Music Ally

Last weekend, Music Ally headed for New York to attend an event called GFC Vision. GFC is a group of 10 creatives – DJs, graphic designers, producers, artists and labels – led by Pedro Winter, ex Daft Punk manager, and now manager of Justice and Parisian label Ed Banger Records.

But the driving force behind it is US beer company Miller Genuine Draft, which is trying to associate itself with innovative music thinking. A bit like Bacardi, except instead of ‘signing’ Groove Armada, they’ve gathered this bunch of creative types who are apparently going to meet every six months somewhere in the world, and Discuss Music Stuff.

The panel is suitably cosmopolitan: DJs from the US, Japan and Russia, hip-hop artists from South Africa and South Korea, and so on. It reminds us a bit of that Nokia Music Recommenders project a while back, except instead of compiling music playlists, this panel is compiling and swapping ideas. The inaugural event that we attended featured a guest speaker, former journalist, pirate DJ and now author Matt Mason. Read on for our report.

Actually, the most interesting session was the middle one, where Mason gave a talk based on his book The Pirate’s Dilemma.

To paraphrase and summarise, it boils down to the fact that there have been pirates throughout history, and they’re usually a response to some flaw in the developing systems of the day. You have to recognise what the flaws are, and work out why the pirates are succeeding. Mason gave the example of Radio 1 in the UK setting up and poaching DJs from pirate station Radio Caroline. We think the book is well worth a read.

Pedro Winter certainly has strong views about the way things are going in music now. “The indies have got to have a different approach from the majors,” he said. “The majors have been shooting themselves in the foot, so let them die alone, as they say in France … It’s why Daft Punk quit a major.”

He also thinks the approach of the major labels and authorities towards online piracy is counter-productive (and remember, France is where the three-strikes debate has been raging): “We’ve got to stop talking about kids as thieves. It’s just a new way of consuming music … I’m a hippy at heart. I didn’t have a problem with the kids downloading music.” For what it’s worth, Winter is dismissive of the whole three strikes proposal and believes Sarkozy will ‘put it back into his pocket.’

South Korean hip-hop artist Tablo had some interesting things to say, too, on how he’s been giving stuff away for free and then making money off the back of it.

“We used to sell a lot of CDs but no merchandise, so we set up a website with merchandise, but no one was buying it. So we gave out a few free songs, but also gave out samples like kicks from our tracks. People had to go there [the website] to get the free stuff, and the merchandise sales went up.”

However, Tablo also said that giving music away makes it disposable, pointing out that five or six years ago in Korea, people would listen to a song for four or five months, or even a year. Now, in a few days they’re bored and want more songs from their favourite artists. This, he thinks, can compromise the quality of the music.

All interesting stuff; diluted slightly by the following session on finding ‘the perfect equation for collaboration’, which went a bit moodboard brandspeaky. “The perfect equation for collaboration is passion.” And so on.

In fact as the audience drifted off, it got us thinking: the fact that Miller is doing this event is as interesting as what was actually discussed. We’ve not seen this kind of futuregazing panel played out in public as part of a brand promotion, rather than at an industry conference like MIDEM. Clearly the company was hoping to ‘amplify its brand values’ through the event and to use the assembled journalists to convey the fact that Miller is a brand which helps creative collaboration. Which is kind of what we’ve just done.

It’s early days to judge the success of Miller’s attempt to portray itself as “a beer brand with music at its heart”, but Vision is clearly just one part of its strategy – the company also sponsors a venue called The Mill in Scotland which puts on up-and-coming acts, while also launching the Miller Music Factory in Turkey, and The Miller Foundation in South Korea. All in all, probably more worthy than a public moodboard workshop in New York.

We7 has bagged the rights to stream the new album by hotly-tipped UK artist Florence & The Machine – but only for this weekend. It’ll then be whipped off for a week while it goes on sale, before becoming available on We7’s service for streaming again.

Anyway, there’s a button below to listen to the album, although it won’t work until midnight tonight UK time. Enjoy!

Play Florence + The Machine’s Lungs

If you can’t get even, get mad. And then get away with their fast food.

US label Dovecote Records has posted an account on its blog of accidentally filching pizza in a bar that belonged to a company having an event there. Cue someone allegedly shouting at them “You STOLE our pizza… You can’t steal other people’s things. You can’t take what’s not yours.” The company in question? Lime Wire.

Cue Dovecote outrage, an attempt to make off with an entire pizza, and an (again, allegedly) aggressive laptop-beer-drenching.

Obligatory disclaimers: we’ve only heard the label’s side, and it should be noted that Lime Wire has a legal music store these days that sells music by indie labels very much like Dovecote. In fact, it may even sell music by that label.

Even so, for an anecdote containing the retort “Well when are you going to figure out how to download pizza into my stomach?”, we love it.

Everyone knows you can make music with an iPhone – artists like The Mentalists and Gary Go have got media coverage as a result. But shooting a music video?

It’s possible with the new iPhone 3GS, and US artist Ben Rivet is the first to benefit, courtesy of a production company called Showdown Productions. See the results above.

However, they also used a fairly price-looking steadycam system, which rather goes against the ”anyone can do this with an iPhone” spirit of the project. Even so, it’s canny marketing on the part of both Rivet and Showdown.

Digital distributor TuneCore claims rapper Drake has sold nearly 300,000 song downloads on iTunes in two weeks, which it says is a record for a DIY artist (i.e. one without a label).

The success appears to be fuelled by his single Best I Ever Had. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, though. Last month, someone uploaded an unauthorised Drake album to iTunes, Rhapsody and Amazon, and it became the 16th best selling digital album in the US that week.

At least now, the sales are for the kosher product.

Global Gaming Factory CEO Hans Pandeya has been explaining his company’s plans for taking The Pirate Bay legit, following its acquisition earlier this week.

In short, he plans to pay users for sharing files, and pay rightsholders who provide the files that are shared. And he’ll raise money from ISPs in return for reducing the strain on their networks.

“Let’s say a popular song comes out. Rather than a million downloads from a site – which would cause a considerable strain on that ISP – we can take that song and put it out on P2P,” he says.

As Mashable points out, this strategy depends on a.) users sticking around, b.) rightsholders agreeing to such a deal, and c.) ISPs seeing enough benefits to pay for it. Meanwhile, Business Week highlights more potential legal and commercial obstacles to the new plan.

Having splashed out big bucks on sponsoring U2’s latest world tour, BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion is hoping to reap the rewards. Starting with something described as “The U2 Mobile album”, for which RIM has launched a teaser website.

It’s light on detail and heavy on slogans (the site, obv, not the album. Although…) So it will let users “show the world what the music means to you” and “experience the tour from all angles”.

Having trumpeted its commitment to music at MidemNet this year, RIM has since flattered to deceive, with many of the music apps on its BlackBerry App World store already available on other handsets. Maybe U2 can help to change that, along with Will.I.Am’s Dipdive app, which is already available.

If you follow our buzz chart in the Music Ally Report, you’ll know that Lady GaGa has reigned supreme in recent months as the most popular artist online. At last, there’s some bad news: she was also one of the artists most often deleted from people’s Last.fm scrobbles in June.

That’s according to a top ten released by the music service, showing tracks that people played, but then deleted presumably out of embarrassment. GaGa’s Poker Face tops the chart, and she has three more tracks in the top ten.

Britney Spears has three. In fact, it’s notable that nine of the ten are by female singers (and the tenth is by Paramore, a female-fronted band). Are Last.fm’s male users a bit sensitive about their penchant for girly pop?

Something tells us buying The Pirate Bay may end in tears for Swedish firm Global Factory X.

The public company is facing an insider trading investigation after its stock saw a huge upswing in trades on Monday, the day before the deal was announced. “There are reasons to suspect that information was leaked,” says an official at the Swedish AktieTorget stock exchange.

Meanwhile, The Register reports that the site has been “flooded with account deletion requests” from angry users since the deal was announced.

This is the real problem for TPB’s new owner – the site’s users have been fiercely loyal, but if they abandon ship now, GFX’s acquisition starts to look much less of a bargain.

Lime Wire has announced that it will be selling music from CD Baby’s roster of 240,000 independent artists in its LimeWire Store, after striking a deal with the digital distribution firm. That means Lime Wire now offers more than 3.5 million licensed tracks in its store, even if none of the majors have yet signed up. “CD Baby and LimeWire Store both champion independent artists and give them access to new customers and revenue opportunities, so it’s a perfect partnership, really.”