33Hz A new format: June 06 AFX AMPOP Acoustic Set Afrobeat Agoria, Spinach Girl Arctic Monkeys Art of performance Art of the DJ At the Lake At the Lake Autechre, Untilted Autumn/Fall pop etc Babyshambles Baxter Drury Ben Harper Black Eyed Peas Blues Explosion, Crunchy Bovaflux Broadcast Cadillac, Magnetic City Can Labels not Suck? Can, Unlimited Edition Carpathian .... Catskills Sampler Ch3vy Chk Chk Chk Chok Rock, Big City Loser Clearlake, Amber Client, city Coldplay, X and Y Collabs 301 Commercial Women Cornershop Crazy Girl Creative Shambles DJ Corner DJ Corner and House Mix download DJ Tom Baker -- DJ Corner DJ corner June Decemberists Diefenbach, Glorious Disco Heaven Domino Sampler Dr. Who: Volume 1 and 2 Electric Six, Vibrator Embrace, A Glorious Day Emetrex, Wish Me Dead Erasure, Here I go ... Exploring Europe FBC Fabric and Reindeer, It's not ... Fall Pop, dance etc Fire Engines Fisk Industries Four Tet Four Tet, Smile Around the Face From Russia with love and beats Fujiya & Miyagi Futureheads, Decent Days and Nights Goldfrapp Goldfrapp, Number 1, Beautiful Gravenhurst Gravenhurst, The Velvet Cell Guns and Lollipops Hed Kandi Hed Kandi 50th Hedkandi Holding hands out the back: The Autons Hood, Outside Closer Hush the Many Husky Rescue, Country Falls Husky Rescue, New Light of Tomorrow I suppose that somewhere here there are Ian Gillan Icky thumps and Bad Bananas Indochine Infadels, Can't Get Enough Infadels, Jagger '67 Jackson and His Computer Band James Holden Jamie Liddell, Multiply Jamie Lidell, Multiply Jane Birkin Jeans Team Jimmy Edgar, Bounce Make Model July 06 Pop World KT Tunstall Lawrence, The Night Will Last Forever Layo & Bushwacka! Liars, Drum's Not Dead Little Man Tate Lou Barlow Louise Attaque Low Melnyk Metal existance Miles Davis ... sorta Moby Live DVD Moby, Hotel Moby, Lift Me Up Moby, Slipping Away Moby, Spiders Mutts, Life in Dirt Myspace World NYC Rock Natalie C June 2005 Nate James, Set the Tone New Order DVDs New Order, Krafty New Order, Waiting for the Sirens' Call New RSS system and Feeds Nick Cave, Warren Ellis Nightwish, Once Nizlopi Noise Hurts Noise music and other stuff Octavarium, Dream Theatre Paper Cut Moon Peyton Placebo Plantlife, The Last Song Popkomm Berlin 08 Prefuse 73 Prefuse73, Surrounded by Silence Prince Puppetmastaz Queurelle Raumschmiere Residents, Animal Lover Revolve promo CD Richard Hawley Richard Hawley Richie Hawtin Rimbaud and Rockers RollDeep Rolling Stones Rough Trade Shops Counterculture 2004 Royale Deluxe Royksopp Royksopp, 49% Rythmes Digitales Secret Machines Shortwave Set Simon Fisher Turner Smog, A River Ain't Too Much in Love Sonic Art Spektrum Stereo Sushi Steve Angello Stonebridge Stonebridge, Freak On Subways, Oh Yeah Subways, Rock 'n Roll Queen Summer Pop Tears Templin, 5 Test Icicles The Mutts The Residents, Commercial Album The Streets, Could Well Be In, Radio edit Trabant Trans Slovenia Express Tricky things Twisted Disco Ukrainian Music Village Orchestra Warp artists DVD Wilco Woody McBride beautiful new born children various, Back to Love, Hed Kandi ˙ūDepeche Mode

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 Can Labels not Suck? Can you believe there was a time when it was almost actually cool to be part of a record label? Some were way cooler than others naturally enough. Right now I'm just getting my head around EMI's takeover by one of those private equity companies - the sort of people who's decision making is spreadsheet based and who are on the lookout for undervalued assets and gouging opportunities. One of their first statements was they'd have to prune artists who weren't paying their way. Oh boy. I won't bother to explain to people who don't know the music biz why this is a gauche and cretinously stupid thing to say. I'll just point to the backdoor where some of these companies are going to disappear soon, and say "there it is buddy, I hope you're the first through it" Although a dead tie with Sony BMG and Universal would be even better. Let's give them all a little advice, shall we? 1) When you insult artists, you insult we the consumers as well. You've been quite good at insulting the consumer as it is... and without us, guess what? Goodby-ee. And yes, you are running out of cretins and twelve yo's. 2) You need to have some decent product. True, you do have some but you need more. 3) Short termism just makes you look like parasites (see 1). You need to have proper, long-term relationships with artists where you invest in them and help them grow. This is the way it used to be and it worked moderately well. 4) People in the aggregate tend towards what they consider to be a fair price. When prices are too high more people steal. Most of the piracy on the internet consists of sales you would never have made anyway. The point here, in case you missed it, is that your prices are too high, or to put it another way ... 5) You need to offer percieved value. Crummy CD packaging with next to no info persuaded people that the packaging didn't matter much anyway and, what the heck, they might as well get digital files from Apple or from the band themselves. Somewhat weirdly, you've created this level playing field yourselves by your greed and shortsightedness. 6) Good luck! (thunderfinger) [] permanent link