During May 7-9th 2009, London will be moving to the sounds from the City Showcase. This music festival will be taking place on various london streets and squares, mainly based in the West End. 

Even the Apple Store in Regents Street will be hosting gigs and special workshops related to the festival!

Get more info here

The EMI story continues to entertain and distress in equal measure. It would seem that the friction in EMI has now spilled over to Guy Hand’s own private equity company TerraFirma as can be read here.

This news that Mr Hands has bought out (for a nominal sum) some of his co-investors isn’t so shocking taking into account that many investors have no more money to invest. However, the timing is as EMI is due a health check with the banks around March time. Perhaps Mr Hands is expecting to have to literally cough up more money from his own pockets (EMI’s losses have been reduced, but they are still losing and not making money) and he doesn’t want any dead wood as part of the fund holding him back.

Guy Hands might know exactly what he is doing, and indeed he might have a great master plan. On the other hand he might just happen to be the Moby Dick of the Music Industry and EMI is one huge whale.

Clearly in the year where UK acts have been doing so well, its a shame that the UK’s main record label is still so weak and is lacking a true strategy to carry it forward. Once the Beatle’s recordings become shared ownership with the Beatles (which under US law they will) then it might be a case of game over.

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FM Revolver

At Music Research Consultants, we often discuss and urge acts to become more interactive and to allow audience participation. 

Sometimes this translates into participation in the creation process, and other times, such as with Guitar Hero and Rock Band it means the fans can play along. Indeed good old merchandising can be viewed as a simple mechanism which allows fans to feel like they have in some way contributed to the development of an act. By buying the t-shirt they know (or hope at least) that the money which paid for the clothing will further fund and empower the act. Additionally, by being branded by the act (by wearing the t-shirt) it makes you feel like an extended member of the family, the ‘groupie’ element which has now been firmly commercialised as an experience.

Other acts go further by crossing into the audience’s world in cross product advertising, such as supporting PEPSI or a tv channel - even a charity. For example, U2 and Apple ‘worked together’ to bring out a unique IPOD. Well it was a different colour and had their signatures on it or something daft. 

50 cent went one further. He had a whole computer game built around his ‘image’ and ’story’. Im sure he wasn’t the first, but in this age of big production games, it was the most recent and large scale. In many ways it completely back fired, as it was awful. Along with his failure to win the battle of the albums with some other Hip Hop act (sorry, not my scene!) it helped to create a mini implosion in the world and brand of 50 cent. Sometimes you can do too much, but in reality its not about how much you do, but the quality. Indeed when you are inviting people to live out the fantasy of being part of your world, even if its just part of your make-believe world, then that experience has to be great.  

However, in the entertainment industry you are only as good as your last project, and 50 Cent looks like he is coming back with another game and this one might just be good. The story and setting are completely looney but that doesn’t matter. In the game the player becomes 50 Cent, and if the player feels good being him then there is a chance that they might just want to hear and see the real thing. Im sure his music will be embedded into the game, so if delivered right, its a whole new platform for certain acts to look into.

Certainly, 50 Cents background story has always involved action and violence, so its easier for him to slip into a videogame persona than for some other acts. However, acts have always used music videos to play characters, whether it is Robbie Williams pretending to a spy/footballer or another act being chased by a mob down a street - fantasy is not new. If this game is well received and sells well, we could see other acts become the targets for videogame developers and publishers to be the face of a new IP. Its a win, win - grow your fan base, include music and possibly even video footage of your act and help to tell the story of the act.The developers meanwhile can tap into the pre-existing fan base already out there. 

How about a Gorillaz version of Little Big Planet please (or at least a Gorillaz level, specially commissioned)?!

After all, developing a story and experience around a musical act is not new and has been known to succeed. Anyone remember The Monkeys?

Hey Mr DJ, as Madonna once said, wanna put a record on? Or something like that anyway. DJs have been with us for some time and its become quite an art form. Loads of music lovers who are already musicians or who never got to grip with traditional music production have embraced this art form as way of making their mark on the creative process. 

The impact a DJ can have on a venue, due to the DJs taste in music and feel for the room is crucial to a venue or club’s success. Additionally once taken to a new level, completely new pieces of music can be born from the clever use of turntables and DJ equipment, from delays, samplers and the like.

Activision it seems loves DJing too. So much in fact, thats its next big music game, following Guitar Hero, will be DJ Hero! For me it makes total sense, more so than Guitar Hero. Over the last few years DJs have already been ‘mixing’ MP3s connected to controllers which didn’t actually have a record on them. You can even get a piece of hardware which takes the motions from a traditional set of decks and uses them to control MP3s.

Hence, there is no reason why the game can’t do everything these existing systems allow for the professionals. Except It will do more as its a game. It will be competitive, allow for Net play in some way and perhaps use the video and microphone elements of the consoles. However, what it will also mean from the perspective of the content owners, is that its a new download store. Thats right, if you have already bought music on Itunes, or Guitar Hero I bet youll need to buy it again in the new DJ format (mind you if you could use your OWN MP3s or Guitar Hero tracks that would be awesome). What would be available? Music videos I would imagine - it could actually reboot the market for music videos. In fact you could have a video mashup section too, which only worked with images.

Lastly, it would offer a much lower difficulty access level for wanna be DJs, and bring more people into music on a creative level, which cant be a bad thing. The new Nintendo DSi is already seeing this trend and embedding it into its design. The DS lite despite being a huge success, can’t play music (what can’t nowadays?!), so with the DSi upgrade Nintendo have implemented this missing feature. However, is it just another IPOD? No, Nintendo have also taken the DJ route. Its more of a creative tool than a ‘dumb’ player. Music can be slowed down, sped up and even have its pitch changed. Like Activision, Nintendo can see that people want to be able to do things with content, whether it be their own, or someone elses. 

So, it would seem we are now ALL going to become the DJ.

Wanna put a record on?

Once again its award season in the music business. In the USA well have the Grammies (which are a worldwide benchmark) and in the UK the Brits. Both award ceremonies are designed as marketing tools, to highlight the ‘best’ recordings and product out there. Following the high point of the holiday season where sales are at their highest, the award ceremonies help keep the music and acts in the public eye.

Columns and web pages will be focused on these events. The industry hopes, as always, that they will create a direct boost in sales for the nominated acts (and winners) and indirectly get people into record shops or online stores, where they might pick up other music whilst browsing. 

In the UK we seem to allow the story of how well our acts are doing in the USA  to dominate proceedings. It is similar to the Oscars. Even though we have our own ceremonies (the Brits for music and BAFTAS for movies) we still think that doing well at US ceremonies is key. Thats not a ridiculous position, in that the USA is a huge market. However, surely what matters just as much is whether those acts are funded by US or UK labels. Its possible to have US acts which are owned by UK labels, and in many ways its healthy to have a portfolio of acts from around the world. 

Additionally, perhaps we should be concentrating on how well UK labels (or acts) are doing in other markets, such as Russia, China, India and Japan. Clearly those are difficult markets and not worth as much as the USA. Japan, excluded, all those markets have major piracy problems, but the potential for growth there is huge. If UK labels don’t invest in those markets (accepting that in the short term they might loose money) then they will loose out. At some point a home grown market will emerge from those markets, and if not challenged will could then ‘dump’ content back on our market.

This is not an argument for cultural protectionism, but for cultural aggressiveness. Just as the UK strives to have its content do well in the states, a mature well developed market, it should also be making huge steps into these new markets. Finding great talent, and developing it. Perhaps adopting different business models for different markets. After all, how much music do major labels sell in Africa? Not a lot as they do not see their model working there. However there is a working model out there and there is money to be made, its just a different model to the one in the USA, EU, Australia and Japan. 

Of course these award ceremonies are built very much around the traditional model. The idea of having an album of the year award, helps market a bulk of work in one go, but how many people actually buy albums over buying individual downloads? How many people are now just streaming the odd song?

What happens if artists sell a subscription or membership to their channel and then drip feed songs. They might never be packaged as an album, but are just a stream of content released over a long period of time. We can still have song of the year, and Act of the year though. I would expect that as new formats take form, we will see a change to these ceremonies.

For now though we are sometime away from that reality, so lets sit back and enjoy the fact that the Brits are back in town. Again.