Industry ish

disso part 2 of Music Industry & Racism

2009-12-13T13:48:00.000-08:00

--- Power and Under-Representation ---

Leading on from part 1… What Tyson suggests in this last statement is that Britain is concerns itself over who is in control and who ultimately has power.
In democratic nations like Britain, the majority rules; strength lies in numbers. Minority ethnic groups make up 7.9% of the UK’s population.

The majority of people interviewed felt that there was an underrepresentation of black executives and managers working in the industry. The statistics may explain why, as industry numbers arguably reflect total population numbers
However what Tyson touched on was that the UK has a conscious or subconscious belief about where power and ownership should lie. He provides an example highlighting his own A&R Manager Lincoln Elias (then working for Sony) who sold over 80 million records and who Sony held in high regard but axed once his imprint label ‘S2’ became powerful and began bringing more black artists through like Terence Trent Darby and Des’ree.

Negus in his Corporate Cultures book details a similar scenario where EMI closed its urban divisions during the 90’s to “concentrate on its stars”, despite urban music accounting for 21% of total sales in the US at the time.

Former Radio 1xtra DJ Nesha Welch commented that because of this imbalance of power at high levels across the industry (meaning labels, venues and media), separation is occurring which she believes could lead to black music being excluded completely. Mercury A&R Manager Joe Kentish commented that under-representation of black staff could be to do with how a person enters the industry suggesting that there is a bias towards middle class people who can afford to work for free for a while or know the right people to get them in.

Bringing it back for December - Kano vs Wiley on Lord Of The Mics

2009-12-13T13:46:00.001-08:00

Back in the day...

Top 10 tracks from my Ipod for December

2009-12-13T13:36:00.000-08:00

J2K – Step

New Boyz – You’re A Jerk

Daisy Dares You – Daisy Dares You

Jack Splash feat Lupe Fiasco

Darkside Fam – Kidnapping the Music Game

T2 & H Boogie - Better Off As Friends

Magnetic Man – Eclipse

Monarchy – Gold in the Fire

Dot Rotten – Ride for Me

Lowdeep feat Ruff Squad – Tell Me

December album in focus: 50 Cent "Before I Self-Destruct

2009-12-13T13:30:00.000-08:00

Good album but I’m a bit bored listening to it. It feels like the same old - how he's going to pop some gangster because he fucked with him. 1 day he's going to end up saying how he's about to pop his Walmart delivery man… "I said green cap milk not blue, motherfucker"… If he's so far up his own arse, sorry, up the industry, how are the 'minnows' from the streets still getting to him?

Its a proper album though; its got the right formula, mix of tracks, flow and production only Dr. Dre can bring to the desk but with this being his 4th album (on Aftermath) I think I would have been more impressed if he had come with something totally left field like Kanye West did with 808’s… Although I don't think 50 has the same freedom to express himself as he's pigeon holed himself (all be it in a very large and successful 1) too much as this gun-slinging-my-pecs-are-made-of-teflon gangster rapper.

Tracks to watch: “Baby By Me” featuring Ne-Yo. Naturally smooth vocals from Ne-Yo that in my opinion no current singer can replicate or get near to, with 50 flowing perfectly over an R&B style beat that would make the most hardcore 50 fan nod and try something sweet in a club instead of the usual “oi oi my side, my side, I’m tryna chat to you babe, what you sayin?”.
“Do You Think About Me”. This is prob my favourite, think 21 questions from his Get Rich album but less romantic.
“Psycho”. This is the 5th track on the album and I had to reload again and again, I nearly forgot there was the rest of the album to listen to. Anything featuring Eminem is bound to be big (as Drake should know… if 'Forever' was a clash Eminem would have destroyed Weazy's, Kanye's and Drake's careers).

Lyric that caught me: on “Disrespectful”… “I'm international I'm never home maynn, I've been gone so long my accent's changed, you better watch who you fuck with mate" (all this in an English/cockney accent)

6/10

December update: Gig of the Month - Liverpool

2009-12-13T13:21:00.000-08:00

I’m down and out after a big night out the previous day, nursing a hangover and licking my wounds after Man City beat Chelsea 2:1.
I give Purple a call and he’s heading up with G Double to Liverpool and Leeds for a night of dubstep so they de-tour to pick me up and we head on our way.
(I’m on this dubstep thing now, I went to a couple of nights but mainly to see what the hype was behind this expanding genre).

After a 5 hour car journey we get to Masque Theatre in the centre of Liverpool; such a cool venue, looks like a theatre with levels combined a certain level of grime that makes you think charm rather dirt.
Silkie, Heny G and Quest from Anti Social Entertainment were amongst a load of DJ’s playing dubstep from the atmospheric to the hard in a setting that rivals anything we have down in London when it comes to the underground sound.
The smoking area was jokes. Being a Southerner I fully expected some harsh treatment but instead I educated the scousers in some London lingo which included definitions and uses for the words “cotch” and “bounce”.

My lasting memory of the city will be standing in the rain at 4am with everyone waiting for kebabs and taxis and thinking, woah, it’s like being in an episode of Brookside…

We got to Leeds at about 5 minutes before the rave ended so we mingled outside on the hunt for an after party to make our journey worthwhile.

Big night with the lads. Dubstep is ours. It’s here to stay... Keep locked to Rinse FM Mondays 1-3am.

December update: News

2009-12-13T13:16:00.000-08:00

--- EMI Publishing sign JLS to mega deal ---

EMI Music Publishing is looking to create writing collaborations between JLS and some of its key talents such as Stargate after signing the X Factor runners-up in one of the biggest publishing deals of the year.

--- Myspace Music arrives in UK by Ben Cardew 03/12/09 in Music Week ---

MySpace Music finally goes live in the UK today, some 14 months after launching in the US.
The service offers UK consumers ad-supported streaming, downloads via iTunes, video content, charts and personal playlists from music fans including Katie Price and The Vatican.

All of the majors are on board, as well as a number of independent aggregators, including Merlin, The Orchard, IODA and Nettwerk Music Group.
The service also includes the MySpace Artist dashboard, a free tool that gives artists access to demographic, social and activity data of their core fans.
MySpace also announced today that it has signed a licence deal with PRS for Music, allowing songwriters to be paid for their work featuring on the new service.

“We’re excited to be launching MySpace Music in the UK, a genuinely innovative service that brings artists and fans closer than ever before” says MySpace Music president Courtney Holt.
“MySpace has always had an unrivalled reputation for encouraging the enjoyment, discovery and sharing of music, and this launch concentrates and expands on that distinctive character. The way people are consuming music has changed dramatically, and we’re aiming to develop a next-generation platform that builds a sustainable business for MySpace Music, content licensors and artists, while serving fans in a completely unique way.”

The launch was marked by a Kasabian gig in London last night, while 50 Cent, Pixie Lott, Florence & the Machine, Alicia Keys, Chipmunk, David Guetta, Lost Prophets and Nelly Furtado are all taking part in the launch, either starring in interactive films that can be personalised by users to mark the occasion, or creating playlists.
Meanwhile, digital label RCRD LBL has teamed up with MySpace Music to launch RCRD of the Day, a free daily music download. The first wave will include downloads from Kid Sister, Cold War Kids, Major Lazer, Wale, Santigold, Miike Snow and Peter, Bjorn & John.
“RCRD LBL is the one of industry’s more compelling music sites and we are very excited to match their editorial team with ours to curate cutting edge new music for the MySpace community,” says Holt.

“By offering free daily downloads from the hottest new acts via the RCRD of the Day, MySpace Music will continue to be at the forefront of introducing fresh talent to our users.”

December update: Just for Jokes

2009-12-13T13:05:00.000-08:00

Funky House is a movement that carries a feel good vibe that makes it accessible to everyone but I find this hilarious…

Dj Hotsteppa & The Funky All Stars - Take It Higher

Madness from Jamaica... (sorry couldn't find the embeded version)
http://www.spifftv.com/video.php?id=525

Not a bad partnership... in Music Week 25th Nov

2009-11-30T04:29:00.000-08:00

After the launch in September of iTunes LP, Apple has expanded its music content offering by opening a live music section on the iTunes store in partnership with Live Nation.

Apple has previously offered recordings from its stores and bespoke events like the iTunes Festival in London each year. This deal with Live Nation gives it a much deeper catalogue of live recordings.

Drawing on recordings from over 80 Live Nation-owned venues, users will be able to download a mix of audio and video content. All available recordings will come from events or venues owned by iTunes or Live Nation, thereby simplifying licensing deals. The deal is global but in the UK will, initially, be audio-only.

Video downloads will cost between $8 and $13 (£4.79 and £7.78) while audio-only downloads will average at around $8.

This comes in the wake of a flurry of activity around online concerts. Last month, YouTube streamed U2’s show in LA live, attracting 10m viewers during the show. Last week, EMI signed a deal with online video site Hulu (for the US only, currently) covering branding artist channels and exclusive concert recordings from acts including Norah Jones.

By Eamonn Forde

Benjamin Zephaniah - Gangsta Rap (2004)

2009-11-22T02:29:00.000-08:00

"School, what school? - My name is X-Ray-X, so be careful how you flex. I used to fresstyle in my bedroom, but me daddy got me vex. The teacher kicked me out of the classroom, now I'm rapping in the Rex"

Ray has trouble home, and he has trouble at school. Then suddenly he has no touble at school, but only because he and his friends have been permanently suspended. What happens to a boy like Ray? If he's lucky, maybe he gets a chance to shine.

The story of three boys who aren't easy. They don't fit in, they seem to attract trouble. But they know what they want, more than most perhaps.

Like when Woolies shut on the high street...

2009-11-19T04:18:00.000-08:00

Tuesday November 10, 2009 by Music Week

The Observer Music Monthly is to close next year as part of a redesign of the Sunday paper.

Under the plans, the re-designed Observer will have four weekly sections – news, sport, review and The Observer magazine – as well as the Observer Food Monthly. Observer Music Monthly, Sport Monthly and Woman will all close.

The Observer editor John Mulholland tells Media Guardian, “Like all newspapers, we had to make changes both to the way we work and to the products we publish. It has been a difficult few months for staff while we have worked through these changes as part of GNM's publishing review, and some hard decisions had to be taken given the extremely challenging economic environment for newspapers."

The news comes against a backdrop of heavy losses at the Observer parent company Guardian News & Media.

Urban Development: Ladies Unplugged review

2009-11-15T05:07:00.001-08:00

What: Urban Development – Ladies Unplugged
Where: Stratford Circus E15
When: 13th November
Who: Yolanda Brown, Shola Ama, Ms Dynamite, hosted by Fusion

First of all, big up Index from AG Publishing for getting me in, I had a great time bruv and appreciate it.

Got there about 10mins from the end of Yolanda Brown’s performance (yes, I am a late waste man) and was gutted; she is excellent, real energetic, smooth jazz and she’s stunning to look at too. No disrespect to the UK crew, but when someone makes and performs jazz music this well my mind automatically thinks they are from the States, but this girl is homegrown so go support, she will be big.
Ms Dynamite walked onto the stage after the interval as Index and I took our seats high above the auditorium and she murked it, especially with a spontaneous live band rendition of ‘Boo!’ She was politically and social enthused and is a whole lot of women (don’t think most of us fellas could handle her) and owned the stage, found it easy to create a relationship with the crowd and held up her energetic performance (out of breath slightly on Boo!).
Shola Ama took the stage to close the event, I’ve always thought she was special and she didn’t disappoint and came across quite humble in front of the audience. She’s got such natural vocals, X-factor and all that is good (shout to Danyl) but these are the standards people should be aspiring towards.

Fusion was class, funny and charismatic, blended the performances and stage-audience banter perfectly.

Top 5 Tracks for November

2009-11-15T04:38:00.000-08:00

1. Baby Blue feat Wretch 32 – Run

2. J2K feat Wiley, Devlin, Wiley & Shola Ama - Trouble

3. Boy Better Know – Goin In

4. Kele Le Roc – Naked

5. Bashy - Life

Worst single of the month: Pitball & Nicole – Hotel Room. Please die.

disso part 1

2009-11-15T04:28:00.000-08:00

Part 1 of my degree disseration. Taking part: 30 people including execs at major labels, underground artists, DJ's, promoters.

- Racism & The Music Industry : Attitudes & The Media

In the late 1960’s Stokely Carmichael, an activist in the American Civil Rights Movement was credited with coining the phrase ‘institutional racism’.
He described it as "the collective failure of an organisation to provide an appropriate and professional service to people because of their color, culture or ethnic origin”. Unlike individual racism which involves the attitudes and actions of individuals that perpetuate racism, institutional racism takes the form of systematic policies controlled by organisations and governments that disadvantage people because of their race.
Taking this description into hand and reflecting it on today’s music industry, some may argue that this form of racism is prevalent at all levels within the industry.
Existing knowledge suggests that in the United States, black personnel have been systematically excluded from positions of power within the industry, therefore the starting point to fill knowledge gaps in regards to the UK, was to ask personnel from all levels in the British music industry if they felt that policies or practices existed which could be seen as disadvantageous to a person from a minority ethnic group. Co-Manager of independent label Illastate Records (Akala, Ms Dynamite) Rez Safina said:
“Yes it does exist, but it’s complicated. Unfortunately the business reflects attitudes in society, because the business caters to its audience, the British public, and there is so much unspoken racism there. So if the businesses want to make money they have to spend their most money marketing to large demographics, and smaller budgets to smaller demographics. The only way the music business could operate in a totally racially equal way would be if society did”.

A&R Manager Joe Kentish from major label Universal/Def Jam said that every decision or action taken is to do with business, and assuming that there is an element of discrimination was to overestimate the industry’s goals. He went on to say:
“The goals of this major record company is to make money full stop, end of story, and you are just giving it attributes that it doesn’t have, its doesn’t have any other motivations other then that. If it can make money of white music, black music, pink, brown, blue music it will do it, that’s the nature of the beast. If you make a million from an album and it’s a black person singing, they (label heads) will much prefer that then if a white person album made £999,999”.

The statements made by Safina and Kentish are in disagreement, while Kentish disregards that there is an element of racism, Safina believes that that institutional racism does exist, however he does not solely point the finger at institutions themselves, suggesting that there is unspoken racism amongst the British public and ultimately businesses have to cater to the majority who tend to hold these attitudes. Alex Ackon, producer of Mayhem TV suggests that there is a much simpler way of looking at it, highlighting the Brit Awards as an example;
“Because we’ve got the MOBO’s, they are trying to segregate us. We should be as recognised but instead they removed the Urban category”.

This lead to question if and where these attitudes existed amongst the British public, what had shaped them and if they actually impact on the how the music industry runs its operations in particular markets.
Literature pointed towards the media and its ability to shape public opinion and in particular the manner in which negative news concerning members of the black community often compares unfavourable with whites, which in the end attaches stigma, reduces sympathy, promotes fear and eventually breeds racism.
On an industry level and focusing on Hip Hop, labels have a job to market the genre’s authentic counter-cultural style and to achieve that on a mass scale is a difficult task as in theory the labels are trying to package what the public perceive and fear straight back to them. The question put forward was does negative media portrayal of black people in Britain shape stereotypes making it difficult to market the artist authentically? DJ FX from Pyroradio/SK Vibemakers felt that the media pick up on isolated stories and run with them, adding:
“Because they are so powerful, if they say something about black youth or a particular music scene it will damage them so the record labels will listen and end up sharing the same views”.

What FX suggests is that the media tend to generalise, as they did with groups like So Solid, and portray anyone who fits the stereotype as a possible criminal and everyone else a potential victim rather then individualising the defendants and victims.
Tendai Tyson, a Virgin Records artist from group Unklejam had a completely different take, pointing out artists such as 50 Cent who have been successfully marketed as counter-cultural artists, believing that blame for low sales is put on bad coverage in the media as a cover up and it’s really down to labels not knowing how to deal with black music that’s at the root of the problem. Tyson controversially added when black artists do become successful in the UK and build power they get:
“Shut down so they don’t become too big because England doesn’t want what’s in America; successful black owned businesses”.

Bashy - Catch Me If You Can album review

2009-11-15T04:05:00.000-08:00

See I’ve had a bit of problem with Bashy, stemming from an incident that happened way way back, so I’ve always found myself with a chip on my shoulder when it came to him because of it.

Felt a bit unfair as I see this guy is doing a lot of positive things in the scene and becoming a real artist, rather then just an MC from the ends.

So I get hold of this album for a bash (no pun intended) and stick it on from start to finish while I cotch with my breakfast…
In a podcast I listened to recently Bashy went on about how he’s “different” and how “there’s no one in the game that’s doing what I’m doing”. I agree, he does have something unique about him but at the same time I can’t say that his uniqueness is all that great. I mean, I make scrambled egg’s in a unique way, I don’t think anyone on my street does them this way, but are they good? Are they the best egg’s this side of Hoxton? Nah. My point is that from his Special Delivery days to his new stuff as a fully fledged solo artist he’s had something missing; I think his flow is sporadic at times, his punch lines lack weight behind them and his word play isn’t as smart as he’d like us to think. There were a few times I was reaching for the skip button as some tracks lacked either the energy or concept needed to sustain my interest.
On the plus side though, I reckon the collab “Ransom” with feat Wretch 32 and Scorcher, the conscious “Life”, the funky “Your Wish Is My Command” and the grimey “Kidulthood 2 Adulthood” are all stand out hits.
I’m feeling Bashy for his work rate and overall I think this a good album and possibly a marker for the rest of the UK scene on how to push yourself successfully and independently.

6 out of 10