Paul McCartney On Music In the Digital World

Rachhpal writes "Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney will release his new album today — it's called 'Memory Almost Full.' In an interview with the L.A. Times, he talked about ending his long-time relationship with EMI and making the new album fully downloadable through his new relationship with Starbucks' Hear Music label. Some of his comments on the music industry: 'I was bored with the old record company's jaded view,' McCartney says... 'They're very confused, and they will admit it themselves: that this is a new world, and they're a little bit at a loss as to what to do. So they've got millions of dollars and X budget... for them to come up with boring ways — because they've been at it for so long — to what they call "market" it. And I find that all a bit disturbing.'"

Comments

Bug Me Not

[Evets]

For those of you still in the dark out there...

http://www.bugmenot.com/view/www.latimes.com

It has a list of account logins and passwords that you can use for this article.

Re:Bug Me Not

[elfin_spectre]

Proxy at work has classified that BugMeNot as "Criminal". I'm expecting the Internet Police any moment now...

Re:Bug Me Not

[kars]

In fact, why not install the BugMeNot extension for Firefox?

http://roachfiend.com/archives/2005/02/07/bugmenot /

Stop posting links to password-ridden sites

[pipatron]

Please, no matter how interesting some piece of news is, unless it's posted on a site that everyone can access, don't link to it. It just annoys the hell out of most people, and gives the website in question undeserved registrations. If they don't want to show the information to everyone equally, I'm not interested.

Re:Stop posting links to password-ridden sites

[owlnation]

Please, no matter how interesting some piece of news is, unless it's posted on a site that everyone can access, don't link to it. It just annoys the hell out of most people, and gives the website in question undeserved registrations. If they don't want to show the information to everyone equally, I'm not interested.

I wholly second this motion.

Oh the irony! While we are talking about one industry where the deadness goes up to eleven, this article is posted on the site of another industry that is beginning to pine for the fjords.

This log-in business for newspaper sites is an example of how they do not understand their new customers, nor how their business has changed. If you listen really closely when you are on the LA Times site you can hear the slow heavy footfalls of the grim reaper approaching.

Anyway, I vote we change the expression "deader than vaudeville" to "deader than the RIAA". You must, surely, realize your business is in trouble when an wholly unrelated one like Starbucks is wiping the floor with your tried and tested artists. Especially since Starbucks is also a big corporation and likely just as bureaucratic as any RIAA dinosaur, I woud guess the business processes to launch a new idea in Starbucks is comparable to that in any record company.

Non-Registration Link

[Gids]

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-ca-mccartn ey3jun03,1,5298355.story

Never in a million years....

[svunt]

I can't believe it, here I am reading Paul McCartney's words and nodding in agreement. I feel a little dirty, but that's ok.

Re:Never in a million years....

[tygerstripes]

I felt pretty much the same way when I heard his single come on the radio the other night. I was humming along, tapping my feet and generally enjoying myself. Then the DJ decides to tell me AFTERWARDS that it's Paul McCartney's new release, and I come over all peculiar.

It felt like that moment when the police tell you she was in fact 15...

If I had 800 million in the bank

[Timesprout]

And the freedom to do as I please I would find lots of things boring and disturbing as well. Its funny how those who are no longer dependent upon anyone after reaping the rewards of the current systems are the ones telling us all how things should be.

Here's my solution to the whole msuic industry.

[F34nor]

We boycott the recoding indutry untill they are bankrupt. Once the companies are in liquidation we pool our resources, by up the IP, and sell it back to the artists who can then publish it in the format they want on the web. We make a profit, the artists get their art back, and a whole bunch of asshole have to look for new work.

Translation:

[C A S S I E L]

Sir Paul: I'm sick of this scene of corporate greed, market-driven business plans, aggressive practices and monopolistic behaviour, always pushing out the little guy and the independent ventures. That's why I've signed with Starbucks.

Available on emusic

[Anonymous Coward]

This album is available DRM-free from emusic (I know, I was shocked too!)

http://www.emusic.com/album/11044/11044254.html

Interesting comment...

[tkrotchko]

I was listening to the Howard Stern show yesterday and they had Adam Levine, lead singer and songwriter from Maroon 5.

Now Howard is one of those dinosaurs when it comes to distributing music; he constantly rails against YouTube, thinks file sharing is ruining the music business, etc etc.

Anyway, Howard said to Levine (and I won't have these quotes quite right): "I feel really bad for you guys, it's tough to make it in the music business because people won't pay for music anymore, they want to get it for free"

And Levine said something interesting "Don't feel bad for the musicians. The music industry is screwed up, but musicians have so many ways to make money from the internet. We couldn't have made it without the internet".

Levine didn't stop there, he said what other musicians have confirmed... "Of all he ways we made money, despite selling 10 million records [might've heard this wrong], we made *no money from CD sales*. All of our money came from touring and merchandising"

Unfortunately, Howard can be quite insightful on when to follow up, but he ignore this little exchange, probably because it doesn't fit his opinions, but maybe because he was bored with it. But to sell so many CD's and not make any money from it. I just wish somebody would take these quote from successful musicians and play them in front of Congress so that somebody will say "Well gee, who are we protecting with these draconian copyright and copyright extension laws? It doesn't appear to be the musicians at all!"

Re:Interesting comment...

[Evets]

In my experience in the music industry (and granted it was a long time ago), musicians would get typically less than 10 percent of sales, usually 6 percent. If it was a group, that 6 percent was split with the group.

The Producers and Labels would invest money in getting the album put together, but it was all contractually recouped if anything came of it. Very rarely do the labels actually lose money on an artist. They at least make enough to cover their investment, and they do a great deal of free/low cost research about how the music will be accepted. A lot of producers own radio stations or other music related businesses that gives them easy access to the target market.

They also charge pretty huge for "studio time", which is almost all profit since the equipment has all long since been paid for and with the number of recording studios in LA the rental rates really should be next to nothing.

Very rarely does an unknown band get to keep their own copyright. The studio will push for changes to the music and changes to the words in order to achieve at least "collaborative" standing in the unlikely event of a dispute.

I've watched as guys got bullied into contracts. It's brutal to the extreme (mentally, not physically). I remember an incident where a mother got involved. She was pretty tough, but all she really got in negotiation was a guaranteed video production. They passed the video project off to a student with a minuscule budget - basically the lead singer on the roof with a brief scene coming out of a studio limo.

Well, I think its a start...

[janrinok]

Sir Paul has come in for a bit of criticism in this thread so far, but I think the fact that he is saying what he is, is actually a good thing. The music industry will not listen to most musicians but perhaps they _will_ listen to him. It matters not whether you like his music, whether you think he is past it and irrelevant to today's music scene, or whatever. He is actually saying what many of us have been saying for a long time. The way music and musicians are managed today is out-of-date. The public has changed, the medium has changed, and now the industry must change. Is that such a bad thing, no matter who says it?

Re:Translation (continued):

[mykdavies]

Sir Paul (continued): I'm really excited about the energy and commitment involved in making new music, and hate all these guys who try to hang onto the past. That's why I'm supporting the extension of copyright on music recordings in the UK.

Paul McCartney supports a call for copyright on music recordings to be extended from 50 years to 95 or even 'life plus 70 years'

The old generation breaking the mould too?

[fruey]

Say what you like about McCartney's music (particularly his solo career). One thing that sets him apart from Elvis, Lennon, Cliff Richard or even Mick Jagger is his pure songwriting output. He's penned most material on his 21 albums, he was a key catalyst in getting the best out of Lennon/McCartney collaboration and some books even go so far as to make him the "number one" Beatle.

His music has been commercially successful over four decades, so he spans a longer career than Elton John, Billy Joel or Jimmy Buffett. He's been with a major label - EMI - and been through vinyl, cassette, CD and now MP3/AAC digital formats. He is a songwriter as well as a musician, and he has a big catalogue.

So, it's refreshing to hear him state that the music business is out of marketing ideas and out of tune with possibilities. Even if you don't like him...

At least copy and paste the texts!

[antdude]

I don't mind the logins as long as BugMeNot has accounts for me to use. Anyways, I am surprised no one copied and pasted the article. Here it is:

Paul McCartney is a man on the run
He has a new album, a new record label, new living arrangements and even a new plan about putting the Beatles' music catalog online this year.
By Kim Murphy, Times Staff Writer
June 3, 2007

What's in a name?
What's in a name?
click to enlarge
Winchelsea, England -- HE noticed it when his cellphone, stuffed with too many text messages, voicemails and phone numbers, started flashing at him: "Memory almost full." It was remarkably like his own brain, weighted down with half-written songs, daughter Bea's schedule, the lyrics to old Beatles B-sides, the blurring faces of long-buried loves and friends.

Delete? Re-record? Which parts go, and which -- the carpets of bluebells outside Liverpool in spring, sitting on twin beds in a hotel room with John Lennon writing "She Loves You" -- stay locked in the hard drive of time?

"Your memory is always almost full these days. There's so much going on, so I thought it was a poetic way to sum up modern life. Just overload, information overload," Paul McCartney says of his 21st solo album, "Memory Almost Full," which explores the persistence of memory, preparing for the settling of scores and a life too full to hold it all.

"It's been pointed out to me that since the album is heavy on retrospective stuff, there's a sort of finality about it. 'Memory almost full,' any second now it will be full, and, 'Goodbye cruel world.' It's not what I meant about it at all, but I can see that meaning, and I like, you know, people to have different interpretations. "Abbey Road" to us was a crossing outside the studio. I'm sure to some people, it meant Monastery Lane, and we liked that sort of quasi-religious feel of it too."

The album (out Tuesday) marks the 64-year-old McCartney's plunge into another kind of digital age. Ending his relationship with Capitol Records/EMI that began in 1962, McCartney has hooked up with Starbucks' new Hear Music Label and unlocks the new album (along with the rest of his solo catalog) for online downloads. McCartney also says the Beatles catalog is on deck for online release near the end of the year, although EMI has not announced a date.

The video for "Dance Tonight," the party-tune, mandolin-laced foot-tapper that opens the record, made its world premiere on YouTube, in a bid to charm a third generation with the kind of winsome songs their grandmother should know.

"I was bored with the old record company's jaded view," McCartney says, plopped on a sofa in the large, comfortable farmhouse that doubles as a rehearsal studio here in the rolling, tree-studded hills of rural East Sussex. Outside, there is an old windmill, and in the near distance, the hazy blue carpet of the English Channel.

"They're very confused, and they will admit it themselves: that this is a new world, and they're a little bit at a loss as to what to do. So they've got millions of dollars and X budget ... for them to come up with boring ways -- because they've been at it for so long -- to what they call 'market' it. And I find that all a bit disturbing.

"I write it, I play it, I record it, and that's all fun. And you go to the record company, and it gets very boring. You sit around in rooms with people, and you're almost falling asleep" -- he rolls his head down midchest --"and they're almost falling asleep.

"My record producer [David Kahne] said the major record labels these days are like dinosaurs sitting around discussing the asteroid. They know it's going to hit. They don't know when, they don't know where it's coming from. But it's sort of hit already. With iTunes, and all of that."

McCartney heard that Starbucks' content development guy, Alan Mintz, loved his music; better, he was a bass player. They arranged to meet in New York, along with Howard Schultz, the chief executive who turned Starbucks from