Posts by Samuel Scott
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I can't believe I am coming across as so establishment and non-cynical.
Believe me, I hate a lot of shit about the NZ music industry and I am really bitter and twisted.
But most of my frustrations come from the lack of support at commercial radio and big media. And the audiences for live music. I am so freakin into Ian's approach to putting on gigs and running venues. I have said this many times; you need a champion for live music in every NZ town. Every town needs an Ian Jorgensen. And unlicensed, off the radar clubs are brilliant.
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It just feels misguided to me to see APRA as somehow THE PROBLEM. The Silver Scrolls are a great night. They might reflect a portion of the industry that is a bit more established/old (the this years winner was 17...) but I am much less cynical about the scrolls than the VNZMAs (and I have won lots of those).
It is my experience that all the people high up in these organisations (APRA, Recorded Music NZ, Universal, Sony etc) are real music fans who were once young people in bands putting on gigs at the Gluepot or wherever. They generally care about music and why shouldn't people who have been working in the industry for that long get the sweet deal jobs. Chris Caddick from Recorded Music NZ is an awesome dude who knows as much about NZ music as Blink!
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Where to start here?
OK so APRA, in my experience, have always been very approachable. The board might be primarily controlled in Australia but they have a good staff in Auckland and I have used them as a resource when making decisions about 'exploiting my IP' and what not for about 12 years. It is my personal experience that they are a very transparent organisation and one that is pretty much a union for songwriters (they used to send out thorough breakdowns of where you earnings come from, like giant phone books, i doubt anyone read them).
Where the disconnect between APRA land and Low Hum land comes in, is probably down to the fact that most small bands will not be making any money from APRA at all. If you get huge amounts of play Active and BFM play you will start to see some tiny money but it is only when you cross over to mainstream radio/music tv/sync licenses that you will start to see enough money to feel like there is a point to this company. This isn't APRAs fault, TV, commercial radio and film are the places where advertising rules and APRA takes a cut of the money. That is where the money is. If you make excellent music that is simply too interesting to be on The Edge, your low-fi videos too edgy for C4 and you haven't had any lucky breaks in film then your music is simply not generating money.
BUT, the retail thing and live music fees is a great topic to raise. I agree with Ian 100% that technology is here to log everything we play in most shops. Even if it was in 500 retail outlets and cafes chosen at random to use as sampling it could work. I have no doubt that the music getting played in NZ cafes is vastly different to what we hear on our questionable commercial radio networks.
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That James Blake set is so wonderfully vague.
I gotta say, that Dolly video didn't strike me as mimed at all. She is doing some kooky phrasing, it would be tricky to fake that. Where did these claims come from?
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BDO may need a bigger % of the population than Glasto but that hardly seems a relevant point when you consider all the other festivals in an English summer. The Hyde Park concerts are like a string of Big Day Outs, V festival is huge, Reading and Leeds festivals is a giant cheese fest. There are soooo many beyond that. Niche festivals for every genre (Green Man a folkish fest hosts 20k people and runs for 7 days!) countless dance music fests. And then you have a number of UK music nuts who travel to Primavera etc in Europe.
The culture of going to several music festivals a year is much stronger there. I'm sure ticket sales to big festivals as a percentage of the population would far out weigh that of NZ.
Personally I would love to see Smith and co put on some sort of fest at Western Springs this summer but 6 months out and without the tie in with oz booking power that seems unlikely. 2014 BDO was great though. Very enjoyable, even without Blur.
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Isn't most music on youtube blocked in Germany because the performing rights association there wont accept their shitty terms? Maybe ASCAP, PRS, APRA etc should try and get some sort of world wide action against this monster. Blah blah free internet and all that, but the reality is that this website is probably the biggest "streaming service" in the world right now and it makes up it's own rules.
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The Young Ones was like Sunday School in our house. We re-watched it every weekend. And I love all the Comic Strip Presents shows so much. Mr Jolly Lives Next Door, Bad News Tour etc.
More Bad News never gets tired.
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Forgitify is ruining my day and I can't stop.
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I love that these big fests stream everything now. It's a great fomo reducer.
"my heart would have given it to the Phoenix Foundation." Thanks Russell, we appreciate that. Certainly we were not expecting to win. I think once Lorde was nominated it was the obvious and appropriate choice and the way she accepted it was exceptionally classy. I guess a lot of people assumed the award was for independent acts only but then we are distributed by Universal so it's all rather blurry anyway. My personal pick was Jonathan Bree's The Primrose Path.
I must implore that The Phoenix Foundation are certainly not playing an acoustic set at Real Groovy tomorrow. We will be playing the 7" stuff straight up.
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I'll check out Pono. I reckon I'd be keen on 88/24 files. Why not? Also I don't think there should be any issue with a mini headphone jack, as long as you have good connectors. Maybe it's all nonsense, but I'm quite happy to pursue the nonsense.
And good stuff posting that Conrad clip!