- pronobozo
------
insert sig here,here, and here
Milli Vanilli. No, it's an industry award, and, like most other industry awards, goes to the people who made the industry the most money.
Oh, but it's on their official website. Well then. I'm sure they woulnd't bend the truth to not look like corporate whores.
They will never stop until somebody makes the
Highlights include:
Animating Ray Charles corpse to sell box sets and tribute albums. Look at the dead guy dance! Reminded me of last year's "Cash in on Johnny Cash".
The most god-awful rendition of 'Across the Universe' ever. Hey, if I wanted wooden performances, I'd hang out with a drugstore Indian. And Slash, you don't need to lean that far back when you're playing a quietly phased 12 string. Save the rock pose for something that isn't being butchered right before your eyes.
The internet-inspired 'mash-up'. You can't tell me that someone didn't get that idea from searching Livejournals, and thinking, "This is super-hot! The kids will eat this up! LOLLERS!"
Industry fuck talking about the usual, "downloading music is illegal". Unless you don't own the rights to it. Great crowd shot during that speech. So many 'fuck you' expressions on the audience that had been screwed by industry contracts. Or boredom, apathy and 'get this over with'. I would have been yelling, "Michael Bolton called, and he wants his hair back!". Or something funny.
The endless 'we care' about the tsunami or fill in the blank tragedy of the moment' blathering. How about you kids spend more time making a listenable record, and less time pandering to your bleeding heart market share?
Once again, the Grammys show that the RIAA is not relevant. When are we getting rid of them again?
How many of you are going to support her by buying her album?
If you truly want music to be free (as in speech), put your money where your mouth is for once. The success of such artists depends on the financial backing of people who claim to support independent music.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
The artist has no label. The album was self-financed, and she managed to recoup her expenses with web sales.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
in AD 2005, war was beginning.
RIAA chairman: "what happen"
RIAA flunky: "somebody set us up the bomb!"
RIAA flunky: "we get signal!"
RIAA chairman: "what?"
RIAA flunky: "main screen turn on!"
RIAA chairman: "it's you!
schneider: "how are you gentlemen. all your sales are belong to us. you are on the way to obsolescence."
RIAA chairman: "what you say!"
maria schneider: "you have no chance to survive. make your time."
ed
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
Ironically (and in restrospect obviously) the album is not available on iTMS in their "Grammy Winners" section. :)
My first thought was: "I wonder how many people who are normally fine with pirating music because they're sticking it to a record company..." (as if the artist isn't a piece of that picture) ..."will, out of inertia, just go ahead and run off with an unpaid-for copy of this woman's work, too." And then I realized that most Jazz fans are a little more cerebral, and have a lot more respect for the artists themselves, and typically would either go see a show, or actually pay for a recording. If her work isn't immediately torrented everywhere, that won't really indicate a sea change in this picture. Stay in the musical neighborhood, but see how it goes with, say, a new Norah Jones collection. Or, just prove that all of the "I only do it because of the RIAA" types are hypocrites by seeing if, just to make the point, Metallica or The Blackeyed Peas would do it. Their work would be immediately ripped off, and we'd have some tangible hypocrisy to point to. And this endless conversation would finally come down to: "I, um, really just don't want to pay for music, actually, you got me."
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
This is precisely the way in which this "revolution" should happen. This artist has choosen to distribute her music only over the internet. Because of her choice many people are able to enjoy her music that might not otherwise. She also has cut out the RIAA member middlemen. We need more artists that are willing to do this.
Her choice, though, is the key issue here. An artist that does not make a similar choice should not have thier right to make that choice usurped by a bunch of thieves with bittorrent clients.
The article says she made 10,000 copies and pre-sold 9,000. The album cost her $87,000 to make. She'd need to be selling them for at least $12 a pop to be getting much of anything back. That's assuming the $87k includes her production cost for the 10,000 CDs. In a small run, the packaging costs could easily run $2-3 per CD.
Her site has gone down in flames (no coral cache available), so I can't check how much she was charging. Granted, a jazz artist with her tallent is likely doing a fair amount of live performances, so the album's not her only source of income, but still . . .
Come on, you didn't read the three rules of winning a Grammy!
1. If a Grammy can be awarded post-humously, it will. No disrespect to Ray Charles at all, he is one of my favorites, but did his duet album deserve to win EIGHT Grammies? He won for pretty much every award he was up for. The same thing happened in the past with Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and George Harrison. There are much better records by Ray Charles out there that should have deserved more when they came out, but to get all these awards post-humously is pandering to right past wrongs concerning his legacy.
2. Perform at the Grammys, win a Grammy. Come on, how many times have you seen someone win a Grammy RIGHT AFTER THEY PERFORMED? Constantly walking right from backstage to accept the award. What proved this to me was when Gloria Estefan performed an obscure Spanish-language song on the show, then they awarded the Grammy for that same category. In any other circumstance, the award would be given out before the broadcast. You almost wonder if some of the winners know beforehand if they are going to win as incentive to perform on the show: "I'll only show up and perform if I won an award!"
3. The palatable artist usually wins. This year: Maroon 5 for Best New Artist. Which might actually be a good thing considering Best New Artist can be the kiss of death. (Arrested Development and Milli Vanilli anyone?). What triggered this theory? Well, Norah Jones last year. Santana the year before that. But two words come to mind. Jethro. Tull.
Let's face it, the Grammys are all about politics, not quality of product. As pretty much all awards shows are. But the important thing here is that you don't have to pay attention to them. You are your own person, you listen to what you choose to listen to, and no one can tell you otherwise.
She was mentioned in a 3-part piece on NPR's Morning Edition titled "Paying for Music in the Internet Age".
She's interviewed in part 1 of the series which was aired on the 15th of September [clip length: 5' 42"]. Odd, though, that clip one is the middle link among the three.
For immediate release:
The RIAA has today shown further proof that non-conventional Internet Music systems are flawed, and costing the artists money. The recent Grammy success of a relatively unknown artist, Maria Schneider, through an unconventional medium is hurting artists. Sure, her method of direct sales, thereby lowering the overhead of record stores, executives and others in the chain seems innocuous enough.
But it's not.
You see, since her record was not released through the RIAA, we missed out on that chunk of profit. That's money straight from our profit coffers, err, I mean our lower employee payrolls. Now, since she cut our profit on her work off, we have to compensate to meet our annual profit-for-executives margins. So, we had to cut into other artists's payments. Now, Maroon5, Britney Spears, and Metallica will NOT be able to upgrade the toilets in their pet's private jets to a gold plating, versus their current silver plated models.
In addition, the RIAA said that without direct control over what the content of the music was, they couldn't tell people what they wanted to hear. One executive was flabbergasted "How the hell are we going to tell the radio stations we want people to listen to this if we don't control it. It's outrageous! I know people aren't smart enough to think about what they want to hear, so how are we going to tell them about this music. It's just a stupid career-limiting move."
Britney was quoted as saying "All those people buying those records they want are hurting my dog. I hope they can sleep at night, knowing my Poopsie will have to deal with the pain of only a silver toilet seat. They all should die in a tire fire."
They also reported that in addition to not distributing through the RIAA or a major label, she was able to control the content. The RIAA has said that they are considering lobbying Congress to get this "potential for free-radical thought" listed as a terroristic activity. No response yet from Capitol Hill or the White House on these allgations yet.
I'm a jazz sax player, and have been a big fan of Maria Schneider for several years. She has been creating some of the most sophisticated and musically interesting big band music around since her first album in 1995 (Evanescence, which was also nominated for two Grammys). She has 3 or 4 other albums, and most have received Grammy nominations. She has been regularly winning Down Beat reader & critics polls since 1994. Schneider is the heir apparent to her mentor, the late Gil Evans, who's music includes the famous Miles Davis collaborations Birth of the Cool, Porgy & Bess and Sketches of Spain. Her music is very accessible, though she's explores complex meters, harmonies, textures, and timbres. Her pieces tell a story, and often make reference to visual images. I bought her latest album over the web a few months ago. It was something like $9.99 for 128kbps, $14.99 for 320kbps. It's an excellent album, but I still think that Evanesence is her best effort so far. By all means check out her band live if you ever have the opportunity. She always has some of the best jazz musicians in NYC in her group. Evanescence (amazon.com) Concert in the Garden review (allaboutjazz.com) And, she's a babe! -Hot Wasabi over & out
-- Hot Wasabi over & out --
This is the point that RMS is trying to make about copyright. He says sharing music should be legal.
The reason for this is exactly what we're seeing here: the artist are being screwed over by the record companies. If you're a "to be" artist, you need someone to record your songs, distribute them and give you PR. Either you sign the standard (awfull) contract, or you get nothing. Of course they sign it, they want to be artists, right?
If music distribution on the net was legal, artists wouldn't be so much under the mercy of the record companies (which you can see they are taking advantage of). They would get their PR through filesharing, more people would go to their concerts (if they're any good), and they would make more money (income from concerts are mostly theirs to keep). Instead, they're getting fucked over by the record companies, and the only option is not to be an artist at all.
The exception for this are the artists that have sold their 7 records or so, because then the contract expires. Then they are in the situation to renegotiate, and they can actually get a contract that's good for them, so that they earn money.
So big stars earn big bucks, and they will loose money if music sharing is legal, but small artists will definitly win.
Those are basicly the words of RMS, and when I hear examples like this they make sense.
Life is Reality