Everyone is entitled to my opinion...

We had our Christmas party last night so today’s blog may be a little sketchy on details.

“Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”, I say. It’s exactly like music marketing. You never give the whole story away right at the beginning. You control a certain amount of information to trickle out and hope like hell that word of mouth will do the rest. And at the end of 2009, it is still word of mouth that will break artists.

As for established acts, word of mouth can also kill. The backlash online to a dud track or poor live performance can be devastating. The power has shifted so much in favour of the audience that it has become even more important (if this is at all possible) to make sure you have good songs to start with. And that’s really all I have been banging on about all year.

I mention this because there are a lot of people out there who believe in the magical Silver Bullet approach to success in the music industry. There isn’t one. But writing hits is still the best place to start.

ARIA Award Rant… continued…

It’s great to see that as the ARIA Awards were not about “making people lots of money” as quoted by ARIA chairman Ed St John a couple of weeks ago, that somehow the record buying public have just "magically discovered" the albums by acts that won awards on the night. Who would have guessed?

All of these acts have "miraculously" moved up the charts.

Robbie Williams’ “Reality Killed The Video Star” went up from #9 to #4

Empire Of The Sun’s “Walking On A Dream” re-entered the chart at #13

Sarah Blasko’s “As Day Follows Night” also re-enteed at #19

Kate Miller-Heidke’s “Curiouser” moved up 15 spots to #22

Lisa Mitchell’s “Wonder” re-entered the chart at #30

And even the lovely Jess Mauboy’s “Been Waiting” re-entered at #37

You can see all of the other ARIA movers at Christie Elizer’s column here.

Record Label in Artist Royalty Statement Shock

You don’t really need to have heard of the act Too Much Joy to have some sympathy for them. A story that has been online for the past week or so goes into detail about their royalty statement that they received from Warner Music appears to under state the amount of digital sales over a particular quarter.

When one of the band members decides to investigate, well, the story becomes quite a ride. It’s quite a long article but definitely worth the read.

If you have ever worked for a major record label, this will all sound very familiar. If you are an artist who dreams of that big record contract someday, just make sure you get a really good accountant…and lawyer… and manager... maybe even in that order.

Read the whole article here.

(if they haven’t already)

My friend Neil, who is currently between jobs (will market for food!) obviously has way too much time on his hands… but he did send me a very interesting article this week that I thought was certainly worthy of bringing to your attention.

We haven’t had a good “It will revolutionise the music industry” story for a couple of weeks but this one is a cracker. For the less technically minded out there, your eyes will probably glaze over during the first paragraph so it's best you skip down to “What Would Dave Do?” right now. For the rest of you, this article is quite fascinating and points to a very interesting future for music online.

Check it out here.

Welcome to the Fog Blog #28

Everyone is entitled to my opinion...

ARIA Award Rant… continued…

Record Label in Artist Royalty Statement Shock

The Geek Shall Inherit The Earth

(if they haven’t already)

What Would Dave Do?