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| Firing On All Synapses |
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| :: Posted by Sid Smith on Mon., Apr 9, 2012 |
Artist John Coulthart has provided a jolly useful link to all the back editions of Synapse magazine including one with ol' Chuckles Fripp.
More news
Displaying 4165 items (Viewing 341 to 350 of 4165)
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ITCOTCK Best Progressive Of All Time
:: Posted by Sid Smith on Sun., Jul 29, 2012
That's according to this list on the Music Advisor site. There's quite a few other KC titles in there making the list as well as JFC's A Scarcity Of Miracles.
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Olympic Heroes
:: Posted by Sid Smith on Sat., Jul 28, 2012
Last night at the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics, Great Britain's team marched into the stadium to the sound of Heroes by David Bowie, featuring the anthemic surging lead guitar lines of Robert Fripp. For viewers able to access BBC iPlayers the Fripp-led team can be seen at around 2hour and 55minute mark.
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OMG It's The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle
:: Posted by Sid Smith on Thu., Jul 26, 2012
Industry journal CMU is running this story today about the UMG / EMI takeover. The piece also runs links to Declan Colgan's article on DGM Live earlier this week about the detrimental effect the bid will have on the industry. Elsewhere, The Guardian's Hellenne Lindvall has this piece running today. Robert Fripp's notes from the speech he gave at the AIM conference last week are now available in his updated diary.
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KC Covers Again
:: Posted by Sid Smith on Wed., Jul 25, 2012
The Dork Report offers another evaluation of KC's cover artwork.
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King Crimson Live In Argentina Review
:: Posted by Sid Smith on Wed., Jul 25, 2012
King Crimson's Live In Argentina has been reviewed here.
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UMG/ EMI Takeover - A Perspective From Panegyric
:: Posted by Sid Smith on Mon., Jul 23, 2012
Here's a perspective on the proposed take-over from Declan Colgan of Panegyric Recordings.
Universal Music Group, the biggest of the four record company
majors, is in the process of taking over EMI, the smallest of
the four. The combined companies would have a market share of
approximately 50% in many EU countries & a far higher percentage in
various areas of music such as jazz & classical.
EU & US
regulators are examining the takeover & UMG is in the
process of offering various "concessions" to the authorities in
order to win approval. Such "concessions" - reportedly a
willingness to sell some parts of the EMI catalogue to third
party labels, major or independent, do little, in my opinion, to
address the problem of allowing a single company to attain near
monopoly position in an already troubled industry.
The following
piece was written as a response the situation from the
perspective of one independent label owner.
Unlimited Supply?
“You cannot expect a company the size of UMG to read or apply the details of every contract of every catalogue it acquires.”
This is a quote from a UMG lawyer to me in December 2008 when I complained about the ongoing availability of King Crimson material on iTunes, as supplied by Sanctuary/UMG, without any digital rights having been granted to the company. This was just one of about forty occasions, in the years 2006-2011, when it proved necessary for me to issue UMG with takedown notices relating to unauthorised digital sales through a variety of outlets – said notices often copied to personnel at the highest level of the company.
Grooveshark was often more prompt withdrawing material.
Even without the specific context relating to the catalogue I license & manage on behalf of copyright owner Robert Fripp, the corporate mindset that produces a quote such as the above is fully indicative of the attitude & the true dangers of the proposed UMG takeover of EMI.
Far from looking for scraps from the UMG table to allow the takeover to proceed, the independent label community should be demanding that UMG is broken up into some of its constituent elements to re-balance the market. There has been much talk of the dominance of UMG/EMI in terms of jazz & classical music. With the not entirely surprising news that catalogue sales have outstripped those of new releases in the US for the first time ever, the importance of a broad distribution of music catalogue representation is fundamental to the future of the music industry. Focusing just on the period in which King Crimson initially came to prominence and the many British bands who emerged in that era as an example, a combined UMG/EMI would control the historic catalogues of Pye, Transatlantic, Island, Virgin, Charisma, Vertigo, Harvest, Decca, Deram & that’s just a partial list of UK labels. There’s also Parlophone & Apple. Any bits of EMI can be sold off so long as those two are preserved for UMG. Beatles boxed sets for the Christmas market while the rest of the catalogue is hacked out in poor sound quality on Spotify or via Omnifone or any of the other digital/streaming “services” in which UMG holds shares & for which the company shows boundless enthusiasm.
Should Lucian Grainge genuinely believe in reviving labels, his company already owns/controls enough of them without the need for further market distorting takeovers, especially as UMG’s lawyers, according to their own statements, have neither the time nor intent of reading or applying the contractual obligations of its acquisitions.
I would go further & suggest that the return of classic & modern catalogues to the artists responsible for creating the music – whether licensed to indie or major labels subsequently – would go a long way towards re-energising the marketplace & combating piracy. It’s far easier to argue that piracy is wrong as a representative of a musician’s work than as the owner of the same work. It’s time the industry moved on from the plantation mentality that has so compromised much of its history.
Barclays, the other major banks, News Corp, G4S, the list goes on & on. There has never been a time when the public has found monopolies or near-monopolies so distasteful. A healthy marketplace for music requires diversity, strong competition among A&R departments, choices for musicians, vibrant committed catalogue departments & a variety of distribution methods to pitch music to the widest possible audience. One gargantuan major with the inevitable distorting effect such a position brings to marketplace access via physical & digital distribution platforms is the antithesis to such a healthy environment & can, ultimately, be nothing but detrimental to all who try to operate in the same arena.
The digital marketplace is renowned for its secrecy, non-disclosure agreements & the unrevealed levels of ownership of digital platforms by UMG and the remaining majors.
“As you are probably aware, Qriocity is a US service. It seems that in October last year Universal requested Omnifone, who act as the aggregator for Qriocity, to take down the King Crimson tracks but apparently they did not comply with this instruction.” This is a much more recent quote from another senior UMG lawyer in July 2011 on the same subject of digital availability company without rights to do so. What the lawyer failed to mention is that UMG supplied Omnifone in the first instance. He also failed to mention that UMG’s digital supremo Rob Wells was, at the time of the availability, listed as a director of Omnifone as Companies House.
Where a company’s senior legal representatives find it necessary to be so circumspect about such matters as to risk misrepresenting the basic facts by omission, how can anyone be expected to take on trust statements about the company’s broader ambitions in the market?
UMG has shown itself utterly incapable – despite repeated assurances to the contrary – of handling the removal of two dozen King Crimson tracks from sale over a period approaching seven years. Their UK lawyers assure me that the material is no longer offered for sale. The statements produced by their US company show continued sales in about twenty different countries.
Who could trust such a company to handle the rights of the vast, by comparison, EMI catalogue?
It is time for a new approach to matters of ownership & representation of the work of artists in the music industry. UMG’s proposed takeover of EMI offers nothing new to EMI staff or artists, merely a perpetuation of the same approach on a grander scale, doubtless complete with the usual “synergies” resulting in fewer staff & artists in the long term.
The labels, staff & artists associated with both companies deserve better than this.
This is not an attempt to create healthy competition. It’s an attempt to restrict such competition & it should continue to be opposed on that basis by all who care about the future of recorded music.
Declan Colgan,
Panegyric Recordings, July 2012
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