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ivan@stellysee.de
| From | Ralph Alfonso <ralph@nettwerk.com> |
| Subject | payola |
| Date | Tue, 26 Jul 2005 11:16:42 -0700 |
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it will always go on in different shades and permutations at all
levels, even *gasp shock* our
little indie world.... except of course it's way more affordable :)
I remember when I was living in LA in the 80s and working with hair
bands... that was HEAVY times....
cash in Fedex envelopes.... refrigerators delivered to store clerks
(Soundscan cleaned up all the
phony retail reporting that used to go on)....club owners pulling
guns to demand their "fee" from merch sales.... secret flights to
drop off points to deliver money to indie
promo guys...very scarey stuff.... you'd call a station & the md
would go, "great record man! have you got
bobby bobbo working it? If bobby were working this, i'd be playing it
tomorrow"....
maybe it's gotten a bit more sophisticated but it will always go
on.... even in its most innocent basic form -
taking someone out for lunch/dinner....
it is very depressing for an artist to see this go down, but at that
mega-million level, those are heavy stakes
and everyone is in on it... the music itself seems to be the least priority...
however, i firmly believe the current indie/digital/back to basics
phenomenon is circumventing a lot of that by
finding success outside of the mainstream.... the #1 digital download
on CDBaby (tracks they have placed with
DSP sites) was Siobhan Duvall, an unsigned female punk guitarist
(ex-Bif Naked) here in Vancouver with her cover of "99 Red Balloons"
- i'm sure a lot of you got that email from Derek Sivers and
scratched your heads:)
but success is what you want it to be. She hardly ever plays live
anymore and that cd is maybe 5 years old now.
The best thing that could happen out of all of this if access to the
mainstream airwaves were suddenly to be based on artistic and musical
merit as opposed to Pro-Tool plug ins and millions of dollars of
bribes and marketing/positioning.
It would be a radical shift back to the origins of FM radio and the
dawn of rock radio - stuff that is already happening on
satellite/digital radio and which, make no mistake, terresterial
radio is very aware of - this is the perfect excuse to clean house
and go for it.... the future is not Jack/Bob/Bing/Jane radio which
trades on easy nostalgia - the future should be the future....
tomorrow's hits today (to paraphrase that). The whole
podcast/glorified mix tape thing could work great on mainstream radio
- it would really force radio to be *gasp* creative, innovative, and
actually in touch with what's going on....
whew!!
ok. i can talk more about this at The Joint, July 31 (this Sunday),
Los Angeles... ahem... Bongo Beat Night... and... uh....
FREE CDS FOR THE FIRST 25 PAID PEOPLE THERE...uh.... yeah.... >sheepish grin<
Ralph Alfonso
http://www.bongobeat.com
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