OK, kids, it’s time to climb back into the Terrordome for another round of music biz news and cheeky analysis with yours truly. When you’ve observed this stuff for any stretch of time, you start to notice patterns, the most persistent being that the whole thing is fucked.

But let’s not be overly cynical. After all, music brings joy to the world. Joy, and sometimes even chlamydia.

• Want to sell music in this wacky new marketplace? Come up with an elaborate plan
  This post talks about how no one is making any money off recorded music (duh), but also suggests that the cure for this is to get out of the album/single mindset and go broadly (but strategically) conceptual. While I don’t disagree with the basic premise here, it’s a bit vague, and requires a skill set many musicians simply don’t have. I’m a musician myself, and I’ve increasingly looked for clever ways to leverage my brand (just threw up in my mouth) across my digital assets (oops, I did it again). And it’s worked really well! I’ve heard plenty of hucksters selling new strategies for musicians, and a lot of what they say boils down to “be interesting.” Unfortunately, a lot of artists that are really great at making music happen to be as dull as doornobs. On the other hand, Lady GaGa is “interesting,” but do I want to listen to her music? Negative.

• Cloud music gets better sounding
  And it’s made by Dolby! No, not Thomas Dolby. Although he did blind us with. . . science! This is a “High Efficiency AAC audio codec (part of the MPEG-4 standard) that “offers high quality audio at low bit rates,” and is “designed specifically to ensure no detectable deterioration in sound quality for music on bandwidth-constrained applications.” Maybe it’ll go some way to solving the “digital music sounds like ass” problem we talked about in the comments of my last post. Or not.

• Abbey Road Studios almost put up for sale; rescued by “historic landmark” protection
  EMI owns Abbey Road Studios. EMI is hemorrhaging cash. Hence the “for sale” sign. Well, there’s not gonna be any foreclosures on the horizon, ’cause the British Government has bestowed historic status upon the Fab Four’s track-laying HQ. The Grade II classification doesn’t prohibit changes to the building but requires that “care must be taken to ensure that any alterations with respect to its character and interest are fully considered.” Which means it won’t be a Ben & Jerry’s like the corner of Haight and Ashbury. Still, I’d love to taste a cone called “Revolution Number Lime.”

• Google pulls music blogs; scribes to leave moms’ basements for first time in decade
  The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is the gift that keeps on giving. Because of this legislation, Google is required to take down sites using its Blogger architecture that are in violation of copyright law, lest the search giant be liable for infringement. I don’t disagree with the basic premise that if you’re doing illegal stuff, you should be stopped from doing more of it, but everybody and their hipster brother knows that blogs are a major marketing/promotions engine for today’s music. As a semi-retired music writer who is still deluged with MP3s from labels who hope I’ll post their stuff, I find it a bit disingenuous that these notices of suspected infringement are sent at the same time the labels are pestering people to post tracks without negotiating licenses like they require for every other non-broadcast use. I’m just sayin.’

• Mommy, what’s a fair use?
  Well, my dear, fair use is a part of copyright law that recognizes that there are certain, limited conditions within which a copyrighted work can be used without requiring permission from rightsholders for “purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research” without being considered unlawful. Does everyone’s favorite mashup master Girl Talk qualify for this exception? He seems to think so. The law, on the other hand, might not.

And that’s all you get. See you next time inside the Terrordome!

Casey Rae-Hunter is a musician, producer, writer and music/media/tech/policy wonk in Washington, DC. This post does not necessarily reflect the views of his employer. You can harass Casey at his site, The Contrarian.

Hello, and welcome to the inaugural edition of The Terrordome, in which yours truly will give you the rundown on the latest music business developments (and a little color commentary).

Paying attention to this stuff is actually part of my job, but if the CIA is letting their guys moonlight, why can’t I?

So here are some hot off-the-tubes headlines with a brief explanation about why you should care (or not).

• Is Streaming the Future of Music?
  I say yes. Then again, I live in a Jetsons-style home with all of my media served digitally through specially-equipped speakers that also allow me to listen to massive catalogs of music, streamed in high-quality, on-demand – all for a nominal fee. (Like 12 bucks a month for basically all the records in the world). The only problems with schemes like this is that the payout to artists is still pretty damn low (I know because my music is on these services and there’s not even a major label taking a cut) and the licensing costs to the services themselves are prohibitive to sustainable business models. The entire concept would benefit tremendously from economics of scale — meaning, if more customers used streaming subscription sites, monthly fees would drop and artist payouts could conceivably increase. I got to live interview Dan Ek from Spotify (an incredibly popular “freemium” streaming service so far only available in Europe) at a major music conference last fall. He says there’s plenty of reason to think streaming is the future. Then again, he’s got a product to sell. All I know is that if Apple gets into this game, all the other companies might as well put up “closed for business” signs.

• Buzzword of the New Decade: Monetize
  Back when I worked at Ye Olde Record Shop, I plenty got tired of hearing the words “where’s your jam section?” Well, now I’m tired of hearing “how can we monetize this?” This article is an inside-baseball account of Midem — an international music biz conference that seems to always include a lot of griping and crystal ball-gazing from industry heavyweights. Apparently, the theme this year was monetization. Some people think this means locking down the internet for the sole benefit of the major content providers and ISPs. Others (like me) believe in the idea that if you made licensing easier and kept the lanes open, we’d see a natural expansion of the legitimate digital music marketplace. None of this helps traditional retailers though. (Sorry, Crandall.)

• Ticketmaster and Live Nation Get Married
  I’m not gonna get into what it means. The link above should help sort out all the Department of Justice hullaboo, though.

• Grandma Endures Wrongful ISP Piracy Suspension
  Here we go again. The latest approach to unlawful filesharing by some in the content industry is to push ISPs (through Government mandates, if necessary) to adopt graduated response, or “three strikes” protocols. This means that if you’re suspected of infringing, your interwebs provider could cut your service after a few warnings (or none at all, in the above case). Currently, several European governments are in various stages of adoption, and there’s some rumbling about a US-led international copyright treaty that would make this a planetary remedy. Of course, there are a zillion questions that come up, from consumer recourse (what if you’re wrongly accused?) to the competitiveness of the broadband marketplace (like, is there even another ISP that you can go to?). Piracy is horrible and wrong, but I’m not sure our legal system is equipped to handle this. Stay tuned.

• Did You Watch the Grammys? Apparently, a Lot of People Did
  A 35 percent spike in viewership is nothing to sneeze at for both the struggling networks and the struggling recording biz. Now we can sit back and watch as the entire industry touts Lady Gaga as the first superstar of the digital era. (Think about it: all the other massive acts snuck in either before or at the start of the Great Disruption.) So expect 360 degree deals to become the major label norm (if they aren’t already) and for the smaller and smaller number of new artists signed to sound like Cher singing over Ace of Base. Look, I’ve got nothing against Gaga — she’s got a cool art school/fashion project going on. Still, when the mainstream biz bets the farm on Taylor Swift’s pitchy live performances and Gaga’s costume changes, I get annoyed. But hey, you can’t argue with ratings. Unless your name is Jay Leno.

I could probably post more, but all of our heads would explode. See you next time inside The Terrordome!

Casey Rae-Hunter is a musician, producer, writer and music/media/tech/policy wonk in Washington, DC. This post does not necessarily reflect the views of his employer. You can harass Casey at his site, The Contrarian.