First of all, I am so glad The Police did not play in one of the barns or stadiums in the Seattle/Tacoma area. I will never see another show at the Tacoma Dome and I’d much rather see the Police as a tight trio than a bloated band. With that said, the concert last night was VERY good and the sound was VERY good at the Key Arena.

The band kicked off with a gong bang (Stewart complained about this on his blog at the Vancouver show – but it was fine) and then a great version “Message in a Bottle” that got the crowd grooving. Everyone (mostly people like me in our 40′s) was pumped to see them and it was a great song to start with. The band (just the three) played with a lot of energy and enthusiasm – especially Stewart and Sting. Stings’ voice sounded strong and man can he hit still the high notes. The next couple of hours was a litany of greatest hits with some of the lesser known (but fun) songs mixed in. I especially like So Lonely, the moody Invisible Sun, the extended/jazzy Roxanne and the last song Next to You.
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Politics and music seem to go hand in hand. If it’s not RollingStone Magazine proclaiming the Bush Administration as the worst presidency ever (which I agree with) then it’ s Bono doing the meet and greets with Kings and Queens to drive dollars to Africa. I’m all for anything that raises general consciousness of important issues, especially to a younger audience that will be in power one day and control the agenda. And, I’m all for bands that are using their public platform to do good. With that, I give you www.musicforamerica.org – a site that promotes band with a political message (mostly around voting and hating the Iraq war – both good things). Check it out.

Is this the first step towards the Beatles catalog being online or just Paul’s way of making a little extra $$ to pay off his horrid ex-wife/gold digger? Either way – I love it! Rhapsody has everything including an album entitled Paul Talks which is a series of clips from radio programs, etc. There are 25 McCartney albums plus compilations and performances on other artists albums.

Did you know that Paul released his first album two weeks before Let It Be was released? Here is the album review from Rhapsody on the first McCartney solo album. “This home-recorded charmer is the most humble No. 1 album in pop history. In 1970, Paul McCartney was ostracized from the rest of the Beatles and was holed up in a shack with his family on the Scottish coast. Filled with anger and frozen by the legacy of the Lennon/McCartney partnership, Macca decided just to record for fun, setting the stage for the rest of his solo career. Bypassed at the time, the future hit “Maybe I’m Amazed” is an autobiographical marvel (as is “Every Night”). “Junk” is a real beauty like “Teddy Boy” it was ixnayed by Lennon as a Let it Be-era Beatles song. Paul plays everything on this one.
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As if the titans of music industry didn’t have enough bad karma in their ethereal bank account, now they are on another round of “sue people who can’t protect themselves in court because it is expensive” for illegally downloading music. A couple of stories were recently posted on MSN and Seattle PI about the lawsuits and letters delivered to college students and individuals regarding illegally downloaded music. While the main story is old news, the real story buried in the PI article discusses how file sharing software like Limewire, BearShare, etc. leave open a perfectly legitimate access point that allows RIAA researchers the ability to scan harddrives. This is scary for a couple of reasons: 1) if the RIAA can get in to see how many illegal downloads you have, who else can get in to mess with your computer? 2) If RIAA can see illegal music downloads, what can other people see on your system?

While I understand the RIAA’s need to protect it’s artists and labels from piracy, there has got to be a better way to deal with music piracy than sue the people who form the foundation of your customer base. Especially by invading their privacy. Legal services like Rhapsody, Napster, Yahoo give you legal access to most of the music you want for a very small monthly fee and is a much safer way to go about having access to large music collections.
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eMusic is a subscription service that focuses on independent labels and DRM free MP3 downloads. A recent post opens the coat a little and describes some dissatisfaction with eMusic in terms of how much is paid out per song by the service and a sense that the service is selling subscriptions on the cheap in order to pad the subscriber numbers to be more attractive as an acquisition target. The CEO of eMusic, David Pakman, declined the intent to sell in an interview with Fortune Magazine, but I think this story misses the point. Only six of the 13,000+ indie labels are threatening to pull out. If so, they will need to rely on iTunes, Rhapsody and the other music services to make up the volume lost. Sounds more like a negotiating tactic than a legit threat. At the heart of the matter is how much the different services pay per song for sale, download or stream to the labels (Big and Small, Corporate and Indie) as well as how do you get exposure for your band. I think the more music services that are out there and the better job they do at identifying a niche (streaming, music store, indie, broad) the better both the bands and the listeners will be served. It is currently a very difficult market to make money in for the digital music services. iTunes sells songs for $.99 but pays out anywhere from $.60 to $.80 to the labels – of which a portion of which goes to the artist. Rhapsody pays per stream and per song sale to the labels. Either way the margins are very thin. Apple makes most of their music money on selling iPods, not on iTunes songs and this is the burden that services like Rhapsody, eMusic, Napster, etc. need to overcome in order to be in the same make money ballpark as iTunes.

How else do you explain Sanjaya staying another week on idol? Oh, I know why – the good folks over at www.votefortheworst.com (VFTW) who have taken Sanjaya on as thier cause of the day. VFTW got another big boost from Howard Stern who promoted the site on the 13th and encouraged his listeners to vote for Sanjaya.

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I scored excellent seats for the Rod Stewart show in the Key Arena in Seattle last night and got a close-up look and listen to one of the great rock voices of all time. While Rod has chased the music of the era running from white blues to disco to pop rock to standards, the texture of his voice has never changed. He was in good form last night through 5 outfit changes and a five gallon bucket of hair gel.

The good:
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The recent settlement with the top four radio properties has me wondering if Payola is still alive and well in the US. The record labels hold a lot of power in the music industry obviously and radio stations depend on the ability to play just about any song they need to whenever they need to with little to no royalties involved. However, the labels need the radio stations to play their music to expose the song, artist, album to the folks who will buy the CD or purchase it online.

While Payola was a significant problem/issue in the 50′s and 60′s, it seems like that activity would get sniffed out pretty quickly in the age of free flying information on the internet. One post somewhere about one DJ or song or label executive would cause a stir. I believe that we want to believe that the voice on the radio (hey Mr. DJ!) is doing what he/she digs to do and either we like it and listen or don’t. I think the online music community is strong enough and vocal enough to listen and respond to an un-truthfulness (sorry Mr. Colbert) like Payola.
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DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and is one of the major problems/issues with digital music. Basically, DRM is a system of locking down digital music so that you can only use the music for which you purchased it within the system which you purchased. Apple has it’s own DRM (called Fairplay) which connects iTunes with iPods. RealNetworks (Rhapsody), Microsoft (Zune Marketplace), etc. have their own DRM systems. However, as Steve Jobs points out on the recent post “Thoughts on Music” CDs do not have any DRM which makes the use of the music technically unrestricted. The legality of the use is a different story, but when you buy a CD, you can rip it to you computer as an MP3 file via iTunes, Rhapsody, RealPlayer, whatever and then transfer it to any MP3 player, burn a CD, play from your computer, put the song onto a home made movie or play it through a stereo system. How ironic that if you buy a song or album from an online service, you are much more restricted in the use. So, what are the issues around DRM?

Issues around DRM:
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We (I) tend to think of music as it relates to me, the listener. But I’ve been reading and thinking a lot about the pure number of artists there are making music and struggling to be heard. In the past, the only real outlet for musicians was getting “discovered”, signing a record deal and getting radio airplay or working clubs and small gigs ad nausium. The internet is clearly changing the paradigm because now the artists can go directly to the people in the form of MySpace pages, digital music services like iTunes and Rhapsody as well as pure music discovery tools like Pandora. With the right music, the right approach to the internet and the right business sense – an artist can sell CDs and make a better living making music without being beholden to the record labels. Will they ever be HUGE without a label deal? not until the purchase of music digitally is the norm instead of the exception. Even then, it will be difficult to be U2 huge, but musicians that find a voice and an audience should be able to make a good middle class living doing what they love, providing great fan service and linking with other groups that are similar. This is getting good for both fans and musicians alike. Sweet!