Björk @ Connect

• Björk image by Kelly Fiveash published in the December issue of Record Collector

Connect Festival, live review

INVERARAY CASTLE, ARGYLL

Billed as a boutique music festival aimed at an older, oyster-loving, whisky-supping crowd, the first Connect drew to an impressive, albeit slightly premature, close with a blistering set from Björk.

Surprisingly, the Icelandic purveyor of quality industrial rave-tinged pop ballads didn’t headline; that honour was handed to LCD Soundsystem in what appeared to have been a last-minute change of running order. No matter: Björk stormed the grounds of Scotland’s Inveraray Castle with songs from her latest album, Volta, as well as crowd pleasers including a marvellous off-its-tits version of Hyperballad.

M.I.A. caused easily the sensation of the festival with a hot and rowdy set that was cut short after she urged fans to join her on stage during her performance of 'Galang'. Over 100 muddy miscreants did bringing the show to an abrupt end as she exited declaring: “We killed it.”

Other highlights included a smorgasbord of Scottish-heavy talent from the likes of Mogwai, Teenage Fanclub and Jesus and Mary Chain. Elsewhere, the Beastie Boys put on a riotous greatest hits headline set, while Bunny Man Ian McCulloch and Primal Screamer Bobby Gillespie struck slightly desperate, end-of-the-pier chords during their respective performances; the former for his potentially slanderous Pete Townsend outburst and the latter for his terrible taste in shiny black shirts.

The organisers of this event made a few mistakes, notably the one-mile mud-trudge to and from the car park as well as locating the campsite near stalls that blasted out Mika at a bastardly early hour. Despite all that, the sound, particularly on the main stage, was excellent and the glorious misty Highlands setting provided the perfect festival backdrop.

• Published in the October 2007 issue of The Stool Pigeon

Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter, live review

Jesse Sykes & co sock it to them

BUSH HALL, LONDON

“Women are just so stupid sometimes”, says Jesse Sykes as she tries to fix a problem with her acoustic guitar and a sound effect pedal. She’s been on stage a few minutes but, despite some technical difficulties, this graceful, sultry Seattle singer can’t put a foot wrong.

Yet, three albums in and Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter appear to be a well-kept secret. As though to underline this fact, Bush Hall is only half full tonight. It does nothing to distil the atmosphere however: if anything it just makes for a more intimate, relaxed set.

There’s plenty of interplay in between the songs too. At one point Sykes places a sock over her mic and, realising that the audience’s curiosity needs to be satisfied, explains that she does it to prevent electric shocks when playing 'LLL'. It’s one of the catchier tunes on her glorious new album Like Love Lust and the Open Halls of the Soul.

With the band’s music to date, it has been easy to get carried away with the obvious 'way out west' analogies, and in some ways the sound they create sits well under a deep red moon overlooking a very American landscape of cacti and cowboys. But for their latest offering, Sykes and band-mate Phil Wandscher have worked together on scratching out an expansive sound that is harder to pin down. It’s neither alt.country nor folksy pop, though elements of both can be heard.

The likes of Station Grey and The Air Is Thin, both played here tonight, capture the essence of an album that is delicately wrapped in the sorrow of empty nostalgia. Sykes strikes a powerful, almost beguiling presence on stage with her rustling, spectral voice, and what comes back at us on this unseasonably cold May night is her overwhelming desire to keep moving lyrically, physically and emotionally out from under the rain clouds.

• Published in the Summer 2007 issue of The Stool Pigeon
  

F1, Scout Niblett, Iggy Pop and the Stooges - all in one day!

Iggy and the Stooges performing at Jarvis Cocker's Meltdown

Scout Niblett in support...

F1 testing day @ Silverstone - BMW Sauber thunders out of the pit!

ATP 2007 highlights... shot by me

PATTI SMITHPATTI SMITHDANIEL JOHNSTONTODD TRAINER
STEVE ALBINIASHY MEETS DAVE PAJO!!!
LOWGRINDERMANSHELLACWord!

Josh Ritter, album review

JOSH RITTER
Girl in the War
V2
****
Like a bedtime story read by Simon and Garfunkel in the upstairs flat of a Dublin pub, this mini-album melds itself into that hidden away place of precious childhood dreams and fairy tales. But don't be fooled; there's an edge to Ritter's lyrics that are very much set in the grown-up world. Here are seven folksy songs containing a collection of released and unreleased work from the past year or so, including a wonderful Modest Mouse cover ('Blame It On The Tetons') and the rousing Mercury Rev-like title song, 'Girl in the War', which mixes allegorical and military imagery to great effect. These are ballads to keep under your pillow.

• Published in the Independent On Sunday's ABC magazine

Sonic Youth, album review

SONIC YOUTH
The Destroyed Room
GEFFEN
*****
Take some 'Creme Brulee' and sprinkle with a 'Pinch' (Can) of Brian Eno-like electronica. In places this album feels like it's been recorded somewhere deep in the Nevada desert, elsewhere it shakes and throngs like the best kind of next-door-neighbours' house who play their music too loud, but have enough taste that you don't mind. You bang on their door and say, "turn it up"; after all this is Sonic Youth, my friends. Packed full of b-sides and rarities, hand-picked by the band, which perhaps aficionados of the SY sound have already, but for those of you that don't I'd be hard pushed to recommend a better alternative compilation for this festive season. This is post punk rock at its best.

• Published in the Independent On Sunday's ABC magazine

Loney, Dear live review

Loney, Dear find spark despite lack of electricity

LONEY, DEAR @ THE CAMDEN ENTERPRISE, LONDON

It’s dark, everyone is sat cross-legged on the floor but there are no marshmallows on sticks and there certainly isn't a campfire to toast them on. There is an acoustic guitar though. And tonight, it seems, is all about making shapes out of shadows and surrendering to a sweetly emotive folksy Motown sound.

A power cut has rendered the band powerless to give the crowd the gig they might have been expecting. What we have here is a hushed, heartfelt slice of low-slung Scando alt.country tinged with the melodic infectiousness of The Beach Boys. It just so happens it’s unplugged and performed in the dark.

I’m watching Loney, Dear upstairs at The Enterprise in Camden and this improvised acoustic set is actually a real treat. Without his band to back him up, there’s an intense intimacy between Stockholm(boy) singer/songwriter Emil Svanängen and the gathered crowd. Once or twice the lights in the room flicker into action, signalling that the power is back on.

Quickly, the rest of the band – four tonight, but often nine in total – join in on their guitars and organ, only for the power cut to suddenly go out again. The band are left stranded on stage, watching us watching them watching Emil. Strangely, it’s okay and no one feels short-changed. Emil’s voice and acoustic guitar is enough to carry us through, and somehow his music captures the darkness.

Stand out song of the night is 'The Battle Of Trinidad And Tobago' with its haunting lyric "I’ve been watching you from the other side I know you so well", which brings to mind the gentler vocal moments of Conor Oberst. Elsewhere there are touches of Belle and Sebastian, the bewitching pathos of Smog, and the lo-fi scratchiness of Tuung.

Emil is showcasing songs from his latest album Sologne. Inevitably his Swedish roots throw him into the mix with the likes of Peter, Bjorn and John, I’m From Barcelona and The Knife. But Loney, Dear specialises in heartbreak and pleading as well as upbeat folksy acoustics and harmony.

"In with the dark nights," sings Emil on one of his songs. Based on tonight’s performance who am I to disagree?

• Published in the December 2006 issue of The Stool Pigeon

Are you getting your full digital pay cheque?

Digital royalties feature published by Music Week
__________________________________________________

Now the digital music market is making money, the royalties should be flooding in. But in a fragmented, confusing market, the numbers are not adding up just yet, says Kelly Fiveash

The rapid expansion of legal digital music over the past two years has undoubtedly been a positive development for the music industry. Recent analysis from Forrester estimates that digital music will comprise 36% of European business in five years' time, as digital download stores have opened up new avenues of choice, immediacy and accessibility.

But the shift from physical to digital media is not without sticking points, especially when it comes to calculating royalties. Independent record labels, in particular, are feeling the strain as they try to keep on top of the multifarious income streams that digital music generates.

By comparison, tracking the royalties produced by traditional CD or vinyl sales is a relatively straightforward process: labels use a distributor to deliver their products to retail, retailers pass sales revenue back to distributors, who then take a cut and report back to the label. The label subsequently pays its artists and passes a share onto publishers. This is simplified, of course (and ignores complications, such as third-party licensing or overseas sales), but the overall process is easily quantifiable and income streams are few and manageable.

In the digital world, royalties are a more fragmented proposition. Not only are there many more music stores (the majority of which are two years old or less), but they operate with different business models, including a la carte track sales (such as iTunes), subscription services (such as Napster) and now, in reference to the headlines surrounding SpiralFrog and QTrax, the prospect of ad-funded models.

For labels, distributors and aggregators, this is a huge challenge. Even before a track is delivered to a download store, the metadata (the digital finger print, such as ISRC code, encoded in each track) has to be 100% accurate. And then, rather than a handful of income streams, sales come in on a "drip-drip" basis with little in the way of standardised reporting. Even with the a la carte model, where sales are split per track rather than per album, this can potentially mean a huge increase in the size of royalty statements.

According to Bob Kohn, chairman and CEO of US-based digital royalty software system Royalty Share, labels risk drowning in paper.

"Labels are drowning in digital revenue files," he says. "A year or so ago that didn't matter too much, because the amount of revenue involved with digital music was very small. Now that revenue is significant, and dealing with it has become an urgent IT need."

"Look at the way things used to be done for an artist like Frank Sinatra," he adds. "He would record a song by, say, Cole Porter, and release an album for Capitol Records. So the song is owned by Warner Chappell and Capitol have to pay Sinatra for the recording. When you sell the CD, you can easily get a spreadsheet from your distributor that basically says, "I'm going to pay 'x'percentage of the net revenue to Sinatra, and whatever units times whatever the statutory rate is to the publisher. Enter iTunes, eMusic, MSN, Rhapsody, Real Networks, MTV, and so on... the 180 or so global digital music services generating hundreds of millions of transactions.

"[Aside from a la carte sales], you've got the subscription services like Napster where a user pays a fixed fee for all the streaming they want, and each transaction is not £ 0.79, it's something less than a penny. The order of magnitude is greater than the number of transactions."

"Trying to get the digital accounting done is a significant addition to an already busy physical accounting run," agrees Matt Bristow, head of digital at Cherry Red. Initially the label negotiated deals direct with services rather than using an aggregator to cover the digital sector. Now the workload is intensive and software compatibility is, he explains, "a major challenge, as no two sets of reports are the same in format".

"Digital royalties have created quite a bit of work," adds Paul Sandell, head of digital at Domino Records. "For instance, with mobile revenue we might use four different aggregators and then they'll be reporting sales from the four different networks. It's not a huge problem, but it would be really nice if things were a bit more standardised."

The other predominant issue, he adds, is the lightening pace of the digital evolution, with different business models continually coming to market and shifting the goal posts - the latest being MySpace's announcement that it will start selling DRM-free downloads and YouTube's licensing deal with Warner Music Group. "Everyone is still finding their feet and there seems to be a new announcement and new rumours every week," says Sandell, "whether that's Google Video or SpiralFrog."

Of course, with limited staffing resources, most independent labels will rely on a distributor or aggregator to consolidate their sales data and supply coherent and timely digital royalty statements. "If you're a label and you've got to deal with multiple products, multiple prices and multiple VAT rates...it's an incredibly complicated monster," says Adrian Pope, head of Vital: Pias Digital. "For labels to collate that data and make sense of it is incredibly difficult and time consuming."

Though acknowledging that digital stores are getting - broadly - better at reporting, Pope says that they need to provide more transparent, detailed and timely reporting. "Ultimately, from the digital music stores, there needs to be a much greater recognition and empathy of what their reporting data means to rights holders. This is a track-based business, so labels need to be able to report transparently to their artists right down to track level - which means including the complete ISRC code, barcodes and publishing information.

"Digital is now a serious business that is impacting materially and the music industry as a whole needs better access to sales data. That doesn't necessarily mean royalty accounting - we can live without getting paid for three months - it's more about having a clue about what worked in a promotional and marketing sense and what didn't.

"The upside to getting this right is that the more information we get, the better we'll be able to market and sell our products. That's of benefit to everyone."

"Some digital stores are good at reporting and some are awful," adds Gareth Henry at Cadiz Music, who act as an aggregator for the likes of Nizlopi, and reveals that he has given up dealing with some stores because of sub-standard reporting. "The rubbish ones really scupper us," he adds, "as they hold up the whole accounting process.

"Admittedly, it's still early days for a lot of people and we've seen it improve over the past two years, but when you start with a new store then you get the same problems all over again."

Scott Cohen, co-founder of The Orchard, reiterates the crucial role of aggregators in making sense of the online jungle. "Working out how much a single digital track earns can involve hundreds of different calculations in a given quarter," he explains, "so what we did from the start was build a sophisticated accounting system that could handle that."

He adds that much of the accounting software used by many of the major labels is not adequate for calculating the intricacies of digital revenue. "We've lived in a fairly simplistic world for a long time regarding accounting... in the world we're dealing in now, it's not a simple business model."

Dean Marsh, who, under his Independent Label Scheme, offers advice for a growing number of small labels, also brings up the question of standardised digital reporting - or lack thereof. While he does not think government or EU regulation will necessarily provide a solution, he does advocate self-regulation with more transparent and fairer accounting practices.

Marsh also questions the concept of ad-funded stores and how this will affect artists. "Under a typical recording agreement, advertising revenue isn't something that is shared," he says. Have any of the artists he represents expressed concerns about the digital sector? "Yes, very much so - when you advise artists on the provisions of a royalty agreement and they see how much they're being accounted to on the digital side, and they work out how much they're actually going to get, it can be quite shocking sometimes."

However, with digital sales accounting for around 6% of record companies' revenues in 2005 (IFPI figures) and likely to become increasingly significant in the years to come, the facility to collate and consolidate digital royalties - no matter how multifarious the format - is crucial.

There are royalty software specialists such as Counterpoint, Korrect and Musicalc which have provided labels, publishers and accountants with bespoke accounting software on their PC desktops for some time. According to Asa Palmer, Musicalc's marketing director, although dealing with the influx of digital income has presented its challenges, it is important that the music industry looks at the bigger picture and treats online and mobile sales in the same way as physical products. "From an accounting point of view, digital is just another product," she says.

Having initially produced a loading programme for iTunes sales reports, Musicalc, whose clients include Beggars Group and Skint, has since created a generic digital loading programme. Consequently, labels only have to change the data fields in a spreadsheet before initialising a royalty run.

Counterpoint too has developed a digital downloads module to its Music Maestro software, allowing the user to administer artist and mechanical copyright royalties based on the sale of individual tracks. The module has the facility to flag sound recordings as available to be downloaded digitally - these are then linked to artist contracts and mechanical licenses in a similar manner to that of a CD or DVD.

A new player in this market is US-developed software system RoyaltyShare, which last week picked up a Popkomm Innovation In Music And Entertainment Award for most innovative product. Used by the likes of Epitaph and KOCH Entertainment and incorporating a web-based utility rather than locally installed software, RoyaltyShare allows users to access real-time financial data via a secure website. It is also free to install, taking a small percentage of royalties earned rather than charging a flat fee, and offers the facility to outsource accounting work. "Our system gives labels the freedom to focus on what they are good at - finding new acts and marketing and promotion," says CEO Bob Kohn.

Kohn, the co-founder of eMusic, claims that existing "legacy" software is insufficient to deal with the scalability and demands of the digital world - not only the increased volume of transactions and complex royalty splits, but also in terms of incorporating new business models.

Further down the scale, royalties is also an issue that affects upcoming musicians looking for a record deal. Billy Bragg has already put a magnifying glass over the small print of social networking websites and a number of bespoke portals - including 7 Digital's IndieStore, TuneTribe, PulseRated, Bandwagon, Arkade and now MySpace itself - all offer the opportunity for unsigned artists to upload and sell their music. As a result of Bragg's crusade, MySpace and Bebo changed their terms and conditions to clarify that content creators retain the ultimate ownership of their music.

The challenges of reporting royalties in a fragmenting digital world, as well as copyright ownership in general, look like they will continue unabated for some time; although it seems there is a consensus of opinion around adaptability, communication and standardising practices. As Scott Cohen says, "This is now a low-margin, high-volume business we're operating in, and everyone needs to wrap their heads around it."